cookitaly.com

Two little fishes

 

In Bologna they call these rather striking fish Gallinelle, elsewhere in Italy they are known as Mazzole or Pesce Cappone, and I believe they are called red gurnards in English. I picked up a couple of them at the market yesterday because they looked so very fresh and they were modestly priced. They are easy to fillet and have no scales and I planned to cook them my favourite way, the simplest - for fish especially simplest is often best.

 

All I do is fillet them - that's the only bit of a work involved - and cook them over moderate heat, skin side down, in some hot olive oil without ever turning them over. That way the delicate flesh stays moist and milky. I wait a little beyond the point when the flesh has begun to turn opaque and then I lower the heat and cover, so that they finsh cooking in steam. Salt at the end, a drizzle of olive oil and supper's ready! But wait, scoop up the small amount of pan juice and drizzle that over too, it's so tasty.

No lemon for me with fish usually, I find it too strong for most white fish though I do sometimes use orange zest in white fish dishes and often orange juice with shrimp.

To go with it, I removed the ribs from some crinkly leaves of blue-green kale - cavolo nero - and blanched them in boiling salted water. I refreshed them in icy cold water and sautéed them in olive oil with tiny garlic and dried crushed red chilli. I added some cannellini beans tossed with chopped parsley and more olive oil, and served up this scrummy yummy, light and healthy meal for two.

 

Chocolate Sauce for Roman Oxtail

 

On to the second exciting part, the finishing sauce that makes the dish so special.

You will need

3 to 6 celery stalks, the pale kind if you can get it - the original recipe uses half a head of celery
A handful of pine nuts
A handful of raisins
A  single square of 70% cocoa dark chocolate - milk chocolate is all wrong
A nutmeg to grate

Preparation

First thing you do is de-string the celery carefully, then slice it into half moon segments. Bring a a pan of water to the boil and throw in a small handful of salt just before you tip in the sliced celery. Roman cuisine loves celery  - called sellero not sedano here - so you can put lots of it in. That way the celery is your vegetable dish and no other side is needed. How  small you chop it and how long you cook it is up to you. Italians like their vegetables cooked through not crunchy, and would cook medium slices for 15 to 20 minutes. I usually cook most of mine the Italian way reserving a handful to add a few minutes before the rest is ready, so as to have just a few crunchy pieces. One minute before scooping out the celery with a slotted spoon, throw in the raisins too, so that they can plump up a little, but if your raisins are very dry then soak them in warm water beforehand and skip this step.

Roman Oxtail Stew

   

Coda Alla Vaccinara, iconic symbol of Roman cuisine, is one of those heart warming soothing winter dishes that you dream of and crave when cold weather sets in. Quick to prepare and slow to cook, it is a humble unpretentious dish made with an inexpensive cut of meat. Simple as it is, the recipe gloriously enhances the ox tail with a subtly bitter sweet finishing sauce. Unfortunately many Rome restaurants, even those specialising in Roman cuisine, skip the final step of the original dish. The dish is still excellent even without it I must admit, but once you've tasted the real thing, the tomato-only version feels incomplete.

Coda alla Vaccinara was born at the historic trattoria Checchino dal 1887, a place that is closely entwined with - if not wholly responsible for - the humble origins of  what is now seen as traditional Roman cuisine. Checchino is located in what was once the slaughter house district of Rome, the now trendy Testaccio area, and though it is a very elegant dining venue today, originally it was just a modest inn.

It first opened in 1870, and served wine along with bread, cheese, olives and salamis, until the original Mariani - the same family still run the restaurant today - obtained a cooking licence in 1887 and started cooking for the workers on the slaughter house construction site on his doorstep.

When the abattoir opened in 1890, Mariani started cooking for the Vaccinari - the butchers - who worked there. At that time, the butchers were given some piece of offal as a little bonus along with their wages, and they took this along to Checchino to pay (almost) in kind for the wine they drank. And this was the birth of Rome's many offal based dishes, the birth of the Roman cuisine of "the fifth quarter".

They still serve the original recipe that the Mariani family invented at Checchino and that is the recipe I am sharing here today.

Pomegranate braised Rooster

 

Galletto alla Melograna

I decided to cook this dish because my fruit seller gave me a huge heavy pomegranate as a New Year's good luck gift that was just sitting and looking beautiful and ready to eat.

I thought about making my usual Guinea Hen dish with it but my butcher recommended I buy his fresh free range "galletto" or rooster/cockerel instead. The Guinea Hen recipe assumes a wild bird, and requires a marinade of lemon juice, black peppercorns and juniper berries, and at the end it is finished with a little cream, but this juicy young bird did not need any of that I decided. Keep it simple and let the flavour of the bird shine through.

My finish would be some fresh pomegranate arils, to add some tartness and that delicious juice popping texture to the tender meat and the thick slightly caramelised shallot-enriched pan syrup.

Here's the recipe:

For 2 people you need:

A small young rooster, free range ideally - Cornish game hen will do instead, or even chicken thighs

A heavy large ripe pomegranate

A shallot

Extra virgin Olive Oil, salt, pepper

Prepare the rooster

If your butcher has not done it for you, cut the rooster into 4 pieces. Check for feathers and if necessary singe over a flame, then rub off. Wash and pat the pieces as dry as possible or your oil will really splatter!

Pork chop, fennel potato puree

For a quick, simple and very tasty lunch today I cooked lovely juicy shoulder pork chops, delicately fat marbled and always more tender than loin chops. These were especially good as they came from Sadurano, a wonderful farm on the hills above the historic town of Castrocaro Terme (Forli' & Cesena province) that has been completely organic since 1982.

 

First I made a bulb fennel and potato puree by cooking a sliced fennel bulb in boiling salted water in one pan, while in a separate pan I cooked two unpeeled floury potatoes starting them off in cold water. This made enough puree for 4 servings. When both were very soft I peeled the potatoes and then squished everything through a potato ricer, to hold back all the stringy parts of the fennel and make the puree nice and lump free. I used a little of the already salted fennel water to soften them, so no extra salt was needed, and kept the puree warm on very low heat while I cooked the chops. I had intended to add some milk and butter to the puree but it tasted perfect just as it was so I left well enough alone. Good decision!

Gnocchi di Patata

After the holidays I crave the simplest foods, so for Sunday lunch I made good old potato gnocchi. Just old floury potatoes and flour: 1 part of flour for every 5 parts potato, and absolutely nothing else, to keep them light and tasting of potato.

I intensely dislike tough and chewy packaged gnocchi, the kind sometimes also served in restaurants even here in Italy. I think the culprit must be the addition of eggs, which of course wet the potato mixture so then you need to add more flour and that way you end up with the rubber bullet gnocchi I dislike so much.

 

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This is what I did:

I placed 2 large old potatoes in cold water unpeeled and cooked them gently till they were well softened, taking care not to let them burst their skins as they need to stay dry, to retain all their starch.

I peeled them while warm and enjoyed squishing them through a potato ricer (a food mill will also do). Today I did it twice to make the mixture extra smooth, letting the potato ribbons fall in a mound.

I sprinkled over most of the flour and worked the flour and potatoes together into a soft dough that held its shape when I started forming it into a long snake.

For light gnocchi I try to use the least amount of flour possible, but always enough so that the "snake" holds and does not break up. I made more than one "snake" and cut them up into even pieces, then I rolled each piece into a ball.I pressed each ball lightly on the back of a fork to indent the front and then gently rolled it up with the tip of my thumb to form the cowrie shell hollow on the back - both are designed to lighten the gnocchi and to give the sauce something to cling to.