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).

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.

macelleria falorni

In late July, we took a brief trip through the Chianti area, visiting our friends Rita and Lino. They live near Greve, so we visited that charming town (touristy, but tastefully so) and the famous Macelleria (butcher), Falorni.

Falorni make their own insaccati (preserved meats), such as the prosciutto (ham) and Il Ghianda (something I'd never heard of - must be native to Tuscany) that you can see here. Many of these are made from the cinghiale (wild boar) which are far from endangered in this region (or any other in Italy, for that matter).

They also sell cheeses and yummy stuff in jars, and the shop is liberally adorned with farm implements, old photographs, signs, etc.

What photographs cannot capture, alas, is the smell! The scent of spicy, salty preserved pork is wonderful and overwhelming - vegetarians are advised to stay well clear.

italo-indian dinner

My balcony garden is full of coriander (cilantro) plants which are rapidly going to flower. Using them up requires an Indian meal, since coriander is foreign to Italian cooking - indeed, several Italians I know can't stand the taste of it. So, tonight's dishes...

Dal (Lentils)

3 zucchine on their last legs found in the fridge, plus some carrots, half a red onion, and a few cloves of garlic - throw everything into the food processor and chop fairly fine. (No, zucchine are not native to Indian cooking, but I need to use these up!)

Heat 2-3 tbps of hot pepper olive oil in a deep pot, add 2 tbsp cumin seeds. When these begin to sizzle, scrape in the mix from the food processor. Stir and sauté until softened and somewhat reduced - 5 minutes?

Add two cans lentils, with their water. (Dried would have been fine, but I didn't think to soak them in advance, and I'm trying to clear out the canned stuff from the pantry.)

Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsps garam masala, 1 tsp vegetable broth granules, half tsp cinnamon, half tsp turmeric. Stir, lower heat, cover, walk away.

Sweet & Sour Aubergines (Eggplant)

A Madhur Jaffrey recipe involving pre-fried chunks of eggplant re-sauted with pachphoran (five seeds), a bit of onion, toasted and crushed sesame seeds, aamchur (sour mango powder), and sugar.

Green Beans with Coriander and Coconut

Another Jaffrey. This one also called for mustard and sesame seeds, but I left them out so as not to be too similar to the previous dish. So it ended up being very simple: fresh green beans, slightly boiled and then rinsed in cold water to keep them bright. Throw them into the wok with some hot oil and a bit of cayenne pepper, then toss with a mix of rubbed fresh coriander leaves and grated coconut (fresh coconut would taste better, but is way too much trouble even if I had it).

Basmati Rice

The best in the world, native to Dehra Dun near where I used to go to school.

There was also a chutney I made a few weeks ago from fresh apricots. Chutney is very easy to make and is a wonderful accompaniment to strong, aged cheeses as well as Indian meals. Before summer ends I'll make a big batch of chutney from fresh tomatoes. Scalding, peeling, and seeding them takes a lot of time, but the chutney-fied tomatoes come out almost glassé. I've also tried making chutney from canned tomatoes, which ends up more like ketchup, but is okay in its way.

pasta with red bell pepper

I love to cook, but I hate having to decide what to cook, so I usually make meals based on whatever I happen to have around that needs to be used, or whatever looks good at the fruttivendolo (greengrocer), butcher, supermarket, etc. that day.

Last night I hadn't done much shopping, but had on hand:

one sweet red bell pepper, getting a little wrinkly

some vine-ripened plum tomatoes, a gift from my mother-in-law's neighbor in Abruzzo, brought up when she came to visit last week

lots of red onions (almost always to be found in my fridge - I rarely use any other kind, except green ones in Asian cooking and salads)

So... let's make a meal.

I diced up the pepper and some onion and garlic, put all that to sauté in some peppered olive oil (home-made - just add red pepper flakes and/or whole red hot peppers to a jar of good oil). I scalded the tomatoes, cooled them, slipped off the skins, diced them (removing some of the seeds, though there aren't many in this type), and added those to the pot. A few grinds of mixed peppercorns, half a teaspoon of vegetable broth granules, and a cup or so of red wine (what was left in one of the open bottles).

I let this cook over a low flame for half an hour or so, going in to stir occasionally while I was doing other things at the computer. On impulse, I added a handful of raisins to the sauce, and later about two tablespoons of butter, to reduce the acidity and give the sauce more body.

When Ross got back from riding, I put on the water for pasta. Since this was a fairly wet sauce, I used spaghetti alla chitarra all'uovo from deCecco - egg pasta soaks up a lot of juice.

Cook, drain, and shake out the pasta, throw it it in a bowl and mix it with the sauce. I grated some aged ricotta into my dish (Ross doesn't like most cheese, and was happy without it), which went well and added protein to the meal. Ross had the remains of a small salame. We mopped our plates with bread.

Today I bought eggplant and green beans. Hmm. What shall I do with those?

birthday lunch

Last Saturday we went to La Lanterna Verde, one of our favorite restaurants in the world, for the now-traditional celebration of Ross' and Alice's birthdays. Last year there were 11 of us, this year 10. The owners have become fond of us, though they'd like to see us more often!

Most of us had set menus, there were six or so to choose from.

Graziella had the trout meal, so her antipasto was a salmon trout mousse, ricotta (I think) wrapped in salmon trout carpaccio, and smoked trout.

I ordered a la' carte, and for antipasto had paté, which had figs inside and came with a sweet red pepper coulis. I actually preferred the red onion coulis they used to make - I think it's a better complement to the paté.

Here are a couple of primi (first course dishes): in the foreground, mushroom-filled ravioli with a chanterelle sauce and, behind, trout-stuffed ravioli with tomato and basil.

This was part of the summer menu, spaghetti with a sauce of raw tomatoes, black olives, and very good olive oil.

Ross and Alice in awe of Ross' main course, I think it was lamb ribs crusted in pepper.

I got distracted with eating and forgot to photograph the other main courses (we had had quite a bit of wine by then, too!).

For dessert, the chef decorated the plates of our three birthday people (David and Ross share a birthday) with "Buon Compleanno" or "Auguri" in chocolate sauce.

Julian had the palette of sherbets, here it doesn't look quite as elegant as when they brought it to the table, as he had already started on it before I got this photo.

With coffee, they served these little trays of nibbles. The candy-coated cherries were amazing - a light, smooth coating of caramel on the outside, perfect sweet dark cherries on the inside.

We like to go to Lanterna Verde during the day, because the drive up there is so pretty (it's on the road from Chiavenna to St. Moritz, high in the Alps), and in good weather you can sit out under the pergola and enjoy a view of waterfalls on the other side of the valley.