Squid-Ring Cous Cous and Sunday Lunch

So a week ago last Sunday, we … well I … cooked lunch for us (my husband and me) and his parents.  Lunch is a big thing still in Italy, especially among their generation and especially on a Sunday.  Il pranzo della domenica … Sunday lunch.  It’s tradition, it’s heritage, it’s culture, it’s what’s important as far as meals go.  Food fads come and go but this one has not lost its popularity in terms of family meals.

I too think that a luncheon can be a delightful event but only if it is special in some way, otherwise I much prefer dinner.  Lunch for me is the time of day I feel a bit hungry and need to feed myself.  A very basic biological need that needs to be met, nothing cultural about it.   I tend to eat something left over from the day before or else cobble together whatever I find in the store cupboard or fridge.  I ‘feed myself’ as opposed to ‘dine’, if you catch my drift.  I am one of those who can easily be reading a book while munching on lunch.  Dinner, supper, whatever you want to call it, is something else. To me it marks the time of day that has to be celebrated whatever else happened during the day, good or not so good.  And that’s when I’ll have a glass of wine, or two, or three.  I can’t drink at lunch, instead, not even one glass, it makes me very sleepy.  In the evenings I seem to tolerate it very well and sooner or later, it’s bed time anyway.  Another reason I tend to look askance at cooking a lunch is that: well, one has to get up early.  Who wants to get up early on a Sunday?  And the last reason is that I like to sip some wine while cooking but I can’t sip wine in the mornings and it would seem that coffee just doesn’t have the same effect on the cook in me as wine does.   So, I have given you three good reasons why dinner is preferable in my world to lunch.  That said, there is magic to a Sunday lunch despite it all.  And that’s because it’s all about the people.  The why we sit at the same table to eat.  The meaning of sharing food and conversation.

Last Sunday I decided to go for fish.

I prefer to cook in my own kitchen but finish off the dishes at the Nonni’s flat.  What you see is what we brought over to theirs.   Let’s take a look at the menu.

For starters I opted for everyone’s favourite this time of year: courgette blossoms stuffed with mozzarella and anchovy fillets and fried in batter.

Clams for the pasta course: spaghetti alle vongole.

Vegetable side dish (contorno) number one: asparagus, served simply with olive oil and lemon juice.

Contorno number two: plain boiled potatoes seasoned with olive oil and chives.  Salt and pepper too, of course.

Main course, boiled fish.  No parsley sauce this time but home-made mayonnaise instead.  The fish on the plate is seabream (orata) and salmon.  The presentation looked prettier in real life when I brought it to the table with sprigs of parsley and the purple flowers of chives.

And this is the recipe du jour, the recipe for today’s post.  Let me explain.  I was going to serve fried squid rings (calamari) together with the courgette blossoms as a starter.  But time was running out and I took a short cut.  I brought the cous cous to life using the fish stock I drew from simmering the fish.  And I simply cooked the calamari rings on the griddle, coated in olive oil.  I seem to remember a good squeeze of lemon juice to add some panache.  The friendly parsley and voilà: a dish is born ta da!  It just goes to show that being a teensy bit lazy can prove fruitful at times.  Had it been the evening, I would never have faltered before frying the calamari.

Dessert was a fruit salad of strawberries and bananas.  Easy peasy.

I felt thoroughly chuffed about this new recipe.  Takes hardly any time, is very tasty and I shall definitely be making it again.

 

How to Hype Frozen Tripe – Fry It!

What got into me that day? Spoken aloud with much groaning and aaargh-ing and virtual hair pulling exasperation.   Why, why oh why did I decide to defrost the stand-alone freezer on my balcony?  

And no, it was not a rhetorical question. I really did ponder what prompted me to undertake such an ill advised course of action when, really – really, really, really – all I wanted to do was hunker down on the sofa, enveloped by a comforting plaid, whilst sipping a cup of pukka loose-leaf tea and watch a good old-fashioned film or series on TV.  That is: chill out, relax, not think, be mentally (and very lazily) transported to la la land. Anything but the consciousness of being in the present, the mantra of ‘be here now’. I didn’t like ‘now’.  I wanted to escape. This was a few weeks ago, when it was still nippy.

Did the Covid lockdown have anything to do with it?  A freezer full of food and leftovers is not to be scoffed at under any circumstances but especially so when thoughts on survival and Maslow’s pyramid start to stare at us in the eye. Clothes for one’s body. Shelter from the elements. A roof over one’s head. Enough food and water. Vital connexions to the outer world via telephone calls, the internet and zoom meetings (the so-called ‘veetings’, such an ugly word for a God-send of an invention).  One becomes perforce more ‘aware’.   Emotions see-saw between anxiety and gratefulness.  Between irritation and peacefulness.  Between boredom and inspiration.  Alternating between escapism and reality checks.

Food waste, something I always try to avoid in any case, became a real issue. And I can immodestly pat myself on on my back for being good at combining both thrifty/homey productions that were still pleasing, together with naughty-but-nice meals that indulged our more decadent yearnings at table.  Variety, after all as we all know, is the spice of life.

On most days I’m as happy as a puppy when it comes to thinking about food and cooking the meal. It’s the rest of the overall food-eat equation that can be tiresome (the shopping, the schlepping, the queues, the storing, the cleaning, the prepping, the washing up etc).  I knew trouble was encroaching when the freezer showed signs, owing to all the untidily placed stuff inside, of not shutting properly. I solved the problem by placing a couple of plant pots on it to keep the lid down (it worked).  Fyi, the photo below was taken a few days ago.  The balcony and the freezer were a different story back then.

“It’s just temporary, I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” I said to myself, almost believing that I would.  But ‘temporary’ turned into tomorrow never comes.  Please tell me I’m not the only one who is gripped by procrastination?  After a while, the niggling feeling that had weaseled its way in the hinterland of my recall began to migrate upwards into the nakedness of conscious thinking, until I had to face up to facts.  I just DID NOT WANT TO defrost the freezer. So much work, sigh.

What was it that finally managed to split the straitjacket of my indolence? Looking back, I think it might have been a wan desire on my part, counter-intuitively enough, to elude reality, to pretend that Covid had not forced us into lockdown or was causing unnecessary deaths, strife and stress.  Sometimes, ‘realistic’ does not inspire, it just blocks.  Sometimes, the game of ‘let’s pretend’ can, instead, act as a stimulant.  After all, it’s what children do all the time.  So I made up a cock-and-bull story that I was about to prepare a feast for loved ones based on what the freezer held.  A culinary challenge, ha ha, so to speak.  Well.  That feast in particular will have to wait BUT, as a reward for yours truly, a new recipe did come out of all that hard work.  I am not sure I am going to make this recipe often but whenever I do, I shall feel almost saintly remembering how creatively I managed to waste-not on that fateful freezer-defrosting day during lockdown.

What I found in the bottomless depths of the freezer was a container full of tripe cooked the Roman way, that is served up with freshly grated pecorino cheese and mint.  Delicious.  That’s if you like tripe which I didn’t until about ten years ago.  My mother used to make it for my husband and he always raved about it.   I asked her for the recipe, good little wife that I am.  If you want the recipe, please refer the the post preceeding this one.

My father-in-law is also very partial to tripe and so he got a share of this bounty; he and my mother-in-law live in the same block of flats as us and as we are their caretakers, we see them on a daily basis.  My mother lives in Grottaferrata, about three kilometers from Frascati.  She is going to turn 94, he 91 and my mother-in-law 85 this year.  You can imagine their anguish upon keeping up with the daily news, and the death toll of the elderly in care homes.  Looking after old people is not all fun and games but we do try to inject some irreverent humour into our interactions with them, which might strike some as callous. “What? you’re still alive?” my husband will say to my mother (in a very loud voice too because she has become increasingly hard of hearing) when he answers her call.  And please don’t worry, she gives back as good as she gets; if anything it’s this kind of humour that keeps her going.  She likes to say that she ‘killed off’ two husbands and that had she married a third time, she was sure she would have killed that unsuspecting husband too.  Another of her favourites is, “amarsi sempre, sposarsi mai” – which translates into “it’s always a good thing to love but never to get married”.  My father-in-law, instead, is what you’d call ‘quiet’.  Very quiet.  Monosyllabic even.  When things go wrong, he is never surprised, he is that kind of a ‘realist’.  And yet, even he had to give in to ‘surprise’ when his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimers.  It’s just cruel, cruel, cruel, is all I can comment. 

All this to say that it can’t be easy for our old folk, no, not at all.   And, likewise, not easy for us their children.  There are good days, of course, and not so good, mostly the latter.  So … yet again, food to the rescue!   Eating food they like seems to be one very good way of making life tolerable.  My mother has become a little ‘picky’ in her food choices but as for my father-in-law: food is of utmost comfort and he sits down to his two square meals every day, with wine to accompany both.  Covid has in no way affected his appetite, bless him.  So I knew he would appreciate a helping of trippa alla romana.  But what about the rest?

See this?  It’s a bowl containing a flour-and-egg batter.  Batter and roughly chopped mint and parsley.  So my invention of the day was: use some of the previously cooked tripe to make: fried tripe!

Here I am frying it in batches.

It looks a bit like fried squid.

Sprinkle of salt and pecorino and Bob’s your uncle.

I realise that tripe is not for everyone, fair enough.  But if you should have any left over, why not fry some in batter as an amuse-bouche?  You know me, the fried food fanatic (FFF)

Tripe Cooked the Roman Way

I am reposting a recipe on trippa alla romana that I wrote eight years ago – my goodness how time flies.

Re-reading it, tears came to my eyes remembering Gareth Jones who died in 2015.  Miss him so much.  His brilliant blog seems to have disappeared into thin internet air?  http://www.garethjones.food – can’t seem to open any page, I wonder why.  What a shame, I was going to recommend you read some of his posts – memorable, informative, inspiring, funny and eye-opening.  That and he did know how to cook.  He called himself ‘the last of the independents’ and he wanted each meal to be a feast, whatever the budget.  His campaign was for a ‘blue collar gastronomy’.

If you do indeed like tripe, this recipe will not disappoint.  It takes quite a long time to prepare but there is nothing ‘difficult’ about it.  It can be frozen.  Aha!  And when you defrost it, you can turn it into yet another recipe – I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

file:///C:/Users/utente/Downloads/garethjonesfood.com_8683_salary-salt.pdf

The MarmiteLover Blog: Volunteering to Cook for the NHS and Key Workers during Covid19 Lockdown

Chef Kerstin Rodgers is famous for her supper club in London, an activity she had to shut down on account of Covid.  No work, no income, no partner to bring in an income.  And yet, and yet, she has managed to put her culinary skills to pursposeful use during Lockdown in London by volunteering to cook for the National Health Service (NHS) and the recently created People’s Army, founded by 29 year-old Hazel Jhugroo (next time someone harps on about millenials I might become a little more voluble in their defence).

You know something?  I haven’t mentioned Covid much in my last posts because, let’s face it, did I want to be yet another person putting in her two cents’ worth of on the dire situation or falling into the mire of stating the obvious?  But there is one urge I do want to honour now and that is the very first ‘gut feeling’ I had when lockdown in Italy took off.  “Something good will come of this,” I thought, “It might get worse before it gets better but something good will eventually come out of this.”  And Kerstin is just one example.

Hats off to her and to the People’s Army.

Below is the link to her latest post with recipes.

Cooking for the NHS and key workers during the Covid19 lockdown

At the end of her post, after the recipes, Kerstin provides links if you would like to contribute:

Please donate to the crowdfunder

Email: thepeoplesarmy@hotmail.com

Ask for support or volunteer at the website
Twitter: @peoplesarmyldn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepeoplesarmyldn/
Facebook: Peoples Army Islington Covid19 Support Group

On Matters of Batter and Fried Chicken

I think that brain matter, likewise, has to muscle into the preparation of this recipe.

I don’t know about you but my memory is starting to play up in certain spheres.  I used to be blessed with a very fine memory, one that came in most useful during the final weeks preceding examinations; I was an adept swotter with a quasi OCD approach to note-and-rote learning, with close to photographic results.  But there is another kind of memory that nearly always comes to my aid.  To this day, friends and family will remark on how extraordinary it is that I can still remember a series of events, or even the day of the week something happened.  Well that, instead, I attribute to a very ordinary practice of logical sequencing, linking or deduction: putting two and two together, as it were.  “How on earth do you remember that it was a Tuesday?” for instance, someone will ask.  And I will answer, “Well, because I used to go to gymn classes on Tuedays, that’s how.”  Nothing Sherlock Holmes about this, just plain ol’ Watson.

I did write a diary for a while, starting in my teens at boarding school.  And one can’t deny that a diary involves some kind of  memory function.  Goodness knows what I wanted to record, to save for remembrance.  I suppose it was a way of keeping time, of making sense of the uneventful progressing of the days.  People sometimes wonder whether I had a hard time at boarding school and I answer no: in an age when it is all too easy to fingerpoint at horrid priests and nuns for the maltreatment of their pupils, I must attest to our nuns being actually very nice on the whole.  But life at boarding school was hardly exciting, let’s face it, so my diary was mostly the jotting down of desultory homework requirements, disappointing match results of games played, or an unhoped for change in lunch menu; commenting on a spat between best friends or, yes!, the break-up even of best friends; the changes in mood due to an imminent menstrual period (we used to call it the ‘curse’) and the excitement of someone buying a new l.p. record.  To this day I cannot bear certain songs (John Lennon’s Imagine for one) because we used to play such records to death, over and over again in the space of a few hours.

And I was always ‘pining’.  Oh what a piner I was!  Longing, awaiting, yearning for, moping, hankering after, languishing for, craving … you get the picture.  I suppose it’s what many young girls feel while growing up?  I can recognise much of myself in Anne Frank’s diary – being able to talk to yourself is a way of trying to make sense of things, of giving words to a troubling feeling, it can soothe restlessness, it can stimulate consciousness.  There is a confessional side to writing a diary, an intimacy of ‘sharing’ that one only usually does with loved and trusted confidantes.  What is life all about?  Who can I consult?  I did French for ‘A’ level and was totally taken by the whole existentialist outlook – with the underlying agnosticism or indeed Godlessness somehow not interfering whatsoever with my catholic religion.  I asked hard questions at times, and I fell in love with Camus (never liked Sartre, horrid toad of a man, was not surprised later in life to discover that he used to require his girlfriend to pimp underage girls for him).  One of the set books was Camus’s The Plague and ouff, how ironic that it should come to mind in this Spring of 2020.  In the mid-seventies, his book could be read as a metaphor for the plague of recurring war (the Vietnam war was still going on), and as a generation we were indeed worried about the possibility of a nuclear war. And here we are – at the very start of the third decade of the 21st century, witnessing a very real virus-driven outbreak, who would have thought … who could have thought?  Camus, like all good things, never goes out of fashion.

One thing I did know for sure: I wanted to ‘live’ and not merely ‘exist’.  And yes, laugh if you will, but that desire is with me still.  My idea of ‘living’ might not be yours, of course – travelling and travel of the mind, and friends and family are its four pillars.  To each their own, as they say, and bringing life into this world, having children, has been my most memorable ‘achievement’, that which made me feel ‘alive’ as no other experience had ever previously done.  Can it be altogether coincidental, I am asking myself as I write, that I began a blog round about the time I was dealing with the empty nest syndrome? (One child had already left home, and the other was about to.)  I am not sure I would have started keeping a diary if I hadn’t gone to boarding school.  Then, despite beloved friends with whom I am still close more than forty years later, it was my family I missed the most, my parents, my sisters, even our dog.  The diary helped me cope with what was missing.  And I can only surmise that the blog has served a similar purpose, this time the people missed being my children.  And I am still asking hard questions.  If you think about it, a blog is a bit like a diary, no? It’s about food all right but, also, food for thought.

Now that I’ve gone off at a tangent let me try to get back to the recipe and why I want to have it carved in blog-stone.

The main reason is that, fried chicken never goes out of fashion.  And it requires a good batter.  The second reason has to do with the slings and arrows of a failing memory.  I want to get this recipe down pat, once and for all.

I have made chicken fried in batter at least a dozen times, and each time it’s been a bit different.   The first attempt was based on a Nigella episode where I learned the crafty art of a) pre cooking the chicken in milk and b) shaking the chicken bits in a plastic bag filled with flour (or was it breadcrumbs, mmm?) to coat them – very clever trick indeed.  Successive attempts always included egg somewhere in the recipe but it wasn’t until two years ago that I made a batter to coat the chicken, as opposed to just flour and breadcrumbs.  And that was because my mother was harping on and on about how wonderful (“out of this world” according to her) our cook in Bangladesh’s fried chicken was.  And could I try and replicate it?  Which I dutifully and gastronomically did to general acclaim.  Jolly good.  Except, now, I can’t remember what I did!

I read quite a few food blogs and found myself being intrigued about fried chicken recipes.  Some amount of marinading is always called for.  A magical ingredient known as buttermilk (which we can’t get here in Italy) is presented as to a cut above  yogurt.  Seasoning ranges from family secrets to the ubiquitous salt, pepper and paprika.  Some opt for chopped onion, others for dried garlic.  Fresh herbs? Dry herbs?  So much to consider, so many choices.  The following are my conclusions, which I am most happy to reconsider based on any new information coming my way.

RECIPE and TIPS

Marinading – I don’t know what all the fuss is about.  Chicken is tender, to me it doesn’t need marinading or tenderising.  The tastiness comes from the spices you are going to add to the batter, not the marinade.  So I give this step a miss.  Shoot me.

Pre-Cooking the chicken: well done Nigella, as I already said.  In this version, however, instead of simmering the chicken pieces in milk, I steamed them.  It took about half an hour. Easy enough to do and one less ingredient to add to the list.  The reason for pre-cooking is kind of obvious: when it comes to frying the chicken, it will take less time and you don’t have to worry about eating semi-raw chicken.  All you have to be worried about is getting the batter to turn crisp.  Note to self for next time: rub a little olive oil over the chicken parts and add some salt.  I am sure this will enhance the overall taste.

Batter Ingredients:

(1)Eggs – egg whites only.  There is a scientific (chemistry) reason why we should eschew the egg yolk.  I think it has something to do with the crisp factor.  I confess, I read about it but have forgotten why.

(2)Alcohol – I used grappa, you could use vodka or some other strong alcoholic drink (not wine and nothing sweet of course).  Apparently, at high heat (and frying does require high heat), the alcohol evaporates and makes the batter extra crisp.  We are talking about tablespoons of alcohol, not great big mugfulls!

(3a)Flours for the batter:  both ordinary flour and corn flour/starch

(3b) Plain flour for coating the chicken pieces before immersing them in the batter; for flavouring, read below.

(4)Breadcrumbs: optional

(5a)Dry spices and/or herbs: you choose what you like … paprika, allpice, parsley, thyme, rosemary – not mint or marjoram I shouldn’t think.  Indeed, you don’t have to add any spices if you don’t want to.  But salt and pepper, yes. Especially salt.  No salt, no taste.

(5b) Fresh herbs: parsley, chives, dill, fresh coriander (even teensy amount of sage) finely chopped – but if so, add them to the batter only at the end, just before you fry the chicken.

(6)Fresh stuff: by ‘stuff’ I mean onion and garlic.  Dry garlic is heaven sent and is what I used. I did use chopped onions on one occasion and it was a tad overwhelming – but that is a matter of personal taste.  I suppose spring onions might be a good alternative?  Whatever stuff you choose to include ‘fresh’, make sure you add it to the batter ONLY at the last minute.  Otherwise it will dilute it.

(7a)Tomato paste – to add colour and a hint of acidity.

OR

(7b)Grated lemon zest – to add freshness, but just a touch. If  you are after a lemony fried chicken drumstick, then by all means add to your heart’s content.

(8)Slurry: there used to be an ad on British television about Murray Mints and the line was, “Never hurry a Murray, it’s far too good to hurry”.  So, mutatis mutandis, it’s a good idea to take your time to make a proper slurry.  Sounds awful, somehow, doesn’t it, conjuring up something slimy.  The slurry basically IS the batter, just not a nice name for it.  It will include beaten egg whites (I used three) diluted with cold water (you could use beer I suppose?) to which you will then add all the other ingredients mentioned above.  The ratio of flours is 30 percent corn starch, 70 plain white flour, but you could even do 50/50 why not.  The final consistency has to be fairly thick.  Go ahead – taste it.  You might want to add a je ne sais quoi to make it just right. Last: it’s not a bad idea to cool the batter in the fridge.  A cold batter will ‘react’ with the hot oil for a crispier result.

(9)Frying oil: groundnut/peanut oil has a good smoke point.

PROCEDURE/METHOD – WHAT TO DO, IN OTHER WORDS, STEP BY STEP

(1)Coat the chicken pieces with olive oil, season and then steam for about half an hour or until ready.  Remove from the pan and allow to cool completely.

(2)While the chicken is cooking, you can prepare the slurry/batter and put it in the fridge.  .

(3)Dredge the cooled-down chicken pieces in a bowl full of seasoned flour (3b above).  Alternatively, place this flour in a large plastic bag, slip the chicken pieces into the bag and shake it until they are evenly coated.

(4a) Place the floured chicken pieces on a rack or large plate, awaiting to be dunked in the batter before being fried.
(4b)Alternatively, place the chicken pieces in a bowl large enough to hold them, pour the batter over them so that it covers them completely, seal with clingfilm and put in the fridge until the next day.  It’s okay for the batter to be cold but …but fridge-cold chicken will take longer to cook.  Hence, it’s a good idea to remove the chicken from the fridge-cold batter at least one hour before frying.

(5)Heat the oil.  It’s a good idea to use a deep frying pan.  If you have one, even a Dutch oven works very well.  When the oil is ready to receive the chicken (at around 180°C), first dunk each piece of chicken in the batter and proceed with frying in sensible batches (don’t fry them all at once).

SERVE.

 

Fried chicken makes everyone happy, it is festive.  People of all ages like it, it is democratic, it can be eaten with one’s fingers.  Fried chicken is a treat.

And, as we all know, fried chicken tastes fab eaten cold the next day.  Great for a picnic!  Remember Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in the picnic scene in To Catch a Thief ?  Who says fried chicken can’t be sultry and sexy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EN_tYpSpqc&list=PL9AFxNdm-mwMpBs3FlKwBKPC51QGT2Vu8&index=2

Here are some photos from my latest batch, cooked last Saturday and shared with my parents-in-law.  There is something naughty about fried foods, isn’t there, and I wanted my in-laws to live a little – heartburn be damned.

Here are the cooked, cooled chicken pieces coated with spiced-up flour.

Here is one chicken piece about to be coated in the batter.  Notice how slightly ‘pink’ it is in colour.  That’s because of the tomato paste in the batter.

Frying away …

Just out of the frying pan and onto a white carpet of kitchen paper.

And this is one piece that got gobbled up by me before dinner.  After I had sprinkled a little bit of salt over it.   We had fried chips for dinner too.  And home-made mayonnaise but not home-made ketchup.

We also had the above stuffed courgette blossoms fried in a different batter.  Saturday night was definitely fried-food night!  (Although in all fairness I did steam the asparagus.)

POST SCRIPTUM

There were leftovers next day and we enjoyed those cold.  I brought some over to my mother a day after that.  And that’s when she told me she had notes for the fried chicken recipe of our cook in Bangladesh!  The one she always raved about.  Odd that she hadn’t mentioned she had the recipe before.  It didn’t take her long to find the recipe notes, written on a sheet of paper bearing the letterhead of the company my stepfather used to work for.  I must say looking at that letterhead really threw me back … decades ! Talk about bittersweet memories.  Anyway, our cook was called Toka.   Toka’s Fried Chicken might well  be the title of another post from me in the not too distant future.

 

 

Friday and It’s Boiled Fish, Boiled Cabbage and Parsely Sauce

Since I made such a fuss about the frugality of parsely soup in my previous post, I thought I’d make up for it by indulging in ingredients that are about ‘richness’ for this post.  Which might suprise  you since the title is all about ‘boiling’.

Boiling.  I don’t think people are in the habit of boiling anything these days except potatoes (and pasta and rice, yes, naturally).  Boiling has gone out of fashion.  We sauté, we steam, we bake, we roast, we grill, we stir-fry, some of us even deep-fry but God forbid we boil foods any more.  And to think that boiling used to be a ‘normal’ method of cooking food for centuries.  We equate boiling with boring, I suppose, and indeed boiled cabbage sounds as interesting as flat, luke-warm beer taunting your thirst on a hot and sweaty day.

Soups continue to be boiled of course.  And in Northern Italy we have a supreme array of boiled meats that are considered a delicacy and a treat: il bollito  misto.  Only for the well to do or on special occasions.  In Britain, instead, boiled beef appears to have been a staple for the working classes (see the end of this post) and was the grist of a popular Cockney song entitled “Boiled Beef and Carrots” (again, I have provided links to the song and its lyrics for those who might be interested).  The French have their Pot-au-feu, the Austrians have their Tafelspitz.  And I am sure these recipes continue to be enjoyed to this day.  So let’s not get too snooty about boiling beef, okay?

And what about fish?  As I googled “boiling fish” two recipes popped up on the screen: Bahamian boiled fish and Sichuan boiled fish.  I’ve not had the pleasure of eating either dish.  But I have enjoyed boiled lobster – and even prawns, shrimps or crayfisih are boiled too, no? The Swedes not only celebrate their summers with crayfish boiled with plenty of dill to add to their deliciousness, they even have crayfish parties! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7a4Y3uL_E).

When I say ‘boil’, I really mean ‘poach’ or ‘simmer’ – meaning that the procedure is a gentle one.   Here is a link that will give you loads of good tips: http://www.professionalsecrets.com/en/ps/ps-university/chef-de-partie-fish/cook-fish/boil-fish/?newsletter_source=Popup&newsletter_confirmed=1

Here is how I went about it – no thermometer, no worries, just making fish for supper.

I got the fishmonger to gut and remove the scales from the sea bream.  I plonked it in a pan large enough to welcome it.  Covered it with water and added some parsley and turned the heat on.  Not a high heat, remember, I was going to poach/simmer.

And I turned the heat off when it was cooked.  Can’t remember how long – probably 15 minutes?  Something like that.

I transferred it to a wooden board and used a fork and a spoon to remove the skin and bones.

And here is the ‘boiled’ sea bream on the serving dish.

While it was cooking, I had prepared the parsley sauce.  Easy peasy.  Blanch the parsley leaves in boiling water for about 30 seconds, then drain and drench in very cold water until all the heat is gone.  Pat dry and then finely mince.  Melt butter in a saucepan, add cream, and then add the parsely.  Add some salt and white pepper.

Spoon the sauce over the fish and serve.  It’s a good idea to heat the serving plate first.  Luke-warm fish, hot serving dish and hot parsley sauce.

I served the fish with a side dish of … yes, yet again, BOILED cabbage.  I did not boil it too long, not the way they used to  back in the 1970s when it would get cooked to a deathly pale grey; so my veggie managed to keep its nice vibrant green colour.  Thank goodness for olive oil and lemon juice.

Served like this, poached fish is not frumpy at all.  It’s really delicious – in an old fashioned way, perhaps, but still delicious.

Of course, you can put the urge to boil in the girl, but you can’t take the crunch frying factor out of the girl – you know me, a fried food fanatic (FFF) ?  Well, I couldn’t resist frying some stuffed courgette blossoms to accompany the meal (ahem).

 

 

 

Boiled beef

Boiled beef is a traditional English dish^[1] which used to be eaten by working-class people in London; however, its popularity has decreased in recent years. Traditionally, cheaper cuts of meat were used, because boiling makes the meat more tender than roasting.^[2] It was usually cooked with onions and served with carrots and boiled potatoes. It was not uncommon for the beef to be salted in a brine for a few days, then soaked overnight to remove excess salt before it was boiled. In other parts of England cabbage replaced carrots.

This dish gave rise to the old cockney song Boiled Beef and Carrots which used to be sung in some East London pubs when they had a pianist and singsong night.

Boiled beef is also a traditional Jewish dish served in many homes and Jewish delis alike. It is usually flank steak boiled and served with vegetables, broth, and sometimes matzo balls.

References[edit]

1. ^ Spencer, Colin (2002). British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231131100.
2. ^ Thring, Oliver (21 June 2010). “Consider boiled meat”. The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved 2 December 2014.

Boiled Beef and Carrots

As originally recorded by HARRY CHAMPION:

As originally recorded by HARRY CHAMPION:

When I was a nipper only six months old
My Mother and my Father, too
hey didn’t know what to wean me on
hey were in a dreadful stew
hey thought of tripe, they thought of steak
Or a little bit of old cod row I said,
“Pop round to the old cook-shop
And I tell ya what’ll make me grow”

Boiled beef and carrots Boiled beef and carrots
That’s the stuff for your ‘darby-kell’
Makes you fat and it keeps you well
Don’t live like vegetarians
Or food they give to parrots
Blow out your kite from morn’ till night
On boiled beef and carrots

The rest of the lyrics on the link  below if you’re interested:

https://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/b/boiledbeefandcarrots.html

Here is the link to the youtube video of the song sung by Max Bygraves:

 

 

Soup during Covid – Parsing Parsley Parsimoniously

Title a bit of a tongue twister, eh?  A cheeky little foray into click-baiting, I admit.
What, you might be wondering, am I alliterating about?
Parsley, that’s what.  And how to make soup with it.

So, let’s talk parsely.  The humble herb that some came to disdain on account of its ubiqitous appearance on a ‘finished’ plate, aka the dreaded GARNISH.  So twee.  So 1980s.  Other people who might otherwise appreciate its contribution to the overall flavour of a dish find themselves distancing themselves from said herb on account of its notorious clingyness – to one’s teeth.   Not just unsightly, it gives one’s gum-receding age away.  But that’s in a restaurant or at a formal dinner party.  Spinach got a bad rap too, for the same reason, in restaurant eating.  I can attest to my own fear of green bits adhering to my teeth in public and my husband and I have a code ‘look’ – one such glance from him and I know I’m in trouble and have to be excused from the table.  At home, however, what is there to stop us?

Where I live and shop for vegetables, i.e. greengrocers or markets here in Frascati or in or around Rome, a bunch of parsley, albeit  a small one, will always be given away by the vendors as a parting gift for the buyer.  It is tradition.  It’s what Italians call ‘odori’ – literally ‘odours’.

The usual  mix of odours consists of one carrot, a celery stalk, maybe a small onion and some sprigs of parsely.  A few wisps of basil will be included during basil growing season.  And it’s a case of first-come-first-served.  You won’t get any odori towards the end of the day, all gone.  Of course supermarkets never give them for free! Oh no, you have to fork out about 1 eu for a bunch of parsley  Are you telling me they can’t afford to? Are we supposed to feel sorry for them?  Just don’t get me started on supermarkets again,  you know how it’ll end.

Here are some ‘odori’ from last week.

On the other hand, imagine my surprise when I first shopped in the Marche, in the historic, beautiful and small hill-top town of Monterubbiano, where my mother-in-law hails from and where my husband and I spent many a summer holiday with our kids … There I was like a lemon waiting for the shopkeeper to hand me out my odori … and all I got was one measely little strand of parsley, handed over to me as if I were being presented with a precious metal.   When I asked for some basil, the look on the greengrocer’s face morphed along the lines of “you have the temerity to ASK for free basil?”  Oliver Twist.  I hastily said I wanted to purchase a big bunch of basil (I’m into alliteration today, sorry) and how much did it cost.  “Ah, that’s more like it,” his softened facial expression seemed to say.  I realised that the Marche can’t be big on parsley  – not like we are here in Lazio where even the fishmonger will give you some to go along with your catch-of-the-day purchase.  You know how in the UK it is Scotland that gets a bad reputation for people being stingy?  Well, in Italy it’s the citizens of Genoa and the people of the Marche who are guilty as charged.  Isn’t it awful when clichés turn out to be true as far as parsley is concerned?  Which is a tremendous shame, actually, because the people I’ve encountered in all my time in the Marche were always very friendly, kind AND generous.  Just not with their odours.

Another suprise for my readers might be the discovery that in Italy parsley has long held a reputation for helping terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  I thought it was just an old wives’ tale.  When I was pregnant with my first child, more than one person warned me against eating too much parsley and I thought they were frankly bonkers.  We didn’t have the internet in those days.  But look it up and lo and behold – there is some truth to this (here is a link if you don’t believe me, scroll down to where it says “parsley oil”  –  https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/abortifacients).   All of this beggars the question: what about tabbouleh?  I wonder if Middle Eastern women are told to eat less tabbouleh when they are pregnant?

I have to confess that I do occasionally fall into the habit of of wanting to garnish a plate with parsley (or mint), it’s been instilled in me bones – but at least I try to keep it understated.  And à propos of bones: parsley is excellent for our bone health and has lots of vitamin K and other beneficiary components.  Here is a link which makes it quite evident:  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/parsley-benefits#section8.

And one final ‘fun fact’ about parsely in Italy is an old adage, hardly ever used now.  Whereas  people “turn up like a bad coin” in English, in Italian they turn up like parsley – always in the middle of something.  Meaning, of course, that parsley is lavishly added to hundreds of dishes.

And now onto the recipe itself.  I was convinced, but con-vinced (please note the emphasis) that my trusty ‘The Prawn Cocktail Years’ book, first published in 1997, contained a recipe for parsley soup.  It turned out the recipe was, instead, for parsley sauce.  Sigh.  Onto internet investigating for ideas but all my research forays always came up with other ingredients to tartify the soup – mostly potatoes. So … nothing.  Head scratching.  More head scratching.  I knew, just knew, that I had eaten parsley soup at some point in my life, I was not making this up!  Until … ta da da daaaaa.  I remembered the vaguely-coloured watery ‘stuff’ that passed for soup and was regularly served to us for dinner when my family was living in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Soup with parsley in it.   Not parsley soup.

The Neapolitan/Campania people have a sense of humour that is hard to beat in Italy.  (Please pardon this apparent non sequitur – it will make sense when you reach the end of this paragraph.)  And Neapolitans adore their pasta, just like all Italians.  But forget about rice: they are not rice-eating people at all.  One of the very first schools of medicine in the world was located in Salerno (this is before universities came about, so  I am talking a long long time ago) and once the Spaniard occupation starting cultivating rice around those parts, it was considered very precious.  Very expensive too, presumably.  The doctors from the Medical School of Salerno deemed rice to have curative powers and regularly prescribed it when people were poorly or recovering from some malady.  Just plain, boiled, no frills.  So, let’s face it, thoroughly uninteresting.  Very white too.  Which is why, to this day, when an Italian has a dicky stomach he will insist on ‘mangiare in bianco’, on eating ‘white’ – i.e. simple, plain food with no sauce or any other redeeming flavour enhancer.  As a result of all this plainness and whiteness and blandness, the Neapolitans tend to refer to rice as “sciacqua panza” – a stomach rinser.  Food that will ‘rinse’ out your stomach but won’t satisfy your appetite or your taste  buds.   At the risk of extending the metaphor inappropriately, let us just say that ‘sciacqua panza’ can be applied to any dish that rhymes with ‘meh’, dull.

I apologise for going off at a tangent like this but … but when the Proustian moment dawned, when I was carried back to the plain vegetable soup we were saddled with in Dhaka as I was growing up, ‘sciacqua panza’ was all I could think of.  Thus it was, that I became inspired to come up with a parsley laden soup that would have no truck with stomach rinsing whatsoever – quite the opposite.

What also contributed to this tall order was the vision of a prodigious amount of parsley accumulating in the  bottom drawer of my fridge staring balefully at me, as if to say: you are wasting food, how long do you think we (i.e. the parsley) can stay fresh enough to be eaten?  I don’t know about you but food ‘talks’ to  me. I was being told off.  I was being reminded that wasting food is not okay.  So, naturally, a little self-complacency muscled its way as a ‘secret’ ingredient into the composition of this recipe.  I was being frugal.  So there ….

INGREDIENTS

Lots and lots of parsley leaves, carrot, celery, onion, peppercorns, olive oil, 1 tiny tomato or else a squeeze of tomato paste, salt, some lemon zest.  Parmigiano/parmsan.  Optional: zuppa imperiale

First I revived the limp looking parsley in some water.Then I set about removing the larger stems.

Golly, look at that knife!  Stealing my photographic thunder because it makes it hard for you to espy the slice of lemonzest at the top and a small tomato all chopped up on the right.  On the left is the chopped/minced parsley.

What you see here are, all chopped up, the carrot, the celery stalk and one spring onion. If you peek hard enough you can also see the peppercorns.  A good drizzle of olive oil and you turn the heat on.

Once the soffritto has cooked for a bit, you add the parsley, the lemon zest and the tomato and plenty of water.  Add some salt but not too much …. you can always add more later.

Ah yes, put the lid on.  You don’t want the soup to evaporate as it cooks.

And that’s it!  When the soup is ready, you serve it with some parmigiano sprinkled all over it.

BUT, aha! … I had espied something very naughty-but-nice in my freezer.

A bag containing something called “zuppa imperiale”.

Zuppa imperiale is a soup from Bologna.

What tranforms an ordinary albeit perfectly good meat stock/broth soup into something worthy of the sobriquet  ‘imperial’ is the addition of what you see above.  Those little golden cubes.  They are made up of whole eggs, semolina flour, and parmigiano.  The batter is baked in the oven and left to cool.  Then it is cut up into very small cubes. Which can be frozen but are usually sold fresh.  I had bought these from that historic, iconic and beautiful store in Bologna called Atti where they are famous for their fresh pasta and tortellini and all sorts of inviting typical foods (see link to the shop at the bottom of this post).  Naughty but nice because you end up putting on a lot of weight when you eat in Bologna!!!

My imperial parsley soup!

This photo shows the soup to better advantage because the soup plate is white.  Well.  Nothing sciacqua panza about this soup, I am very glad to report.  Plenty of taste – the imperial cubes and the parmigiano saw to that.

And for once the word ‘frugal’ didn’t  make me sad.  This is indeed a frugal soup, ingredients-wise, if you omit the imperial cubes.  Anyone can make it.  And if you haven’t got parmigiano, then add some cheddar, why not?  Some croutons too, why not?

Who said parsley was only for garnish, eh?

Foodie Must-See: Inside the Historic Atti Bakery