Summer Chicken Salad

A chicken salad is one whose prime ingredient is the chicken – duh – but the other elements that compose it are not the same all year round.  This being a very very hot August, I decided that buying a rotisserie chicken made a lot more sense – better than poaching a chicken myself and waiting for it to cool down, etc.

The real ‘nuisance’ about this salad, and one which you are free to avoid, is making the mayonnaise.  (Personally, I can’t stand bought mayonnaise because to my mind it really isn’t mayonnaise, just some kind of industrially produced salad cream.)  There are loads of youtube tutorials on how to make mayonnaise and the easiest, I think, is the one using an immersion blender.   Real mayo makes all the difference I promise you.

INGREDIENTS

Eggs for the home-made mayo, extravirgin olive oil, lemon, patisserie chicken, bacon, various kinds of salads, rocket/arugula, celery (sliced), red pepper corns, grapes (sliced)

I started out by cooking the bacon until very crisp and waiting for it to cool before adding it to the mayonnaise.  Don’t tell anyone but … I actually used some of the  bacon fat to MAKE the mayo, aha! On top of olive oil of course, and lemon juice.

Chopping the chicken did take longer than I thought it would but there you are – this was a recipe made with love.  Once done, I added the chicken to the mayo and left the bowl (covered) in the fridge until it was time for dinner.  In the meantime, I also sliced the celery and washed the salad leaves and, again, left them in the fridge.  Then off we went to the beach for the day.

Silvia, favourite son’s girfriend, went to the trouble of slicing the grapes in half.  Good girl …

I placed the salad on the bottom of the serving plate and added the chicken in its mayonnaise coating on top.  And then added the celery and the peppercorns.  The grapes went in last.

A close-up ….On the table, taking pride of place amongst the other dishes.Bit of a weird photo, but we were starving by then and there was much rejoicing and wolfing down of food to be done.

RECAP

Cook bacon, make mayo, add chicken to mayo and store in fridge.   Slice celery, wash salads and grapes and store in fridge.  Slice grapes just before eating.

Rehana’s Lemon Condiment and A New Recipe for Cod

1. I do not know whether I shall make this recipe any time soon but I do now that I shall definitely be using Rehana’s lemon condiment again – what a shame that a blog post can’t impart an aroma, let alone a taste !

This is Rehana:

She and I work at the same Wine Estate where clients can choose to do a pasta or a pizza class or just sit down to a nice lunch.  It gets super busy at times as we serve the food and wine, and talk with and tend to the clients, with much to-ing and fro-ing between the kitchen and the dining  halls.  And we invariably talk about food and recipes in between, together with the chef, Luigi.  Luigi lived in France for nine years and speaks brilliant French.  Rehana is from Mauritius and speaks English as well as French.  She lived in Lebanon for a while, before coming to Italy with her husband and family.   My own family lived there too in the seventies, up until the ghastly civil war that started in 1975.  Our clients hail from all over the world.

Despite the Winery’s being an uber-Italian establishment, and with good reason, the food talk very often skirts around non-Italian traditions and recipes.  I don’t know where Rehanna picked up some Chinese recipes for instance but she has promised that we are going to cook some together one day.  I want to find out more about her Mauritius cuisine, it sounds very intriguing.

Out of the blue, just the other day, she delights us all with a present of a small jar of condiment she had made.

Here is how she made it.  She gets unwaxed lemons, cuts them in half and squeezes the juice out of them (the juice can be used for other preparations).  She then stores the lemon halves in a jar filled with salted water, for about a month.  At this point, she removes the pith, the inner white fibrous membrane directly below the zest.  She then mashes what’s left – i.e. basically just the lemon rind – with fresh green chillis, garlic and a little bit of onion.  And that’s it.  The taste is explosive and tangy and incredibly more-ish.

Once home, I knew I was going to make some ‘baccalà’ – cod – for dinner in a tomato sauce I had made the day before, using fresh tomatoes, removing their skins and cooking them down.   I also had some yellow courgettes/zucchine to play with.

INGREDIENTS

Summer tomato sauce: i.e. a sauce made with fresh tomatoes, in the absence of which I suppose you could use some good quality plum tomatoes or a passata

Extra virgin olive oil, garlic, fillet of cod, courgettes/zucchine, basil, some toasted bread and Rehanna’s condiment of course.

I’d never had yellow courgettes before.  Spoiler alert: they taste just the same as their green cousins.  It was their cheery colour that attracted me.

I cut them so as to leave out  as much of their pulp as possible.I sliced the cod into thick ‘chunks’.

Slices of toasted bread.

LET’S GET COOKING !

Here I am cooking the garlic in a puddle of oilve oil together with some basil and a teensy bit of fresh red chilli.

Not long later, I added the tomato sauce and sprinkled some salt.

I cooked the sauce for only a few minutes and then puréed it with an immersion blender.

I put the saucepan back on the fire and added the courgettes (sorry no photo) and let them cook for just a minute or two in the sauce.

I decided to be careful with Rehana’s condiment and added just one teaspoon at first.

But then I added another two … the sauce was mouth wateringly good at this point.

It takes hardly any time for the cod to cook.  Meanwhile I had toasted the bread.

And here is how I served the cod – lots of delicious sauce to mop up, and some grapes for added sweetness and contrast.

Thank you Rehana !

 

Carbonara: ‘Mayonnaise’ Tip

The origins of the carbonara pasta sauce are a bit of a moot point.  More and more current researchers believe that it came about as a result of American soldiers’ food rations when they liberated Rome and Italy (together with the other Allies let us please not forget ! Brits, Poles, Indians, Aussies, New Zealanders, French and Moroccans, and the Italian Partisans too).  The thread is that the staple bacon and eggs ration of the American GI got morphed into a guanciale OR pancetta and pecorino cheese sauce, liberally sprinkled over with freshly ground pepper.  The reason for this conclusion is that the Carbonara recipe is not to be found in any Italian Cookery book prior to the late 1940s.  So whether the GI Joes really were behind it or not, it can be indisputably ascertained that the Carbonara as we know it today originated some time during WWII.

And in Rome we think we make the best Carbonara.

The four pillars of  the Roman pasta portfolio are: (1) Cacio e Pepe (using only pecorino cheese and pepper), (2) Gricia (pecorino again but this time with the addition of rendered pork jowl aka guanciale);  (3) Amatriciana or Matriciana (basically a Gricia cooked in a tomato sauce and served with Pecorino) and (4) last of all the Carbonara.  The first two are, historically speaking, the ancients.  The third required the use of tomatoes that hailed from the Americas, and that didn’t begin to joyously ‘invade’ Italian recipes until the early 1800s.  So our Carbonara is the new kid on the block and maybe, just as with the tomatoes in the Amatriciana, comes with a bit of an American ‘background’.

Earlier I wrote that Romans like to think that they make the best Carbonara.  And I like to think that the way I make it is representative of its Roman outlook: I don’t like pancetta, I prefer guanciale.  I do not like the mix of  both parmesan and pecorino, I prefer to use pecorino only.  Also, I do not use the egg whites, only the yolks.  Raw egg yolks are good for you, raw egg whites are not.  True, the cooked pasta which is still hot will “cook” the beaten egg mixture but I still think that the egg whites are unnecessary and do not add any flavour whatsoever.  Last, as with any ‘normal’ Italian Carbonara lover, I am of the idea that adding cream or herbs to this hearty pasta is anathema.

INGREDIENTS

Eggs, pecorino cheese, black pepper.  Spaghetti or tonnarelli are all very well and good but short-shaped pastas are easier to handle.

PASTA BRAND

Today, I decided to use Delverde which gets its name from the River Verde.  They draw their water for their pasta-making from the River apparently.  They are geographically very close to the popular De Cecco and Cocco pasta brands, Fara San Martino in the Abbruzzi Region.  http://www.delverde.com/it

 

I decided to weigh the pasta today: 380g for three people (i.e. 125g each – this is a really BIG helping, and 380g would suffice for four people ordinarily.  But but but … Carbonara has a way of being very more-ish).

PLAYING AROUND WITH THE PEPPER

Try this tip if making Cacio e Pepe too.  Those who understand Indian cooking know that it is vital to warm up spices before including them in a recipe, and this is the same idea. I actually read about it for the first time what feels like aeons ago, probably in the late 1990s, in a cacio-e-pepe recipe by Maureen Fant (Partner at Elifant Archaeo-Culinary Tours) who has been living in Rome for decades.  If it works for cacio e pepe it must surely work for Carbonara, I thought.  And it does.

You’ll need a wee pot or pan (the one in the middle) and a mortar and pestle.  If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, just use a full can/tin of something (baked beans?) or a rolling pin to bash the pepper corns.

Warm the pepper over a low heat and be sharp and keep an eye on the procedure.  Just last month, I was heating up the pepper and left it to finish watering my plants on the balcony (we women are always multi-tasking even when we’re cooking).  To my horror, when I returned to the kitchen minutes later I could hardly breathe and my eyes began to smart: the essential oils from the pepper had gone beserk.  I had to throw them out and stay away from the kitchen until the ‘smell’ dispersed, cough cough.

As you bash the warmed pepper in the mortar, the NICE fragrance from the pepper will make you smile.

And then, since you can’t bash the pepper to smithereens, put it through a strainer/sieve.  The end result will be so much more refined and also good for avoiding pepper overload.  I saw this tip with the sieve in a Jamie Oliver episode when he was in Rome making cacio e pepe on a roof top.

You can keep any leftovers in a sealed jar.  It will always smell and taste more fragrant than unheated pepper.

Pepper prep finished.

GRATE SOME PECORINO

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’ll know how much I detest grating cheese.  I always try and find someone who wants to be helpful and the task today landed on my obliging husband.  He does ask silly questions, however: “How much should I grate?”.  I don’t know.  Enough for four people.  As it turned out, he grated just the very amount I was after, huh! (Actually a tad too much but that’s not a problem.)

GUANCIALE (PORK JOWL) AND RENDERING THE GUANCIALE

The rule of thumb – well at least MY rule of thumb – is at least 30g of guanciale per person, 35-40g  being even better.  But I use my eyes a lot too.  As I was slicing, I cut what I thought would be enough for four 100g portions and then added an extra slice – a bit like when making tea in a teapot, you know, 1 teaspoon loose leaf tea per person plus one for the pot.

Think of it this way: 40g guanciale x 100g of pasta per person.  I cut it first and weighed it later, and it came to just under 150g – wow, bang on considering I was cooking 380g of pasta!

After you’ve sliced the guanciale in match-stick shapes, turn on the heat and let it cook and the fat render very slowly.  I actually started out doing this first,  and then got on with the pepper prepping as the guanciale was cooking.

Once the guanciale is thoroughly cooked, you will need a sieve and a bowl or something to catch the rendered fat.

Here we go.

Transfer the cooked guanciale to a large saucepan.  Later you will be draining the cooked pasta directly into this saucepan – no heat.  You could, if you preferred, use a big fat large bowl instead of a saucepan.

CARBONARA MAYONNAISE

What you see are: 4 tablespoons of grated pecorino on the left (1 tablespoon per person) and the rendered guanciale fat on the right.  Which has been left to cool.

Carbonara can go horribly wrong if it the egg curdles over the hot pasta.  My way of making carbonara does a great job of avoiding this pitfall.  And basically, it’s like making a sort of mayonnaise – only we are using pork fat instead of a vegetable oil, and adding grated cheese.

Here are the cheese and the fat.

Time to add the egg yolks.  These were rather small eggs so I used 1 egg per person plus another for good luck.

The egg whites are in that terracotta bowl.  (I later put them in a small jar in the freezer. )

So rule of thumb: 30-40g guanciale x 100g pasta x 1 egg yolk per person x 1 tablespoon grated pecorino romano cheese.

When I mixed everything together, however, my mixture was a bit too liquid for my liking so I added some more pecorino.

And also a sprinkling of pepper.

The pasta has been cooking for at least 4 minutes at this point …

I remove some of the cooking water.  That ‘thing’ you see in the cooking water is a bit of guanciale that had accidentally fallen into the pot.  No problem, if anything it adds flavour.

I now wait for the cooking water to cool.

I add the cooking water a little at a time, a little at a time, until I get a creamy sauce.  This is literally minutes before draining the pasta.

TIME TO BRING IT ALL TOGETHER

On the table.

One last thing.  As always we must always taste, taste, taste.  And the carbonara sauce was VERY tasty.  It needed more cheese but I decided to add parmigiano/parmesan at this point rather than pecorino because otherwise it would have been too strong.

Below is a link to some very short videos showing me make carbonara dating back to March 2014 – more than five years ago!  I have ‘perfected’ the recipe over time, as outlined in today’s post.  There is always something new and wonderful to learn in the world of cookery.

I hope you find my ‘mayonnaise’ approach useful and if you have any other short-cuts and/or tips do let me know, thank you!

https://myhomefoodthatsamore.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/videos-of-the-carbonara-in-the-making/

Pasta Ulrika following on Pasta Camilla

Here we are.  I seem to be having a courgette/zucchine obsession.  Well, in my defence, they ARE everywhere this time of year and you know what they say, when life hands you lemons, make Limoncello … no no no.  When life presents courgettes, find a way of making them interesting.

Some fresh chilli for instance.  As in the above photo.

Since I am making pasta, I know I shall want some grated cheese – and I opt for a mixture of pecorino and parmesan.  There is no one about wanting to help me grate the cheeses so I choose to cheat.   This is not the best way to grate cheese because it can’t be fine enough.  But it was fine enough for me that evening.

What you see are eight slices of thinly sliced (by my butcher) of guanciale, pork jowl.  If anything can make a pasta dish more ‘interesting’, it’s most definitely guanciale: think Amatriciana, think Carbonara, think Gricia.  I cut the guanciale up into smaller portions.

I cooked the guanciale over a low heat so that its fat would render.  And I waited for it to become a little crispy.

While the guanciale was cooking, I set about removing most of the pulp from the courgettes.   Talking about kitchen toys as I did in my previous post, that tool you see with a white handle is a courgette corer.  Very handy for when you want to make stuffed courgettes.  You can also use it as an apple corer.

I slimmed down the courgettes and cut them down to bite size.

And now it’s almost time to cook.  Pour a generous amount of olive oil into a big saucepan and add garlic, pepper corns and fresh mint.

Once the courgettes have been slimmed down even more into large cubes, turn the heat on, cook the garlic until it becomes golden, and then add them.

I added the fresh chilli too.  The veggies were cooking under quite a fiery heat.

And now I did the porky ‘thing’ of adding the fat rendered from the guanciale to the  mix. Only the fat.  Save the guanciale meat for later.

I swithched the heat off and blended the courgettes as much as I could.

The blending became easier after the addition of plenty of cream.

The last addition was the grated cheese.  Time to test.  Add salt and pepper as required.

Drain the pasta directly into the large saucepan, add a little cooking water and toss and turn until the pasta is well coated and/or has absorbed some of the sauce.

See what I mean?  I added yet more fresh mint leaves.  And last, the crispy guanciale.  You could, if you wished, add the guanciale directly onto the pasta served on a plate.  But people were getting hungry, all eight of us and there wasn’t time for such a nicety.  There was some extra grated cheese already on the table for those who wished to add a sprinkling on top of their plate.

So eager was everyone to dive in, that no one took a photo – not a single photo of the delicious pasta on the plate !  So what you see above is the pasta (what was left of it) the day after.  Sigh.

The good thing was that someone got to eat these leftovers.  Pasta can indeed by reheated and enjoyed – but only ONCE.  I wrote that in capital letters and will repeat: pasta can be reheated but only once.

Anyway.  The title of this pasta is Pasta Ulrika, in honour of my delightful niece from Sweden who was visiting.

Shame about the lack of photo to show how enticing this humble mix can be – but give it a try anyway, I think you’ll like it very much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Another Summer Tomato Spaghetti Sauce – Almost “Crudaiola”

A “crudaiola” sauce (pronounced croo-dah-yo-lah in English) is essentially a sauce that is made up of raw ingredients.  This pasta recipe is almost raw.  It’s cooked very little.  It is a take on a classic Italian tomato sauce made with fresh tomatoes when in season.

The word for uncooked in Italian is “crudo”.  So, I’m thinking that the word “crude” in English must somehow be embroiled etymologically with this … who knows how or why.  Of course, the Ancient Greeks called everyone who was not Greek a “Barbarian” and barbarians were known NOT to cook their food.  Can we hence assume that the Italian “crudo” (uncooked) had something to do with the English “crude” (i.e. unsophisticated) ?

Understated in the extreme as this recipe may be, there is nothing unsophisticated about it whatsover.  And as with the luxury of understated and refined goods, the secret lies in the quality of the ingredients.  I wouldn’t dream of making this recipe during the colder times of the year.  It requires the best of Summer tomatoes.

INGREDIENTS

San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, parsely stalks, extra virgin olive oil, basil, spaghetti

I like kitchen toys – they make life a lot more interesting when cooking.  That little black thing you see on the right?  It’s a tomato peeler.  Yes, not a potato peeler – a tomato peeler.  And it does a wonderful job of peeling tomato skins.  If you don’t own one of these (and why would you?), then … then plunge your tomatoes in boiling water and let them sit there for a couple of minutes – after which, remove them and plunge them into very cold water, so that you don’t scorch your fingers when removing the skins.

Now that the tomatoes have been skinned, they need to be quartered.  And then the quarters need to be halved.

And then … and then you want to get rid of the ‘inside’ of the tomatoes so that all you are left with is the pulp.  The stuff on the left, in the bowl on the left, is the ‘inside’ of the tomato.  And will be thrown away.  The stuff on the right is the good stuff, the pulp.

Job done.

Job almost done because it’s a good idea to slice the tomato pulp now, into thinner slices.

And to finish off the job, sprinkle salt over the slithers of tomato pulp.

People sometimes ask me to recommend pasta brands.  This is a brand I like. It’s called Pasta Cocco  and comes from the region of Abbruzzo.  If you want to read a little bit more about it, here is a link: https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/making-pasta-pope-abruzzos-mastri-pastai  Here is their website but there is no translation in English it would seem? https://www.pastacocco.com/ .

TIME TO GET COOKING

Bring the water to the boil, add salt (10g of salt per liter of water) and when the water returns to a rolling boil, lower the spaghetti into it.   Avail yourselves of a nice big saucepan and generously pour extra virgin olive oil into it.  Add as much or as little garlic as you like.  A handful of parsely stalks.  And some fresh chilli – or dry chilli flakes if you don’t have fresh.

Unlike other occasions when the garlic needs to be cooked to a golden colour before adding other ingredients, this time everything gets thrown in together – à la crudaiola. Boom.

And only now do we turn the heat on.

Cook for a few minutes.

Then add basil and cook some more.

Then add the cooked spaghetti and some more fresh basil and any other fresh herb you fancy and finish off cooking the pasta.

Toss and toss to finish cooking the pasta and then switch off the heat.

Can’t say this presentation looks like much.

Nor this.  But can I say?

It tasted just mmmmmm.

PS I was inspired to do this recipe by a similar one outlined in the book called “Faccia da Chef” written by comedian and cook Andy Luotto.

 

Making Mushrooms Sexy

Well, not really.  But you know what I mean, don’t you?  Mushrooms, ordinary button mushrooms, that are called “champignons” in Italian (which is of course a French word actually), aren’t exactly thriling now are they.  I can’t imagine people getting all excited about eating a plate of these mushrooms.  They seem to have gone out of fashion – I don’t even see them on Italian menus in family-run restaurants any more.  Sometimes as part of a pizza topping but that’s about it.  I wonder why, poor things.  They are quite tasty after all and surely, unless you hate mushrooms or are allergic to them, you don’t mind having them as a side dish, sautéed in olive oil and garlic and finely minced parsely.  But again, the operative word is “don’t mind” (which of course are two words but let’s not quibble here) as opposed to “hanker after” or “crave”.  Mmmmm.

As my children were growing up, I had to account for differing tastes when it came to vegetables and since I love vegetables myself – all of them I hasten to add – I did not mind putting at least two and usually three vegetable side dishes on the dinner table every evening. (potatoes often being the common denominator).  Favourite daughter can’t bear mushrooms, and might even be slightly allergic to them.  Whereas favourite son likes them, even the lowly button-mushroom kind.  Favourite husband is usually easy to please but he has never waxed lyrical over them.  So the bottom line, now that both kids have left home, is that I rarely cook mushrooms (except for the porcini kind, when they are in season).

I have been boycotting supermarkets for over ten years, a decision I came to after reading the book “Not on the Label – What Really Goes into the Food in your Plate” by British journalist Felicity  Lawrence.  I have been guiding tours around Frascati for almost two years and this piece of information pops into the tour when I show our clients my shopping street and the town’s market.  And I tell them, the way I write to you now, that I cannot get on my moral high horse about this – because food shopping is incredibly easy to do in Frascati and I have access within walking distance to everything I could possibly want (except for fresh coriander – for that I have to go into Rome.  Coriander/cilantro still not big in these parts).  As life would ironically have it,  however, it turns out that I have had to  frequent supermarkets on a regular basis (weekly!) ever since my mother stopped driving last year and I have to take her shopping (she turns 93 in December bless her).  I kid you not, I have been more often to the supermarket this past year than I have all together in the previous ten or more.  Oh – and by the way it’s not the idea of a supermarket that I am against.  It’s the fact that they don’t pay the producers well.  That and lots more but let’s drop the subject now and get back to the recipe for today’s post.

So there I was looking at the fresh foods at the supermarket with her the other day and turning my nose up disdainfully.  The aubergines/eggplants looked okay, I suppose.  The salads all came in plastic bags.  I’ll admit the cucumber looked good.  But for the rest I was really underwhelmed.  I went for the button mushrooms in a desultory bid to avoid coming home empty-handed.  I had to make dinner after all.

By the time I did get home, my husband told me he’d be late that night … so it was a case of my being on my own.  And that’s when I decided I would make a pasta dish with these champignons and let’s see if I could raise the bar here, and make them a bit special?

In the fridge I had some fresh tomatoes that I had cooked down in order to make a tomato sauce, and which I had put through a food mill.  A home-made tomato sauce is always good for adding ooomph to a recipe.  For the rest it was a case of the usual suspects: olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs.

On the other hand, since I WAS trying to make this a bit special, I knew I had to bring out some big guns.  Follow me.

 

The pasta brand. This pasta brand.  Verrigni.  One of the best in Italy, full stop.  From Abbruzzo.

A secret ingredient – dried porcini mushrooms.  Please ignore that lovely onion from Tropea in the foreground.  I used that to cook something else.

I poured boiling water over the funghi porcini and let them soak until they were tender.

Once they were totally rehydrated, I used a pair of scissors to cut them up.  And don’t even think about throwing away that porcini-infused water!  That’s what was to give the dish a bit of ooomph.

Not too shabby either was this home-made tomato salsa I had prepared the day before. I skinned the tomatoes, chopped them up very roughly, and just cooked them down for about 15 minutes.  Afterwards I put them through a food mill and added salt and olive oil (extra virgin olive oil, naturally).

The mushrooms soaking in a bowl of water.  They needed a good soak, it was very hot that day.

The same mushrooms, a little later, roughly cut up and ready to be cooked.

TIME TO COOK

I put the water onto the boil for the pasta.

I am recently very much ‘into’ this big frying pan – don’t ask me why.  I certainly didn’t need anything this big for my recipe but for some reason this was the only pan that ‘spoke’ to me that evening.   Made me feel a little cheffy, I suppose.  As you can see there is plenty of garlic, and plenty of olive oil.  There are, also, a few pepper corns (no, they are not mouse droppings).  And the green herb that you see is what we call “mentuccia” and which, I think is what is known as “calamint” in English (the official name in Latin is Clinopodium nepeta).  It is very strong, very.  Think mint on steroids.  And it goes wonderfully well with mushrooms. You could always substitute with marjoram, or tarragon, or thyme, or mint or even plain parsely.  Mentuccia is very easy to grow (I grow don’t have green fingers, trust me).

I had the garlic cooking on a stronger heat that I would normally use.

The minute the garlic started to turn golden, I added the mushrooms.

And shortly after I added the porcini mushrooms and the water in which they had been soaking.

Here you see everything bubbling away over a high heat.

Time to cook the pasta too.

I now added my tomato salsa.

A thick slice of a beautiful lemon from the Amalfi Coast (they are famous for their lemons there).

I tasted the sauce, added some salt, a bit more mentuccia and … yes … even some freshly squeezed lemon juice.  A little at a time.  A little goes a long way.

I added a little bit of freshly grated pecorino cheese and switched the heat off.   The cheese melted easily even with the heat switched off.

When the pasta was ready, I drained it directly  into my beefy saucepan and turned on the heat to a fierce temperature as I mixed in the sauce with the pasta.  I even did a bit of showing-off tossing – but couldn’t photograph that of course.

I served it with some freshly grated parmigiano (parmesan).

I added some chilli flakes just after I took this photo because I like a bit of heat.

I thought it was rather nice, thank you very much.  See?  There WAS  a way to make button mushrooms sexy after all.  Or so I thought.

The next day, while I was away, my husband had some leftovers for lunch.  When I got back, I enquired as to his liking of the dish.  He scrunched up his nose, took in a deep breath and pronounced it “unconvincing”.  I mean, he ate a whole plate of the stuff but it wasn’t exactly ‘good’ according to him.  He wasn’t being mean, by the way, just offering an honest opinion.

Yet.  You can imagine how crestfallen I felt.

“Did you add freshly grated parmigiano to it?” I asked.  He answered that no, he had not.

That must have been it then, I said to myself, trying to cheer myself up.  Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

PS – if you leave the cheese out, this recipe is fit for vegans.

PPS – It’s always a good idea to add some lemon juice to mushroom soup too.

https://myhomefoodthatsamore.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/mushroom-soup-for-parties/

PPPS – Here is a little background on Mint (https://www.summerdownmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Food-Wine-Sept-2011.pdf)

More Mint Mythology
In Roman mythology Minthe was a
lovely young nymph who caught
the eye of Pluto, the ruler of the
underworld. When his wife Persephone found out about his love
for the beautiful nymph, she was
enraged and changed Minthe into
a lowly plant, to be trodden underfoot. Pluto couldn’t reverse Persephone’s curse, but he did soften
the spell somewhat by making the
smell that Minthe gave off all the
sweeter when she was trodden
upon. The name Minthe has
changed to Mentha and become
the name of the herb, mint.
In ancient Greece, mint was used
in funerary rites, together with
rosemary and myrtle, not simply
to offset the smell of decay but
mint was an element in the fermented barley drink called the
kykeon that was an essential brew
for participants in the Eleusinian
mysteries, which offered hope in
the afterlife for initiates.

 

 

Polpette di Melanzane al Cumino -Aubergine Patties with Cumin

These patties, or ‘polpette’ as they are called in Italian are quite simple to make and create a bit of interest taste-wise on account of ingredients that ‘pop’:  cumin, spring onion and fresh mint.  They’re dead easy to  make and are crowd pleasers because you can eat them as a finger food or serve them as a part of a main course.  I made them for the first time just over a year ago, on a whim, and have kept making them since, tweaking them this way and that.  There is no real recipe, if you see what I mean.  Just a bunch of ingredients thrown together.  There are countless recipes for aubergine/eggplant patties in Southern Italy and this one would not differ too much save for one ingredient: cumin.   I’ve never come across an Italian recipe calling for cumin.

Try them, you might like them.

Ingredients

Aubergines/eggplant, plastic bread, spring onion or ordinary onion, parsely if you don’t have mint, tomato paste, cumin, sweet paprika, salt, 1 egg, breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon grated parmigiano

This is one aubergine, sliced, and cooked in the oven until it dried out a little.  About half an hour.  Wait for the slices to cool before proceeding.

Some slices of bread (this is what I call plastic bread).

Break up the bread.

Add the parsely.  And whizz the parsely too.

Add some cumin: a couple of teaspoons say …

Add 1 peeled onion, cut into quarters.  Spring onions are better, but I didn’t have any that day.

This is a tube of tomato paste, tomato concentrate.  My fridge is never without one because this tomato can be added to so many recipes.  Just a squidge here and there.

Okay so here is a view from the top: I processed the bread and then the parsely.  After I added an onion, some cumin, a squidge of the tomato paste, a good pinch of salt and, last, the bright orange you see on the right, some sweet paprika.

Remember these?  Time to add them.

The end result was somewhat sticky.

I transferred this mix to a bowl, and added Italian breadcrumbs, which are very dry, a tablespoon of freshly grated parmigiano, and 1 egg.   I used a spoon to bring the mix together, adding more and more breadcrumbs until I reached the consistency I was after.

A little on the laborious side but not rocket science, it was now time to shape the mix into patties .  I prevailed upon my husband to do this while he was watching some news on the TV.   If he can do this, anyone can.    (Not that I was idly lounging about, I hasten to add, I was otherwise occupied in the kitchen and getting our dinner ready.  The patties were just an ‘extra’.)

I left the patties in the fridge overnight.  I fried them in ordinary groundnut oil, the next day, and served them with some tahini sauce.

I had been asked over to a potluck dinner at a friend’s house and all was well.

That’s some tahini sauce in the middle.

I suppose you could also serve them with ketchup, why not?  A squeeze of lemon?  Leave the egg and cheese out, and these can be served as a vegan dish too.

To me … these polpette speak of summer and warmth and longer days.