Monthly Archives: November 2011

White X’mas with Pistachio and Cranberries

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This no-bake slice ticks all the boxes when it comes to Christmas confection.

It’a ever-so-easy to make so you can can safely get your little helpers in the kitchen to give a hand, wrapped in baking paper it makes a delightful Xmas treat to gift your friends with and, above all, it is utterly and over-indulgently delicious.

The traditional recipe calls for an ingredient I wasn’t familiar with: Copha, an Australian vegetable shortening made from hydrogenated coconut oil…

As many Australians do these days, I have replaced this less familiar ingredient with the velvety  lusciousness of white chocolate.

This is not the only liberty I took… I sometimes find this confection to be overly sweet and somewhat adult-unfriendly, with its massive presence of rice bubbles and marshmallows. I much rather have my kids grow to like the sourness of cranberries and the savory quality of toasted pistachio and make this a treat fit to please children and grown-ups alike.

ingredients for 10/12 rectangles

180 gr (6.5 oz) white chocolate

60 ml (1/4 cup) condensed milk

25 gr (1 oz) toasted pistachios

60 gr (2 oz) dried cranberries

40 gr (1 1/2 oz) blanched almonds (I used chocolate covered ones..you only live once!)

25 gr (1 oz)desiccated coconut

1/2 vanilla pod or 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste.

In a double boiler, melt your chocolate with the condensed milk.

In the meantime, dry toast your pistachios in a non-stick pan for 1 or 2 minutes.

Pour the chocolate and milk paste in a large bowl, add your nuts,  fruits and coconut and scrape it onto a sheet of baking paper. Shape it like a sausage and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours before slicing.

Oh, Oh, Oh…Santa is coming to town!

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Rigatoni with Ocean Trout, Broad beans and Mint

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Whoever said that pasta is fattening ought to look at this and think again…

This dish could not be healthier if it tried… concentrated onto one plate you have the goodness of vibrant green broad beans, the Omega 3 provided by a flaky, succulent ocean trout fillet, the zing of lemon zest, the fragrance of freshly chopped mint and chives, all married with al dente cooked rigatoni, tossed with EVOO.

I dare any health freak with a fear of carbohydrates, to say that this is not good for you….

It s also spectacularly easy to make, this alone is a good thing.

INGREDIENTS FOR TWO PEOPLE

1 150 gr (1/3 pound) fillet of boneless and skinless ocean trout

180 gr (6.5 oz) of short pasta

The zest of 1 lemon

a handful of chopped up mint and chives

freshly ground black pepper

4 tablespoons of EVOO

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.

In the meantime, cook your fish.

You can either steam it of pan fry it. Either way, keep it a little under as, when you toss it with the cooked pasta, the residual heat will cook it further.

When you water is boiling, drop a cup of podded broad beans and blanch for 1 minute. Drain and rinse under cold water to arrest the cooking process.

Drop your pasta in the same *boiling water and cook until al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, shell (take the skin off) your cooked broad beans, and mix them in a large bowl with the flaked up trout, the herbs, the oil and salt to taste.

Drain the pasta and reserve 1/4 of a cup of cooking liquor.

Toss the pasta with the other ingredients and mix well. If it’s looking to dry, add a tablespoon or two of pasta water. Sprinkle with lemon zest and freshly ground pepper.

Serve hot, warm or at room temperature as a nice pasta salad.

* Boiling your pasta in the same pot you have cooked your vegetables is a cooking technique often employed in Italy. The pasta will retain the goodness and the flavor of your greens and you don’t have to wash two pots. It’s a win-win!

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Panforte, an Italian Christmas treat

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Panforte is as traditional Italian as it can get.

Legend has it, and some historical accounts may prove this too, that crusaders themselves used to carry, on the way to their quest, slabs of what was described as a durable confection made with honey and sugar syrup, spices, nuts and dried fruits: Panforte, that is.

It’s name means “Strong bread” , which refers to the generous amounts of spices such as clove and cinnamon as well as black pepper.

It is one of the most popular and loved Italian confections, that seems to be mostly consumed around Christmas, especially in Tuscany, its geographical home-land.

The recipe for Panforte is one of those controversial ones. The reason being that the Tuscan confectioners from Siena would rather set they hair on fire than share their century-old knowledge.

So, for avid home-bakers like myself the choice is to experiment in the kitchen until I get a good approximation of what they proudly produce in the Tuscan hills.

Experimenting may at times involve burnt caramel and a non-rescuable frying pan, but other than this minor set back, I think I may have come up with something worthy.

And guess what? Since I’m not Tuscan but Lombard/Abruzzese, I will happily share this with you….

INGREDIENTS

  • 50g (1/3 cup)  whole blanched almonds
  • 50g (1/3 cup)roasted hazelnuts
  • 3 table spoons coarsely chopped dessert figs
  • 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped dried apricots
  • 2 tablespoons mixed peel
  • 55 g (1/2 cup) plain flour
  • 1 tbs cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon of freshly found black pepper
  • 40 g chopped dark chocolate (70%, preferably)
  • 85 (1/4 cup) ml  honey
  • 3 tablespoons  sugar

Preheat oven to 170°C/ 340 Farenheit.

In the meantime, make a syrup by dissolving the sugar with the honey and the dark chocolate in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil, then reduce and keep simmering, without stirring for around 2 minutes. Do not leave the stove at this stage or you will end up with burnt caramel….don’t ask me how I know…

Place almonds, hazelnuts and dried fruit in a large bowl.  Sift over the cocoa, the flour, the ground pepper and spices and stir to combine. Add the chocolate and honey syrup and mix well. At first to will look dry, have faith and keep combining until you obtain a dark, gooey paste. If it struggles to come together , add 1 tablespoon of honey.

Line an oven dish with non-stick baking paper, pour in your panforte mix and smooth and flatten the surface with the back of a spoon or by pressing baking paper over it.

Bake for around 20 minutes or until just set. As it cools down it will firm up more.

Cut into squares, dust with icing sugar and accompany with coffee or grappa. Or both!

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Spiced Angel Cookies

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150 gr (1 and 1/3 cup) sifted flour

50 gr (1/4 a cup) almond meal

1 egg yolk

95 gr (3/4 cup) of icing sugar

100 gr (a little less than 1/2 cup) of soft butter

2 tablespoons of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract or scraped seeds.

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves

Plus ground cinnamon and icing sugar for dusting.

As I often do with cookie dough, I chucked all the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid and let the machine turn the messy assembly into a slightly sticky paste.

Naturally, you can do this by hand, and rather quickly too. Put your flours and spices into a bowl, then add your soft butter and quickly work it into the flour until it all looks crumbly and  wrong…Don’t panic! Simply add your yolk and milk and knead with the palm of your hands to release the gluten in the flour that will magically turn this goop into perfect cookie dough.

Add the vanilla, then roll into a ball, wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Roll out your dough onto a floured surface. Cut out your angels and place them onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment.

Rest in the fridge for 10 minutes while you bring your oven to 170 Celsius (340 Farenheit).

Bake for 10/12 minutes. They will still feel quite soft, but keep in mind that they will firm up during the cooling time.

Dust the angles with ground cinnamon and icing sugar while they are still hot from the oven and surrender to the  X’mas Spirit!

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An Italian Roast Dinner!

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Here’s the ingredients:

Fine meat, great wine, fun friends!

To be just a little more specific, here is the core ingredient:

* WARNING*: the following image is rated EXMO (Extreme Meat-lovers Only) and it’s not suitable for Vegans and Vegetarians alike…

When it comes to roast dinners, Italians favor simplicity.

What could be better than grilled-to-perfection T-bone (what we call Fiorentina) or Rib-eye, crunchy roast potatoes, a green salad and some Barossa Valley shiraz?

My Top Tips on Meat:

1.

Forget about lean meat for once. Indulge and enjoy the marbling of fat throughout your rib-eye or T-bone knowing that as it roasts, the fat will render out thus basting the meat, keeping it succulent and juicy, and also  creating that irresistible, savory ,charcoaley crust.

2.

Take the meat out of the fridge 20 minutes before cooking.

3.

Broil on a white-hot griddle pan or bbq

4.

Don’t keep turning it. Only flip once.

5.

Allow to rest for half its cooking time before you carve.

In our house, we like to rub the meat with freshly ground white peppercorns and salt flakes, but you can be even more adventurous and make a rub with ground fennel seeds and black pepper, or cayenne pepper and cumin, the combinations are endless and almost always great.

We like our steak on the rare side of medium-rare (well, in fact I like it extremely rare, but Richard is a little more conservative and I’m happy to compromise!). To achieve our desired result, we tend to grill a 2 cm (1 inch) thick steak for approximately 4 minutes on one side and 3 minutes on the other and we rest it for about 4 minutes.




If you like it on the medium side of medium-rare, grill for 5 and 5 and rest for, 4 to 5 minutes.

If you like it medium, 6 and 4,  plus 5 minutes resting time should do the trick.

If you like it well-done, well…I don’t know what to say to you… I don’t think I have ever cooked a well-done steak in my life!

In my world, a succulent steak’s best buddy has to be crunchy potatoes. And plenty, please!

This is my favorite way to pan fry  them to a crisp crust and a soft inside.

A green salad to freshen up the palate is in order too.

The other day I picked some rocket (arugula) leaves and peas out of my garden, added some store-bought asparagus, and coated the glistening green goodies with EVOO, lemon juice and shredded mint.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch is ready! Who’s bringing the wine?

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Stuffed Zucchini Flowers

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As I post this recipe, I cannot help but feeling aware of the fact the other half of the globe is enduring the autumnal cold weather knowing there will be another 5 months before they can come near anything like this…

But, on the other hand, I must not forget my fellow antipodean dwellers and together we must celebrate the sought-after arrival of spring.

What better way than a couple of crispy, stuffed baby zucchini and a cold beer to honour Mother Nature?

I can safely predict that my zucchini crop will be abundant and rich this year and that this is only the first of many zucchini-related  posts.

Please bear with me, there will be plenty!

To stuff your flowers, proceed like so:

Gently open out the petals to reveal the yellow stems. Remove the stems and discard.

Rinse your flowers well and drain on kitchen paper. Stuff with a couple of pieces of mozzarella, 1 anchovy fillet, a couple of baby capers, and a mix of chopped up mint, basil, parsley and lemon zest. Gently twist the petals to enclose the filling.

In a large pot, heat up 1 lt (4 cups) of frying oil or, for added flavour, olive oil.

In the meantime, make your batter by mixing 2 cups of self-raising flour and 250 ml (3/4 of a can) of cold beer. Quickly stir it with a chopstick, leaving some lumps for extra texture.

Drop the stuffed flowers into the batter, and then gently into the hot oil. Deep-fry for 3 to 4 minutes, than drain on kitchen paper.

Serve while still hot preferably with a cold beer.

You can use the left-over batter to deep-fry parsley and sage leaves and even lemon slices, a southern Italian delicacy.

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My favourite Baguettes (French bread stick)

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Baguettes are, quite possibly, the western world’s most-loved bread. The reason being that this starchy good, with its morish texture and savoury crumb is simply and utterly divine…It’s the ideal accompaniment to any cheese and cold cut of meat, it’s best friend with terrines and  pâtés and it doesn’t fail to impress when married with jams or chocolate spreads. It’s practically perfect in every way…Apart from the fact that, unless you are in France or you own an industrial strength oven and proving cell, it is very difficult to re-create at home. Lucky for you, I am a bread-obsessed woman, and I have spent the last few weeks attempting to adjust various baguette recipes to suit my very normal oven and kitchen appliances. I have had many disappointments, and then eventually, last Sunday..Eureka! I cracked it. I cannot wait to share this with you, bread-lovers worldwide. For those of you as obsessed (read “insane”) as I am, I have worked out a recipe that uses natural sourdough yeast. But I have not forgotten the rest of you, probably a much saner percentage of readers, who will never go through the trouble of cultivating natural yeast for weeks and would rather use the readily available dried one. It’s good news all round: the bread will turn out incredibly good, no matter which  rising agent you decide to use.

Where’s the catch?… You have to be patient and let the dough prove for, at least 8 hours. Mix it at night before you go to bed, forget about it, than shape your sticks in the morning, prove them for another couple of hours, and for your Sunday lunch you will have your much deserved reward.

Ingredients

220 gr (1 cup) of sourdough starter or 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast

410 gr (3 1/2 cups) flour (baker’s or 00)

210 ml (3/4 cup) of filtered water, at room temperature

1 teaspoon of diastatic malt powder (or barley malt syrup, or honey)

2 teaspoons of salt

1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil

semolina flour for dusting

How to

1. In a large non-metallic bowl, mix the sourdough starter or the dried yeast with flour, a teaspoon of diastatic malt (or barley malt syrup -or honey-) and water.

2.When the starter/yeast is well incorporated add  salt and  oil.

3. Mix it with a wooden spoon just so the ingredients are amalgamated. The dough shouldn’t be too smooth, nor elastic. In fact, it should feel a little rough and slightly damp.

4. Cover the bowl with a lid or with cling wrap. Prove at room temperature for 8 to 14 hours. You will observe that in very warm climate, and if using dried yeast, the dough will bulk prove quicker than in colder climate.

5. When the dough has tripled in size and looks bubbly, gently tip it onto a floured surface. It will feel quite sticky. Do not panic! Grab a small handful of flour and delicately work the dough to turn it a bit more pliable, being mindful never to actually knead it. It is important not to over work the gluten in the flour otherwise your bread will turn out too dense. Also, you don’t want to knock  out  those precious air bubbles as they hold the secret to a light-as-a-feather crumb and crunchy crust. Gently flatten the dough with the palm of your hand then roll it onto itself, lenghtways,  and form a long sausage shape, seam side down and slightly narrower at the extremities. At this stage, you can sprinkle them poppy or sesame seeds, if that takes your fancy.

6. Prove for two hours at room temperature, on a tea towel dusted with semolina flour, and well covered. Then, carefully tip the logs into a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Rest for another 20 minutes and bring your oven to  200 Celsius (390 Farenheit). Place a metal bowl in the oven to heat up.

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7. Score the sticks with a sharp knife quickly, yet gently, place the tray into the oven and pour a cup of cold water onto the metal bowl, to create steam. Close the oven door immediately after. The steam will favour the creation of a moist crumb and a crackly, bronzed crust.

Bake for 25/30 minutes or until the top looks crusty and golden and the bottom looks sunburnt and slightly rusty in colour.

Your home will smell like like a French bakery…

Bon Jour!

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Egg-free Oat and Chocolate cookies

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As I start typing this post, I need to stop, reach into the cookie tin and help myself to my third one… They are that good!

Make sure you have a nice Cappuccino or Earl Gray tea to dunk them in…

This recipe is so easy and the absence of eggs is not, by any means, my attempt to subscribe to some fashionable fad diet.

I simply didn’t have any in the fridge and I was too lazy to go but them at the shop.

Turns out, cookies don’t necessarily need eggs.

Cream 1/2 cup of soft butter with 1/2 a cup of packed brown sugar,a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla extract or paste.

In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 a cup of rolled oats, 3/4 of self-raising flour and a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. Add the buttery mix to the dry ingredients, along with 80 gr of roughly chopped up chocolate ( I used left-over chocolate eggs) and, if too dry and floury, pour in a table-spoon of milk, bearing in mind that this dough should stay rather firm.

Pout the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes, then, with wet hands, divide it into 10 balls and place them, well distanced,  onto an oven tray lined with baking paper. Gently flatten the balls with the back of your hand. Place tray back in the fridge for a further 10 minutes.

In the meantime bring up your oven to 175 Celsius (around 350 Farenheit).

Bake for around 15 minutes, to until slightly golden, but still soft in the middle. As they cool down, they will crunch up a little.

I will concede this cookie recipe is not traditional Italian, but the way my children gathered around the cooking bench to help me make them, and the way they both ended up covered in chocolate and flour is indeed a traditional Italian Sunday Mess!

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Roasted Snapper with white wine, parsley and other beauties…

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This is a rather peculiar way of roasting a fish.

The idea is that if you make the fish stand up in the oven, it will roast more evenly and the skin will become uniformly crisp. Ingenius.

I must say it got me totally baffled when I watched an Italian Chef on TV baking his snapper like this.

He assured this was the Italian way and that goes to show how beautifully varied Italian cuisine is.

An Italian born-and-bred gal like me had never come across this before!

Sure enough, I had to try it for myself and, as I often do, added my personal touches here and there….The addition of chillie is definitely my idea of “personal touches”…


To make the fish stand, stuff the cavity of a scaled and gutted snapper with a ball of aluminium covered with baking paper (to prevent the flesh from sticking to the foil).

Than it’s just a matter of scoring or criss-crossing the fish and smother it with a marinade of 2 garlic cloves, 2 small dried chillies, a small handful of chopped up baby capers, two anchovie fillets , a pinch of salt, a splash of white wine, extra-virgin olive oil and fresh parsley.

(I made it an a pestle and mortar, but feel free to use a blender , if easier).

Roast it in a hot oven for about 25/30 minutes, according to how big your fish is (ours was enough for two hungry people)

Richard and I both ate a good portion of fish and potatoes in a civilized manner, but ended up standing by the kitchen bench , forks in hand, scraping the bits of flesh still attached to the bones…

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