Category Archives: Italian

Fennel with Walnuts and Oranges

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Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you had a lovely Christmas with friends and family, a good break, some great food, and a fun New Year’s Eve yesterday! We spent last night at Osteria del Toro in Wellington. Really good cocktails and gorgeous food (at extremely good prices, by the way). Even if the weather was so rotten the fireworks were cancelled!

And now we have 2012 to look forward to. What do you hope for from the year ahead?

I’m going to focus on enjoying life, as it is. Taking good care of myself and my family, eating well (and feeding others well), keeping fit and healthy, and having more fun instead of getting hung up on details! I’ve got a few things to tick off my Thirty By Thirty list (starting tomorrow with a nervous visit to Adrenalin Forest in Porirua), too.

I’m looking forward to conquering new frontiers in my kitchen, but also to preparing simple food with delicious ingredients. Like this salad of Fennel with Walnuts & Oranges.

The recipe comes from The Silver Spoon, one of Italy’s best selling cookbooks. It has quite a focus on authenticity, and while I haven’t cooked from it a lot, anything I have cooked has been delicious, and well worth a repeat effort.

I had blood oranges to hand, so used them instead of the more standard variety. They’re such a creepy fruit! Beautiful orange skin with red speckles of warning, hiding flesh that really does look… bloody. They are perfectly named. Surely, I thought to myself, there are good jokes to be played on children who have never come across blood oranges before.

Enjoy the salad, and there’ll be more posts to follow later in the week. Have a happy 01/01/12!

Fennel with Walnuts & Oranges
from The Silver Spoon. Serves 4.

4 tender, round fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced
olive oil, to drizzle
salt and pepper, to taste2 oranges
6 shelled walnuts, chopped

Place the fennel slices in a salad bowl, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Peel the oranges and cut off pith, then slice and add to the fennel (I was happy segmenting mine). Add the walnuts, mix and serve.

Mushroom Bruschetta

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We had bruschetta for lunch recently on a sunny Sunday. Such a sunny Sunday, in fact, that most of my photos are a bit overexposed! But they give you an idea of what a nice day it was.

I love bruschetta for a weekend lunch; it feels Italian-y and a bit special (depending on what ingredients you use), but is actually really easy. At its core, it’s fancy tomatoes on toast.

Annabel Langbein’s Great Food for Busy Lives has a recipe for mushroom bruschetta topping, which I borrowed for this lunch. And the nice thing about bruschetta, like pizza, is that you can use up ingredients lurking in the fridge.

Note – I’ve updated this part of the post, after some tips from Alessandra Zecchini on the best authentic bread for bruschetta. I had read a bunch of recipes suggesting ciabatta, but as Alessandra notes, a Tuscan-style compact loaf is best. I am happy to be put right as I had used a good dense grainy bread (I think it was McKenzie country stuff). My original choice would have been our homemade sourdough (the starter is still going well, by the way), and I can now confirm that would also be a suitable choice. Thanks, Alessandra!

Mushroom & Artichoke Bruschetta (adapted from an Annabel Langbein recipe)

olive oil
as many slices of ciabatta as you need
1 tsp sesame oil
about 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 Tbsp unsweeted greek yoghurt
squeeze lemon juice
1 Tbsp chopped Italian parsley
spready options – harissa paste, tahini paste, or olive tapenade
cherry tomatoes, halved
canned artichoke halves, drained and chopped (optional)
extra Italian parsley, to garnish

Preheat the grill. Brush the bread with olive oil (if you want to keep things a little healther, I actually sprayed my bread with olive oil spray), and grill it lightly, just until it’s beginning to toast. Once it’s done, take the bread out and turn the oven to bake function, at 180°.

Heat the sesame oil in a frypan, and cook the mushrooms and garlic until the mushrooms have softened and reached that delicious-smelling, melty stage. Mix them with the yoghurt (you could also use mayonnaise), using just enough to bind the mixture and make it spreadable. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and the parsley.

You don’t need to spread anything on the bruschetta before adding the mushroom topping, but I used a little tahini paste on some, and a little of my harissa paste on others (tip: spread very thinly, that stuff can be quite hot!). If you have it on hand, try a black olive tapenade.

Spread the mushroom mixture over the bruschetta, and top with artichoke hearts and cherry tomato halves. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the bruschetta are starting to crisp at the edges.

Almond, Orange & Cardamom Biscotti

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Biscotti are a very special kind of biscuit. They take some extra work during their baking, but it pays off. They last in the tin for ages, and they’re healthier than most biscuits. Biscotti can also form part of an elegant dessert, they’re nice with semifreddo or anything with dark chocolate.

And I love how long they take to eat; I usually gobble biscuits but a biscotti will last right through my cup of tea! They are truly the pixie caramel of the biscuit world.

I always assumed that the biscotti name was related to our word ‘biscuit’, and that these words just meant a small baked hard-ish food. The words are related. But in fact, biscotti is made up of bis, meaning two (which you may recall from words such as bisect or bigamist), and cotti, meaning cooked (like in panna cotta). Twice cooked.

So our word ‘biscuit’ isn’t usually very accurate. But biscotti is very accurate here; this is the biscuit you bake twice.

Ok folks, Latin lesson over, you can wake up now. It’s time for biscotti.

I think of this recipe as quite a classic biscotti; the cardamom and orange flavours are very subtle. It’s more like a plain almond biscotti with a bit of extra warmth. Perfect with coffee or tea after dinner. The recipe comes from a funny little English book I have with classic sweet food recipes; a little gold mine of European baking.

Almond, Orange & Cardamom Biscotti

2 eggs
⅔ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup self-raising flour
¾ cup plain flour
1¼ cups almonds
1 Tbsp finely grated orange zest
¼ tsp ground cardamom

Preheat the oven to 160°(c) and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a bowl with electric beaters until pale and creamy. Sift the self-raising and plain flours into the bowl, then add the almonds, orange zest and cardamom and mix to a soft dough.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the mixture into two, and shape each portion into a 5x20cm loaf. Bake the loaves for 35-40 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack. When cool enough to handle, slice the loaves into 1cm diagonal slices with a large serrated bread knife. The loaves will be a little crumble on the edges, so work slowly and if you can, hold the sides firmly. If you can hold the pieces together, they’ll firm up and dry out on the second baking.

Place the slices carefully back on the baking trays in a single layer. Return to the oven for 10 minutes on each side. Don’t worry if they don’t seem fully dry as they will crisp up on cooling. Makes about 40 slices.

Empty Cupboard Pizza

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I like cooking at the weekends. I like taking my time and putting real care into my cooking, rather than trying to shovel something out because we’re starving when we get home from work on weeknights. So I like making at least one lunch over a weekend, instead of eating leftovers.

Still, some Sundays are lazier than others. And some Sundays, the fridge and pantry are emptier than others. On those lazy, empty cupboard days, only pizza will suffice.

Even though many years have passed since I bought a ready-made pizza base (*shudder*) I can’t believe I ever did.  Just about every cookbook I own has a basic pizza dough recipe; and actually they’re all pretty basic, pretty quick and pretty tasty. Certainly all of them are better than the supermarket chilled ones.

I particularly like this one from Alison Holst; it’s easy to work with and roll out, and it goes nice and crispy. And she’s kind of my hero. While I love kitchen adventures, and cooking recipes out of my fancier books (Jamie, Nigella, The Silver Spoon), I really respect Alison Holst’s work for ordinary families.  Her recipes are reliable, inexpensive, un-intimidating and, usually, really nice. I’ve always grown up with Alison Holst cookbooks (I have a classic ‘Cooking for Children’ book in ’70s yellow and orange with her kids in corduroy pants on the front cover), and I learnt a lot of my basic cooking skills from her books. Those skills are ultimately what lets me try new ingredients, techniques and recipes. So thanks, Dame Alison!

Basic Pizza Dough
This quantity made two pizzas like the one in the picture.

3 tsp instant active dried yeast
½ cup milk
¾ cup boiling water
2 tsp sugar
1½ tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups high grade flour

Measure the yeast into a large bowl. Combine the milk and boiling water and add this to the yeast with the sugar, salt and olive oil. Leave it to stand for a couple of minutes. Add half the flour and stir well to make a thick batter. Add the remaining flour and stir to make a dough firm enough to knead (you might need a little bit of extra flour or water).

Tip onto a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes, then cover the dough loosely with cling film and leave to rise for about 10 minutes before using (patronising tip of the day: get your toppings ready and cut up your veges, and then it will be time).

Turn the dough onto the floured surface again and divide into two for this sized pizza, or smaller/larger, depending on your preference. Roll out and top away (see below). Bake it at 200(c) for 10-15 minutes.

Topping
Firstly, a spready topping. I’m one of the geeky people who buys a whole can of tomato paste, then spoons it into ice cube trays and freezes it, then turns all the little frozen tomato paste cubes into a zip lock bag and keeps them in the freezer so I always have tomato paste at the ready. If you’re not as organised obssessive as me, you could also spread your pizza base with hummus (soooooo good with chicken and plum sauce), pasta sauce (go easy on it though to avoid the sog), pesto, a dip of some kind, pureed cannellini beans & olive oil … and probably others I can’t think of right now.

Secondly, an arrange-y topping. When I made this, I didn’t really have any fresh ingredients for it at all. That is a little sad, I know. But all was not lost. A couple of cans and a couple of jars saved the day. Nobody needs another pizza topping suggestion list, but in case you can’t identify the ingredients from the photographic exhibits, I used:

  • random can of stuffed green olives
  • 1/2 a can of artichoke hearts
  • small can of anchovies
  • thinly sliced red onion
  • little cubes of feta
  • thinly sliced peppadews
  • thinly sliced semi-dried tomatoes

Hmm, it didn’t seem so at the time, but reading that list back, this was one salty pizza.

Thirdly, a sprinkly topping. Cheese is really your only answer here. But you can also add chopped herbs (fresh or dried) and seasoning mixes.

Best eaten straight out of the oven when it’s still a little too hot to hold! Great Sunday lunch … and then leftovers for lunch on Monday to remind you of a weekend that by then seems so long ago.

On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese

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Who doesn’t love spaghetti and meatballs?

I realise I’m getting into the habit of blogging about classics that seem to have lost their appeal along the way. Meatballs are a prime (mince) example. Beef mince, pasta and a good tomato pasta sauce – what’s not to like? It seems unfair that lasagne should claim all the status points in this category. So I’m standing up and fighting for meatballs. Kia Kaha!

This meatball recipe has been around our family for ages – I’m pretty sure I used to eat it when my brother and I were at primary school. I like baked meatballs better than fried, and these ones have a really nice flavour. The recipe title has always been ’spicy meatballs’, but they’re really not spicy, so I’ve taken the liberty of renaming them.

My tomato pasta sauce recipe is very back to basics; I sometimes add extra things depending on what’s in the fridge and what I’m using the sauce for, but it’s a good base recipe. Put together, you have simple, good food. 


Bring Back Meatballs & Basic Pasta Sauce
Serves 2

250g beef mince
1 onion, very finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp mustard powder
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg
chopped fresh Italian parsley
about 200g spaghetti (I used wholemeal, in case you were wondering about the colour)
½ Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp tomato paste
tomatoes*
2 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs (e.g. basil, italian parsley, oregano)
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp minced chilli
1 tsp brown sugar
parmesan and fresh herbs, to serve

*I used a tin of chopped tomatoes, plus 4-5 fresh ones (red gold!). In times of plenty, you could use all fresh tomatoes (imagine that!), or all tinned. Whatever you fancy and have on hand.

Preheat oven to 200(c). Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Combine the mince, half the onion, the first clove garlic, the ginger, mustard powder, breadcrumbs, egg and parsley, and mix until all ingredients are well combined. Shape into golf-ball sized meatballs. Place on the lined tray and bake for about 15 minutes or until cooked through.

While they bake, cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water, according to packet directions, and prepare the pasta sauce:

Heat olive oil in a frypan over medium heat. Add the garlic and remaining onion, and cook until softened (about 5 minutes). Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1-2 minutes, then add tomatoes, herbs, salt, chilli and brown sugar. Let that simmer away gently for 10-15 minutes, while the meatballs finish cooking. Check seasonings and adjust with salt, pepper and/or brown sugar.

 To serve, place the spaghetti on plates, then top with ½ the sauce (as in, 1/4 of the sauce on each plate), then add the meatballs, then the remaining sauce. Top with shaved or grated parmesan, and some extra fresh herbs.

The ultimate verdict on whether this dish is good or not:

Winter Seafood Risotto

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I couldn’t think how to begin this post. So I asked Mr. J, “What can I say about risottos?”

“They’re full of rice,” he replied.

Yes. Yes, they are.

I usually have a lot to say about foods for which I feel great enthusiasm. And I love risottos. But oddly enough, I don’t have a lot of commentary about this dish. I can’t even remember where this recipe came from, but I don’t think it was a particularly gourmet source.  I’ve adapted it slightly, although you could do a lot more with it – perhaps add more lemon-y zing, or if you have saffron threads, you could make it a cheery yellow. You could change the veges (in spring I want to try asparagus).

But for now, let’s just enjoy the moment and be grateful that risottos really are Full of Rice. Delicious Rice.

Winter Seafood Risotto for Two

1 Tbsp olive oil
½ onion, peeled and finely diced
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1 cup Arborio rice
2 cups fish or chicken stock
½ cup white wine
finely grated zest of ½ a lemon
300-400g seafood of your choice (I used salmon, calamari, prawns and added
steamed mussels at the end)
2-3 Tbsp parmesan (shaved or shredded)

Heat the oil in a large frypan over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook for around 5 minutes, until the onion
softens. Add the rice and stir to try and coat all the rice in oil. Keep cooking, stirring occasionally, for a couple of minutes until the little grains turn mostly white. Add one cup of the (hot) stock and mix well. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer, uncovered. As the liquid evaporates, keep topping it up with the wine and stock, about ¾ cup at a time.

When all the liquid has been added, and has evaporated (this will take about 20 minutes), the rice should be tender and yummy!

I actually quickly sautéed the seafood in a separate pan, but if you were desperate to keep dishes down, you could just cook it in the risotto pan – add it 5-10 minutes before the end of the cooking time. Mix the cooked seafood through the risotto gently. Stir the parmesan through, or just use it to garnish, depending on your preference.