The Recipe Room

This recipe is a hearty favourite of mine. Pasta itself is filling, but with the breaded red meat and strong cheese, I recommend that you make this only when famished!

This is more of a lunch item as well. My wife and I prefer the Mediterranean diet, so we normally eat a substantial lunch and a lighter dinner. Eating a heavier lunch gives us the energy we need and allows time for proper digestion.

I lent this recipe to a friend of mine who wanted to show off his  culinary skills. He proudly served it as dinner to his family. Later, his wife confided to us that although it was tasty, their young son suffered from fairly vivid nightmares all night. We all know that there are a number of things that can affect your dreams, but my personal suspicion is that it was the heavy meal right before bedtime.

I serve a side salad with lettuce and tomatoes, drizzled over with oil and vinegar. The lettuce aids in digesting the meat. You could also try this summer salad with pears and cheese. Or save that option for your light dinner before a peaceful night’s sleep.

The delicious sweetness of ripe pumpkin combines deliciously with the crispy sage and Parmesan cheese to create this sublime dish from Northern Italy. Pumpkin and Sage Crisp Risotto is simple to prepare, and wonderfully filling, so you don’t need to think about side dishes.

If you can’t find fresh sage leaves, you can mix dried sage into the rice mixture. It’s not the same, but it still gives you the aromatic flavour that enhances the traditional pumpkin risotto. Other fantastic rice meals include this delicious asparagus risotto and my tempting game Pigeon Risotto.

As an accompaniment, I recommend a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, served ice cold.

Among our repertoire of appetisers, starters, and snacks, is roasted red pepper bruschetta. We’ve been known to whip some up for a light supper, or to accompany a light salad or soup, like this rich and tasty watercress soup. The red pepper is such an evocative taste of the Mediterranean for me. I remember the smell on the nights my mum flame-roasted them on a small fire, blackening them before peeling off the skin, rinsing and deseeding them, and then adding them to salads, pastas and of course bruschetta too.  For more toasty bread and salad sensations, try this warm chicken salad with garlic and tomato bread.

Mama would also store them in jars to add wonderful flavour into other recipes. If you have the option of flame-roasting your peppers, I would certainly recommend it for this roasted red pepper bruschetta. If you have a gas hob, you can roast them straight over the flame, staying close by, and turning them as you go with metal tongs. If you don’t have that option, then conventional oven roasting is also great. If you want to speed this recipe up massively, you can buy and use really tasty roasted peppers in jars.

Potato Gnocchi are light potato dumplings which were my grandmother’s specialty, a typical Sunday lunch at her table. They are an Italian tradition, differing in ingredients and form according to the region. You can serve it up with different sauces; Pomodoro, Pesto and Gorgonzola are three classics.

Gnocchi is a versatile dish, and to get it perfect requires practice and a little patience, as they should be light and delicate rather than heavy and rubbery. But when you get it right, Mamma, are they good!

If you like Gnocchi you could also try my Baked Dolcelatte and Broccoli recipe.

Pappardelle is a broader version of tagliatelle, usually about an inch (2.5/3 cm) wide. It’s a delicious form of pasta, and reputedly gets its name from the verb “pappare”, which translates as to ‘scoff’ or ‘gobble’ up. Very appropriate!

It doesn’t take much to modify this dish. You could add bacon, chicken, courgettes, or all three. Or some cream, or a little dry white wine. We enjoyed a version of this we once tried where we used a little leftover roast rabbit. A green leafy salad, some crusty bread, and a dry white wine will all complement this dish perfectly.

Once a year or so, I like to visit a vineyard and do a wine tour or tasting. It is always interesting the differences that each company uses in their wine production. There are a lot of decisions made throughout the process that changes the body and flavour of a wine, making each one really distinct. I wouldn’t say that I am a connoisseur, by any means. However, the more tastings you go to, the more you learn and can appreciate the difference between wines.

Many vineyards have gift shops to buy the wines you liked or other paraphernalia. I once saw a ceramic that tickled my fancy, and now it hangs in my kitchen. The slogan goes, “I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.” In my household, this is most certainly true! This chicken marsala recipe is just one example of when I enjoy a glass of wine while cooking, and use just a bit in the process as well.

I use red wine here, but if you prefer white, try this chestnut spaghetti with chicken livers.

A calzone is a folded pizza. I’ve had some that are literally a pizza folded over, and others that are like an English ‘pasty’, folded over and joined along the edge to for a self-contained pie. Calzones have often been used as a way of clearing up tasty leftovers, with tomato and mozzarella added to bind the whole lot together.

With today’s recipe, I’m keeping it ultra-simple, and sticking to just those two essentials: tomato and mozzarella, and a little shredded basil: red white and green, the colours of Italy!

You can obviously make as many as you need, and they actually taste fantastic cold, as well as hot, so you can make a few and store them in the fridge for those times when you just need to grab and go.

Eat with a peppery rocket and watercress salad and some nice cold beers. This stuff makes good couch eating; as it cools off, you can dispense with the cutlery and pick the pizza up and munch away, while you chill in front of the TV. It’s not all sophisticated living!

Ingredients:

• Approx 250g of pizza dough, divided into two (Check out this gluten-free option for pizza crust.)

• Flour, for dusting

• 150-200g chopped tinned tomatoes (or half a jar of store-bought pizza sauce)

• 250g mozzarella, sliced or chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped

• A handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly torn up or shredded

• Salt and pepper

Preparation:

1 – If using tinned tomatoes, simmer for 15 minutes in a pan to reduce and thicken. If using pizza sauce, skip this part. Divide the pizza dough into two balls, and on a lightly floured surface, roll out two discs of between 20-30 cm in diameter.

2 – Divide the tomato sauce between the two pizza bases, leaving a 2.5 cm edge around the base. Add the garlic and mozzarella to one half of each pizza-base, before sprinkling over the basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper.

3 – Brush water around the edge of the base, fold over and seal, pressing your thumbs into the dough. Place on some baking foil, in a baking tray, prick in a couple of places with a fork, and cook at 200ºC for between 10-20 minutes. Basically keep an eye on them and remove them when the dough turns a beautiful pale gold.

Makes: 2 calzone pizzas
Total Time – Approx 45 minutes (preparation, 25 hours; cooking time, 20 minutes)

In Italy there’s a plethora of sausage varieties; but here in our neck of the woods, the easiest salsiccias to get hold of are simply known as… ‘Italian Sausages’. You can generally take your pick between ‘hot’ and ‘sweet’, the hot variety containing hot red pepper flakes in the mix of spices. The other magical ingredients which bump up the distinctive flavours of Italian sausages are fennel and anise. You may discern one, or a mixture of both.

It goes without saying that I’m talking Italian salsa di pomodoro here (tomato sauce), and not the Mexican salsa we often associate with the word. And as a twist from my usual tack of making everything up from scratch, I’m suggesting for once that you buy a really good quality ready-made tomato and chilli sauce. And the reason for this tangent? Well, sometimes you have all the time in the world to do it all yourself; and sometimes well, you just don’t.

So this recipe is here to offer you a delicious Italian inspired meal that’s simple to put together and is still going to dance a salsa on your taste buds. If you want to stick to making your own sauce, which as you know, I always prefer when time allows- find my basic tomato sauce recipe and spice it up with a little chilli.  For another quick to make,  Italian-inspired meal, take a peek at this mushroom lasagne with mozzarella and tomatoes.

This is another of those dishes that have simple, humble origins, but can now often cost top dollar in fancy restaurants.

Some form of rustic herb-bread, ideally something chunky with rosemary or sun-dried tomatoes in it makes a good accompaniment. Try this rosemary focaccia bread.

Have some extra-virgin olive oil handy as well, preferably in a jug or decanter with a spout; sprinkling some extra-virgin olive over the pasta and clams really binds the flavours together.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
•  Several cloves of garlic (according to taste), peeled and very thinly sliced
•  1/2 lemon
•  1 dried red chilli, finely chopped
•  1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
•  200g linguine pasta
•  500g clams* (buy these alive from your fishmonger)
•  Salt, pepper and extra-virgin olive oil.

* Fresh clams need preparing: wash them in cold running water, throwing away any with broken shells, or if they’ve died (if they don’t close up when you tap them). Remove their ‘beards’ and thoroughly clean the shells. Soak in a bowl of cold water for half an hour before washing them under the tap again. Refrigerate in a covered bowl, but ideally use them straight away. When they go into the pan, they should all be closed, any that aren’t, discard.

Method:

1 – In a large deep frying pan, heat the oil at a low setting before adding the garlic and chilli. They need to thoroughly infuse the oil, which will take 5-10 minutes. Be sure the heat is very low as you don’t want to burn them, or they’ll taste bitter. If need be, remove from the heat and set aside covered, where the heat from the oil will do the job.

2 – While the oil’s infusing, get your pasta going in another pan. Timing is important with this deceptively simple dish. Don’t start step three too soon!

3 – Once your pasta’s half or two-thirds of the way to being cooked perfectly ‘al dente’, put your clams into the frying pan with the garlic and chilli-infused oil, increase the heat and cook them, stirring occasionally, until they open. This should only be a matter of minutes; you don’t want them (or your pasta) overdone, so don’t rush into this step too early or leave it too late!

4 – Drain the pasta water, reserving a ladle-full (two or three tablespoonfuls), and then mix everything together in the large frying pan. Squeeze some juice from the lemon over it all, season with a little salt and pepper, serve and enjoy!

Serves: 2

Total time: 45 minutes (20 minutes preparation; 25 minutes cooking)

These days the gnocchi you can find in the big stores tends to be potato-based. In a future post I might try my hand at making it at home (it’s not something I’ve tried yet!). The combination of iron-rich broccoli, a healthy vegetable if ever there was one, contrasting with the indulgence of dolcelatte, baked to rich, creamy perfection, makes this a winner every time. (Also try this broccoli feta rice recipe.)

This is a great food for the autumn and winter: piping hot, rich and comforting. Cosy up on the couch with your ‘significant other’, and watch a good film. Last time we had this, we watched ‘The Big Sleep’, with Bogie and Bacall, a classic!

Ingredients:

• 250g gnocchi
•  150g broccoli (half a large ‘head’ of broccoli, or most of a smaller one)
•  100g dolcelatte (or other soft blue-veined cheese, e.g. gorgonzola)
•  100ml single cream
•  50g grated Parmesan
•  Salt and pepper

Method:

1 – Heat your oven to 200ºC. Meanwhile bring a large pan of very lightly salted water to the boil (salt reduces the boiling temperature). Cook the broccoli for about three minutes*, till it becomes tender (Since it’s going to be baked as well, don’t overcook it. And watery mushy broccoli isn’t very appetizing!).

2 – Cook the gnocchi in the water you used for the broccoli, as instructed by the packet.

3 – Combine the dolcelatte, cream and half the grated Parmesan, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper, and pour into a casserole (or other ovenproof) dish. Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan over the top.

4 – Bake for between 10-20 minutes, until the top is golden, and the sauce bubbles.

* If you want to save a few minutes and feel a bit clever at the same time, you can steam the broccoli over the boiling water. This should take about four minutes. After the broccoli has steamed for two minutes, lift off the steamer, pop the gnocchi into the water, and replace. The gnocchi should cook in two minutes (you know it’s ready when it floats), and meanwhile the broccoli will have cooked atop it.

 Serves: 2

 Total time: 40 minutes (10 minutes preparation; 30 minutes cooking)