Wednesday 30th.

Puddings for tomorrow are well underway. I’ve poached the pears in red wine, as you can see they are cooling by the kitchen door; the chestnuts are roasted and peeled in preparation for a chocolate and chestnut cake; four clementines are bobbing and simmering away at this very moment for yet another clementine and almond cake; a vast bowl of more clementines and a slightly smaller dish of walnuts and dates are perched on the makeshift shelf. The kitchen smells wonderful and I’m feeling so uncharacteristically organised that I might just have to have a large gin and tonic to celebrate.

Tomorrow night we will be 14 I think, in our very very small flat. I’ve bought a vast piece of pork which will spend a large chunk of tomorrow in the oven, we have nice salami and tuscan bread to start and then I’ll make mashed potato and braised red cabbage to go beside the slow roasted pork. I will resist the urge to panic cook anything else, simple is best, I know that (and often forget that), nothing new, nothing fancy or fussy, I want to enjoy the evening too. Oh, wait, there is one more thing, I’ll cook some lentils to eat after midnight. Its traditional to eat lentils at New Year in Italy, they’re a symbol of good luck and prosperity, their round shape, like tiny coins, is supposed to ensure riches and prosperity for the coming year.

I should go and make the cakes really, then get started on the red cabbage which is better after a night’s rest.

So, Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for reading, thank you for all the companionship that exists on these pages. Heres to health and happiness and good food thoughtfully made for everyone. I hope to break real bread with some of you this coming year.

Rachel

I am immensely fond of spinach, fresh, lively, gloriously bright green spinach, the kind that bounces, crunches and squeaks in a most unruly way as you try to stuff it into your shopping bag.

Most of the time I like spinach served simply, so as to appreciate its sweet, leafy, ever so slightly bitter goodness, a nod to Popeye. We often have a little pile of spinach for lunch after the pasta, steamed or blanched briefly in fiercely boiling water, drained and then dressed with coarse salt, olive oil and lemon. I like it sautéed in nut-brown butter then seasoned with salt, pepper and a flick of nutmeg. I almost can’t contain my excitement at the thought of a certain French recipe in which spinach is cooked and reheated over 5 days, each day more butter is added, so by the end, half a kilo of spinach has absorbed an impressive 300g of butter and you have a purèe so rich, delicious and full of flavour you need only a very small spoonful beside your grilled lamb chop. I like spinach in soups, salads and soufflès – what am I talking about ? I don’t think I’ve ever had a spinach soufflè, but I would very much like to - dumplings, gnocchi, as filling for ravioli, filo pastry pies, curries, stir frys and tarts. I like a little pile of buttery, glossy spinach under a poached egg and a quivering blob of Hollandaise.

Last but not least, I like Creamed spinach; wilted, drained spinach, mixed with a little carefully made bechamel which has been spiked with musky nutmeg and tangy, sweet- salty parmesan, topped with more parmesan and flashed under the grill.

Creamed spinach

Creamed spinach has been on my mind and in my note-book for few months now, ever since Friday 2nd October to be precise, when my Dad took all of us for dinner at Rowley Leigh’s wonderful restaurant Le Café Anglais in London, the evening before my brother Benjamin married Kate. It was a night of happy company and gloriously good and memorable food. Everything was delicious, but two things really stood out; firstly, a little ramekin of parmesan custard served with anchovy toasts; secondly, a shallow dish of seductive creamed spinach. As I placed spoonful after spoonful beside my fine roast beef, I found myself wondering if creamed spinach is one of the best vegetable dishes ever invented, ambrosial, warm, soft and deeply comforting, food which manages to be both humble and elegant at the same time.

As the black cab raced us past the Georgian stucco terraces and garden squares of Bayswater, home to my sister’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush, I wrote in my notebook – scribbled incoherently actually, the cab driver took some impressive corners -  make creamed spinach ! and underlined it.

Creamed spinach is a good companion for roasted or grilled meat, especially  lamb. It’s nice with grilled fish or beside a big blob of mashed potato topped with a poached or fried egg.  I like it best just so, with some good bread.

I wouldn’t bother making creamed spinach if I didn’t have some really nice, fresh spinach from a proper market, frozen spinach is too sloppy and I don’t bother with plastic bags of ready washed very neat and suffocated spinach from the supermarket, however organic it claims to be, haven’t you noticed the slightly funny smell that accompanies the opening of each bag regardless of the date. Hunt down some good fresh, loose spinach, you won’t regret it, oh and remember Jane Grigsons advice when you choose  ‘assess its liveliness, spinach should have a bouncing, bright appearance. As you stuff it in your bag. it should crunch and squeak‘

Creamed spinach

Serves 2 (very well) for lunch or 4 – 6 as vegetable side dish or course.

• 1 kg/2 llb bright green, bouncing very fresh spinach- not baby spinach.
• 30g butter
• 30g plain flour
• 300ml whole milk
• freshly grated nutmeg
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 heaped tablespoons freshly grated parmesan for bechamel
• 2 heaped tablespoons freshly grated parmesan for sprinkling on top

First cook the spinach

Pick over the spinach and discard any withered, discoloured leaves or very tough stalks. Wash the spinach in several changes of water. Stuff the spinach in a large pan with no more water than clings to its leaves, cover with a lid and put the pan on a medium flame. After about five minutes, give the whole thing a stir and a shake, the spinach will have started to wilt and release lots of green liquid. Raise the heat a little so the spinach cooks more rapidly for another minute or so and the spinach has wilted to about 1/10 of its orignal volume. Turn the spinach into a colander and soon as it is cool enough to handle, squeeze gently to get rid of most of the moisture. Chop the spinach very coarsely and then set it aside while you…

Make your bechamel.

Warm the milk in a small pan but don’t let it boil. In another pan melt the butter over a low flame and add the flour, cook, stirring with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes but do not let it colour. Remove both pans from the heat and slowly pour the milk into the butter and flour pan a little at a time, whisking (a metal balloon whisk does this job beautifully) well between each addition. Place the sauce back on the heat and keep stirring without interruption until the sauce is dense like thick cream which should take about 8 minutes. Add the parmesan, taste, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and freshly grated nutmeg, taste again.

Add the chopped spinach to the bechamel and mix gently and throughly, taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Turn the mixture  -while it is still warm – into a shallow, buttered oven proof dish , I use an 7″ earthenware dish, sprinkle with parmesan and put under a hot grill for a minute or two and the parmesan is melted and golden.

Serve immediately.

Notes

Spinach, described as the ‘Prince of vegetables’ by  the 12th century Arab writer Ibn al-Awan, originated in Persia and was domesticated by the Persians in the 4th century AD maybe earlier. Over time it crept eastwards, first to China via Nepal in the 7th century then in the 11th century it was brought westwards to Europe by the Arabs when they invaded Spain.It only became established and accepted as a food plant in Europe in the middle of the 16th century.

It is generally agreed that eating spinach makes you strong like Popeye.

Last thing

I really hope you had a happy and merry christmas.

It’s been cold, grey and rather soggy day in Rome.

The slightly deflated inflatable Father Christmas the family opposite have tied to the balcony has been blown upside-down and now his head is in a plant pot, I know how he feels.

The market was uncharacteristically quiet and subdued this morning, it felt as if everyone was hiding their heads in Pots. I talked to my fruttivendolo Vincenzo for a while, watched him trimming cicoria, ate two clementines and pretended to understand when he broke into a Rant about something complicated in heavy and wonderfully blasphemous Roman.

I arrived home with two very handsome heads of fennel with green wispy, feathery tops like the headdresses of Las Vegas showgirls, two bunches of carrots, 2 red onions and a rope of yellow ones.

For lunch I chopped a head of fennel into thick half moons, did the same with a red onion and then cut 4 carrots into unruly chunks. I put everything in a baking tin, doused the whole lot with plenty of olive oil and salt – Maldon, I am devoted.

I roasted everything for about 40 minutes in a fairly hot oven – about 200°/ 400F I think – until the vegetables were soft, shriveled and just starting to really caramelize and char at the edges.

But rewind, while vegetables were roasting I cooked some farro which I am notoriously slap dash about, no soaking, no hour-long simmers which leave the farro too soggy and mushy for my taste. I cook farro like rice, plunging it into plenty of salted boiling water and then cooking it at a lively simmer for about 25 minutes until the farro is tender but still slightly nutty and chewy, then I drain it. I never cook less than a cup /125g of farro at a time which works out at about 4 nice servings when cooked, it keeps really well it the fridge and I am always grateful when it’s on hand.

So farro ready, I pulled the vegetables from the oven, shriveled indeed, but how gloriously shriveled, soft and sweet and deep with flavour. Ah the joys of vegetables doused in oil, seasoned with salt and roasted in a hot oven. Lunch.

Farro with roasted fennel, carrot and red onion

It was extremely good. The red onion, fennel and carrot are a particularly good roasted vegetable combination, one to remember, and the farro makes a perfect foil, robust and nourishing but not righteous, it’s nicely chewy, almost sweet and delightfully nutty.

I left the door open while I had lunch which meant a bit of a draught, but lots more light and a perfect door framed view across the courtyard to the other balcony where he still had his head in the plant pot.

If you..

..turn left when you come out of our building and continue down via Mastro Giorgio, walk past the market and the flower stall, then turn right into via Allessandro Volta, just before you reach the junction with Via Mamorata you will find a tavola calda called Volpetti Più.

It’s a simple, self-service canteen-like-establishment, spartan and rather functional both inside and out. Misleadingly so, don’t be misled, the food is excellent, as simple and unpretentious as the place itself, but excellent nonetheless. It’s not really surprising, Volpetti Più is the little sister of the sublime temple of gastronomia, the delicatessen Volpetti which is just round the corner.

When you come to Rome we will go for lunch. We could have a bowl of thick minestrone or pasta e ceci topped with freshly grated parmesan and a little raw local olive oil accompanied by a slice of warm unctuous pizza bianca. We could have a spoonful of buttery polenta with some slow cooked ragu. If it’s Thursday we might have a whole artichoke cooked Roman style with wild mint followed by a plate of freshly made gnocchi with tomato sauce and yet more parmesan. You might like piece of chicken, rosemary scented with golden, crisp skin  – leg or breast you choose – beside it a few roast potatoes and a side order of slim green beans dressed with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. We could choose a plate of 3 different vegetable dishes, I recommend the green beans cooked – stewed really - very slowly with onion and tomatoes, the roasted pumpkin and finally the creamy, pale-green Roman zucchini which are steamed and then ripassate in olive oil, salt and black olives…..Oh, or you could have the baccalà with tomatoes and olives and I – depending on the day – could have a slice of either classic lasagne alla Bolognese, spinach and ricotta lasagne or roasted vegetable lasagne…..

Now it took me a few months of weekly visits to try any of the lasagne in Volpetti. They all looked good, particularly the vegetable one with its pleasing harlequinesqse dots of colour studding the modest stripe of bechamel between the thin and obviously hand-made pasta, but I was distracted by other things. Also, I was still suffering from a hangover from the predominantly bad lasagne years I endured growing up in England, too much meat, too much badly made bechamel, thick stodgy pasta, a soggy unappealing mess..

Then one day a rather elegant looking signor sliding his tray along the Volpetti counter in front of me did an unlikely little skip of excitement and muttered something very enthusiastic in Italian as a new dish of roasted vegetable lasagne was brought to the counter. He promptly ordered a slice, a portion of green beans to be dressed with the new season olive oil and a glass of Soave.

I did the same and I was very glad I did.

Our (his) timing was perfect, the lasagne was warm but not hot. There were 6 very thin layers of excellent handmade egg pasta and between each a thin layer of bechamel sauce dotted with very finely diced mixed vegetables, a sprinkling of parmesan and tiny soft cubes of melted mozzarella. On top was a golden crust of more good parmesan. It was substantial yet delicate, sturdy, retaining its neat shape yet soft, creamy and just a little luxurious at the same time.

Delicious.

It was a little lasagne epiphany. The following week I had a slice of lasagne alla Bolognese and then the following week a slice of the spinach and ricotta one. Actually it’s unfair to say that my rediscovery of lasagne was entirely due to Volpetti. At about the same time – I must have been in Italy about 6 months – I was eating some superlative lasagne in peoples homes, with friends in Bologna, at my friend Andrea’s family home in Le Marche. Each delicious slice relegating my English lasagne horror further into the past.

Anyway the roasted vegetable lasagne…

I’d had it in mind to make a Volpetti inspired roast vegetable lasagne for rather a long time, I just had one problem, I didn’t really have a recipe. I had plenty of advice, inspiration, other recipes. I even had a kind of recipe, a verbal one from the chef at Volpetti, the charming but not very specific one which involved more gesticulation than words

“it’s easy….. make some pasta…..very thin thin thin….. make a good bechamel, keep stirring all the time, all the time…… roast the vegetables, many types, many, various vegetables, you know, you know……layers so and so and so and so and so…… then you need a oven, nice and hot”

Anyway the lasagne joined the list of things entitled Things I would like to make……Then The Italian dish posted a recipe for a roasted vegetable lasagne, I did a little leap of excitement just like the man in the queue. Finally. I gathered my bits and pieces of advice and inspiration, called my cooking consigliere to check her bechamel sauce recipe, went to the market and then made a lasagne.

It’s become a bit of a favourite.

I should probably mention that I don’t make my own pasta, I can – sort of – but I don’t because we live around the corner from one of the best pasta all’uovo in Rome, an old-fashioned, no-nonsense shop called Gatti that makes very traditional fresh egg pasta for locals and some of Romes best restaurants. If we didn’t live near Gatti I like to imagine I would make my own pasta, but if I didn’t I’d have no problem buying best quality dried durum wheat pasta sheets. I don’t bother with thoses no par boil nessesary dried pasta sheets – they are rubbish, thats not snobby, it’s just true.

Fresh pasta is best though….rolled into nice and thin sheets. The Italian Dish has some lovely advice and lessons on pasta making. I also highly recommend Marcella Hazan’s book The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking if you are serious about making your on pasta.

Now before I launch into the recipe I want to mention that even though this is an essentially simple recipe, it demands a bit of effort, a wedge of time and a little patience – nice food often does ! This is a recipe for a quiet morning, a morning with space, no urgency and room for a few pans and little temporary chaos. But once the cooking is done it is a beautifully uncomplicated supper. While the lasagne is cooking you make a big green salad of sweet and bitter leaves (this lasagna needs such a salad), wash some grapes, unwrap one nice piece of cheese and open a bottle of wine…….. a pretty damn fine, no worry supper indeed.

Ok as always these are guidelines. We all have different dishes, ovens, hands, taste buds and pasta…oh the pasta, now that varies wildly and I suppose it always will. I use a very old rectangular Pyrex dish for lasagne it’s about 11″ by 7″ and about 3″ deep. I like 6 layers of pasta in my lasagne and with this particular Pyrex thats 2 sheets of pasta for each layer……are you still with me……12 sheets of pasta.

Roasted vegetable lasagne

Inspired by Volpetti, Elaine, Marcella Hazan, and all the lasagne I have eaten here in Italy

serves 4 – 6

• 2 medium carrots peeled and finely diced
• 2 medium zucchini finely diced
• 1 bulb of fennel, finely diced
• 2 medium sweet red peppers, deseeded and finely diced
• olive oil
• coarse salt
• 500ml whole milk
• 50g plain flour
• 50g butter
• freshly grated nutmeg
• 250g ball of mozzarella, chopped or torn into little pieces
• 85g freshly grated parmesan
• butter for dish and dotting on top
• Roughly 12 7″x 5″ sheets of fresh or dried lasagne

So as you may have gathered from all the photos dotted rather chaotically around the post you dice the vegetables, 2 carrots, 2 firm zucchini, the red peppers, and bulb of fennel into neat little cubes and put them in a nice wide baking tray. Sprinkle them with coarse salt and douse with oil (mix everything well with your hands) and roast the vegetables for about 10 minutes in a hot pre heated oven until they are soft, tender and just starting to turn golden.

You make your bechamel. Warm the milk in a small pan but don’t let it boil. in another pan melt the butter over a low flame and add the flour, cook, stirring with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes. Remove both pans from the heat and slowly pour the milk into the butter and flour pan a little at a time, mixing well between each addition. Place the sauce back on the heat, add salt and a grating of nutmeg and keep stirring without interruption until the sauce is dense like thick cream.

Grate your parmesan into little mountain.

Chop and tear the mozzarella into little pieces

Parboil your pasta……….bring a shallow pan of water to a fast boil and put 3 sheets of pasta in at a time. Fast boil for a minute with fresh pasta or as instructed by your packet for dried. Quickly lift the pasta onto a clean tea towels to dry….yes you need some space for this, have 2 or three towels laid out ready.

Now let the constructing commence.

Butter your dish tuck in a layer of pasta, spread a thin coating of bechamel on the pasta, sprinkle with 1/5 of the roasted vegetables, 1/5 of the grated parmesan, 1/5 of the mozzarella and a grind of black pepper.

Repeat this process 4 more times leaving yourself with just enough bechamel and parmesan for the final layer.

For the final layer spread the bechamel over the 6th layer of pasta and sprinkle with parmesan and dot with butter.

Allow the lasagne to rest for at least 2 hours and up to 12 (in which case in the fridge and covered with cling film and then brought back to room temperature)  before baking.

Preheat the oven to 200°/400f and bake the lasagne for about 20 minutes or until a light golden crust forms on top. If you like a very golden crust you can use a hot grill for about a minute rather than risking the lasagne becoming dy in the oven.

Let the lasagne sit for at least 15 minutes before serving in which time it will firm up nicely and reach the right mellow temperature.

My next post is going to be really short.

Saturday lunch

and Sunday lunch

I spent a nice chunk of last weekend reading and cooking from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food.

On Saturday we had Baked fish (sea bass) with potatoes and red onion. Then on Sunday Grape Harvesters Soup ( which is a simple onion soup really served over bread) followed by warm slices of potatoes and hard-boiled egg with shallot dressing and some very nice goats cheese.

We also ate a quite impresssive quantity of clementines and roasted chestnuts.

All of the above deserve more words…….they just haven’t come to me yet.

Minestrone.

In Italian to denote largeness you add -one/-ona/-oni to the end of the word. Libro (book) for example becomes librone (big book), casa (house) becomes casona ( big house) and minestra* (a soup) becomes minestrone (big soup.)

Before I swear off writing about soup for a while – I do know there has been rather alot of it around here lately  – I’d like to talk about minestrone, the delicious heavyweight of our trusted soup/zuppa/minestre/broth recipes. A big, hearty, robust, bear roar of a plateful.

Minestrone, as you probably know, is a very substantial mixed vegetable soup which may or may not include beans and probably some pasta or Rice. It is cooked very slowly over a low heat emerging dense with a deep, mellow flavour that recalls no vegetable in particular, but all of them at once. There are, as is natural with a dish of this kind, many many recipes, ideas and thoughts about minestrone, the character of each panful being shaped by its circumstances, the place it is made in, the season, the produce available and of course the cook.

Place – Rome. Season – Autumn, was crisp and ode worthy but now rainy and rather soggy. Produce -  onion, celery, carrots, courgettes, potato, tomatoes, green beans,  savoy cabbage, cannellini beans. Cook – me with Vincenzo supervising.

The big, bold, relaxed ‘everything in the pan‘ aspect of minestrone is true but misleading if you think it means ‘chuck it all in the pan.’ Good minestrone- I have learnt- is made with care, attention and needs time. True, a large part of this time requires a minimum of attention, a stir every now and then, the later addition of the beans while the pan simmers for about 3 hours over a very low flame. The initial steps however do need just under an hour of your cooking attention. This is because the ingredients enter the pot one by one in a set sequence, as each one joins the previous one in the pan it is given an attentive and gentle 5 minute sautè before the next ingredient is added.

This steady march of ingredients into the pot allows the essential underlying flavours to develop which are then imparted to the next vegetable. While one vegetable is cooking you prepare the next, It’s actually a rather nice process if you are not in a rush and have some good chopping music.

When you get to the simmer, the flame should be low and the simmer itself tremulous, the gentlest kind, the kind that has you checking the flame hasn’t gone out because the pan looks so still….. you lift the lid, you look closely, you see the surface is quivering and suddenly ‘plop‘ a burp of a bubble breaks surface of the soup, you are reassured all is well.

I made this particular minestrone on Monday. We had some for supper on Monday night with some bread, it was good, but it was much better on Tuesday when we added some pasta and ate it for lunch with Lisa. I knew it would be, a good nights rest and a gentle reheating improves the flavour.

We like pasta in our minestrone, it is usually small lumache rigate (lumache means “snail,” and this delightful form of this pasta does look rather like a snail shell.) As we usually make a mothership quantity of minestrone which lasts several days – a week even if all nicely sealed in the fridge – I reheat the quantity we need for a particular meal in a smaller pan. While the minestrone is gently reheating I cook some pasta in another pan, about 70g per person until it is very al dente. Once the pasta is cooked and the minestrone is nice and hot I drain and then mix the pasta with the soup and then let everything sit for at least 5 minutes so the pasta can finish cooking and absorb some of the flavours of the minestrone which is in turn cooling to the most desirable temperature.

Minestrone

Adapted (like so many of my recipes) from Marcella Hazans book The essentials of Classic Italian cooking.and the recipe for Minestrone alla romagnola.

Inspired by the many bowls of minestrone I have eaten here in italy

serves 6 very generously.

• 45g butter
• 8 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 medium red onions peeled and finely diced
• 3 medium carrots peeled and finely diced
• 2 sticks of celery,  finely diced
• 350g courgettes diced
• 200g potato peeled and diced
• 150g french beans diced
• 200g shredded savoy cabbage
• 120g tinned or fresh plum tomatoes
• 1.5 litres water
• 400g cooked cannellini beans
• a large parmigiano – reggiano (parmesan) crust
• 4 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano – reggiano (parmsan) cheese

Gently heat the butter and oil in very large, heavy based pan and then add the onion. Keep the heat at medium low and cook the onion uncovered until it is soft and floppy and just starting to turn golden but no darker – this will take a good 10-15 minutes.

Add the diced carrot, stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice more.

Add the diced celery, stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice more.

Now add the potatoes stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice more.

And now….the french beans stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice.

Now the add the courgettes…..yes you have guessed it….. stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice.

Add the shredded cabbage stir and then gently cook for 5 minutes stirring once or twice.

Now add the tinned tomatoes, stir and then add the water and the parmesan rind, stir again and cover the pan reduce the heat to a tremulous simmer, steady and slow and leave it just so for 2 and a half hours stirring occasionally.

After 2 1/2 hours add the cannellini beans, stir carefully and firmly and then cook for another 30 minutes.

NOTE; if you find the soup is looking too thick before it has finished cooking add a little more water.

When the minestrone has finished cooking pick out the parmesan rind and remove about 1/5 of the soup into a separate bowl and blast it until smooth and gloopy with the imersion blender before returning it to the big pan and the rest of the soup. Stir in the grated parmesan and taste and season with salt if necessary.

* In Italian the word minestra is often used (sometimes confusingly) to describe most of the vast family of Primi piatti (first courses) with a liquid base and thus eaten with a spoon, the broths and some soups with pasta, rice or grains and sometimes dumplings in them. Soups without these additions tend to be referred to as zuppe. Tortellini in brodo, pasta e ceci, pasta e fagioli are all minestre.

]]> http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/the-big-soup/feed/ 12 racheleats P1040843 P1040815 P1040846 P1040844 http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/some-comfort/ http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/some-comfort/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:13:38 +0000 rachel http://racheleats.wordpress.com/?p=3813 ]]>

Otherwise known as eggs baked in very creamy mashed potato with very buttery spinach.

If this recipe were an object it could be one of the four blankets draped or more often flung on, over and about our sofa throughout the colder months. We have no heating you see, blankets therefore play very important roles in our lives. Maybe the dark green fleecy one, my favourite, deliciously cosy and familiar, the one ready to be tugged reaasuringly around my shoulders, tucked under knees and toes in preparation for another chapter, episode and or another favorite of mine, a nap…The blue blanket however would be a fish pie, the deep green one pasta e ceci or a mothership minestrone and the funny grey blanket come cape – a plate of sausages and mash.

The blankets have taken up their winter residency on the sofa, I have started pulling on poloneck jumpers and banging on about vitamin C and handcream, large quantities of soup are being made at least twice a week, it’s that time of year, time for eggs baked in very creamy mashed potato with buttery spinach…..

It’s all looking rather neat on the plate, obviously the idea is you mash everything up together, gently of course, into a big potato, butter, spinach, more butter, garlic, egg mess which is altogether more tasty.

An Egg – fried in olive oil until it is frilly at the edges but still runny of yolk- perched on top of some nice mashed potato, maybe with a flick of Tabasco has long been a favourite of mine. It was a great relief to discover Vincenzo shared my affection for such things. I can’t remember exactly when it was I decided to adapt our classic comfort supper by baking the eggs in the mash, I remember the inspiration though, it was a recipe from Fegus Henderson’s ‘Nose to tail Eating’ for baked celeriac with eggs.

Decant the mash into a warm dish….make 4 indents in the surface of the mash into which you break the eggs……Season the eggs and place two small knobs of butter on top. Bake in a hot oven for approximately 5 minutes until the egg whites are firmed up but the yolks still runny. Serve immediately.

Even before I had made it I had an inkling it would become a trusted favourite ….. and I was right.

My soft spot for mashed potato is deeply engrained and blurred by nostalgia. I grew up with very buttery mash. Despite my mum’s affection for Elizabeth David, olive oil (we are talking England in the 1970’s here not that many years previously people were still buying olive oil in little bottles from the chemist) and French Provincial Cooking, we were not deprived of more stoutly English suppers. We were not only raised on ratatouille, dauphinoise and ragus but also hearty English fare, much of it topped or accompanied by a good generous dollop of mash;  smoked fish pie, Shepard’s pie, plump pork sausages, fried eggs, liver and bacon or simply straight. a bowl of plain mash, easy and celestial.

I can get a little evangelical about mashed potato but only because I have been converted. It was a tiny epiphany but an epiphany just the same, the discovery of the potato ricer. Maybe you already have a faithful and trusted way with mash, maybe you too are evangelical, good, you should be, it’s important to be sure of your mash. If on the other hand you are less certain then maybe you should consider a potato ricer, a rather pleasing object especially if you find a classic metal one. A ricer gives mash a lovely even texture, incorporates plenty of air into proceedings it also makes mashing or should I say ricing an easy, rather satisfying and mildly amusing - all those little worms of potato – task. Best of all, you don’t need to peel the potatoes, you just cut them into chunks and cook them with the skin on, which is meant to preserve the flavour. Then as you rice them the skins are removed.

The potatoes. Until I am persuaded otherwise I will keep using local grade A potatoes, red skinned, everyday ones bought from a farmer I trust. They have nice balance between floury and starchy as I find very floury potatoes tend to get rather waterlogged and often using all starchy ones produces a mash which is a little too sticky and gluey for my taste.

I follow Hugh’s advice when it comes to milk and butter……. plenty of it…. Did I mention I met him once, I was a waitress in this great organic pub he was being all organic in, he was really rude to me, I mean REALLY REALLY rude…TWICE, he made me cry. I got over it and despite it I still really like his food, his books, dammit I even buy his books, I have 4 of them and I have only defaced one photo of him in each, innocent stuff, moustache here, silly nose there, Toe weed written across his forehead I figure he deserves it.

The mashing. When I have drained the potatoes into a colander I put the whole milk ( about 200ml for every 1kg/2llb of potatoes) and lump of butter ( about 140g for every 1kg/2llb of potatoes) back in the still warm pan over a very very gentle flame so the milk warms and the butter melts, then I turn off the heat. I then quickly push the potato through the ricer into the pan and beat it energetically with a wooden spoon, I season with salt and pepper and beat again adding a little more milk if necessary. Sometimes I will add a very big spoonful of cream if I have some in the fridge.

The spinach. We are eating lots of spinach at the moment, what with the broken elbow and my impending cold, I seems the sensible thing to do. I am buying the big meaty stuff from the market, deep green and glossy leaved spinach that makes you feel stronger just looking at it..

You wilt the spinach down in a big covered pan. A very thorough draining and then a few minutes being nudged around a frying pan with plenty of butter and some garlic is all this spinach needs.

So there you have it, some comfort on a plate, the culinary equivalent of a fleecy green blanket…..

Eggs baked in very creamy mashed potato with buttery spinach

4 generous servings

• 1 kg  spinach
• 1.3kg  all purpose potatoes
• 160g butter for the potatoes
• 200ml – 250ml whole milk
• salt, freshly ground black pepper and nutmeg
• 4 large eggs
• 75g butter for the spinach
• 2 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed with back of a fork in a little salt

set the oven to 200°c/ 4ooF

Wash and rinse, wash again and pick over the spinach and then scoop it into a big heavy pan with just water you have washed it in clinging to the leaves. Cover the pan and put it over a modest flame. After a few minutes, turn the spinach with a wooden spoon, it will be starting to wilt. Keep and eye on the spinach after about 5 minutes it will have wilted down to about a 1oth of its original volume sitting in a pool of green liquid.

Drain the spinach in a fine holed colander – keep the liquid, you should drink !!!!….think Popeye kids. Set the spinach aside.

Make the mash. Scrub the potatoes and cut them into halves or chunks (without peeling them if you are using a ricer) and boil them a large pan of lightly salted water. When they are soft enough to mash, drain them thoroughly.

Put most of the whole milk and lump of butter back in the still warm pan over a very very gentle flame so the milk warms and the butter melts, then I turn off the heat. Put the rest of the milk and some extra in another small pan and warm it.  Quickly push the potato through the ricer into the big pan and beat it energetically with a wooden spoon. Add more milk from the small pan, beat again and taste, check the consistency is as you like it.

Season with salt and pepper and a grating of nutmeg and beat again adding a little more milk if necessary.

Decant the mash into a VERY warm oven dish – this is really important as the heat of the dish will help cook the eggs.  Working quickly so the potato stays nice and hot even the mash roughly with the back of the wooden spoon and then make 4 indents in the surface of the mash into which you break the eggs. Season the eggs and put two small knobs of butter on top. Bake in the hot oven for 5 – 10 minutes until the egg whites are firmed up but the yolks are still runny.

While the eggs are baking warm the butter and garlic over a very gentle flame so the butter melts and is infused with the garlic. Add the spinach to the pan and raise the heat. Stir carefully so the spinach is warmed through and well coated with the butter.

Pull the eggs from the oven and serve immediately.

It must be all the spinach and hours under one of the aforementioned blankets beacuse Vincenzo is really really on the mend, the plaster comes off early so he can start physiotherapy. He will not be doing any proper drumming for a while, hard for a drummer but at least the tapping can commence

]]> http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/some-comfort/feed/ 14 racheleats P1040803 P1040802 P1040794 P1040801 P1040791 P1040804 http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/3682/ http://racheleats.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/3682/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:00:31 +0000 rachel http://racheleats.wordpress.com/?p=3682 ]]>

nearly…

The last few days have been all about nearly……the ravioli, the ragu, the soup, the cake….. nearly ready to be posted about……nearly…….but not quite.

Not the fruit and nuts of course they are perfect already.

Vincenzo broke his elbow and banged his head mightily when he was catapulted off his bike. He has been in hospital all week and now has a big thick, heavy cast on his drumming arm which means no drumming for a while……..which for a drummer is a terrible thing.

He comes home tomorrow which is very good indeed.

Comforting, elbow fortifying food ahoy.

My copy of David Tanis’s ‘A platter of figs’ falls open in the most familiar way at page 171………there is even a faint, careless, circular coffee cup stain. Two clues which suggest I have made it dozens of times…….I haven’t….. I have just looked at page 171 rather alot.

Having said that…. it is a little strange. I have faithfully smoothed and stared at other pages, pored over various pictures with equal intensity. The page in question is not the middle of the book, the binding doesn’t seem to favour it and whats more, it is a volume fat with bookmarks – 4 posit’s, 1 postcard, a recipe I ripped out of the newspaper and a depressing bank statement – and it still falls open at page 171.

Anyway, I decided to take it as a sign, a message, maybe from the author himself.

I just needed to wait for Plum time…..

…. which has arrived.

Nice plums have been around at the market since late July but apart from some tiny greengagelike delights which took me by surprise one-day, I didn’t buy any – being too preoccupied with cherries and then the peaches, nectarines and apricots before they disappeared for another year – Plums can wait I thought.

Until now that is, September, when are at their best, their sweet, juicy but robust flesh and dusty mellow colours fitting and right for these still warm but unmistakably autumnal days. We ate the first plums straight, they deserved it. Blue, black, oval ones called Stanley or Italian plums, golden globes called la giocca d’oro (golden drop) some flushed with scarlet and pale greeny yellow ones known here as regina claudia.

Then I flopped the book open and finally made the cake.

It is a delight of a cake. Stanley, drops of gold and Queen Claudia Plums (David Tanis recommends you use all Stanley plums) baked in batter of ground almonds, sugar, eggs, melted butter, milk and just a little flour.  It is dense and compact. It is most certainly a cake but inside the texture is reminiscent of clafoutis or pancakes. This is because the generous quantity of plums studding the batter bake and collapse in the oven, becoming soft and jammy thus keeping the batter surrounding them moist and dense, slightly fudgy and almondy. Each slice is a delight as you meet pools of soft, baked plums. For this reason it is best served warm or within a few hours of baking.

A little after I took this photo the light faded alongwith the possibility of decent photos, rest assured we had two slices each and then Vincenzo shaved off about 3 more slivers. We thought about some ice-cream, or creme fraiche on top, but that would have meant leaving the house and neither of us wanted either badly enough to do that.  I will however get ice-cream, maybe almond, for next Thursday when I make it again for supper with some friends I know will appreciate a slice or two of warm plum and almond cake for pudding.

Now I used a smaller, deeper tin than recommended which meant longer in the oven was needed, with a little tin foil hat for some of the time to stop the top burning, it did work, but I will be interested to see what happens with a wider tin. Maybe the depth of my tin was also the reason all the plum slices drowned and sank in the batter rather than providing a pretty pattern on the top. Actually I didn’t mind them drowning and the lack of pretty patterns and perfect execution, it made the whole thing kind of rustic and easy which is how I like my food really.

Just for the record my tin was 8″ across and I only used 700g of plums (it was looking very full) and I left it in the oven for 50 minutes with the tin foil hat to stop the top burning for the final 15 minutes. I have however given you the original page 171 recipe because it is David Tanis and it feels right, I am sure you will play around and experiment accordingly if you feel need, after all, I think we might all be making this quite alot.

Italian plum cake

Adapted From David Tanis’s ‘A platter of figs‘

• 100g / 1 cup ground almonds
• 100g /1/2 cup of fine sugar plus 50g/ 1/4 cup of sugar for topping
• 75g / 1/3 cup of all – purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup of whole milk
• 4 tbsp of melted butter
• 900g Italian/ stanley plums, pitted and sliced thickly

Set the oven to 180°/ 350F and butter a 10 inch tart dish or springform pan.

Mix the ground almonds, sugar, flour and salt in a large bowl.

Beat the eggs with the milk and then stir in the melted butter and then add to the dry ingredients. Stir with a spoon and them whisk with a balloon whisk until the batter is smooth and silky.

Pour and scrape the batter into the pan. Arrange the plum slices on top in a circular pattern (!!!). sprinkle the extra 1/4 cup of sugar over the top.

Bake for 45 minutes until the top is golden and a skewer pushed into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Best served warm or within a few hours of baking.

Are very nice indeed.

Red, ripe, sweetly fruity but nicely acidic small plum tomatoes, cut in two, sprinkled with salt, doused in extra virgin olive oil and roasted slowly, slowly….until they are withered and wrinkled, curly at the edges and sticky with intense tomato goodness.

See… I knew withered and wrinkled could be beautiful, when I get old I want to be a slow roasted tomato…

Yes, a slow roasted tomato squashed on some toasted bread which has been rubbed with garlic… with a bit more olive oil over the top for good measure.

After a meltingly hot August when just the mere thought of cranking up the oven  brought me out in a sweat, September breezes and pleasing showers means some low, slow roasting is possible. Good job too, the end of the tray of plum tomatoes was starting to look a little withered, neglected and in need of attention.

Attention they got, a good wash, a chop and a new coat of salt and olive oil and a long lazy 3 hour lounge in the oven at about 100°c/220F….

I know some people like to roast their tomatoes for hours, 5, 6, 8 even, this is good but different and I find such lengths leave the tomatoes rather too wrinkled and dehydrated for my liking, dried rather than roasted really. Once, I did leave a batch in for hours, they emerged with a not unpleasant, but rather challenging leathery chewyness which made me realise how much I like softness and creamyness of lesser roasted red thing, a thing with mashing and squashing qualities.

At a very nice supper recently our friend roasted up a tray of these. No fancy plating or arranging was necessary (is it ever ?) she just brought the whole oven tray to the table along with some toasted bread, a peeled clove of garlic for each and everyone, a bottle of excellent olive oil and a jug of basil still on the stem. Thus followed a clattering of forks and hands as we all banged elbows and rubbed our toast with garlic, picked our roasted tomatoes straight from the tin, mashed them into the bread with the backs of our forks, ripped our basil leaves, poured our oil and constructed our own bruschetta. Some wise ones then mopped up the sticky juices from the bottom of the tin with more toast.

Still in squashing mode, a few roasted tomatoes with some goats cheese is good, on warm toast or in a sandwich,…..

Or they are nice in a salad, one with bitter leaves and some hot strips of bacon…….. or as dots of colour in a simple green one with parmesan…… if you squeeze the flesh out of the skin and mash it roughly with some more olive oil and ripped basil leaves you have a good and simple pasta sauce

……and I like them beside some toast, 2 fried eggs and a fat sausage for a kind of English breakfast, best eaten with the newspaper before you and a very strong cup of English breakfast tea beside you on Sunday at about 11.

Slow roasted tomatoes

I do think plum tomatoes are better here as they have a sweet (but not too sweet)  mellow fruitiness which is balanced by a good acidity.

• 30 small plum or cherry tomatoes
• coarse sea salt such as Maldon
• extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 100°C/220F

Wash, dry and cut each tomato in half and place them cut edge up on a baking tray.

Sprinkle with coarse salt you have rubbed between you fingertips.

Pour a thin stream of olive oil over the tomatoes making sure you coat (but don’t flood) each one, they tray and tomatoes should glisten with the oil not swim around in it.

Put on the middle shelf of the oven for 3 to 3 and a half hours.

Check, the tomatoes should be nearly half their original size, slightly wrinkled and curling up at the edges but still soft and moist in the center – taste one to see.

Best served at room temperature, will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days but remember to take them out of the fridge before you want to eat them as fridge cold kills the lovely flavours.