Anna del Conte

I'm revisiting Anna del Conte's earlier works, which I have in Italy in the form of 'Secrets from an Italian Kitchen' and 'Entertaining al'Italiana', and which have now been combined and republished in a new format, under the title 'Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes'.

Highly, highly recommended.

With frequent literary references and the provenance for her recipes often reliably cited as specific eighteenth and nineteenth century italian authors, del Conte is the italian version of Jane Grigson, with all the four-square stature that that suggests. These recipes date back a few decades now, and there are some things which a decent modern editor (if such a thing even exists in food publishing, these days - which I seriously doubt) would probably change - the repeated use of ring moulds for presentation purposes, for example, smacks rather worryingly of the late seventies, and I suspect that del Conte's sweet tooth would be reined-in a little if the recipes were being produced for the first time now (she uses a third more sugar in her meringue mixture than I feel comfortable with, for one thing, and her recipe for chilled zabaglione with strawberry purée is good, but would be even better if the sweetness was reduced significantly).

Marcella Hazan comes across as much more of a practical 'hoofer' than the rather more intellectual Ms del Conte, and I wonder how they got on in practice - Anna was the editor for the first UK version of Marcella's 'Classic Italian Cooking', about thirty years ago, so it's to be presumed that they did actually have to deal with each other. It may be that La Hazan is more accessible for somebody who is still feeling their way, but for anybody who is confident in the kitchen, then Anna del Conte has a great deal to offer. Particular gems from the current collection are her recipes for Fennel with Pistachio Sauce, and for Lemon Risotto (which I noted from bookshop browsing that Nigella Lawson quoted in one of her many books, and then proceeded comprehensively to make a complete dogs dinner of the recipe!) ; del Conte's recipe for Celery purée is good, but you need to use either proper italian celery or else the organic variety, as ordinary british celery doesn't have enough flavour; and her sauce for Duck with Balsamic vinegar works much better with roast pork tenderloin than with duck breast (in general, I wouldn't bother with Italian recipes for duck - the quality of beast available in Italy is generally quite poor, and so no decent recipes have evolved for dealing with it).

Tonight's dinner:

Sformatino of Fennel, with Gorgonzola Sauce

Lamb Mentonais, with Endive braised with Orange

'White' Tiramisu (made with White Rum and Milk, rather than Kahlua, and incorporating crushed Meringue, along with the Savoiard biscuits.)

Recipe: Fennel Sformatino

Sformato used to be a dirty word in this house, on the basis of one (made from Cardoons) that was served many years ago at a Christmas Eve dinner party outside Colle Val d'Elsa. Sludge-like in appearance, it had the texture of baby food and a composite flavour that could have been anything or nothing. It did the concept of Sformato a terrible injustice, and for a very long time even the very word raised a wrinkled lip of disdain in these quarters. Until now.

Recently, I came across a recipe for Fennel Sformato, given by Anna del Conte in her excellent 'Secrets from an Italian Kitchen' which has completely reversed that prejudice. The version given here is an adaptation of that recipe, and is light, and completely delicious. Sformatino, by the way, is just the linguistic consequence of making sformato in smaller, individual portions.

The fact that the cooked fennel is partly chopped and partly puréed is important - it retains some texture in the finished dish, and saves it from being merely pap. The choice of sauce is mine - you can replace it with any sauce you might prefer that you think would work with this dish.

For Two Sformatini.

Ingredients: 250g Fennel; 30g Butter; 100 ml milk; 15g Flour; pinch of Nutmeg; 1 Egg; 20g grated Parmesan; 1 tbs dried breadcrumbs (see recipe re this ingredient); 30g Gorgonzola piccante; 1/4 cup of Cream; Salt & Pepper.


Method:

1. Slice the Fennel thinly, sauté it for five minutes in half of the butter, melted in a sauté pan, then season with Salt & Pepper, add half of the Milk, and simmer, covered, for twenty minutes or so - until the Fennel is cooked through.

2. Drain the Fennel, and discard any remaining cooking liquid. Purée half of it in the food processor, and chop the other half by hand into fine dice. Combine the two Fennel mixtures in a bowl.

3. Melt the remaining Butter in a double boiler or simmertopf . Stir in the Flour, and then add the remaining Milk; cook, stirring, for five minutes or so, to make a thickish bechamel. Add to this a pinch of Nutmeg, then add the sauce to the Fennel.

4. Add the beaten Egg and the Parmesan to this mixture; mix very thoroughly, then test and adjust seasoning to taste. Put into two prepared ramekins (if you use Trennwax on the ramekins, no breadcrumbs are necessary; if you butter the ramekins instead, however, then it's a good idea also to dust them with fine breadcrumbs in order to facilitate subsequent unmoulding)

5. Place the ramekins in a bain marie, and bake for about 30 minutes in 190 degree C oven - when cooked, the tops will be slightly browned, and the sformatini will have swelled slightly. Let sit for five minutes before unmoulding them onto heated plates to serve.

6. Meanwhile, gently heat the Gorgonzola and Cream together to make the sauce, one spoonful of which should go onto each sformatino.

Schacciata di Pasqua

Not sure how I'd missed it before, but it appears that there's a traditional Italian Easter Cake - 'Schacciata di Pasqua' by name. It resembles a large button mushroom, and is flavoured with aniseed. Beyond that, sadly, there's nothing much to be said for it. Being naturally cynical, I strongly suspect that this Schacciata isn't so much a time-honoured tradition, as a construct on the part of the Panettone manufacturers, who were casting around for ways of making money once the Christmas-Panettone rush was over. Yet another example of the 'fakelore' impulse which has seen the appearance all over Italy of so-called ancient customs, most of which involve the locals inappropriately wearing moth-eaten 'medieval' costumes and performing some specious activity in order to part gullible tourists from their money.

The Schacciata itself is fluffy and insubstantial, and the slice I ploughed through was a little like eating flavoured polystyrene. As with Panettone, I think probably the best use for the thing is as the base for a Bread & Butter Pudding.

Otherwise, I've come across something else, which probably has a greater claim as traditional Easter fare: Pasqualina. This is a double-crust pie, filled with a ricotta and swiss chard mixture in which whole raw eggs are placed before the top crust is fitted, and they set as the pie is baked. The only 'old' recipes I've found for Pasqualina use what seems an unnecessarily complicated (and heavy!) format of oiled layers of a rather dough-like pastry; I'm replacing that with a much lighter puff pastry, which should be considerably more digestible.

Watch this space...


Tonight's dinner:

Pasqualina

Spezzatino alla Fiorentina

Bread & Butter Pudding (di Pasqua)

Recipe: Tomato Tart

One of my all-time favourites, a miniature version of which was a stalwart on my canapé list in the days when I was cooking for my living. The recipe came originally from Julia Child, but I don't honestly know whether the version given here has suffered memory-creep, because when I went just now to check whether the version I now make still agrees with the original, that particular page was missing from my very battered copy of 'Mastering the Art'...which says much for the number of times I must have consulted it in the past.

The anchovies and olives are important, as they cut the sweetness of the tomato, and give greater structure to the final combination of flavours. As with many such dishes, this is almost better eaten cold the following day - although the likelihood of having any leftover to do so is pretty slim!

For an 8" diameter tart.

Ingredients: Shortcrust pastry made with 4 oz Butter, 5 oz '00' Flour, a pinch of Salt, and approx 30 fl oz cold water; half a medium Onion, finely diced; 2 oz Butter; 1 minced Garlic clove; 3 Anchovy fillets; 1 14 oz can of Tomatoes; 3 tbs tomato paste; 3 Eggs; 1 tsp dried thyme; Salt & Pepper, to taste; 8 stoned Black Olives; 3 tbs grated Parmesan.

Method:

1. Line a false-bottomed 8" diameter tart tin with the pastry, prick the base of the shell, and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. After resting, bake blind in a 190 degree C oven for ten minutes with weights in place, and five minutes further after the weights have been removed.

2. Melt the Butter in a sauté pan, and sauté the Onion and Garlic together for several minutes, then add the chopped Anchovies, and continue to cook until the Anchovies start to fall to pieces.
Add the tinned tomatoes, and cook over a low heat, covered, for ten minutes, then for a further five minutes uncovered, with the heat raised so that the liquid from the tomatoes reduces (you want the mixture to be quite thick at this stage).

3, Beat the Eggs in a bowl, along with the Tomato Paste, thyme and seasoning. Carefully combine this with the cooked tomatoes, and then put the whole lot into the baked tart shell. Arrange the Olives over the surface of the tart, and then sprinkle the grated Parmesan evenly over the top.

4. Bake for approximately 30 minutes at 200 degrees C - the tart is done when the filling puffs fulsomely, and the cheese on top has melted and begun to go brown.

Slice, and serve.

The Week...

Quote of the week was from Michelle de Kretser's 'The Lost Dog' - a splendid piece of writing, the absence of which from last year's Booker shortlist is yet another reason to denounce the 2008 judges as a bunch of halfwits. And the quote itself, richly loaded for all the spareness of its phrasing:" ...takeaway (food) was an offence that compounded profligacy with neglect. Love merited the effort of indifferent home cooking." It speaks volumes!

Discovery of the week: was that in making posset (as in Marsala Posset with Prunes) it's necessary to have an astringent of some kind in order to make the cream set properly. As long as the flavouring agent being used is wine-based ( sherry, for example, or marsala) then that will do the trick. But in trying a version that was liqueur-based instead - as I did several days ago, when experimenting with a Blackberry and Amaretto version - then you have to include a generous squirt of something like lemon juice in order to kick-start the process. (I don't entirely understand why this should be, as the process of making clotted cream relies entirely on heating the cream, and includes no additives at all...so, go figure). If you leave out the astringent when making posset, though, then the cream won't set properly and will just remain half-heartedly runny.

New recipe of the week: a staggeringly good ice-cream, made from Crème Anglaise (6 egg yolks, 6 tbs sugar, 500 ml milk, half a tsp vanilla essence), 2 tbs Fowlers Black Treacle, half a McVities Ginger Cake (diced), 1 tbs dark rum, and 50g of finely diced candied orange peel. Lots of strong flavours vying with each other for attention, but none of them completely dominant or even readily identifiable in the end result. Best served with something like apple pie, that will cut the richness of the ice cream.

Buy of the week: a small copper saucepan, specifically for making sauces in exquisitely concentrated quantities. Not sure what it cost, as the Tech Dept found it on ebay, and muttered vaguely that it was 'around a fiver', when quizzed on the subject. A bargain, by any measure. (It's already joined the growing pile of things to be transported to Italy, next week - along with a pair of Holbelias, five picture lights, a bottle of Boyajian Orange Oil, a set of sofa cushions, some Miracle-Gro plant food, and a kilo of peeled almonds...)

Question of the week: what in God's name are we doing in grey and cold and dismal London, when Tempo Italia shows that the weather in Pisa this week is glorious?

Tonight's Dinner (post Cinema):

Warm Smoked Salmon

Roast Beef; Carrots/Mushrooms/Scallions sautéed in Butter, with Cumin.

Meringues, with Crème Chantilly and Raspberries

Recipe: Lemon Tart

Two things make this recipe a phenomenal success:
1. Use of ‘00’ flour for the pastry (not only does it produce a superbly-textured pastry, but the flavour of the baked tart shell is distinct and delicious – not unlike a particularly good digestive biscuit); and
2. The filled tart should be baked in an oven set at only around 130 degrees C, so that the filling ‘sets’ rather than ‘cooks’; this gives it a wonderfully velvety quality.

Over the years, I’ve tried many different methods for making Lemon Tart. This one is as good as it gets!

For an 8” diameter tart.

Ingredients: Short-crust pastry made with 5 oz ‘00’ Flour, 4 oz Butter and water; 4 Eggs; 2 oz Sugar (or equivalent volume Splenda); zest from 2 Lemons, and the juice from 1; half a cup of cream. Icing Sugar, to dust the surface of the finished tart.

Method:

1. Roll out pastry and use it to line a greased (or Trennwaxed) 8” false-bottomed tart tin. Leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour, then bake blind for twenty minutes in a 200 degree C oven. (The shell needs to be fully baked at this stage).

2. Reduce the oven temperature to 130 degrees C.

3. Whisk the Eggs in a bowl with the Sugar (or Splenda); whisk in the Cream, along with the Lemon zest and juice (and if you have any Boyajian Lemon Oil, then add a couple of drops of this also – it raises the lemon ‘hit’ significantly).

4. Pour the filling into the tart shell, and bake for approximately 45 minutes; remove from the oven as soon as the filling is clearly no longer liquid when you gently shake the tart tin to test for done-ness.

Allow to cool, and sprinkle with Icing Sugar. Serve.

Credit Crunch Cooking...

...is actually a misnomer, I think. Perhaps it's my scottish blood, but I've always believed that a significant element of being able to cook is about efficient husbanding of resources, and about producing optimal results from the limited raw materials available. Getting the most bang for your buck. It always sounds more elegant in the original french, but when all's said and done, any recipe which includes 'bon marché' in its name means nothing more nor less than 'cheap'....well, ok, 'good value' And I'm all for it. The current economic climate is more likely to encourage a general focus on good food for less money, I suppose - but I confess I've pretty much always been there, anyway.

Some guidelines for stretching the pennies, but without having to compromise on what you put on the table:

1. Shop opportunistically. If you see that something is reduced-to-clear, but still within its sell-by date, or there's a 'special' on offer, then adjust your menu plans to acommodate it, or buy it for the freezer (or even, buy more than you need right now, and freeze the surplus for future use). Equally, if travelling and there are things available which would be more expensive at home, then stock up while you can. It's on this basis that I have a freezer currently stuffed with Salmon Fillets and Duck Legs (all the result of reduced-to-clear labels) as well as Snails, and Frog Legs (from the supermarket in Tournus, where we stopped whilst driving the four-footeds back from Italy in January) and ready supplies in the cupboard of '00' flour and Carnaroli Rice, from the shop round the corner in Pisa. This approach was also the reason why we had boned Poussin for dinner, last night....reduced to £2.09 for the entire bird, it was a bargain!

2. Don't waste money on processed or ready-made products, when you can make them for yourself for significantly less cost (and probably get a better result, as well). Pastry (of any kind), pasta, stock, cakes, biscuits, sauces...the premium charged on most of these things is horrendous as well as generally needless. If you master the techniques involved in doing it yourself - along with things like boning poultry, which is another clear opportunity for significant economy - then you'll become a much better cook, as well as saving money along the way.

3. Plan ahead, so your meals over several days allow you to save time and money in aggregate: leftover cold roast chicken can be used subsequently in salad or a pie; one batch of pastry can go into three different courses over three or four days; chicken bones make stock on one day, for use in a risotto on the next; leftover sauce from a daube can later form the basis for a pasta sauce; egg whites left over from making a custard can be used for almond biscuits...
Whatever you do, NEVER throw any food or unused ingredients away! It's the cardinal sin, and basically means you screwed up on your planning if you have to. Why not just tear up banknotes instead?

And the pictures accompanying this post? Well, they were last night's dinner: Snails (delicious!), followed by boned Poussin and Carrots, with lattice-topped Rhubarb pie to finish. And the whole thing, for two people, came to under a fiver...with enough Poussin left over for a starter tomorrow, and half of the Rhubarb pie, which was polished off with coffee this morning.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tiger Prawns with Mango.

Braised Oxtail, with Cabbage & Juniper.

Lemon Tart.