Emiko Davies

Lina’s pollo in galantina, an Italian family classic

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:16:26 GMT

My favourite butcher shop, Sergio Falaschi, which is one of the reasons why we bought a house in San Miniato (joking — sort of!) has one of the prettiest and enticing counters, it could compete with any pastry shop window. It is run by my friend Andrea, Sergio’s son, and they are the fourth and third generation to run this shop, with great care for the products, and in turn the heirloom breed animals and local farmers they work with (see my last post all about their prosciutto di Cinta Senese). I’ve always loved walking through the butcher section in the Florentine markets to marvel at what they have on display, offering not only all the classics, from the most rustic to the most sought after cuts, but also an array of inventive, creative and delicious prepared meats ready to simply take home to cook.

At Falaschi, they have things like cotolette (flattened out crumbed chicken thighs with the bone still attached), collo ripieno (stuffed chicken necks), roast pork wrapped and tied with lardo and rosemary, fegatelli in the winter season (pork liver wrapped in caul fat and stored in lard, my husband’s favourite dish) and spiedini. I love their boiled beef polpette, ready to take home to fry until golden brown (delicious with salsa verde) and their filetto in crosta is genius (below), it’s a delicious pork loin rolled in finely chopped rosemary, garlic, thyme and fennel seed. It’s pushed into the crust of an emptied out baguette and the whole thing is wrapped in pancetta. They’re sold like this, ready for roasting for about 20 minutes in a hot oven.

They also sell some cooked dishes too, including ready made ragus, insalata russa (Russian or Olivier salad) and pollo in galantina, which is a classic Italian family dish, popular in Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, one often made for important celebrations like Christmas, when there is broth being made and there are plenty of people around the table to feed. It was once considered a noble dish, prepared for festive occasions and perhaps for the care and length of time needed to prepare it, it has always been the sort of dish that appears once a year for that special occasion.

I recently spent some time in the kitchen at the back of the butcher shop — which, before the pandemic, did a roaring trade as a restaurant — with Lina, Andrea’s mamma and she showed me how she makes her glorious pollo in galatina for the shop, to share here on my blog.

Lina’s Pollo in Galantina or Stuffed Chicken
Pollo in Galantina di Lina da Sergio Falaschi Macelleria, San Miniato

Lina uses a deboned, butterflied chicken (in Italy a whole chicken, in particular free range, local ones like the ones they have at Falaschi’s butcher shop, weigh about 1 kg whole). And she uses a large sewing needle and kitchen string to sew it all up! It is ideal to start this dish 24 hours before you want to serve it so that the chicken can chill and set in the fridge. It will be easier to slice after this.

Serves 5

For the chicken stuffing:

1 small white onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
small handful of fresh parsley, chopped
600 grams minced veal and pork (Lina prefers mostly veal, with a small quantity of pork)
1 egg, beaten
40 grams grated Parmesan
pinch of grated nutmeg
salt and pepper
1 piece of boiled beef tongue in brine (lingua salmistrata), diced (or if you don’t have it perhaps try diced mortadella)
150 grams of prosciutto, diced
a handful of blanched peas
a handful of pistachios, toasted lightly (optional)
1 deboned chicken, approximately 800 grams in weight
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled

For the broth:

1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick of celery
1 bay leaf
Enough water to cover

To serve:

Salsa verde (see recipe here)
Salsa tonnata/tuna mayonnaise (see recipe here)
Boiled potatoes or Insalata russa (Russian or Olivier salad)
Giardiniera (Italian Pickles, see my recipe here)

Method:

Combine the onion, garlic, parsley in a large bowl with the minced veal and pork. Add the beaten egg and mix through, along with a good pinch of salt, a good grinding of pepper, Parmesan and nutmeg. Mix until well combined then add the diced tongue, prosciutto, peas, and pistachios if using, until well distributed.

Now take the deboned, butterflied chicken and place it skin side down on a board. Place about half the stuffing on the chicken and then arrange the two boiled eggs inside then cover with the rest of the stuffing mixture. Sew the chicken back up with kitchen string, closing it entirely and securely. You can (and should) also tie the chicken as you would a good roast pork.

Heat the oven to 160C. In a large dutch oven place the vegetables for the broth and the bay leaf, along with the tied chicken and add water to cover. Cover and let it cook gently for 1-1 1/2 hours. You can also boil it on a stove top but be careful to cook it gently and slowly so that it doesn’t break open. Remove from the heat and allow it to cool entirely in the broth. Once cool, you can slice it no more than 1cm thick (hint, the more chilled it is, the easier it is to slice thinly, which is why you should do this the day before you would like to serve it and keep it in the fridge). You can eat this cold or warm. To serve it warm, reheat the slices with some of the broth.

Serve the pollo in galantina with salsa verde and salsa tonnato (tuna mayonnaise), piping hot boiled potatoes, pickles or Olivier salad.

Notes: Some like to prepare a broth beforehand, using the bones of the chicken, so if you’ve deboned your own chicken that would be a very good idea to not waste the bones! Also at the end of the cooking, you should definitely keep the broth to make a minestrone or some other warming, comforting dish. It’ll be delicious.

Thank you to the Falaschi family for their generosity and time!

Making Prosciutto di Cinta Senese with Sergio Falaschi

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 15:32:18 GMT

I have long been taking advice from my friend and favourite butcher, Andrea Falaschi (above), a fourth generation butcher who goes by @guidofalaschi, the name of his great grandfather who first opened the family butcher shop in 1925 in San Miniato. We share the same passion for ethically and sustainably raised free-range animals, Tuscan traditions and quality over quantity when it comes to eating meat.

Andrea works with his father, Sergio, in the butcher shop and laboratory where they make their famous, artian salumi, prosciutto and sausages, and his mother Lina, who makes fresh preparations for clients to cook at home like stuffed chicken (pollo in galantina), filetto in crosta (pork fillet to be roasted inside bread crust) and spiedini. Before the pandemic, Lina also headed a wonderful restaurant at the back of the butcher shop, which happens to have one of the best views in town!

They work directly with local farmers – just as Andrea’s great grandfather Guido did – who have the same values, and that same care goes into everything they do. They make, amongst many things, San Miniato’s only Slow Food presidium, mallegato, a spiced winter blood sausage, my favourite truffle sausages and precious prosciutto di Cinta Senese, made from an ancient Tuscan pig breed that is only raised free range and has a natural diet of foraged acorns, tubers and roots. One day I’ll go into more detail on the mallegato and other specialties but today I wanted to share their process of making prosciutto, which they do for their own butcher shop and also for other well known farmers and producers around Tuscany.

I was recently invited to visit the Falaschi laboratory, which is in the countryside just 5km from the butcher shop in the historical centre of San Miniato (and a few minutes walk from our new home!). I brought my 8 year old, who loves prosciutto and helped me document the experience! Everything is done by hand, from the filling of finocchiona and salumi in their natural casings, to all the tying, with all natural products according to ancient traditions. We watched the Cinta Senese prosciutto being made – prized for its juicy and tasty meat and its thick, delicious layer of fat. You can always tell it’s a certified Cinta breed (it is a DOP product, aka protected designation of origin) because the hooves are left on the prosciutto to differentiate them from regular prosciutto.

First the prosciutto legs are rolled with a rolling pin to remove any excess blood at the socket. Then they are painted with a mix of garlic, sugar and water. Over goes a heavy sprinkle of ground pepper, then coarse salt all the way down to the hoof (above). They stay like this for 3 days then are hung to cure in an air-temperature controlled room. They take 60 days all together from start to finish! That’s it, time and a few essential curing ingredients, no preservatives or additives.

Cinta senese is a truly ancient pork breed native to Tuscany’s province of Siena (as its name suggests) — it is thought that they were raised even in Roman times. There is a well known fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the Palazzo del Comune di Siena, painted in 1338, that depicts a farmer with a Cinta Senese pig — easily identified by the thick white band or cinta (belt) across its otherwise black body, which is still how it looks today. A century ago it was the breed of pig that most Tuscan farmers would have kept, however, after the second world War their numbers fell drastically — partly due to the fact that after the war, the prolific Danish and English breeds were introduced. Sadly, this happened all across Italy and during the 20th century many native pigs died out — in 1927 there were 21 heirloom breeds native to Italy and today there are only six, including the Cinta Senese. Luckily from the 1970-1980s, some passionate farmers helped bring them back from the brink of extinction.

In the year 2000 the Consorzio di Cinta Senese, a voluntary group that determine the rules and regulations in which this heirloom pig should be raised, was created and by 2012 it was awarded DOP status. Certified Cinta Senese are born, raised and butchered in Tuscany. They are pure bred, live free range with an enormous amount of space (usually in woods or partially wooded areas, no more than 10 animals per hectare or 2.5 acres) and forage for their food. During the months where there is less around, their diet can be integrated with a small percentage of cereals, legumes, seeds, fresh fruit and vegetables, 60% of which must be Tuscan — more or less replicating the Tuscan traditions of centuries past.

Truffle, artichoke and anchovy (ancient grain, sourdough) pizza

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 16:36:10 GMT

Christmas may be upon us but since 2020 is a very different kind of year and we will be just us, I feel we can do something kind of different for Christmas too. Homemade pizza is something we have always loved making but to make it special I thought I might put truffle on it so we came up with this rather unusual combination — but oh it works so well!

We recently moved from Florence to my husband’s hometown, San Miniato, which is half an hour from both Florence and Pisa. It’s a charming hill top town that I’ve written about often, even before moving here, and one of the main attractions, other than the views and affordability, is the fact that this is the heartland of Tuscan truffles.

I’ve been testing out some different truffle products that are on offer in San Miniato (spoiler alert, we are hoping to very shortly share with you a special, curated box of delicious things, including truffle products!) and one of the things that got me curious was an artichoke and truffle paste. The first thing I thought was — what a Tuscan combination! Artichokes and truffles are two classic Tuscan ingredients available in the winter. The second thing I thought was, how have I never thought about this combination before?! We smothered it onto a pizza base in place of tomato sauce, added some anchovies (because I love anchovies, especially on pizza, and did you know anchovies and truffles go hand in hand as well?), and fresh mozzarella right at the end. It was spectacular!

I also wanted to share this recipe for an unusual pizza dough (to add to our other pizza dough recipes, including this Roman style pizza dough, and this Florentine ‘bar style’ pizza dough from my cookbook Florentine), which we changed from our usual favourite because we were working with an interesting flour that has very little gluten. It’s grown organically and stone ground here in San Miniato with a ‘tipo 2’ wheat called ‘Gentil Rosso’, an ancient Tuscan grain which a century ago was grown widely all over Italy but has now almost disappeared because of the fact that it has very little gluten in it and it was replaced by more productive modern grains.

An aside on ancient grain flour and its strength

This ancient grain flour’s strength, measured by W index, is only 42 (a soft ‘tipo 00’ flour could have a W index of around 90-180, regular all purpose flour around 250, while strong flour like Manitoba flour has a W index of 400). So there are a few things to consider when using a very ‘weak’ flour. The stronger the flour, the more resistant it is to leavening and needs to rise longer, so technically this weak flour doesn’t need a long rise (but we did, a couple times, and we liked the results). The stronger the flour, the more water the flour can absorb too — Manitoba can absorb 90% of its weight in water, while a tipo 00 can take more like 50%. We pushed this too, and the result is a sticky, wet dough that you will mould with yur hands rather than roll out.

In general the weaker flours are more ideal for making biscuits and cakes, while stronger flours for things like sourdough bread (and the ones in between for pizza). But we went ahead and tried this very weak ancient ground flour out for pizza anyway! My husband Marco (the passionate baker in the house), aimed for a 65% hydration at the suggestion of Emanuele Bianucci, the producer of this Gentil Rosso flour. Marco used his sourdough starter (boosted by a pinch of dried yeast) but you could use directly yeast too.

We loved it because it made an absolutely delicious, perfumed, soft style pizza crust that, as Italians like to point out, is more easily digested. We also made schiacciata from this dough, scented with rosemary and olive oil, and it was impossible to stop eating it!

Truffle, artichoke and anchovy ancient grain sourdough pizza

If using regular flour or you don’t have sourdough starter, you may like our Roman style pizza dough recipe, but if you are attempting a pizza dough with a weak, ancient grain, low gluten flour, give this dough recipe a go! It is best made the morning before you want to cook the pizza. I used an artichoke paste but if you can’t get the paste, use quartered marinated artichokes and chop or blend them yourself into a paste.

For 2 x 30cm diameter pizzas

For the sourdough pizza:

100 grams sourdough starter
290 ml water
pinch of active dried yeast/instant yeast
420 grams ‘tipo 2’ ancient grain flour (we used ‘Gentil Rosso’ W42)
60 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus more for topping
10 gr salt

For the pizza topping:

350 gr buffalo mozzarella (or burrata) at room temperature
180 gr artichoke paste (or marinated artichokes in quarters, see note)
8-10 anchovy fillets (the best quality you can afford)
1 small truffle, thinly sliced

To make the dough by hand, combine the starter with the water and a pinch of dried yeast in a large bowl and whisk together. Add half of the flour and whisk into a batter. Add the olive oil and salt and combine. Add the rest of the flour little by little until well incorporated – switch to a spatula, wooden spoon or hands to mix at this point. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes, then mix the dough, from bottom to top, almost like folding it, a few times, every 30 minutes for a total of 4 times/2 hours. Cover and leave to rise in the fridge 8 hours (or overnight).

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 230C (450F).

Divide the wet dough into 2 portions and plop them onto well-oiled pizza trays and spread out evenly with (oiled) hands. Place spoonfuls of the artichoke paste here and there all over the pizza bases and then, with the back of the spoon, roughly spread the paste around the base to cover lightly. Add anchovy fillets (I like to keep them whole and use them as ‘markers’ where the pizza will be sliced but you can chop and scatter if you prefer) and a good drizzle of olive oil.

Bake in hot oven (remember to swap the pizzas around so that they get even time on the lowest shelf; if baking one at a time, keep it on the lowest shelf) for 18-20 minutes of until the crusts are golden brown and the toppings are sizzling furiously. At the last moment, throw over the mozzarella and leave 1 more minute, just enough for it to go lovely and soft but not melt. Remove from the oven, scatter over the truffle slices and serve immediately with another good drizzle of olive oil.

Chestnut panforte, a gluten free and vegan treat

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:31:58 GMT

This is a slightly untraditional variation on the most traditional recipe I know for panforte — a sweet, dense, spicy medieval cake from Siena. The recipe comes from the bible of Tuscan cooking, Paolo Petroni’s Il Grande Libro della Vera Cucina Toscana and every time I make panforte (since I first posted about it back in 2011) I make some kind of variation on his recipe. To be honest, I usually don’t deviate from it much unless there’s something I can’t find — even in Tuscany, that candied melon he calls for can be hard to procure! Often I might simply play around with proportions of spices, more black pepper, a little less cinnamon. Or, if I have it, I go with the spice mix Tuscan’s call, droghe, drugs, which are bought by the weight in little neighbourhood alimentari, wrapped in paper.

But this time I wanted to try something quite different, and I used chestnut flour, which you can find in Tuscany from about October to March in place of regular flour. It makes such a delicious seasonal version, and although it’s not a traditional part of panforte’s long history, the flavour of chestnuts is so Tuscan that it feels like it’s meant to be in here.

Panforte generally has only a few variations. There’s panpepato, which is a very spicy version, with it’s top covered in a layer of black pepper (pepato means peppered) in place of the icing sugar — it tastes positively medieval and is just the thing to warm you on a wintery day with an espresso. On the other side of the scale, there is a very delicate version known as Panforte Margherita. Invented in 1879 in honour of Queen Margherita of Savoy’s visit to Siena, it’s made using candied citron instead of the melon and vanilla instead of the characteristically heady spices. The citron makes it ‘blonder’ than the classic, dark panforte.

Down the bottom of Tuscany in Monte Argentario and Giglio Island is what I would call the long lost cousin of panforte, panficato – made similarly but with dried figs in place of the candied fruit. I have that recipe in Acquacotta and it is something like a figgy brownie, with only flour holding the fruit, chocolate and spices together, shaped into a rustic loaf.

The main ingredient in panforte is candied fruit— so it should be something you are already particularly fond of and, if you can, I strongly recommend using a good one, either homemade or artisan-made rather than industrial, pre-chopped bits. It’s not a cheap option but it makes a world of difference and I would go as far as to say it’s probably not worth making if you can’t get the good stuff.

Not having candied melon in lockdown, I use candied citron like the panforte Margherita (or try dried figs like the panficato of the coast). Use whatever nuts you like best — almonds are traditional but since this is an untraditional panforte, I think hazelnuts or walnuts would go particularly well with the chestnut flavours.

This makes such a lovely treat for Christmas. Like many fruit dense Christmas cakes (the little ones in the photo below are Belinda Jeffrey’s Christmas cake), panforte lasts weeks and weeks and you only need tiny portions at a time because it is so sweet and dense. It makes a nice gift too, if you make one big one like this, cut into slices and wrap in greaseproof paper before wrapping in pretty paper (you can also make this in small tins, just note that the panforte should be about 2cm tall). Oh and did I mention, it’s gluten free and vegan too?

Chestnut Panforte

I recommend having all the ingredients ready before you add the syrup as once this gets added it can harden to a point where it becomes difficult to handle (especially if your kitchen is quite cold). If this happens, you simply need to warm the mixture gently and then it becomes easier to pat into the cake tin. If you can, use whole spices and grind them just before using in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder for maximum flavour. You may be timid about using pepper, but I can’t stress how important the flavour of the black pepper is in here, go for one whole teaspoon of it!

Serves 12

350 grams candied citron
50 grams candied orange peel
200 grams whole peeled almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts
4 teaspoons ground spices (coriander seeds, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper)
150 grams chestnut flour, sifted
300 grams white sugar
Icing sugar for dusting

Grease and line a 24-26 cm cake tin with baking paper and heat the oven to 160C (320F)

Chop the candied fruit into very small diced pieces and place in a large bowl. Add the nuts, the spices and the sifted chestnut flour (it tends to be lumpy, don’t skip the sifting) and set aside.

Place the sugar in 100 ml of water in a saucepan over low heat. Let it dissolve and thicken very slightly into a syrup, about 5 minutes of simmering should do it, do not let it colour into a caramel (it should reach 120C, if you have a sugar thermometer).

Pour the syrup off the heat and mix with the candied fruit mixture until just combined. Tip the mixture immediately into the cake tin and flatten/smooth out with a nonstick spatula (or dust the top with some extra cinnamon and then use your hands to pat it out). Bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown and the top is firm to the touch. Allow to cool completely in the tin. Before serving, cover generously with icing sugar.

It keeps very well stored in a cool, dark place.

Garibaldi Innamorato’s Zuppa Corsa, a fish soup from the Tuscan coast

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 14:43:14 GMT

The supermarket was offering the prettiest fish plucked out if the waters of the Tuscan arcipelago last night — so fresh they smell of the sea and are still in rigor mortis — for a steal, 6 euro a kilo. Look at how bright eyed and beautiful they are! These small fish — a mixture of different types of sea bream known as fragolino (the pink one, known as pandora in English) and mormora (striped sea bass, with the yellow stripe on his cheeks), along with gallinella (gurnard), scorfano (scorpion fish) are labelled as pesce da zuppa, fish for soup, or sometimes paranza, for frying whole, because of their pint size. Often there are some triglie (red mullet) in the mix too.

Tuscany alone has 400 km of coastline and 7 islands and there are many good Tuscan fish soups (let alone the ones found all over the country!), the most famous being Cacciucco from Livorno, a huge, minimum 2 person type dish made with thirteen different types of seafood. But there’s another, very memorable one for me that I had many years ago a little south of Livorno. We were in the port city of Piombino (the mainland stop if you’re on the way to Elba Island) on a very cold blustery autumn day, at Garibaldi Innamorato — an appealing choice I had selected out of that year’s Slow Food restaurant guide. What got me was that they only use the freshest fish of the day so the menu is never the same, it’s always unexpected, except for one mainstay, the Zuppa Corsa or Corsican soup.

Before you wonder why you’d have Corsican soup in Tuscany, look up Piombino on a map and you will see about 100 km to the east, on the other side of Elba island, is the finger-point of Cap Corse, Corsica. It’s closer than Florence. You can see it on a clear day easily from here. Well, we had to have their famous Zuppa Corsa, where the thick, smooth, rust-hued fish soup is ceremoniously spooned out of a tureen over a plate of toasted crostini previously topped with grated cheese and a dollop of pink rouille sauce (it’s a bit like an aioli but spiced with chilli and often paprika, however at Garibaldi Innamorato, they make theirs — interestingly — with housemade mayonnaise and harissa). It sounds odd in the regular context of Tuscan fare — fish with cheese is just not a thing in this part of Italy, creamy mayonnaise isn’t particularly either. But oh it works!

If you are already familiar with French bouillabaisse, then it’s not too dissimilar from the famous soup of Marseilles. Yet it is also different. In bouillabaisse, similar fish is used (traditionally also eel and shell fish) but the soup base is decidedly more Provençal, which in Julia Child’s description means, garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel. You may even find potatoes or sea urchin, and it is served with rouille sauce on toasted bread at the bottom of the plate. The boiled fish is eaten after the soup course. The Corsican soup base is more rustic and very similar to smooth, brothy Tuscan fish soups like minestra di pesce which you might eat with pasta in it, and this zuppa Certosina from a Tuscan monastery. Oh and then there’s the Swiss cheese. A must – you could probably use another type of cheese but make sure it is mild and melty.

Just thinking about this warming, delicious dish, at once creamy, cheesy and yet tasting of the freshest Tuscan seafood, made me dream of heading back to Piombino as soon as lockdown is over. In the meantime it also had me looking up the rouille sauce recipe right away, while Marco was already cleaning the fish.

I followed a recipe for the rouille from the Silver Spoon, the main tweak being that Marco insisted on a hint of tabasco going in there! The soup part of the recipe was all Marco. It doesn’t usually have the calamari in there but we couldn’t resist as those were on display too and very fresh. Rather than the entire soup being blended smooth, he left the fish in pieces but this is a matter of taste. One thing I will say is that if you have a mouli/passaverdura/passatutto, it is an old fashioned contraption but a great help in making fish soup with whole fish this way as it gets rid of the bones and unwanted bits while filtering through the wanted bits. If you don’t have one, you can blend with an immersion blender, but do be careful of small bones.

Zuppa Corsa inspired by Garibaldi Innamorato

Serves 4-6 (four as a main dish, 6 as an first course)

1 kg small fish for soup (sea bream, scorpion fish, gurnard, red mullet), gutted and scaled
4 small calamari, whole if very small, or cut into large pieces and cleaned (optional)
2 garlic cloves
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
Handful of chopped fresh parsley stalks
1 whole fresh chilli, chopped
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
500 ml wine (red or white) or fish stock
500 ml tomato passata
4 large slices of sourdough or country style bread, cut into crostini sized pieces.
50 grams of Swiss cheese, grated

Rouille sauce
1 egg yolk
2 slices of soft white bread soaked in a bit of fish stock or milk
1 garlic clove
Fresh or dried chilli (or cayenne pepper)
Pinch of salt
80ml extra virgin olive oil

Any very small fish can go in whole, but you may like to skin and fillet the larger ones (keep the heads).

In a saucepan, place garlic, onion, parsley stalks and chilli, pour over 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and bring to a low heat, letting everything sizzle and soften gently for about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the tomato paste, turn heat up to medium and stir it across the pan, you want to toast it a bit to bring out the flavour but not let it burn, 1 minute or so. Add fish heads and whole fish, and brown them on the outside a few minutes. Then add the wine, a good pinch of salt and bring to a simmer. Let cook 10 minutes, uncovered and it should reduce slightly. Add the passata along with 500 ml of water and let simmer 30 minutes gently. Taste and adjust salt to your liking.

Pass it through a mouli or sieve. It’s meant to be smooth but we actually kept larger pieces of fish in there. If you would like to do it that way, keep the fish pieces you filleted earlier for the next step. If you would like the smooth version, add the fish fillets to the soup and continue simmering 2-3 minutes, then pass through the mouli.

If using the calamari, in a separate pan, heat a little oil and over medium-high heat roast the calamari for 1 minute then add to the soup and continue cooking 10 minutes. Add the fish pieces the last 2 minutes of cooking. Keep the soup warm, this should be served nice and hot.

While the soup is simmering, you can toast the bread for crostini and set them in a dish to place on the table, maybe wrapped inside a linen napkin to keep warm.

For the sauce, use a pestle and mortar or an immersion blender to blend all the ingredients except the oil until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the oil a little at a time, whisking or blending it in for a smooth, creamy sauce. Taste for salt or heat. (Marco likes a drop of Tabasco in this but I prefer without!)

Spoon the rouille sauce into a small bowl and set it on the table, along with the grated Swiss cheese. Place the soup in a tureen with a lid and ladle. To serve, place crostini in the bottom of the bowls, top each with rouille sauce and a sprinkle of cheese. Spoon the hot soup over the top and let it sit for a minute or so then enjoy.

Introducing the new edition of Florentine

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 08:39:27 GMT

My first baby, Florentine: The True Cuisine of Florence, which I started writing in 2014, was published in 2016. And this month it has been launched in Australia and the UK (the US will have to wait a few more months until 9 February 2021) with a brand new look! It has a slightly smaller format to the original, still hardback only, and a moodier, darker, beautiful marbled cover.

The recipes and photographs are the same as the original, where I was mindful to include the most Florentine dishes you can find, but in this edition I have also written a brand new guide to eating and drinking in Florence! This is my most comprehensive list — all my favourites, in short form (such as a quick list, where all you need is a glance, and even a 24 hours in Florence suggestion), and in long form (descriptive reviews of my favourite Florentine restaurants), with plenty of photographs and even suggestions for shopping for gourmands — alongside my address book for Florence.

To celebrate the release of my new edition, my publishers Hardie Grant Books are giving away 5 copies of the new Florentine anywhere worldwide! To enter and see those details, just tell me about what you love about Florence on my latest Instagram post. Winners will be drawn on Sunday 15 November 2020 and contacted on Instagram.

I’m so proud of this book, it was the dream cookbook I always wanted to write (if you want to read more about the making of Florentine, head to this article in Good Food Australia), and I’m so grateful that my publishers wanted to give it a new life and re-release it with this new look. Thank you, as always, to Jane Willson, my publisher at Hardie Grant Books, book designer Allison Colpoys, who together with Kasia Gadecki created the marbled covers of the original and new edition, and recipe photographer Lauren Bamford, stylist Deb Kaloper, home economist Caroline Griffiths. Thank you also to my family and thank YOU, my readers, for all your support over the years!

Savoury bread pudding cake with prunes, caprino and pumpkin

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 16:06:34 GMT

Back home from a whirlwind trip to Venice with a new set of Covid-19 regulations that means it’s time for a lot of baking (and staying at home).

This is a savory bread pudding cake, which as far as I can tell isn’t really a thing but it is the best way I can describe it. Basically it is an excellent way to use up leftovers — stale bread, milk and eggs make the body of the cake, then add whatever you have in the fridge, leftover bits of cheese, some pancetta, that sort of thing. The bread part of the this savoury cake is based on the bread and apple cake that I wrote for the Financial Times during lockdown, I often make it when I have loads of stale bread lying around that I can’t bear to throw away (like all that sourdough we made during lockdown!), plus sugar, a couple of apples and a swirl of jam, but this savoury version has prunes, roast pumpkin, walnuts and caprino, a creamy, mild goat’s cheese.

It is inspired by a wonderful savoury cake by Rachel Khoo that a friend once baked me years ago that I can still taste when I close my eyes, it had prunes, goat cheese and pistachios in it and she describes it as perfect for a picnic. I added the roast pumpkin as a last minute thought as I had just bought a beautiful Mantova pumpkin (quite similar in terms of flavour and texture to Japanese kabocha pumpkins which remind me of eating boiled chestnuts) that are now in season.

Thick slices toasted with a blob of salted butter this morning for breakfast were heavenly. It’s like a sweet-savoury French toast. Because the caprino is so mild but tangy and the other ingredients are sweet, you could easily take this to the sweet side topped with some honey and butter, or give it a more savoury edge with layers of prosciutto or crispy pancetta, which would make a delicious lunch next to a salad of bitter radicchio. If you prefer it cheesier (a bit like these cheesy stale bread ‘tortine’) and decidedly more savoury, add a handful of Parmesan or a good melty cheese to the mixture before baking. It really is a blank canvas for whatever flavour combinations (or things hanging about in the fridge) that you happen to have.

Savoury bread pudding loaf with prunes, caprino and pumpkin

400 grams of stale country style bread or sourdough (about half a large loaf)
500-700 ml of warm milk
120 grams of pumpkin, diced (Kabocha, Mantovana or butternut squash are great)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
70 grams of melted butter
200 grams caprino (soft goat’s curd)
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
Generous pinch of salt
100 grams of dried prunes, chopped roughly
70 grams walnut pieces

Roughly cut the bread into thick cubes and place in a bowl. Pour over warm milk (if you are using rock hard bread you may need up to 700 ml) and let sit until the bread is soft enough to crumble by hand (about 15 minutes or leave it overnight in the fridge if needed). If you have very hard crusts that don’t break down these may need to be cut off and discarded. You can also blend the bread mixture with an immersion blender or food processor, if you have it, but I usually crumble it by hand.

Cook the pumpkin in a small skillet in the olive oil over medium heat until well roasted around the edges and tender. Set aside to cool.

Heat the oven to 180 C.

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, butter and goats cheese with a fork until roughly combined, and then evenly stir through the soft bread mixture along with the baking powder and salt.

Add the walnuts, prunes and the pumpkin and stir through the distribute evenly.

Pour into a greased and lined large loaf tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is golden brown and springy to the touch. Delicious warm right out of the oven, but perhaps my favourite way is over the next day or two, cut into thick slices and toasted on a pan until browned then topped with very good butter. Keep leftovers of this cake wrapped well and store in the fridge.

Tuscan spice pumpkin bread, a tale of forgotten drugs

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:38:39 GMT

I am quite aware that this title sounds a bit ridiculous — because there is no such thing as Tuscan spice pumpkin bread and it sounds like one of those recipes that I see online and abhor, that has nothing at all to do with Tuscany, like “Tuscan salad dressing” (no such thing exists in Tuscany, we just use olive oil and a wine vinegar of choice). But this time Tuscan spice really is a thing and it’s a fascinating thing too, something also sadly disappearing and not very well known. A heady mix of spices and an unlikely pairing of ingredients go into this mix, which is called droghe (drugs!) and is sold by the weight from a disappearing culture of food shops. Its name comes from an ancient term that covered not what we think of now as drugs but all manner of pharmaceuticals, in particular, plants, herbs and seeds that were used for medicinal purposes. And pharmacists were those who, in centuries past, would have kept spices too. Today in Florence, Bizzarri is one of those shops that looks like it has remained unchanged for 150 years and it is still where I go today for hard to find whole spices like mace.

My mother in law’s grandfather, Angiolo, who built the house she lives in, was the owner of a bar and alimentari (a food shop, or deli), where his wife Maria churned out aniseed biscotti and cakes, where they sliced salami and prosciutto, supplied pecorino for grating and fresh bread, dried pasta, salt, pepper and other spices, everything by the weight and packaged in paper. Their “droghe” were sold, like all spices and salt, alongside the tobacco.

The droghe mix can contain spices such as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, aniseed, fennel or perhaps liquorice, pepper, star anise, coriander seed, juniper berries, dried orange zest. It’s also the same mix of spiced commonly used in salumi-making to spice Tuscan salami, soprassata or sausages.

There is a shop in my mother in law’s town — one of those shops that is unchanged by time — that still sells droghe by the weight. The signora of the shop pulls down a white container from a shelf labelled “spezie toscane” (Tuscan spices), weighs out a scoop for me and packages it in a piece of paper to take home — she shares with me that to the usual mix of ground spices, they add raisins, pine puts and chunks of chocolate. It’s mostly used for gamey stews — it’s perfect for a sweet and savoury Tuscan wild boar and chocolate stew known as cinghiale in dolceforte, and it works very well with hare too, although that is a rare dish these days. It’s a similar mixture of spices also used in the medieval panforte, a dense, rich, heavily spiced fruitcake from Siena. Both these well known dishes taste of the Renaissance, with that wonderful spice mix being the hero, and the highlight.

This pumpkin bread is made with mostly buckwheat but you can use regular flour in its place, I personally love the nuttiness of buckwheat in a cake like this (also in this incredible apple cake from Danielle Alvarez). Buckwheat is naturally gluten free so if you are looking for a completely gluten free cake, you can use almond meal/ground almonds in place of the flour. We all know that pumpkin in cake is just another vehicle (just as with carrot cake or zucchini bread) for a delicious, tender cake full of spices. So rather than use the classic, American style spice mix (often labelled “pumpkin spice”) which is a usually a mixed blend of cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice, I used this special Tuscan blend of “drugs”. I wanted to include raisins and pine nuts in this too but you can leave them off or use dates or chunks of dark chocolate instead of the raisins, and walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts instead of pine nuts.

I made this with a simple glaze using the juice from the zested orange, sprinkled with pine nuts, but alternatively you can enjoy this unglazed, warm right out of the oven lathered with some butter. Add the pine nuts to the batter if you like instead.

Tuscan spiced pumpkin bread (Torta di zucca con le droghe)

For the Tuscan droghe spices, combine the following ground spices in equal amounts: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, fennel seed, coriander seed, nutmeg. Keep in a jar and use as you please.

125 gr butter, softened
150 grams light brown sugar
2 eggs
300 gr of fresh pumpkin boiled and mashed
1-2 tsp droghe spice mix (above)
1 tsp cinnamon
Zest and juice of an orange
150 gr buckwheat
65 gr flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
50 gr raisins, optional
120 gr powdered sugar (icing sugar)

Preheat oven to 180C and line a load tin with baking paper or grease with butter.

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and pale. Add the eggs and continue beating until well incorporated. Add the pumpkin mash, along with the spices and orange zest (reserve the juice for later) and now fold through the buckwheat, flour, baking powder and salt. Once the flour is well incorporated, stir through the raisins, if using. Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake until the cake is well risen and the spices begin perfuming the kitchen. A cake tester inserted in the middle should come out clean, about 40-50 minutes.

Allow to cool and in the meantime, toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until golden, shaking them the entire time so they don’t stay in one spit too long and burn. Prepare the the orange glaze by mixing the powdered sugar with a teaspoon at a time of the freshly squeezed orange juice until it slides thickly off a spoon. Sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts and allow to set before slicing.

Prosciutto and pea pasta (Paglia e fieno alla fiesolana)

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:50:48 GMT

As family meals go, we are slowly but surely developing a repertoire of meals that all four of us — including the picky eater — can eat together and nothing makes my heart more full than a meal that we can make and enjoy together. To add to the growing list of favourites, Tuscan spiedini di carne (skewers of meat, sausage, bay leaf and bread), spaghetti con le vongole, my mother’s tamago no gohan (a simple stir fry of egg and rice, which I serve with dried seaweed and furikake and always results in empty bowls and requests for more) and my pantry staple, polpette di tonno (tuna croquettes), is this delicious pasta sauce, which goes by several names but the one I like best, for nostalgic reasons, is alla fiesolana, Fiesole style.

We are shortly moving house, from Settignano, a beautiful hilltop quarter of Florence near Fiesole, where we have called home for four years, to San Miniato, my husband Marco’s birth place. We have sadly but sweetly outgrown our tiny hilltop apartment with its even tinier kitchen, the room where we play, relax, cook and eat together. Mariù and Luna, who are 7 and 2, know their way around that kitchen and it’s here where they have become experts at cracking eggs and cranking a pasta machine – whenever they see me pull it out, they always want to be involved.

I always find it fun to turn a pasta making session into an activity for the girls — it is one of the things that got us through lockdown! Actually I shot all of these photographs while in the middle of lockdown for an article on our family meals that appeared in Corriere della Sera — so this pretty style of tagliatelle known as ‘paglia e fieno’, or straw and hay, was an excuse to get them playing in the kitchen. It’s a combination of egg and spinach pasta (hence the reference to straw and hay for the colours) from Emilia-Romagna. I found a similar recipe in the Silver Spoon with speck, rosemary, parmesan and cream as the sauce, simply called tagliatelle paglia e fieno, but otherwise I haven’t found any particularly old recipes or even old references to this so-called “Fiesole” sauce, making me think this is simply a newer, popular combination.

Truth be told, we most often make this with store bought pasta — penne is our favourite. It’s a delicious sauce, creamy, with a salty pop of prosciutto, the sweetness of peas, a hint of garlic and herbs — everyone loves it, even though one picks out the prosciutto and one picks out the peas, you can’t deny that the sauce that clings to the pasta is so good you want to lick the plate afterwards!

Pasta paglia e fieno alla fiesolana
Fiesole style pasta with prosciutto and peas

If you don’t have a pasta machine you can use any store-bought dried or fresh pasta for this, we also like it with penne (use 80 grams of dried pasta a head for adults, I usually calculate about 50-60 grams for the kids). The sauce is so quick to make that this makes an ideal weekday dinner or lunch – skip ahead to the last step if doing just the sauce!

Serves 4

For the pasta:
3 eggs
50 grams of cooked spinach
400 grams of flour (tipo 00 or all purpose)

For the sauce:
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
100 grams prosciutto, cut into thin strips
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
4-6 sage leaves
60 ml (1/4 cup) white wine or water
100 grams peas (fresh or frozen)
150 ml fresh cream
grated parmesan cheese for serving

For the pasta, combine 2 eggs with 200 grams of the flour to make the ‘paglia’ egg dough. For the ‘fieno’ spinach dough, combine the other egg with the pureed spinach and the rest of the flour. Let the doughs rest at least 30 minutes. Cut the dough in half and, working one piece at a time, dust with extra flour and roll through the pasta machine starting on the widest setting and working to the second thinnest setting on your machine. If you have the fettucine attachment to cut the dough, pass the dough immediately through this, otherwise, you can also cut it with a sharp knife – to do this, leave the pasta sheets to dry out slightly while you finish rolling out all the dough. Dust the pasta sheets very well, then fold several times over themselves until a smaller width than the knife’s lenth and cut into fettucine. Shape the well-floured pasta into little nests or let them dry long (a coat hanger or back of a chair works well for this) until you are ready to cook.

Put a pot of water on to boil the pasta and salt well (1 teaspoon per 1 litre/4 cups of water and calculate enough water to cover well the pasta).

To make the sauce, place the olive oil in a pan and over low heat, add the prosciutto and garlic, and cook for a few minutes, to brown the prosciutto slightly. Add the sage leaves and pour over the wine. Turn up heat to medium and let simmer 2 minutes. Add the peas and cream and cook a few more minutes until the cream has reduced slightly and the peas are cooked but still bright. I like to season with pepper (no need for salt thanks to the prosciutto but if you have little ones that complain about pepper, leave it out) and set aside until the pasta is ready. When the pasta is al dente, drain and immediately add it to the pan with the warm sauce and toss very well. Serve with parmesan.

White Truffle and Wine Culinary Retreat 11-16 November 2020

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 12:58:06 GMT

The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s plans and when we initially mentioned this workshop in January 2020 on instagram, it almost sold out instantly. Now, unfortunately, most of those guests have had to cancel their bookings due to travel restrictions. However, we have decided to keep it open and offer the workshop to a small group who can still make it and who want to experience a warm and casual retreat revolving around truffles and wine in Tuscany’s heart, with all the covid-19 regulations in place of course.

So if you are able to get to Italy this year, please join me and my sommelier husband, Marco Lami, on a highly curated trip to experience our personal favourite food and wine experiences in Tuscany! We have had so many questions and requests about it and, after the success of our last one in November 2019, and are looking forward to sharing this trip with you!

Autumn in Tuscany is magical. It’s misty, it’s perhaps wet, but it is mild and also the best time of year to experience Tuscan cuisine. We will be based in a beautiful restored farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside near San Miniato – Marco’s hometown and white truffle country – where home cooked dinners of the season’s best soups, stews and roasts, with specialties like saffron, wild mushrooms, chestnuts, new olive oil and white truffles, and wine tastings, held at a long table or around the open fireplace.

Our days together will consist of our most favourite things: a combination of trips to beautiful medieval towns, hands-on cooking classes, farm visits, eating out at some favourite places, winery visits and tastings, tasting new season olive oil and even being part of a truffle hunt – a white truffle hunt, no less, one of the most rare and unique ingredients in the world and a specialty of San Miniato. We will cook together and have aperitivo every night together, but for those who prefer a bit of down time and lounging by the huge fireplace with a glass of wine, you can choose to do that too and just join in on the eating part! See below for all itinerary and more details.

Dates: 11-16 November 2020 (5 nights, 5 days)

Location: San Miniato, Tuscany

Cost: from 2,500 euro per person

Highlights:

2 cooking classes with cookbook author Emiko Davies
3 winery visits and 2 wine pairings with sommelier Marco Lami
Truffle hunt and visit to San Miniato to explore the wonderful food shops
Olive harvest experience and guided olive oil masterclass with an expert from
Saffron harvest experience and a meal at our favourite farm
Truffle dinner in our favourite trattorias
Salumi tasting in our favourite butcher shop
Be immersed in a beautiful, traditional Tuscan farmhouse
Organic, local, slow food and wine

The itinerary:

Day 1: Arrival at the farmhouse in late afternoon. Aperitivo followed by a welcoming dinner together in the farmhouse.

Day 2: After breakfast, a short trip to visit to one of our favourite organic farms in San Gimignano to pick crocus flowers and harvest fresh saffron. A delicious seasonal lunch in front of the fireplace with produce, wine and olive oil all from the farm to follow. After lunch, free time to wander the medieval town of San Gimignano and visit to a local biodynamic winery. Casual dinner back at the farmhouse with wine pairings by Marco.

Day 3: After a relaxed breakfast, we will have a cooking class at the house with Emiko followed by lunch and an olive oil masterclass with an expert – learn how to recognise the difference between a faulty and an excellent olive oil. Time to relax and enjoy and explore the grounds of the farmhouse. Dinner will be homemade wood-fired pizza (made in the eighteenth century oven) with a wine lesson by Marco.

Day 4: Today will be all about white truffles! We start the day with a morning of truffle hunting. We will visit a biodynamic winery with a wine tasting and nibbles, have a light lunch in a butcher shop with the best view in town and then free time for a stroll through the town to explore all its offerings. Truffle dinner in a local trattoria.

Day 5: Breakfast and then a cooking lesson with white and black truffles, plus a wine lesson with Marco. We can spend the afternoon around the fireplace roasting chestnuts and chatting, answering questions and drinking wine. A casual dinner at the farmhouse for our last night.

Day 6: After a relaxed breakfast we say our goodbyes.

Retreat cost per person: 2,500 euro in double occupancy (single supplement: 400 euro)

What is included in the price:

5 nights accommodation in a beautiful, renovated, private farmhouse
Day trips and all transport in a private van included in the itinerary
Winery visits and tastings
Organic farm visit and saffron harvest experience
5 healthy breakfasts, 4 lunches and 5 dinners, including two typically Tuscan meals out
All wine during meals (and in between!)
Two full cooking classes with a cookbook author
Two wine lessons with a certified sommelier
A white truffle hunt and plenty of white and black truffles for the cooking class
Olive oil masterclass and tasting

Not included in the cost:

Airfare and travel costs to and from the farmhouse
Travel insurance (a must to join the retreat)

The farmhouse:

The house that we will call home during this retreat is a beautiful, traditional Tuscan farmhouse that sits atop 100 hectares of land that include organic olive groves, vineyards, grains, forest and a small farm of chickens, goats and bees, frequently visited by wild deer and pheasants. It is powered by solar panels. There are two floors with 7 bedrooms (each with private ensuite), a wonderful, giant fireplace and communal salon for relaxing in, an eighteenth century woodfired oven, views over the San Miniato hills and a central, long table for sharing meals. It is situated right in between Florence and Pisa, 6 kilometres away from the historical town of San Miniato and on the ancient pilgrim route, the Via Francigena.

To book the workshop:

Email workshops@emikodavies.com with your interest. When booking, please specify if you would like double occupancy (if coming with a friend or partner, please let us know so we can match up the bookings otherwise let us know if you are happy to share with a roommate) or single with the supplement fee – and please do let us know of any dietary requirements. You must have your own travel insurance to participate and because of ongoing travel bans, you will be responsible for checking your country’s travel advisory and its Italian consulate for information on whether you can indeed arrive in Italy safely, with or without a 14 day quarantine (there is some updated information here).

Getting here: Closest international airports are Pisa, Florence, Bologna and Rome. Pisa is the very closest and it is very easy to reach San Miniato by regional train (Trenitalia) from Pisa (it is on the line from Pisa going towards Florence). You can also rent a car from the airport but you won’t need a car during the retreat as we will take care of all transport during the retreat. We can organise transfers from the station of San Miniato for arrival and departure, if needed.

Tuscany in November:

We chose November for this trip because it is our most favourite time of the year. It is calm and the finest Tuscan foods are at their best, including white truffles (we will catch the 50th anniversary of the white truffle festival in San Miniato, read more about it here), freshly pressed, impossibly green extra virgin olive oil (you will never get to taste olive oil like this except this time of year!), harvesting saffron and more. Autumn in Tuscany is beautiful. It can be crisp, clear and sunny or foggy and wet, but it is always spent well with warming foods, wine, roasting chestnuts and traditions like harvesting olives, saffron and truffle hunting.

Your hosts:

Emiko Davies is an Australian-born cookbook author who has called Florence home for over a decade. She was a restaurant critic for The Good Food Guide in Australia for several years and has written about Tuscan traditions and Italian cuisine on this blog since 2010 as well as for publications such as Saveur, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, Financial Times, Gourmet Traveller and Corriere della Sera, to name a few. She has written three cookbooks on regional Tuscan cuisine.

Marco Lami, is a certified sommelier and has worked with Australia’s top chefs, including Neil Perry at Rosetta, George Calombaris at The Press Club and Andrew McConnell at The Builder’s Arms/Moon Under Water. He was the head sommelier at Michelin-starred Il Pellicano and is currently the sommelier at Il Palagio at Florence’s Four Seasons Hotel. He was born in San Miniato, home to Tuscany’s precious white truffles, so you will truly experience this part of the visit through the eyes (and tastebuds) of a local.

Things to note:

The retreat will take place with a minimum of 6 and maximum of 10 participants and social distancing (1 meter) will be observed.
Guests will sign a certificate before arriving confirming that they do not have any covid symptoms; guests should also bring their own masks or we will supply disposable ones.
The itinerary is a guide; we reserve the right to make changes in case of bad weather or unforeseen circumstances where we may need to change the order of activities or replace some of the activities with something equally wonderful.
Retreat cost per person: 2,500 euro in double occupancy (single supplement: 400 euro).

To book now please email workshops@emikodavies.com

Grottaglie, a ceramic lover’s dream in Puglia

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:50:09 GMT

It was serendipitous that I read Patience Gray‘s recipe (which is more of a description of this beautiful summer ritual than actual measurements) for “salsa doppia” (bottled tomato sauce and fresh tomatoes in layers over orecchiette and a shower of pecorino cheese) while visiting Grottaglie in the province of Taranto in Puglia, a small, somewhat unglamorous town that has been known for centuries for its artisan ceramic production. Gray describes the oversized, shallow salt-glaze dishes typical of Grottaglie’s ceramics – a communal serving bowl where the pasta for the entire family was “poured, dressed and then despatched, each member attacking it with a fork.”

I was in Grottaglie with Alice Adams, friend and food stylist who I’ve worked with on two of my cookbooks, Acquacotta and Tortellini at Midnight. We were doing a workshop together with Saghar Setareh at Masseria Potenti and Alice was leading the group on a day trip to Grottaglie with the scope of checking out the behind the scenes of her favourite botteghe in the renowned ceramic town. I recognised instantly a stack of the ancient dishes that Gray described in the beautiful ceramic museum-bottega, Casa Vestita, some pieced back together, the large cracks running through them like creases on the palm of your hand.

Later, in Nicola Fasano’s ceramic workshop, I found entire dinner sets decorated, like the hand drawn illustration accompanying Gray’s salsa doppia recipe, with a rooster at the bottom of the plate. It is the symbol of Nicola Fasano’s ceramics, which Franco Fasano started making in the 60s after discovering a collection of perfectly preserved rooster plates that his grandparents had owned. He, too, recounted to me that families used to eat from the same large plate – huge, if you were to feed a family of ten like Franco’s. The image of the rooster, he said, was to trick you into thinking you might be eating more than what was actually on the plate. The dish may not have had chicken – or any meat – in it, but you could see the drawing on the bottom of the plate and imagine it did. A reminder that we eat with our eyes too.

The tradition of these very characteristic dishes from Italy’s deep south is at once practical, nostalgic and beautiful, even the everyday objects. I thought it would be nice for you to hear about what makes Grottaglie so special from Alice, who took me there twice on our trip together. Below you’ll also find my recipe for Patience Gray’s description of salsa doppia, which is from Tortellini at Midnight, perfect for the glut of tomatoes that we have right now in Italy.

ED: What drew you to Grottaglie?

AA: I had been collecting Italian ceramics for a few years and kept turning up – mainly at second hand mercatini — lovely simple terracotta pieces with the stamp CNF [Ceramiche Nicola Fasano] Grottaglie on them. I worked a bit with a stylist called Emanuela Rota and she had a lot of CNF pieces, all simple plates and bowls with the most beautiful single colour glazes, and perhaps a hand painted line or a textured edge. I knew that Grottaglie was in Puglia, and already loved the splatter ware that comes from the south, so Grottaglie was on my radar. Then I went back to Australia and turned over one of the green terracotta plates that mum and I had found together in the mid 80s, plates that had seen so many family lunches under the persimmon tree at Jamieson, and there it was again, the CNF stamp. The following June Leonardo (kindly) suggested that we dedicate a day of the family Puglia vacation to a Grottaglie expedition. I was almost nervous as we drove into town. Was I going to be disappointed? Were the workshops going to live up to my high hopes? The town, and the Ceramics Quarter, lived up to all those years of expectations, at every corner there was something to look at; here a terrace with a view over the maiolica tiled dome, here a ramp of stairs with hand painted tiles, over here piles of plates in every hue. Even my travel companions enjoyed it enough to come back for more time in the botteghe after an afternoon dip in the Ionian Sea.

ED: You’re absolutely right, it’s a ceramic-lover’s dream! Can you tell me about the kind of pieces that are really special to Grottaglie’s ceramic tradition, that are instantly recognisable as coming from there?

AA: There are two distinct traditions in Grottaglie; the caposanara or ruagnara, which concentrates on the production of amphorae, kitchen utensils and everyday objects, and the faenzara which concentrated on the more sophisticated world of highly decorated objects in the majolica tradition. The latter are also called bianchi or white wares because of the white glazed base on which they are decorated. Both of these traditions are alive and well in 21st century Grottaglie. I’m more attracted to the simple workaday objects like the straight sided bowls, which are made up to a metre across and were used for domestic activities like crushing the tomatoes for preserving. And the flat broad plates with the flower dot motif that hark back to the time when families would share a meal from the same bowl. Then there are the decorative pieces like the Pumo, an elegant single coloured glazed cone with feathers, said to bring good fortune, and which are to be found on all the balconies around the historic centre of the town.

ED: I am absolutely with you on the everyday objects. The flat broad plates you speak about is exactly what this huge bowl of orecchiette below needed — and you had that perfect plate in your collection (thank you)! I am absolutely crazy about the splatterware. What are your personal favourite pieces from Grottaglie?

AA: Before we visited Grottaglie as part of the Masseria Potenti Workshop, you put me onto a post by Carla Coulson that became the next step in discovering Grottaglie [yes! This one, a dream, all of Carla’s favourite addresses]. The Vestita Family have one of the most magical workshops (Bottega Vestita) but also open their villa to share the treasures uncovered when they renovated the property, including Roman floors and a 13th Century chapel, hidden from view for centuries by a medieval oven. Hundreds of antique ceramics are displayed in a small family museum that runs of the ethereal garden, where capers run over Roman columns and huge amphorae climb the walls. In the displays there are countless examples of dining ware, both from everyday and Patrician traditions. Watching the styles change over the centuries is fascinating, as is discovering similarities that have crossed the sea. The curved edges on the 19th century plates have almost the same lines as those of classic Wedgewood plates my mother serves cake on. I later bought a couple of hand thrown plates at Bottega Vestita, glazed in pure white, that echoed the style of the 18th century tableware on display at the museum. They have made it into lots of photos, including Tortellini at Midnight. Then I have lots of simple coloured and splattered pieces from CNF that get lots of use, and a very pale pink oval platter that all food looks beautiful on, also from CNF. The bowls about 15 cm across are perfect for putting over a lump of pasta dough as it rests, they are just snug enough.

ED: Any favourite shopping tips for ceramics in this area?

AA:My favourite makers (and at both you can watch the artisans at work if you visit at the right time) are Ceramiche Nicolo Fasano, or CNF, Via Francesco Crispi 6 (ask to see the workshop, it’s up the hill from the shop), and Bottega Vestita, Via Santa Sofia 23. Also Antonio Fasano and Cinzia Fasano, and many others, there are roughly 50 workshops. The Grottaglie Ceramics Museum in the Castle at the top of the Ceramics Quarter is really interesting and full of artifacts from the period of Magna Grecia onwards. The Casa Vestita Museum if it is open (check their facebook page for planned openings) is incredible.

ED: Thank you Alice! Before the pandemic Alice was hosting some expeditions to the second hand markets in Puglia and more trips to Grottaglie, so if you are passionate about collecting ceramics you will want to keep in touch with her. You can read more about Grottaglie on her blog here.

Salsa Doppia (Double Tomato Sauce)

Although the ancient custom of eating from the same bowl has now disappeared, Gray’s salsa doppia, which involves layers of homemade, bottled tomato sauce, pecorino cheese, orecchiette (or your favourite short pasta) and just-picked fresh tomatoes (which in her recipe are quickly cooked but I prefer to leave raw), is one worth repeating – I like to do the layering in a pretty bowl to present at the table and then portion out this summery pasta dish into bowls. This recipe was originally published in Tortellini at Midnight (this photograph is by Lauren Bamford, styled by Deb Kaloper and features one of the huge antique Grottaglie plates from Alice’s collection!).

Serves 4

3 ripe tomatoes, diced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
4-5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely sliced
400 grams tomato passata (puree)
handful of fresh basil leaves
320 grams of short dried pasta such as orecchiette or penne
40 grams pecorino, ricotta salata or parmesan cheese, finely grated
salt and pepper

Combine the chopped fresh tomato with the garlic, about half of the olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Stir well and set it aside to marinate so that the juices are drawn out of the tomatoes.

Put on a large pot of water to boil.

Prepare a tomato sauce by gently heating the onion slices in the rest of the olive oil with a generous pinch of salt. I like to use a wide pan with curved sides and a bit of depth. Over low heat, it should take about 5-7 minutes for the onions to begin to sizzle and soften without colouring – add a splash of water or turn down the heat if they begin to brown. Add the passata together with about 80ml of water and a few whole basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper and let simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes or until thickened. Set aside.

Add salt to the boiling water and tip in the pasta. Cook the pasta until al dente, then drain.

In a large, shallow serving bowl, layer: half of the pasta, half of the grated cheese, the tomato sugo, followed by the rest of the pasta, the rest of the cheese and the fresh tomato mixture with all the delicious juices. Top with as many fresh basil leaves as you please and present it to the table like this. When serving at the table, give the whole thing a bit of a stir so that each portion gets a bit of everything.

Pici all’aglione, Tuscany’s rustic pasta al pomodoro

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 08:59:37 GMT

Cooking post-lockdown is still keeping us grounded, but also relaxed and even entertained. I have been turning more than ever to Tuscany’s comforting, frugal cuisine for inspiration – it just feels right. Not because we can’t get ingredients or are rationing but just using what we have on hand or what is abundant (hello tomatoes) at the little bottega in the piazza, skipping that trip to the supermarket in favour of staying home or close as possible to it.

I have been loving making pici since lockdown, a humble and ancient Tuscan pasta of flour and water, hand-rolled into long, fat noodles, so easy that even a two year old can make them.

The therapeutic nature of making dough with your hands, of kneading and rolling is an activity itself that is calming and stress-relieving. This pasta doesn’t take that long to make but I also find it such a pleasure that I like to take my time with this. In my opinion, pici should always be handmade; there is nothing like the charmingly imperfect quality of proper pici, painstakingly rolled one by one. It results in an almost primitive pasta with bite and a good chew that reminds me, nostalgically, of udon noodles. Noodles strong enough that they can support robust sauces like wild boar or hearty duck ragu, the carb-on-carb treat of anchovy and garlic-enhanced breadcrumbs or this classic all’aglione, a rich, rustic tomato sauce.

The sauce

Aglio means garlic, so aglione means literally “big garlic” and you’ll see why, it looks like an enormous bulb that can easily weigh over half a kilogram, the cloves of which are sometimes as large as one regular garlic bulb. But despite its looks, aglione isn’t actually a giant garlic, it’s a variety of allium ampeloprasum, which is a wild leek — surprise!

Aglione‘s main feature is that it is sweeter and milder than regular garlic and doesn’t contain allicin, which is what gives garlic its distinctive odour. In Tuscany it’s only grown by a couple of handfuls of producers today in the Valdichiana, the southern region between Siena and Arezzo, and since it was traditionally a vegetable only used by the farmers who grew it, it’s not all that diffused throughout the region so true aglione is hard to find even in Florence! It’s harvested in the summer so now is the best time to try to find it. It’s also native to many countries including all around the Black Sea, as well as Portugal to Egypt and found all over the world so maybe you have seen it in another context?

But even without true aglione you could replicate this with regular garlic too. I love the way the aglione is prepared in this rich tomato sauce, on a low and very slow simmer in lots of white wine and olive oil that brings out its sweet and mellow flavour before being mashed with a fork and added to the ripe tomatoes. It works wonderfully with regular garlic (perhaps with a bit of leek too?).

The pasta

Pici (or pinchi as they are called in Montalcino) come from the province of Siena and I’ve always loved them for the fact that they are so rustic, that you can instantly recognize handmade pici over machine made ones. I like to use a mix of semola (durum wheat) and regular (00) flour made of grano tenero (soft wheat). But you can use all flour or all semola if you like. As this is a rustic and poor dough, there is traditionally no egg in it, just water and a touch of olive oil.

The olive oil doesn’t go into the dough but onto it — a trick I learned at Villa Pienza (which is bang in the middle of pici territory in the incomparably beautiful Valdorcia). Rub about 1 tablespoon of olive oil into the surface of the rolled out dough — this creates a protective film over the dough which prevents it from drying out too quickly and keeps it soft, even if you keep the dough partially covered. This is important to keep the dough soft and pliable, you don’t want any cracking. If this is a technique you’d like to perfect, I highly recommend visiting cookbook author Rosetta Costantino’s tutorials on IGTV. She has an excellent series on how to hand roll and stretch semola and water pasta dough, each video based on shape. Check out the one on how to make rope shapes such as fedelini (which are the Calabrian cousin of pici) and lorighittas, it is enlightening to just watch how her hands move over the dough to roll them into perfect noodles.

The Recipe

Pici all’aglione

Note: Aglione literally means “big garlic” but actually comes from the wild leek family (allium ampeloprasum, Holmense variety, similar to Elephant Garlic which is the Ampeloprasum variety), with a mellower flavour than regular garlic. It’s a typical product from the Valdichiana area in Tuscany and has only recently been rediscovered and brought back into production (the ones I found are grown by Ortofrutticola Castiglionese). If you don’t have aglione, you can try doing this technique with regular garlic too. For those who like a bit of heat, some chilli is good in this too.

Serves 4

For the pici:

1½ cups/ 200 grams of plain flour
1½ cups/ 200 grams of semola, plus more for dusting
1 cup/ 200 ml water
1 tablespoon olive oil

For the sauce:
4 cloves of aglione
60 ml ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
100 ml white wine
400 gr tinned or fresh tomato pulp
salt and pepper

To make the pici, mix the two flours together on a clean surface, forming a pyramid. Create a well in the centre of the pyramid and pour in the water bit by bit while incorporating the flour by carefully swirling the liquid with your hands. Continue combining the flour and water this way until you have a smooth dough. If you find your dough comes together before you finish incorporating all the flour, stop there; if it is too sticky, dust on some extra flour. You want a ball of dough that springs back when you poke it and no longer sticks to your hands when you roll it. Set the dough aside to rest, covered, for at least 30 minutes (I use this time to start making the sauce).

Separate the dough into two pieces to begin with and on a well-floured surface roll out the first piece until it is about 2-3mm (1/10 inch) thick. Cut long strips and then with the palms of your hands on a board or between your thumb and fingers in the air, roll each flat strip from the center outwards, until you have thick noodle. Dust with plenty of semola and roll around your hand then set aside — I usually place them in a single layer on a wooden board dusted with semola or flour. Continue until you have finished all the dough.

Heat a pot of water to boil the pasta and season with 1 teaspoon of salt for each litre (4 cups) of water.

For the sauce: If you are using fresh tomatoes, you should blanch them in a pot of boiling water for 30 seconds first to peel the skins off, then chop roughly.

Peel the garlic cloves and place them whole (or if extra large, halved) in the pan with the olive oil and white wine. Turn heat on low and gently heat. The aim here is to very gently cook the garlic cloves without them colouring, until they are so soft that you can them crush them easily with a fork – it will take about 30 minutes at least, covered. If you’re using regular garlic then you’ll need less, about 15-20 minutes. The reason to do this and not chop them before is that they will more easily burn in smaller pieces and you want to draw out their sweetness by the slow, low cooking. Add the tomato pulp, season with salt and pepper to taste, and continue cooking a further 20 minutes, uncovered, until the sauce has thickened slightly, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

Boil the pasta until al dente, about 3 minutes for fresh pici, then drain and toss through the warm sauce until well coated and serve immediately.

A tip for preparing for this recipe: I would not recommend trying to make this pasta too far in advance as the pici could start sticking — or drying out too much which can affect the texture. If you would like to prepare a part of this recipe ahead of time, make the sauce. It will keep well in an airtight container such as a jar for a few days in the fridge. But otherwise, start first by making the dough. Then, while it is resting for 30 minutes, start the sauce. Go back to the dough once it is rested and by the time you have made the pasta and are ready to boil it, the sauce will be ready, and still warm.

A Cinque Terre getaway

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 09:49:36 GMT

If I could describe the summer break we just had in the Cinque Terre in a handful of words, it’d be a list of some of my favourite things, especially when experienced together: saltwater, anchovies, lemons, sea breeze, pesto, winding coastal roads, chilled white wine and cheesy focaccia that leaves your hands deliciously greasy with olive oil.

It’s been over 10 years since my last trip to the Cinque Terre, and even then, we always visited in the off-season, in particular March or October. I’ve never jumped into the refreshing, crystalline waters of Liguria before — I have clearly been missing out, but the five pretty seaside villages that make up the Cinque Terre on a most delicate hillside nestled in a UNESCO World Heritage recognised national park are small and easily crowded. It’s often too hard to find a place to stay or it’s just too unpleasantly crowded on the train to get there and move around — and let’s face it, being packed like sardines on a hot train takes some of the magic away from this very special part of the world. Over the years, as tourism has grown, the Cinque Terre has become a very popular destination for day-trippers and cruise ship goers too, giving it a similar problem to Venice.

This unusual summer of covid-19, made all the more sweet after one of the world’s strictest three month lockdowns, means travel to Italy is still off for Americans, Australians and many more — which means it’s a unique time for those of us in Italy to actually visit relatively uncrowded sights we may normally avoid. We managed to book this trip to the Cinque Terre less than 24 hours before we set off, unheard of in August! There was no traffic getting there, a quiet drive, just under 2 hours from Florence. We had no trouble finding parking, or getting restaurant reservations on the day. We even lucked out and found a comfortable family room (with air conditioning) in a beautiful, secluded spot between Corniglia and Vernazza with a 180 degree view of the sea (see the photo above and the two photos directly below): Cadè Ventu. The photos on their website don’t even do it justice.

I know how lucky we were, I lapped up every second of this short, lovely trip, making memories with the family — I know we may never get to experience it this way again, which I have very mixed feelings about. My eldest asked if we can come back next weekend (and I just might be tempted!).

Although we didn’t visit in the order listed below but rather we skipped around, arriving in Manarola for lunch, then spending the rest of the day/evening in Monterosso, or leaving the car in Riomaggiore for a dip in the sea, then taking the ferry to Vernazza, the train back to Riomaggiore then driving to dinner in Corniglia, I thought I’d list our favourite experiences by order of town as I find that most useful. I would say, you could do this all easily without the car of course (car access to the towns is extremely limited so you are better off traveling by train which is very handy indeed) but if you are staying in the accommodation we stayed in, they recommend having a car to get there (I would too) as it is quite secluded, though not impossible to do by bus/shuttle.

RIOMAGGIORE:

The southernmost of the five villages is, like the northernmost village, Monterosso al Mare, one of the larger of the villages (population 1500). There is one main, very steep, street where you’ll find shops, minimarkets, plenty of places to eat and more, but life really revolves around the pretty marina where there are restaurants and bars with sea views and boats to take you around to private coves and beaches you can only reach by sea.

We grabbed a delicious fritto misto from Tutti Fritti (Via Colombo, 161), a tiny, takeaway spot where everything is fried to order, and took it down to the marina to eat with legs dangling towards the water. A five minute walk from the marina takes you up and around the rocks to the rocky beach with the most crystalline water — an absolute dream, though not for the faint of heart as the rocks make it quite a challenge to get in or out of the water and there is no shade — however, it is totally worth the effort. It is up there as one of my favourite swims, ever (and I’ve swum in some remarkable places around the world!).

Halfway between the marina and the beach, you’ll pass by the ferry stop — if you’ve been clever enough to buy a ferry ticket at the little booth at the top of the steps from the marina then you won’t have to come back this way so that after a swim you can just hop on the ferry to another town of your choice (it costs 11 euro one way, 20 return, children are free).

MANAROLA:

The second smallest of the town with a population of 350 people, this charming little pastel-toned village has a pretty view from the church piazza (which doubles as a soccer field as it’s the only flat, wide surface in town for the kids to play on!).

Climb a little further up and you’ll find Trattoria da Billy, a sweet, little restaurant with a tiny terrace that boasts a sea view from high up — we shared the anchovies marinated in lemon (a Cinque Terre specialty, I ate it everywhere I went!) as antipasto, followed by pasta: handrolled trofie with pesto (the region’s specialty; this one with a very good garlicky kick and the classic addition of potatoes and green beans), spaghetti with vongole and bottarga, tagliolini with scampi and a julienne of vegetables; fried calamari for the girls and then semifreddo for dessert. If I knew I was going to have room for it, the mixed house antipasto consisting of many little dishes looked so good, and so did the off-menu special of pasta with swordfish and summer truffle that I could smell from the table next to us.

CORNIGLIA:

The tiniest of Cinque Terre is also the only one that doesn’t have the sea lapping at its edges. Higher up means you have a few hundred steps to reach the village from the train station but it’s pedestrian-only medieval streets lead to a beautiful terrace where you can see all the other four villages. And there are also a couple of wonderful places to dine here — Cantina de Mananan, which I first heard about thanks to the Slow Food Guide about 12 years ago. I admit, it’s been about a decade since I’ve been back but it continues to be a mainstay of the recommended restaurants in the area by guides like Gambero Rosso too, for its dedication to typical Ligurian cuisine and absolutely fresh fish. It’s directly inside the medieval hamlet so is quite small and cosy and tavern-like.

The place we chose to have dinner this recent trip is a spot my husband Marco used to take hikers to when he did tours of the Cinque Terre over a decade ago, Ristorante da Cecio. He was pleasantly surprised to find all the same staff still there, who still remembered him. We had a memorable meal here watching the sunset over the sea from the hydrangea and lemon tree-lined terrace: more lemon-marinated anchovies (these ones with the addition of diced fresh tomato), more handmade trofie with pesto (I could not resist), spaghetti alle vongole for the girls, pansotti (Ligurian ravioli) filled with black lobster in a creamy tomato sauce and perfectly cooked whole grilled sea bream with a chilled bottle of Cinque Terre DOC. We finished with lemon sorbet and a custard and pine nut tart. It is a romantic spot with its view over Corniglia and the sea behind it, but it’s perfect too for a larger gathering of family or friends as it has two large terraces for outdoor eating so everyone gets a spot with a view. We had such a lovely night here, dinner was well-paced, so fresh and delicious, the warm evening was breezy, the view was incredibly special, even the girls were well behaved! If you’re looking for a place to stay they also have rooms above the restaurant.

VERNAZZA:

With its natural port and it’s colourful houses that look as if they’re almost tumbling into the sea, Vernazza is irresistibly pretty – 10 years ago it was by my favourite of the villages but on this recent trip I felt that it had lost a little of the authenticity that you can still find in the other villages, perhaps it was also because it also felt like the most crowded of all the villages, possibly because of its narrow streets and smaller size.

We popped in on the ferry from Riomaggiore that arrives right in the marina and spent the afternoon wandering, having a spritz and eating gelato (Gelateria Stalìn had a very good selection of quality gelato, I had basil-infused fior di latte and ‘stracciamenta’, or mint chocolate chip, the girls had a mousse-like nutella and lemon sorbetto that they ate right down to the tip of the cone — sounds obvious but actually my girls normally tend to abandon gelato halfway through, the fact that they didn’t this time was testament to how good it was!).

There is also a small sandy beach right where the port meets the piazza, where many people were relaxing and sun bathing more than swimming. Being right inside the port, the water didn’t look as clean as the other beaches we visited but it’s definitely an accessible option and the kids playing in the water seemed to be having a blast.

If we had decided to stay here for dinner the place I had my eye on was Gianni Franzi, where you can eat out in the open right in Piazza Marconi overlooking the marina. Look at the appealing “off menu” items above – tagliatelle with mantis shrimp, soup with vongole and venus clams, linguine with lobster, roast fish with potatoes. After I read about their stuffed anchovies and the “tegame Vernazza” — a panful layered with Monterosso anchovies, potatoes, tomatoes and herbs — I think I may come back just to try it.

Our accommodation was halfway between Vernazza and Corniglia, 350 metres above sea level in the lush green national park, Cadè Ventu. If you don’t have a car, you can reach it by bus from Vernazza.

MONTEROSSO AL MARE:

Without a doubt Monterosso was the whole family’s favourite village. We arrived in the late afternoon and had a long wander through the centre of town, browsing shops — Lanapo for artisan-made sandals, hats and handbags inspired by the Cinque Terre, and Fabbrica d’Arte for artisan ceramics (I love anchovies of all kinds, even their ceramic ones, what a perfect souvenir of the Cinque Terre), stopping for snacks of cheesy focaccia and heavenly fried stracchino-filled focaccia at Il Frantoio (Via Gioberti, 1 – they mainly function as takeaway and sell by the slice) and lemon granita and gelato, before arriving at the beach.

Here there is a portion of the beach that is “free” (this part gets covered by shade first) and the rest is private (and has a longer time in the sun), accessible by renting an umbrella and lounge chairs at one of the bagni such as Bar Bagno Alga, where you also find showers, kayaks for rent and a bar for drinks, snacks or light meals — we were able to snap up a spot since it was late in the day but in August you’ll usually find it full. The water was glorious, crystal clear, the sand here is very fine and kept beautifully clean by the bagni. We were the last ones to leave when they closed at 7pm and the water turned silver as the shade drew across the beach, it was that hard to drag ourselves away!

We had booked a table for a light meal at a long standing favourite wine bar, Enoteca Internazionale, when we stopped at Il Frantoio for focaccia (it’s next door), and I’m glad we did as its outdoor wooden tables fill up quickly. It’s the perfect spot for tasting wine, with plenty of local wines by the glass (many natural options) and if you feel like a nibble, there’s a big selection of things such as platters of salumi, cheese or long boards of bruschette topped with anchovies (what else? This is Monterosso’s specialty after all), pesto, mozzarella and tomato, tuna carpaccio and creamy local cheese, but you can also just pop in to buy bottles of wine or other local specialties (pesto, honey, salted anchovies, Ligurian olive oil, traditional candies and biscuits, all the best kind of souvenirs!) to take home. Some other good places to eat that were recommended to me are Miky (perhaps to visit minus kids) and Ristorante Ciak, a favourite local restaurant that has been going strong for the past 50 years. We didn’t have time to eat there this time but they were high on my list after reading about them on Gambero Rosso and getting some personal recommendations too.

Admittedly the highlight for the girls (who are 7 and 2) was the playground and the beach, which are just steps away from each other. The playground is fenced so it keep the kids contained and parents can rest easy. Like most Italian families in the summer, we visited after dinner in the dark, when it’s no longer hot and the well-lit playground was crawling with kids until late!

Thinking about it, maybe we will just pop back next weekend.

Pan roasted sausages with grapes for Artusi’s 200th birthday

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 08:14:13 GMT

I would go as far as to say that Pellegrino Artusi helped me start this blog almost a decade ago. And write my first cookbook, Florentine. He would be turning 200 today, so I felt it apt to cook him dinner for his birthday. I didn’t choose anything fancy because to be honest, the recipes in his 790 page cookbook are anything but fancy. They’re regular recipes of the best kind — home cooking. So I chose something satisfying, homely, seasonal and, well, something that felt very ‘Artusi’ to me.

Born into a wealthy family in Forlimpoli in Emilia-Romagna on August 4, 1820, Artusi moved to Florence in 1852. He bought a home in the leafy Piazza d’Azeglio (incidentally, it is one of my favourite piazze in Florence — it is also very close to the Sant’Ambrogio market), where he lived with his butler and cook until his death in 1911 at the age of 90. He wrote several books but the one that he is known for, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, which he self-published at the age of 71 in 1891, is not only considered the first Italian cookbook (which makes him the great-grandfather of Italian cuisine) but it has never gone out of print. It’s a book that you’ll find in the kitchens of most Italian families, dog-eared and stained from frequent use, passed down from generation to generation.

I would say every Tuscan in particular knows ‘Artusi’, as his book is often called, and is familiar with its dishes — it does have a slight Tuscan bias to its language and recipes, as you would expect from someone who lived in Florence most of his life. In fact, he is even credited with contributing to unifying a young, highly regional Italy with one language: Tuscan, the language of Dante, Petrarch… and Artusi.

I was introduced to Artusi before I even started this blog; but the book was one of the reasons I began writing about food. It was a tattered, yellowing copy belonging to Marco’s nonna, Lina, passed on to my mother in law. The splattered cover was falling off, notes were stuck in randomly here and there, and the book opened instantly to the most well-used pages (the pasta frolla recipe, along with the notes in nonna Lina’s handwriting pointing to pastry “recipe B”, it is my absolute go-to for any shortcrust pastry but epecially for a classic crostata).

But my main relationship with Artusi really began when my blog was only a month old, in January 2011, when I began a series where I wrote about one of his recipes each month for a year — here is the first of that series, Artusi’s January, with a recipe for biancomangiare, or almond milk pudding. I got to know Artusi very well in that first year, choosing recipes from his seasonal menus or letting fate pick a page for me. I kept the book by my bedside table and carried in my handbag; it went everywhere with me. With nearly 800 recipes in the book, there is always something interesting to try or read about.

It had never occurred to me to make these sausages with grapes until now, but somehow it seemed quite fitting. It’s August, we are still a few weeks away from proper grape harvest season but it’ll be upon us any moment and you can find good grapes already. Plus, his three-sentence ‘recipe’ for salsicce coll’uva starts charmingly with “It is a trivial and ordinary dish, but I note it because the sausage, with that sweetness of the grapes could be to someone’s liking.”

Artusi’s recipe doesn’t specify any quantities, or whether the grapes are white or red. There is no other ingredient called for other than “a drop of water.” In Umbria, where this is a typical country dish, white grapes are often used. In Tuscany, where red grapes reign, I thought it would make sense to go with red, but in the end I couldn’t resist trying both. My verdict: go with a grape that has a hint of acidity. I find the green table grapes I used were very sweet, too much so, while the red grapes had a more interesting flavour here. I threw in some rosemary and sage with the sausages, and instead of water, added a splash of white wine — but I do believe water is just as fine. Either way, the wonderful thing is the little sauce that gathers at the bottom of the pan, a mixture of fat from the sausages and juice from the grapes, watch that it doesn’t evaporate all away.

Salsicce coll’uva (Sausages with grapes)

Serves 4

4 Tuscan pork and fennel sausages
a sprig of rosemary and 4-6 sage leaves
1 bunch of red grapes (or mixed red and green grapes)
60 ml (1/4 cup) white wine or water

Poke the sausages here and there with a fork and place them in a frying pan over medium heat. Let them brown all over and release some fat, then add the herbs and the grapes. Pour over the wine (or water) and continue cooking, turning the sausages and grapes as needed — you want the sausages evenly cooked and the grapes to be puffed and a little blistered. If the pan is looking a little dry, add a splash more wine or water or cover to stop the evaporation. It should take all of 15 minutes. I did not add any salt or pepper to this dish as Tuscan sausages are flavourful enough. Serve with crusty bread, a glass of wine and something green — a salad or some sauteed spinach. Or below for another Artusi recipe with spinach.

Frittata in riccioli per contorno (Spinach frittate for a side dish)

This is a cute and intriguing recipe that I wanted to try (see photo at the top of this post). Artusi suggests serving it as a side dish to a stew. It makes a nice lunch on its own too, maybe with a tomato salad.

1 small bunch of English spinach, washed
2-3 eggs
salt and pepper
knob of butter
freshly grated parmesan cheese

Blanch the spinach until it is completely wilted. Drain very well (you should have just a small handful left) then pulse it in a food processor until it is smooth. Crack 2 eggs into the processor and blend together with a pinch of salt and ground pepper. It should look very, very green, but you can add another egg if the ratio of spinach is so high that the frittate don’t hold. In a small frying pan greased with butter, fry very thin frittate, rather like crepes, until dry on one side. You don’t need to flip them, but turn them out onto a board until you have finished all the mixture. Roll up the crepes and slice into “tagliatelle”, then put these back into the pan with a knob of butter and toss well until coated. If you like, you can sprinkle them with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Serve immediately.

If you’d like to see more of Artusi, please do take a look at some of these — just a small selection of some favourite recipes I’ve written about in the past:

Zuppa Certosina (a sort of egg drop fish soup named for the Tuscan monastery)
Artusi’s gnocchi alla romana (baked semolina gnocchi)
Tuscan chicken liver pate (as is common, Artusi doesn’t give any measurements for this one, which he likes to add dried porcini to)
Artusi’s raspberry acetosa (a delicious raspberry syrup with a vinegary kick)
Duck pappardelle (still one of my all-time favourite pasta sauces)
Chicken gnocchi (the chicken is actually inside the gnocchi; one of the most soothing, comforting dishes ever)
Pumpkin pie (not just an American tradition after all, this is a favourite I make every autumn)
Rose petal jam (one of the most popular recipes on my blog, and one very close to my heart)
Torta Margherita (a 4 ingredient gluten an dairy free birthday cake)
Quattro-quarti (a pound cake, which I adapt into a pistachio, polenta and olive oil version)
100 year old apricot jam (my very favourite)
Polenta and elderflower cookies (modern sounding but delightfully old fashioned)
Braciuole nella scamerita (a wintry, very Tuscan, comforting pork neck with cavolo nero)
Spiced walnut linguine (a “lean” dish of walnut pesto laced with sugar and spices)
Artusi’s Good Friday menu (save this for a traditional Easter meal)
Almond milk gelato (with a hint of orange blossom water, so refreshing)
Sweet tomato jam (yes, this is sweet, you’d never guess it’s actually made from tomatoes)
Artusi on the perfect bistecca
Nocino (sweet and spicy walnut liqueur)
Artusi’s minestrone (and one of my favourite anecdotes in the book)
The language of food (an essay about how Artusi contributed to the Italian language)
Brodo (beef broth; the very first recipe in Artusi’s 790 recipe cookbook)
Artusi’s bomboloni
Polpette di trippa (funnily enough, Artusi was not fond of tripe but he includes this recipe which he in turn found in a seventeenth century cookbook. It’s insanely delicious; it will convert any tripe hater)

Stay at home with these comforting family recipes

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 15:14:41 GMT

What a summer! Post-lockdown Florence is bittersweet, we are wary and careful – masks still on, distances kept, obsessive hand washing and hand sanitizer a prerequisite for entry into any indoor space – the streets and piazze are free of travellers and previously tourist-dependant parts of the city now are left for residents to discover their own city again. It’s great to be able to see friends and family again and even take the odd weekend away (to nearby Maremma or Venice), but to be honest I’m still reluctant to be out in public too much – home is definitely a haven for me, where I feel most comfortable and where food is still providing comfort and nurturing.

With my friends and family in Melbourne back in Lockdown for a further 6 weeks and cases still climbing out of control in the US, it feels a bit too soon to be going outside no matter where you are, so I thought someone might appreciate some simple, satisfying foods to stay at home with. I’ve compiled a list of favourite, comforting, even distracting (for when you need a good project to keep your mind busy with something else) foods, the sort of dishes that have a good satisfaction to maintenance ratio, dishes that are easy anytime but perhaps right now are even inspiring in that they might take you daydreaming to Italy or remind you of a big Italian lunch. Yes, quite a few pasta dishes are here, it’s true, to me there is nothing more comforting!

These recipes all come from my latest cookbook, Tortellini at Midnight, which is about home-cooking, inspired by my in-law’s family and their origins in Puglia, Piedmont and Tuscany. It is family-friendly food, but like all homemade dishes, can be made to adjust portions (or simply freeze the leftovers for a day when you don’t feel like cooking – here is a handy, general guide on freezing food from NHS).

If you don’t have the cookbook, I’ve added the links below to where you can find them online so that I can share these all with you easily.

Ziti al Forno

Because pasta is always a winner in our home. It’s what we make when we need something quick, and satisfying, that everyone will be happy with. Ziti al forno is a classic southern Italian dish – basically pasta with tomato sauce and melted cheese baked in the oven. Marco likes to add sausage to it (pull off its casing, roll the sausage meat into tiny meatballs and add to the sauce). If you can’t find ziti, which are long tubes of pasta, you can substitute rigatoni as Nigella Lawson suggests. If you click on the recipe title above, it’ll take you to my recipe on Nigella’s site.

Ditalini con cozze e fagioli (Ditalini pasta with mussels and beans)

I can’t tell you how much I love this dish. Part soup, part pasta, all delicious, this is a classic homestyle dish from the port of Taranto, where all of my in law’s as far as I could trace back to the 1700s are from (side note: here is a rabbit hole you could go down if you have Italian family, try to map your family tree, I’ve created an article with all the resources I used to do ours here). Mussels are a specialty of Taranto and we ate this dish in every trattoria we visited, I could never tire from it. Thrifty, quick, easy and nourishing, this has all the elements I want too when it comes to comfort: broth, pasta, warmth and tasting of home. Clicking on the recipe title will take you to the Australian Good Food Guide site where my recipe is featured.

Agnolotti al plin (pasta stuffed with roast meat)

When you want a project to do, pull out the pasta machine and get to making these delightful little parcels. They are by far my absolute favourite filled pasta to make (and eat), I find them so satisfying! This is the very traditional meat filling from Piedmont – the idea is to use up leftover roast meat – served in the pan sauces with some butter and sage, but you can easily make it vegetarian with a ricotta and spinach filling like this one (from my recipe for tortelli maremmani for delicious magazine), the key is quite a firm filling so make sure you use well-drained ricotta and spinach if you go that way – and serve with a simple sauce of sage wilted in melted butter. If you need to see how to make them, a Pasta Granny can help you with that. Here is the inspiring 93 year old Ida making her agnolotti al plin with the ease and expertise of someone who has been doing it for a lifetime! Click on the recipe title above to go to my recipe on The Canberra Times.

Polpette di Nonna Anna (Nonna Anna’s meatballs)

This is probably one of the most loved dishes at home, one of my personal favourites from the book and definitely the one most made by other people (along with Angela’s apple cake below!). Kids and adults alike love it and if you’ve got leftovers, they are even more delicious the next day. If you eat all the meatballs and find yourself with a lot of leftover tomato sauce, it’s actually (like many good Pugliese dishes) meant to be stretched into another meal, to be served with pasta the next day – the tomato sauce with all the extra flavours from the meatballs and pancetta is so delicious. Click on the title to go to the feature in National Geographic or you can find a version of it here, along with the story behind this recipe in our family — a dish that belonged to my husband’s great-grandmother, a noblewoman who eloped with the postman.

Torta di Mele di Angela (Angela’s Apple Cake)

Baking is my favourite form of distraction when I need it, and I’m sure you already know this but baking is the best therapy, even science says so. While this isn’t a traditional Tuscan apple cake like this one from Florentine, my mother in law, Angela’s apple cake, was the cake she baked through most of the 80s and 90s. It has plenty of butter in it – beware those who try to bake it in a springform tin, as some of the butter might leak out and burn on the bottom of the oven. Please do try it in a cake tin that won’t leak. It is divine, especially still-warm, with some whipped cream. Click on the link to go to my recipe on the Australian Good Food Guide site.

Toast al cioccolato (grilled chocolate-hazelnut sandwiches)

When you need an instant pick me up, literally a food-hug, it is this grilled sandwich with special, gold-foil wrapped gianduiotto chocolates from Turin. Of course you can use any chocolate you have, just don’t feel guilty, take one bite of this and don’t look back. Click on the link for my recipe on Saveur.com.

All of these beautiful shots are from the cookbook, with my talented team, styled by Deb Kaloper and photographed by Lauren Bamford with me (4 week old baby wrapped around my chest!), Marco, my intern Helen Johnson and home economist Alice Adams in the kitchen, on location at Valdirose, my friend Irene Berni’s beautiful B&B in Tuscany. More on the behind the scenes/the making of the cookbook here.

Venice, post-lockdown, is still about the cicchetti

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 11:24:13 GMT

I don’t know if it’s just me but even after leaving Venice I feel like I’m still swaying on a pier waiting for the vaporetto. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it was one too many spritzes or a little bit of Venice’s version of Stendhal’s syndrome (also called Florence syndrome, from the feeling of dizziness and like you might faint after being exposed to the great beauty of the Renaissance city that I call home) but my head is still spinning after an intense weekend in Venice!

After seeing Florence’s centre so uniquely quiet and tourist-free, I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Venice in a similar state (minus the dreaded cruise ships too!), so we brought the kids, met up with some good friends from Trento for a weekend of cicchetti-ing and enjoying having the place to ourselves. However, it was busier than I expected, particularly on Sunday, and it was very hot (especially on the vaporetto, where we were squeezed in like sardines, masks on but not a lot of social distancing happening there otherwise), reminding me why I love Venice (and Florence) so much in the autumn and winter. Once meeting up with our Venetian friends too we had six kids in tow (2 in prams to carry over a bridge every 2 minutes) so it was quite the endeavour! But the thing I have always loved about Venice, even pre-pandemic, is that that it has plenty of quiet pockets, backstreets and wide campi where there are no crowds, but just the peace and pace of neighbourhoods coming back to life and people enjoying being outside.

In 2016 I wrote a blog post called The Venice List with a handy list of some favourite things about Venice. They’re all still favouries but here are some more to add to that.

The Venice List II

Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio — here the kids played in the tree-filled piazza while the adults drank spritzes of all colours (Select, Cynar and Aperol!) at Al Bagolo. There are plenty of benches for people watching and there is also a handy Coop supermarket here and a water fountain to fill up water bottles.

Orsoni Venezia 1888 — Our good friend Edoardo was one of the architects who helped restore this stunning artisan mosaic workshop (the only one in Venice that makes glass mosaics in an ancient onsite furnace) so he was able to give us a personal tour. If you find some way to get in here (perhaps during the Biennale or some other special event) and see it’s “colour library” of 3,500 coloured glasses, it is one of the most fascinating places I’ve seen in Venice, just a testament to what a unique city it is especially for artisans, creatives and the arts.

Cicchetti — I have written a lot about my favourite cicchetti bars and I can happily say the ones I’ve written about earlier are still up there on my favourites list but also I would add Antica Mola, the new addition to Timon in Cannareggio. We had excellent oysters, shucked to order, and delicious cicchetti with fresh prawns and fennel and juicy, still warm polpette di tonno washed down with prosecco.

Fondaco dei Tedeschi Rooftop — Simply a stunning 360C view over the rooftops of Venice at the elegant Fondaco dei Tedeschi palazzo turned department store, conveniently right by the Rialto bridge. As numbers are limited you need to reserve your spot to go up there but it is free (and yes, there is an elevator).

Torcello Island — we spent Sunday on the island of Torcello at Taverna Tipica Veneziana with our Venetian friends. The draw card was the ample outdoor eating area, plus fun stuff for all the kids (goats, rabbits and playground equipment!). The food is classic Venetian, simple, no-frills, but aimed to please, a little like eating at nonna’s. We had squid stewed with tomatoes and peas and prawns in saor as antipasto, then fried calamari, bigoli in salsa (anchovy and onion sauce) and tiramisu.

Rialto market — I know, it’s always on my lists. But it’s just my favourite thing to do. Coffee and cornetto at Caffe del Doge sitting out in a backstreet, then second breakfast at All’Arco (for baccalà mantecato and a glass of prosecco), then a stroll around the market where I bought things for cooking dinner at our friends’ place: zucchini flowers from the island of Sant’ Erasmo (fried in batter after being filled with mozzarella and anchovies), line-caught sea bass (roasted with lemon and parsley), calamari for frying, razor clams (grilled quickly then tossed in a hot pan with samphire and dressed with lemon, olive oil, parsley and garlic).

Not everything was open, like many things around town, which sadly means some are finding it hard to reopen after lockdown but I am hopeful that Venice finds a way to come back, finding some balance, minus the cruise ships and mass hordes to blossom. Speaking of which, here is some interesting reading on the future of Venice and sustainable tourism that I highly recommend:

Venice Tourism May Never Be the Same. It Could be Better (New York Times)

Sail Away, No Seriously Sail Away (Prior)

It’s an Exciting Beginning: Venice Opens to Tourists (Guardian)

The Trampling of Venice Shows Why Tourism Must Change After Covid-19 (Guardian)

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Edna Lewis’ white pound cake

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 16:30:18 GMT

Between making yolk-rich pasta, the odd carbonara, or whipping up some crema, I always seem to have a few egg whites lying around — I honestly can’t bear to throw them away. I usually freeze the egg whites, hoping to find something useful for them but inevitably they sit there in the freezer, multiplying. My girls love meringues but I’ve found that defrosted egg whites don’t make the best meringues (or pavlova!). If I have just one or two I might make semifreddo with them, or lemon sorbet, two wonderful treats that often call for fluffy whites to add airiness.

Then, amidst an emotional and turbulent couple of weeks of the Black Lives Matter movement, learning and reading more about Black cookbook authors, I discovered Edna Lewis and her Taste of Country Cooking (1976) book (side note: this was a very interesting article to read, Cookbooks, not Restaurants, are giving Black Foodways an Identity, I’m looking forward to receiving Byron Ford’s New World Sourdough, which just came out, and Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom looks great; Deb from Smitten Kitchen has a long list here that I suggest you check out too if you’re interested). I honestly feel ridiculous for not knowing about her cooking and her books until now, about what an important culinary figure she is in American cooking (there are many great articles written on her, this New York Times article from 2015 seems particularly meaningful today, Edna Lewis and the Black Roots of American Cooking). I was so hooked, I ignored my family all day and just read it cover to cover. And amongst those page I found the absolute best thing to do with all those leftover egg whites: white pound cake.

It is exactly what I love most in a cookbook – full of personal stories, almost a memoir, with her recollections, a celebration, of an upbringing in a farming community in Virginia, where her family recipes followed the seasons (as do her chapters and the menus in each chapter) with simple, good food inspired by and with great respect for the ingredients and above all, the land. Her recipes are written with love, care and life experience, full of so many tips that are hard to find in cookbooks these days.

I know why Alice Waters said, “When I discovered her cookbook, it felt like a terribly good friend.”

What to cook first from it? I let Mariù choose, and as any 7 year old would, she picked the blackberry cobbler and lemonade, which we filmed. I was inclined to go with the casserole of sage-flavored pork, hot buttered beets and pan-fried chicken (cooked in hand-churned butter and home-rendered lard, served with a cream gravy because in the summer the calves were weaned and cream was plentiful, as was the green grass for them to graze on) from the same menu as the cobbler, the wheat-harvesting midday dinner from the summer chapter. I’m regretting that I didn’t know about dandelion blossom wine earlier but am drooling over the pickled watermelon rind and smothered rabbit, and holding out for the September green tomatoes to make preserves that Lewis says tastes like honey. Maybe with a batch of her corn muffins. The way she describes how her family wrapped the rest of the green tomatoes in tissue paper and stored in a cool, dark place to make it to Christmas reminds me of my mother in law’s recollections of the tomatoes her father would hang, as they often do in Puglia, in the attic to last until Christmas time. As her editor Judith Jones wrote, “I think every reader will feel genuinely grateful for the memories Edna shares with us.”

This white pound cake immediately caught me eye, perhaps because of the resourceful use of egg whites, but also because of all the simple, comforting recipes that fill this book, the very simplest ones like her yeasted bread rolls and this pound cake appealed in an enormous way to me. I knew this was going to be a wonderful recipe before I even made it and now that I have, I can say it is truly the best pound cake I have ever made or eaten. I honestly can’t stop walking over to the kitchen bench just to inhale the perfume of this cake!

I will say I used some special ingredients. I imagine that when Edna Lewis was writing these recipes she was also using the freshest ingredients off the farm. So I chose a very special butter from the mountains near Pistoia, you can eat it right from the packet, it tastes like cream. And I used raw milk from Camporbiano, a nearby farm, that comes in a bottle and still has a thick layer of cream on top. I only ever use organic, free range eggs and organic flour. I think Edna would approve, she speaks often in her book about using fruit or even water without chemicals, often even calling for bottled water in her recipes.

I had to adjust this recipe slightly from Edna Lewis’ original, partly because I don’t have a 10 inch bundt tin, as she calls for. I planned to use a loaf tin and I know from experience having baked many pound cakes in this tin before (like this pistachio, polenta, olive oil pound cake and this peach and jam pound cake from Acquacotta) that there would be too much batter to fit. So if you do plan to make this in a bundt you could probably double this – or go with Edna’s original (admittedly, although I reduced all the other ingredients, I kept the egg whites the same because I had so many)!

One thing I did not use from the original was almond extract, which I think would be lovely, and would give it a beautiful perfume. But at the last moment, I replaced it with a splash of sassolino, a clear, Italian liqueur with a strong, distinct aniseed flavour. Many Tuscan desserts are made with aniseed in them and I thought this might be a lovely way to bring that local flavour into this recipe from Lewis’ Virginian farm.

I hope you love it as much as I do. I urge you to try this with a few simple quality ingredients if you can – or splurge on just one, the butter would be my choice. It will make a difference.

Edna Lewis’ White Pound Cake
Plum cake bianco di Edna Lewis

For one loaf tin

I don’t normally post in cups, because it’s incredibly confusing, can you believe the US, Australia and the UK have slightly different cup measurements?! So please be aware these are US cup measurements. Since the original was in cups, I based this on that recipe, measuring on my scales in grams too.

200 grams/1 cup sugar
220 grams/1 cup best quality butter, softened
250 grams/2 cups flour
125 ml/ 1/2 cup milk
Pinch salt
2 tsp almond extract (or aniseed liqueur, try it!)
160 grams/2/3 cup egg white (about 4 whites from large eggs)

Prepare a loaf tin (I line mine with parchment paper) and preheat oven to 300°F / 150°C.

Beat the butter until creamy, then add sugar and beat well until pale and creamy. Fold in the flour and milk, alternating each until combined, starting and ending with the flour. Add the salt and almond extract.

In a clean bowl with clean mixers, whip the egg whites until fluffy and soft, not stiff peaks. Fold these in bit by bit (I did it in four lots) until incorporated and you have a smooth, creamy batter. Pour into the loaf tin and place in oven.

After 40 minutes, turn heat up to 325°F / 165°C and continue baking a further 15 minutes or until the top feels firm and a toothpick inserted inside comes out clean (I actually kept mine in 25 minutes; I would start checking from 15 as Edna instructs).

Remove cake from oven and leave in tin for 15 minutes before removing from tin and allowing to cool. Keep the cake covered (Lewis instructs to cover it after 15 minutes to ensure it stays soft), I keep mine wrapped in its original parchment paper and a clean linen teatowel around it. It keeps well without drying out this way for several days. If you can resist.

Fried tuna polpette, a favourite pantry meal

Thu, 28 May 2020 16:57:31 GMT

Whenever I make polpette, I have this image in my head of tiny Nonna Lina, Marco’s grandmother, standing by the stove, frying, creating an enormous pyramid of these polpette, only to have people pop in and out of the kitchen, stealing the one on the top, too hot to even hold let alone stick in your mouth. “Polpette” is also the name for meatballs but it can really refer to any roundish fried thing, regardless of whether or not they have meat in them. These particular polpette are more like croquettes, where mashed potato gives them body and you can add whatever protein you like — tuna is my favourite storecupboard staple.

Usually this is an excellent vehicle for recycling leftover meat, roast meat in particular, but also ham, perhaps with odd ends of cheese. This polpette recipe is itself a variation of the “polpette di lesso” from my latest cookbook, Tortellini at Midnight, which is a classic Tuscan recipe. It used to be common to make meat broth (in my in law’s home brodo was a daily preparation!) and the boiled meat leftover was aplenty so it was refashioned in different ways, namely these fried treats and also in a hearty onion stew that Florentines call Francesina.

I’ve been putting this version with a tin of tuna, in the regular rotation of meals lately, the whole family loves them (which you may have been following has been a battle for a while) and it’s been a very handy pantry meal to have on hand — potatoes, a tin of tuna (mackerel is also great), breadcrumbs, a garlic clove and you’re more than halfway there. I bind the mixture with an egg and a handful of parmesan cheese too. It doesn’t need much else but if you have it, parsley or some other fresh herbs like oregano or thyme, is nice in here. My girls like it with a squeeze of lemon and mayonnaise to dip them in, but they are also delicious as they are or with a dollop of zingy salsa verde.

Other variations: Vegetarians can easily do these polpette without the tuna (you’ll only need 1 egg), but you should also try this version with cannellini beans too, it’s absolutely delicious and is inspired by historian and well-connected British expat Janet Ross’ century old cookbook, Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen (1899). If you don’t know it yet, it is a wonderful book of vegetable recipes. She lived in Poggio Gherardo which is a beautiful villa (now a monastery), part of the skyline of my neighbourhood of Settignano.

And when you have leftover polpette (incredibly, it happens), they happen to be delicious cold and are ideal to put in a lunch box or take on a picnic, but Tuscans often prepare them “rifatte”, which is where they are warmed in a tomato sauce — and it is perhaps even more delicious. With each reinvention, they just seem to get better.

Polpette di tonno
Fried tuna polpette

This makes about 20, which you could serve as part of an antipasto or aperitivo for a gathering or as a meal, with salad, for 4.

2 medium potatoes
250 grams tinned tuna
salt and pepper
1-2 eggs, beaten
40 grams of parmesan, finely grated
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
handful of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
80 grams breadcrumbs
vegetable oil for frying

Peel and roughly chop the potatoes. Place in a saucepan of cold water and bring the the boil over medium heat. Cook until fork-tender, then drain and mash with a generous pinch of salt. Set aside to cool (refrigerate if not using right away).

Drain the tuna and place in a bowl along with the mashed potato, egg (I use 1-2 depending on the consistency of the mixture or what I have on hand), parmesan and herbs and combine well, adding a pinch of salt taken with three fingers and some freshly ground pepper. Taking about 2 tablespoons of mixture at a time, form cylinders and place on a plate until you have used all the mixture.

Place the breadcrumbs in a shallow dish and roll each polpetta to coat completely. Set aside. Pour enough vegetable oil in a wide pan (cast iron is ideal for frying, if you have it) to about 3cm and heat over medium-high heat. To test when oil is ready, a cube of bread should turn golden brown in about 15 seconds – less and it is too hot, more and it’s not hot enough – adjust heat accordingly. Fry the meatballs in a single layer for about 3 minutes on each side or until deep brown. Drain on paper towels and salt while still hot. Serve immediately.

Strawberry tiramisu

Sat, 16 May 2020 15:28:30 GMT

I made a video of my girls and I making strawberry tiramisu recently on Instagram and it was such a hit, I loved seeing others making this, so decided it should be a permanent recipe on the blog too!

There are so many reasons I love this version of tiramisu, first and foremost because strawberries and cream in any combination is a treat. But also, this tastes like strawberry shortcake without having to bake (note that down, those without an oven or, like me, who live in sweltering hot places in the summer and don’t want to bake), and because of that you can even make it in any container or form you like — individual cups or glasses, in a long, rectangular glass dish, a trifle bowl, or like here, a cake tin (which I love as it feels more like “cake” and reminds me of making a Tuscan zuppa inglese). Finally, even though it’s best to wait a few hours for it to set, it’s quick and easy to make. Even the kids can do it.

This is more or less the tiramisu recipe that I learned when I was 16 from a family friend who had lived in Rome. Actually tiramisu is one of those newer recipes — invented in the 1960s in the Veneto, they say — which explains the cross-regional ingredients (savoiardi from the Veneto and mascarpone from Lombardy) and also means, unlike centuries old traditional recipes, there is really no “set” way to make it. My Tuscan mother in law makes a tiramisu in a way that I admit isn’t my favourite — she uses pavesini biscuits, which are the same shape as savoiardi but flat and in my opinion are inferior because you don’t get the fluffy, sponge like layer that you have from savoiardi and they can too easily get soggy. She also uses dark chocolate, chopped roughly in chunks to cover her tiramisu, which I think jars with the delicate cloud-like cream and fluffy biscuit layer – a light dusting of grated chocolate or even powdered cocoa is my preference, if anything at all.

To be honest, it’s just a very simple variation of the classic tiramisu, just more kid friendly. In place of the coffee (spiked perhaps with rum or vin santo), the biscuits are dipped in macerated strawberries and their juices. I recommend doing this in high strawberry season when they are ripe and plentiful — you will get plenty of juice as the strawberries macerate with a bit of sugar and lemon juice. But if you find they’re not as juicy as you hoped, you can add a splash of orange juice (blood orange juice is wonderful, also for the colour), and while you’re at it, add a bit of the zest in there too! Raspberries are a delicious alternative.

Strawberry Tiramisu

Note, this recipe uses raw eggs so it is important that you have very fresh, organic, free-range eggs – if that isn’t already your norm. There are many recipes online that involve pasteurising the eggs if you are squeamish about using them raw, but it isn’t the way it is normally done in Italy so rest assured this is a healthy, delicious treat as it is.

500 grams of ripe strawberries (note, my girls eat a lot of them along the way, I think we used in the end about 400 grams)
200 grams sugar
1 lemon, zest and juice
3 very fresh eggs, separated
500 grams mascarpone (if you want to make your own, see here)
500 gr savoiardi (lady finger) biscuits
A small square of dark chocolate, grated, or powdered cocoa for garnish, optional

Chop the strawberries into small pieces or slices, discarding the green tops. Place the strawberry pieces in a bowl and scatter over 50 grams of the sugar and the zest and juice of the lemon. Leave to marinate (macerate) about 1 hour at least.

To make the mascarpone cream, separate the yolks and the whites into two medium to large sized bowls. Whip the yolks with the sugar until you have a dense, creamy and pale mixture. Add the mascarpone until combined. Whisk the egg whites (make sure you use a very clean bowl, glass or metal is best, and very clean beaters to quickly get beautifully stiff whites) until you have stiff peaks that hold their shape even when you turn the bowl upside down. Fold the whites into the mascarpone mixture. Set aside — if not using straight away, store covered in the fridge.

If making a round, cake-like tiramisu this should make 3 layers. You may get 2 if using a rectangular glass dish.

The strawberries should have created a lot of lovely juice. Strain the juice into a shallow dish wide enough for the biscuits to fit and set aside the berries. Dip biscuits one by one quickly on both sides and make an even layer your prepared tin. Repeat with more biscuits until you have a nice, tight layer that covers the base of the tin – you can break them to make sure they fit. Cover the lady fingers with a thick layer of mascarpone cream (if making three layers, use one third of the mixture, if making two use half). Layer over some of the macerated strawberries. Repeat layering with dipped lady fingers, cream again, strawberries and so on until you finish with a thick layer of cream.

Leave in the fridge overnight (or for at least four hours if you are in a hurry), covered. Decorate with more strawberries, grated chocolate or cocoa powder and enjoy!

What we are drinking in lockdown

Wed, 06 May 2020 13:00:04 GMT

I’ve been talking a lot about what we have been cooking in lockdown for the past two months (most recently for the Financial Times How to Spend It weekend magazine), and it’s unsurprisingly been a lot of comfort food, a lot of baking and lots and lots of bread as our sourdough starter has finally been given a life!

Off the back of a fun little live chat that Marco and I did on Instagram recently about wine (you can see the notes from it in my highlights here), I thought it would be nice to do another “what we are drinking” blog post, which is about introducing some interesting Italian winemakers that Marco picked and why we like them.

In lockdown, drinking wine has been part of our daily aperitivo ritual – a glass of wine with nibbles as we are preparing dinner, or maybe taken down to our neighbour’s olive grove, picnic style, with some tiny glasses, salami and Marco’s sourdough bread, so the girls can stretch their legs after being cooped up for most of the day. That golden hour before dinner is the prettiest time to be out on the hillside, under the olive trees, it is absolutely magical and it has been a lifesaving, head-clearing ritual over the past weeks, a nice excuse to go for a walk, look up at the sky, switch off and relax with my family and I keep reminding myself to do it more often while we can (we have to enjoy it now before the mosquitoes drive us away)!

But to the wine, I want to share something with you about these interesting grape varieties from equally interesting wineries, a selection of the things that have stood out lately. It’s a coincidence but they all come from northern Italy and, looking at these now written down together, they actually make the start of what would be a fabulous food and wine inspired road trip!

Marta Valpiani, Albana di Romagna 2018 Madonna dei Fiori (Emilia-Romagna)

Marta Valpiani is a winery in Emilia-Romagna, near the medieval town of Castrocaro Terme, composed of a mother and daughter team that call themselves “artisan winegrowers”, which I like. We ordered a few of their wines as well as their olive oil and really enjoyed this Albana (below), a golden white wine made from older vines (between 30-60 years old) grown according to organic and biodynamic principles, harvested by hand. It’s a wine for dining with and goes well with punchy flavours like bottarga, anchovies, even artichokes which are notorious for pairing with wine.

Ca’ Lojera Lugana Annata Storica 1999, Lake Garda (Lombardy)

Ca’ Lojera is an organic winery situated on the south side of Lake Garda, right on the Lombardy/Veneto border – not far from Verona, even if it’s on the Lombardy side. We picked up this 21 year old special vintage Lugana (above), made with 100% Turbiana grapes at our local bistro in Settignano, Caffe Desiderio, which is closed like all restaurants and bars right now, but offering deliveries. It was a steal, too, at 30 euro. It was balanced and elegant, with notes of apricot and honey to match its deep honey colour (see the first photo in this post!). We drank it with a whole roasted sea bream with potatoes, but it would have been wonderful with a plate of cheeses too. If you’re interested about this grape variety, Turbiana, Wine Folly has an interesting story on it here, until recently it was thought to be a Trebbiano grape but it is actually a Verdicchio, which in Lugana’s microclimate is expressed in a very unique way.

Le Sincette Groppello from Lake Garda (Lombardy)

We visited this winery (in photo below) last autumn, while driving back from beautiful Bergamo. Situated on the southwest side of Lake Garda, near Salò, it is one of the most important biodynamic wineries in the area. They grow mostly red grapes, plus chardonnay, an interesting one is their Groppello. It’s a native grape to the little pocket of vineyards on this end of Lake Garda on the Lombardy/Veneto border (it is one of the few DOC wines that crosses borders actually, though on the Veneto side this same grape is called Rossignola), and is often used in blends with Sangiovese, Marzemimo and Barbera — single variety wines like this are rare. A nice red to go with salumi.

Diego Morra Verduno Pelaverga, an unusual grape variety from La Morra (Piemonte)

Pelaverga piccolo is a rare grape varietal grown in the Langhe in Piedmont, especially around the town of Verduno. It’s production today is limited to about 18 hectares divided by about 10 producers only, but it has actually been around since at least the 1400s when this small, black grape was trained over fruit trees as supports. It had a little revival in the 70s and in 1995 was awarded DOC status (in an effort to showcase some of Piedmont’s lesser known varieties) but as you can imagine, it’s still overshadowed by the region’s more famous Nebbiolo, Barolo and Barbera. It’s a fruity, aromatic, peppery, bright red wine and is versatile for pairing with but Marco rightly suggests to simply drink it on its own, so you can enjoy this unusual and rare grape without any distractions. Diego Morra is a family winery run by three generations of winemakers in one of the most beautiful winemaking regions I’ve ever been to.

I’ll leave you with this intriguing piece by journalist and wine writer, Alice Feiring, on what has changed by drinking alone in isolation:

“When drinking with others (even one other), my game plan is to choose wines that can oil the joints of conversation, wit, gossip, and sometimes argument. But COVID-19 requires more proletarian options.”

It’s interesting, is wine the same when you don’t have someone to share a conversation with? Marco has always been reluctant to write about wine, or let me even interview him about wine for the blog, insisting that wine writing is outright boring. What’s interesting – to him – is the tasting, and especially tasting with others, so that you can talk about it together. He was even skeptical about me writing this post but I stubbornly insisted because I like to share and tell the story of food and recipes, things we have been enjoying, why not wine? Yes, he’s right that it’s not the same as drinking it at the table together in person, but hopefully you find this useful, maybe you can seek out these interesting grapes or these particular low intervention winemakers where you are, or plan a trip for the future. And hopefully one day we can drink them around the table together.