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Panna Cotta

This the most requested dessert on my cooking classes, and luckily for me one I never tire of!

Now eaten around the world as well in most of Italy, its origins are mysterious. I have read on a couple of Piedmont blogs in Italian that it is definitely originally from that region, and would say this seems very likely as the Piedmont region, bordering France as it does, is the only one where cream occasionally features in the cuisine.

In general in Italy there is a belief that milk is intended for the nutrition of babies and young animals, that milk is difficult for the adult stomach to digest, and the same goes for cream. This is why Italians tend not to drink Cappuccino after meals and why there are no "cream sauces" for pasta in Italy - at most, here in Emila-Romagna, just a a tablespoon or two of precious cream is used to bind a pasta sauce serving 4 to 6 people. 

The brief references to its origin that I have come across, say that it was in invented in the early 1900s by a lady of Hungarian origin living in the Langhe area of Piedmont. Though in my Piedmont cookbook the recipe (La Panna Cotta del Antico Piemonte) is said to have been known in the region since the Middle ages.

Be that as it may.........I like my Panna Cotta simple: white and with berries, at most with some other fruit. I do not like it with chocolate or caramel sauce, as it is often served in Italy, and none of the many variations created by chefs and restaurants in Italy and beyond stand up to the original for me. Above is my favourite summer version, with tiny wild mountain blueberries.

In winter I might serve it with Bologna's famous wild sour cherries in syrup, the Amarena Fabbri as above, in late summer with grapes, in the fall with persimmons, but I love it most of all right now, in fresh berry season! Read on for the recipe.

Great Garganelli Pasta

Garganelli were born in 1725, the story goes, in the country mansion of the representative of the Pope - the Pope at the time ruled the region of Romagna - specifically in the home of Cardinal Cornelio Bentivoglio d’Aragona.

His cook was busily preparing Cappelletti, the Romagna cousin of Bologna's Tortellini, and she was either taken by surprise when a large number of extra guests arrived unexpectedly, or else, in another version of the story, the kitchen cat got at the tasty meat filling when she was not looking! Either way she had dozens of little squares of pasta all cut up and a-waiting their stuffing and not quite enough filling to go round.

Thinking on her feet and in some desperation, she decided to dispense with the filling altogether and to make little maccheroni-like rolls instead, with the aid of the pencil-sized wooden twigs used to light the kitchen fire and a tool borrowed from the weaving room: country households spun hemp and wove most of their own linen in those times.

"This is the true story of the origin of Imola garganelli, as told in the stables during the story telling sessions of the long winter evenings of Romagna," it said on the website where I found the story.

So thus, it seems, was the birth of a great little egg pasta shape that was originally served in the broth destined for the Cappelletti but today is frequently served al prosciutto e piselli which is to say with salt-cured ham and peas. The peas today may be fresh, frozen or canned, while the prosciutto can be in strips or in dice. Traiditonally it was softened in the pan with the onion and pea mixture but today I often reserve a little of it and crisp it up to use a topping, as in the first photo above and the last one at the end of the post.

 
But these little golden quills, golden mainly because of the deep orange colour of egg yolks in this region, are a wonderful vehicle for a great many sauces. The pasta quills, being made of soft flour, readily drink up the liquid part of the sauce, the ridges trap extra sauce and the holes at either end allow tasty tidbits to creep inside the little tube, so that the pasta and its dressing really come together, as they always should.

Golden Fried Cardoons

Mmmm, fried cardoons, cardi fritti, one of winter's to die for swoon-worthy treats!

So what is a cardoon exactly? Like the artichoke, it is a member of the thistle family and it makes a glorious, tall sculptural plant of pale, silvery, grey-green leaves.

from cheese by hand

from hayefield.com

It has much smaller thistle flowers than the artichoke but it gets much taller, much bigger, and can be quite spectacular.

By the time I see cardoons in the market they look like huge - almost scarily monstrous - creamy white celery. They have been stripped of all but their most tender leaves, as the part we cook and eat is the stem, wheras with the artichoke we eat the flower.

They are hard work and a pain in the neck to prepare but to me at least well worth the effort for the delicate taste - like a reflection or an echo of artichoke heart - as well as for the texture, which can vary from crunchy and crisp to meltingly creamy according to how you prepare it.

The cardoons we prefer here in Bologna - and probably in all Italy -  are known as gobbi or hunch-backed. We like them better because they are more tender, and the flavour more sweet and delicate. Like Italian white celery, they are blanched through cultivation in total darkness. To blanch the gobbi, the plants are bent over to one side when young, down to the ground ,and then covered with earth. Having been bent, they come out looking hunched, short and fat, like this:

Those nice fat stems are a whole lot easier to peel than the regular kind, the cardi lunghi. These come in taller narrower bunches and have elegant slender stems. They just happened to be the only ones available the other day when I made this dish..

I love the feel of the velvet-soft feathery little leaves at the top and always give them a little stroke before discarding them; a little pleasure before the not-so-much-fun task of prepping the cardoon stems begins.

 

Tiella Barese

A one course meal of baked mussels, rice and potatoes

This dish comes from Bari in the Apulia region, which I think is where I was about the time of my last blog post, six months ago.Yes, it's been a long long time, and I apologise, but I am back now, and hope to post a recipe a week at least while my low season lasts.

Tiella is a dialect word for Italian "tigella" or pan, so the name refers to the dish it is cooked in. It is one of my top favourites and one reason is that it is both great comfort food eaten hot but it is also really good eaten at room temperature - in Bari it is often eaten on the beach, they say the sea air makes it taste particularly good!

There is nothing complicated or technically difficult in the process, which I am going to describe and comment on through the photos. At the end you will find the quantities and a summary of the method.

Above are almost of the ingredients: rice, potatoes, parsley, garlic, peeled plum tomatoes - in summer I use fresh tomatoes but not in late December.

 

And the fresh mussels of course!

Just in case you are not familiar with how to check over your mussels to make sure they are fresh, here's a short video clip:

 

This time I steamed the mussels open after picking them over and then scrubbing them and removing the beards - cue for another "how to" video clip. I've chosen one in Italian for fun - have no fear it is subtitled in English:

Sweet Pepper Roll-Ups

   

There have been sweet capsicum peppers in the shops since early May but as their natural season is July through to late September I have not bought any until now. One of my childhood memories of summer is of a house filled with the sweet slightly caramel scent of roasted or fried sweet peppers, a memory that brings a smile to my lips and makes me want to inhale deeply the better to remember. I have at times been so disappointed with out of season - or new hybrid - peppers that have neither scent nor juice that I make sure to wait until it is their proper time. Even then I may be disappointed but the chances of disappointment are much higher with out of season imported or green house grown peppers.

The cuisines of Italy have many ways of cooking these vegetables that speak so eloquently of summer: Peppers may be stuffed with rice, meat, fresh fish or tinned tuna, with breadcrumb based mixes, with ricotta or Mascarpone, with pasta or with diced vegetables. Roasted and peeled they are made into cold dishes where they are combined with parsley and garlic, or capers and tuna, or hard boiled eggs and anchovies. In the Pollo ai Peperoni of Roman cuisine they are pan braised with jointed chicken on the bone, the same procedure but with jointed rabbit in Piedmont's Coniglio con i Peperoni. Not to mention the many sweet pepper pasta sauces of Puglia and Abruzzo. And yes surprise, surprise, "peperoni" in Italian means sweet peppers and not spicy salami.

One of my favourite things to do with sweet capsicums is to make roll ups. Though once again there are many possibilities one of my perennial favourites is the sweet -savory Sicilian filling of capers and currants and pine nuts and anchovy, and this is the recipe I share with you below.

I always use capers, and anchovies preserved in salt because once you wash the salt off, the anchovies taste and smell of the sea, while the capers taste of capers not of vinegar. They require a little preparation but the processes are quick and easy and you will be rewarded with distinctive, wonderfully intense flavours as well as better texture. Salted anchovies stay very soft unlike anchovies preserved in oil which turn hard and a little plastic like,. Capers preserved in salt are firmer and less mushy than their vinegary and somewhat mushy counterparts. 

(photo above courtesy of A Culinary Photo Journal's Photostream, Flickr)

 

In Italy we buy salted anchovies by specifying the number we need, and the vendor prises them out of the large tins, at least the size of cookie tins, that they are packed in. You can find them in Spanish, Greek and Portuguese delis as well as Italian ones. As for the capers, the smallest are the tastiest, so when I discover a supply of tiny capers preserved in salt I buy lots and stock up.

Summer Tomato Sauce

  

for Orrecchiette with Ricotta Forte

This is my recipe for a simple, basic summer tomato sauce, the one I make when the good ripe tasty summer tomatoes are once again available.

In Italy, or at least in Bologna if you just ask for tomatoes when shopping you get the question: "For sauce or for salad?", because different varieties are suited to one or the other purpose. If you answer "for salad" the follow up question is "All green or a little red?". We prefer harder greener tomatoes for salads, yes. They have a very slightly acidic tang which is necessary. Most of the time we use very good olive oil, so we dress with just olive oil and salt - vinegar or lemon only distract, disguise and generally interfere with the wonderful aroma and flavour of a good extra-virgin. Partly green tomatoes also have the firmness to stand up to the olive oil dressing and do not give off so much water when salted.

Sometimes I need to ask my greengrocer which variety is best for sauce but not when my favourite sauce tomato is in season. The flattish multi-pleated "Riccio", in the photo above has oodles of flavour, excellent  colour, soft flesh and lots of juice. I also use like it best for rubbing on bread or toasted bread because the soft flesh can be easily rubbed in leaving the skin behind. And Ricci tomatoes are good for making Pomodori Gratinati - cut in half, topped with breadcrumbs, parsley and grated cheese, a little minced garlic sometimes, a drizzle of oil and baked till crisp and coloured gold on top.

But back to my basic simple sauce and the recipe.