Deirdré Eats - and Cooks

torta di pane

As I mentioned earlier, this is a good way to use old, dry bread. The recipe is more or less one that I scribbled down from a magazine in a waiting room.

Cut/break 1/2 kilo of dry bread into smallish dice

Soak it overnight (in the fridge) in about 1 liter of milk; I also add a few tablespoons of amaretto or other liqueur

Mix two eggs with 50 gm melted butter, 200 gm sugar, and 50 gm cocoa powder (unsweetened is fine)

Add a grating of lemon peel, raisins, pine nuts or other nuts. I also tend to toss in any other dried fruit I have around, e.g. figs.

Mix in the soaked bread; I use an electric mixer, which also helps pulverize the bread into smaller pieces, but the batter will not be smooth in any case

Bake at 175 C / 350 F for about an hour

It's okay if it comes out a bit puddingy. It tastes best when warm, and reheats well in the microwave.

restaurant review - il capriolo

Saturday Enrico and I were restless and decided to go for an outing. We visited the abbey at Piona, then headed up the mountain. We had a booklet listing restaurants in the province of Lecco, including one more or less in the area where we were. Turned out we hadn't looked closely enough at the details - it was way up the mountain at 1100 meters, and took quite a while to reach over a narrow, twisty mountain road. We had to call several times for directions and to ask how long the trip should take, and we almost turned back several times.

But Il Capriolo turned out to be worth the trip. For primo, we shared a dish of gnocchi with gorgonzola. For secondo, we had the local buckwheat polenta, with generous portions of three different kinds of meat: brasato (braised) beef, spezzatino (small pieces of veal) with porcini mushrooms, and pork loin cooked with pancetta (bacon). The brasato was good, the other two were excellent, each with just enough gravy to add flavor to the polenta.

For dessert we had panna cotta ("cooked cream") with a warm berry compote (see the video). All this, plus over half a litre of the house wine (a more-than-decent Cabernet), came to 40 euros for the two of us - cheap at the price!

Il Capriolo is also the local hangout for the inhabitants of this tiny mountain village, so there were people playing cards, watching TV, reading the newspaper, and a father came in with his kids to buy popsicles.

For anyone who might be in the area: Il Capriolo and five other restaurants in Valvarrone are having a food-fest in Sept/Oct/Nov (21-28 Settembre, all the sundays in Ottobre and 1-2-9-16-23-30 Novembre), which looks very yummy, go to http://www.valvarrone.com/ and click on "" Sapori d'Autunno " - Quarta Edizione" for menus, driving directions, and contact info.

Click the picture above to view the video. To use video controls (Play, Stop, Rewind, etc.), click with your right mouse button on the video (Mac users: right click or control + click).

italian quiche

In Italy you can buy ready-made pasta sfoglia (layered pastry), which is something between a pie crust and puff pastry. It comes in frozen or refrigerated forms, the easiest kind is pre-rolled and cut into a circle, and already laid out on oven paper, so all you have to do is plop it into a pan and fill it.

Quiche is a good way to use up odds and ends of veggies and cheese. In this case, I sauteed a couple of shallots (scalogne) and some sliced zucchine, while mixing three eggs, some milk, a dash of salt and pepper, and some grated aged ricotta. Pour everything into the crust, bake in 175 C/350 F oven for about an hour.

Quiche per se is not an Italian dish, but there are many variations on torte salate (salted pies), typically with spinach and fresh ricotta.

moghul shredded chicken curry

To make the chicken broth for the scrippelle, Enrico had boiled two chicken thighs. Which meant I had lots of cooked chicken, plus leftover white rice from several previous meals (I always manage to overestimate how much rice everyone will eat).

So Saturday night I made Moghul Shredded Chicken Curry, from Royal Indian Cookery. The recipe calls for steamed chicken breasts, but boiled thighs worked just as well. I pulled all the meat off the bones and shredded it, then:

- fry 1 tbps cumin seeds in ghee or oil for 1 min

- add one chopped onion, cook til soft

- grind into paste 2 cloves garlic and a 1-inch cube of fresh ginger (actually, I used the food processor to chop very fine, not quite the same as paste...)

- add to the pot with cayenne pepper and 1 tsp turmeric

- in a separate pan, fry a finely chopped small onion in oil til brown

- food-process this, along with 1 cup cashews, 1/4 cup blanched almonds, 2/3 cups dried coconut, into a fine-ish crumble

- add to main pot, stir for a few minutes, add about 1/3 cup water, cook low for 5 minutes

- add 1/4 cup yogurt and 1/3 cup raisins (previously soaked in water to soften), and salt, cook some more

- add chicken, cook another 10 minutes or so

The recipe calls for a garnish and a final two tbsps of cream, but I didn't bother - with the yogurt, it was plenty creamy.

Along with this we had the leftover rice (I bought a microwave this year mostly to heat pasta and rice in) and a simple dish of green beans and peas (clearing odds and ends from the freezer!) with coriander, another Madhur Jaffrey recipe. And lots of chutneys.

scrippelle

Saturday night we had scrippelle, a traditional treat from Abruzzo. You can think of them as crepes made without milk, or very, very thin omelettes. These had been home-made for us by family friends, Enrico brought them back carefully wrapped in layers of plastic with a wet dishtowel, storing them in fridges when he stopped along the way. They freeze very well, but we decided to eat them right away.

The simplest way to prepare scrippelle is to roll them up with lots of freshly-grated parmigiano inside, place three in a shallow bowl, and pour fresh, hot chicken broth over them. Sprinkle with some more parmigiano if you like, and dig in.

what's in the pot

This one's for Mica, who wanted to know what's in the pot.

Friday night, it was pork loin (lonza). It was a smallish piece, because I had expected to cook it Thursday night for just me and Ross, but after making chutney all day, I was tired of being in the kitchen, so we went out for pizza instead. So I had the lonza to cook on Friday when Enrico came home.

Procedure:

- In a casserole, sear on all sides in a bit of olive oil

- add chopped carrots, a couple of small onions, sear them as well

- add white wine (some ex-sparkling white that had been forgotten in the fridge, now flat but not yet vinegar) and a tsp or so of broth granules, pepper, and a couple of teaspoons of sweet chutney.

- cover and cook about 40 minutes, til a meat thermometer shows nearly done, dollop with sweet tomato chutney (that's when I took the picture) and cook a little longer.

Serve with mashed potatoes and its own gravy.

restaurant review - Osteria del Viaggiatore

...and another one.

A new find in Lecco - Osteria del Viaggiatore

July, 2004

I had driven past this place many times, but it's easily overlooked - the outside of the building is unprepossessing unpainted cement, though the large sign with a mysterious painting on it is intriguing. Then we heard from friends that it was good, and I found it listed on http://www.acena.it/lecco.html, a source I'm finding reliable for good restaurants in the area.

So we finally went last night. The menu is fixed-price, 30 euros for five courses, drinks extra. The first antipasto was prosciutto and raspadura - scraping - very thin slices of a local hard cheese. The prosciutto was among the best I've ever had: sweet and tender, melt-in-your-mouth.

After that, we had to make choices, from 6 or 7 dishes for each course. For our second antipasto, I had a tortina di zucchine in fiore, a mini-pie with cheese, zucchini, and zucchini flowers. Nice, though I would have liked it a little more salty. Enrico had cold, wafer-thin slices of turkey breast with a sauce of raw tomato, celery, and cucumber. He ate all the sauce before I got to taste it, so I can't speak to that, but the turkey was good.

For primo, Enrico had lasagnette with fagiolini, patate, and pesto - a baked
lasagna dish very similar to the Genovese-style pasta with pesto that I make at home with green beans and potatoes, and in this case, bechamel. The lasagna dough was light and airy, making this dish not as heavy as I had expected, and very tasty.

I had home-made ravioli filled with borragine (borage) with a simple dressing of melted butter, sage, and pine nuts. The bitterness of the borage contrasted very nicely with the rich butter.

For secondo, Enrico had cold roast piglet sliced very thin, very similar to porchetta from central Italy, but more tender. I had two kinds of local lake fish, lavarello (sardine-sized, but lighter in flavor) and persico. Both were very lightly battered and fried, leaving plenty of room for the flavor of the fish to come through. As contorno (side dishes), we were both served a small quantity of oven-roasted potatoes.

Then came dessert. Enrico had an exquisite panna cotta (cooked cream) with a dressing of strawberries and other "forest fruits." I had "Fondente Extra Bitter", slices of something between a mousse and a torte, made with lots of bitter chocolate, swimming in a creme Anglaise. Wow.

We tried one of the house wines that the owner has made to order, called Aromata Coeli - basically a non-sparkling Barbera which the waitress told us had been aromatizzata (perfumed), though we weren't clear on what that meant. It was more than palatable, and a good complement to all the variety of our courses.

restaurant review - Crotasc

I posted this on eGullet back in March, but have just realized that it's difficult to find on that site now. So here it is again.

We've discovered a new treasure, Crotasc, a restaurant attached to the Mamete Prevostini winery in Mese, just outside Chiavenna. Their specialties are salumi and insaccati (dried meats) and wild game (including salumi made from wild game), and of course their own wines.

The house welcoming nibble consisted of thin slices of slinzega, a dried beef similar to the Chiavennasca specialty, violino di capra ("violin of goat' - salted preserved haunch of goat, traditionally carved by holding it under your chin and sawing towards you with a long knife), along with several kinds of excellent bread, ranging from pure white to the traditional pane di segale (rye) - I wish I could buy the bread the restaurants get!

My husband had the 30-euro wild game menu, which started with a small selection of wild game salumi, followed by ravioli with fagiano (guinea fowl). I had home-made papardelle (wide pasta ribbons) with duck breast. Both were wonderful.

Enrico's secondo was a medallion of venison with a sauce of Sfursat (the local "fortified" wine); I had a venison cutlet. Both were served with a dollop of polenta and a vegetable "foam." My cutlet was excellent, but Enrico's with the sauce was even better.

For dessert I had a chocolate pudding in vanilla sauce, Enrico had an orange semifreddo (semi-frozen), which again I liked better than my own - maybe I'm just envious.

We accompanied everything with a Grumello 2000 by Mamete Prevostini, also excellent. We could probably have bought some of their wine while we were there, but they were disappointingly out of the lovely white called Opera that we had tasted last summer at a Lanterna Verde - they're waiting for the new vintage to be ready. I guess we'll just have to go back for it.

The restaurant is divided into two rooms, one traditional with a huge fireplace, and big dark wooden ceiling beams. We ate in the non-smoking room, which looked as though it had been recently done or re-done, in light wood with lovely modern fountain chandeliers and stone paving. There is also lots of outside seating, so the place is probably even more delightful during daylight, in good weather.

I've put details and a map link for Crotasc on my site, http://www.straughan.com/italy/restaurants.htm
I warmly recommend this restaurant to anyone who's visiting Lake Como - it's well worth the trip.

panzanella

Today's lunch was panzanella, another good thing to eat while tomatoes are in season. I more or less follow the recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, except that I didn't have any of the herbs. Basically, you make home-made croutons by frying chunks of dry, old bread.

...which is a great way to use up dry, old bread, BTW. We always end up with a lot, partly because we overbuy and undereat, and Italian fresh bread goes stale very quickly, sometimes within the day. Whatever I can't use up making croutons, or bread cake (recipe another day), or crumbs, goes to the horses - horses love dry bread.

Where was I? Bread: chop into 1-inch cubes (roughly), sauté in butter and olive oil with minced garlic, fresh herbs if you have them. Pepper. Remove from pan into a large bowl, toss with fresh-ground cheese. The recipe says parmigiano, my grater currently contains odds and ends of sharp aged cheeses, I don't even know what all.

Then chop ripe tomatoes, thinly slice red onions, toss with oil, red vinegar, salt, and pepper. When ready to eat, add the croutons.

chutney day

I had been saying all summer that I was going to make tomato chutney during this season, while the tomatoes are at their best. My favorite fruttivendolo was selling pomodori ramati - tomatoes on the vine - at 3 euros for 3 kilos, so I bought 3 kilos (~ 10 lbs.).

I first scalded all the tomatoes, in batches, in boiling water for 15-30 seconds, lifting them out with a slotted spoon and letting them drain and cool in a colander. When they were cool enough, I peeled them (at this point, you can just strip the peels off with your fingers), chopped them, and removed most of the seeds - this is a personal thing, I just don't like the seeds. If you don't care, you can leave them in.

3 kilos is a lot of tomatoes, so I decided to make two different kinds of chutney, both from Madhur Jaffrey recipes. First was a Hyderabadi chutney - very peppery and garlicky, a bit yellow from turmeric. Unlike most of the chutneys I've made so far, this one is sauted. It is tasty, and VERY hot.

The bulk of the tomatoes (2.3 kilos) I used for my usual sweet tomato chutney, again a Madhur Jaffrey recipe. I can't find online the exact recipe I'm using, but this one is similar - just use fresh tomatoes prepared as described above.

This recipe calls for cooking the tomatoes in vinegar and sugar, with lots of minced garlic and some spices and salt, for about an hour and a half. The recipe calls for raisins, which add pectin and help it densify (is that a word?) faster, but I decided to leave them out since I still have a batch of apricot chutney made a few weeks ago, with raisins. So the cooking time got longer, and it got slightly burned on the bottom before it really got dense enough. But I picked out most of the black specks, and they don't seem to affect the flavor, which is sweet, sour, and garlicky, all at the same time.

The pictures show all three chutneys - apricot, sweet tomato, and spicy tomato. Hmm. I still have some things to learn about food photography. The first two will go well with cheeses - aged and sharp cheeses such as parmigiano for sure, and probably with some kinds of pecorino (sheep's milk) or caprino (goat's milk) cheese as well, especially aged ones. The third one is more like a relish; I'll have to see what it goes well with, though Ms. Jaffrey says it "could brighten up almost any meal."