Archive for July, 2008
And it is really good, too. I have eaten them in Greece. I have eaten them in Italy. I ate them all my life in the United States. I liked them however they were done by whoever had cooked them.
The Greek ones did not have meat but did have lots of oil and rice. They were cooked to collapse and served at room temperature at lunch time. The Italian ones were cheesy and had crumbs over the rice filling. Sometimes they had meat, sometimes they didn’t. The American ones came in many different versions. Some were filled with a solid meatloaf type of filling and those were very nice. Some were made with breadcrumbs and vegetables. Those were good, too. Some were made with macaroni and cheese. Those were strange. Once I had them filled with chili and that was better then you’d think. This version, however, is the kind I remember from home as a kid. We never had them often enough.
Just lately eg has been talking about making and eating stuffed peppers in her home. When I saw these I knew I had to make them, too. They look like nice, big tomatoes. They have thick, substantial walls. They are beautiful and charming. I wanted to eat them.
Stuffed Peppers like Mom makes
for 4 people
heat the oven to 175°C or 350°F
4 nice peppers in any color and shape you like
1 cup of rice, cooked according to directions
1/2 onion, chopped
.5 pound or .25 kilo ground beef or lamb
about 3/4 teaspoon salt
handful of fresh oregano leaves or a different herb if you like
1 egg
olive oil
Clean the peppers removing all the innards and depending on the size, leave them whole like mine or half them vertically if they are those tall thin ones. Salt the inside very well. Really well. I did not salt enough.
Oil the bottom of a shallow baking dish that will hold your 4 peppers or 8 pepper halves. Put the peppers in it.
In a frying pan, heat some olive oil. Add the onion and fry it until it is transparent. Add the meat and fry until it loses its color. Add the rice and then salt, tasting as you go to make it suit you. This is separate from the salt inside the peppers. Toss in the oregano leaves and stir them in. Add the egg and stir that in quite well.
Using a big cooking spoon, put the stuffing into the peppers. Distribute any extra filling around the peppers– this part will get a crunch bottom and be really tasty. Drizzle a little oil over the peppers in the pan.
Put it into the oven and cook about an hour. The peppers should start to collapse a bit, to be really good. Depending on what you stuff these with, they could be anything from antipasto to contorno or side dish. With meat, mine were a one dish meal.
I like these best not really hot, but just warm. The peppers in this photo are not dancing, but my arms are. Sorry.
eg’s recipe actually sounds even nicer, but she doesn’t photograph her food, being normal and all that.
July 31st, 2008
Busily making fig conserves, freezing tomato sauce and putting raspberries one by one into a bottle of grappa has kept me from cooking anything photo worthy. I did make something pretty though and I’ll post it tomorrow morning my time.
The raspberries are ripening one by one. So it doesn’t matter that the bottle neck is narrow. There is no crowd trying to get in.
July 30th, 2008
With all the bran and zucchine bread happening lately, I was getting a bit worried about the sugar I was serving. I’d seen some zucchine breads made without sweetening here and there, but they didn’t strike me as particularly healthy. One cup of zucchine can do only so much for you. It can damage the glut of zucchine almost not at all, too.
I saw a savory loaf like this in an Italian cookery magazine the other day, but it was surprisingly presented as a main dish. It featured green beans and walnuts and it sounded pretty good, but I have not yet fed anyone who would think of it as a substitute for a pork chop. Maybe an antipasto would be more like it.
I went warrening through the cupboards to see what I had that could be thought of as healthy and might be cobbled together to make a healthy bread. Shazam! I think I’ve got it!
As a kind of compromise for Continental readers I am measuring many things here using conventional metric measures in unconventional ways. I simply could not get into weighing all of it today, but at least I have not left you to figure out what a cup is. I also used ordinary table setting silver rather than official measuring spoons since I know so many don’t have them to use.
Zucchine Breakfast Bread
Grease or spray a loaf pan with oil or fat. Mine is silicon so I just spray it. Were it metal I would grease it quite heavily and maybe flour it as well.
Preheat the oven to 180° C or 350°F
500 ml/2 cups sugar free corn flakes
125 ml/1/2 cup crusca (miller’s bran)
250 ml/1 cup plus 2 cucchiai / tablespoons milk
1 egg
125 ml/1/2 cup olive oil
250 ml/1 cup grated or shredded zucchine
1.5 inch/4 cm dried chili/peperoncino minced fine with a knife
Put all the above together in a medium sized bowl and stir them together.
500 ml/2 cups all purpose flour (farina 00)
2 teaspoons/cucchiaini baking powder (lievita in polvere)
¾ teaspoon/cucchiaino salt
Put all the above dry ingredients into a large bowl and stir them together
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir them together until they are moistened. If your mixture seems too dry, you could add a tablespoon/cucchiaio of additional milk.
60 g/2 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano, grated finely
60 g/2 ounces Provolone or other tasty cheese, grated
Add the above cheeses or those you choose to the batter. Stir in well, then scrape the heaqvy batter into the loaf pan and make it sort of level if you can.
Pop it into the oven and cook it for about one hour. It is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. This bread is dense and very moist so it doesn’t look as done inside as most breads do, but when the toothpick is clean, it’s ready. Let sit for a few minutes and then unmold it onto a cooling rack and allow it to cool quite through before wrapping it tightly. It was very tasty hot with butter, but you could taste the cheese more as it cooled a bit. I might toast it on the third day, but since it is so moist, it should keep very well. Eating it with formaggio fresco or cream cheese might be cheese overkill.
My tongue got tired, so I took some of this outside and fed it to four random Italians. They all said, “Buono!” and that they could taste the cheese. They could neither discern the bran nor the corn flakes, however, which is just as I wanted it. I find it is very difficult to get people to eat healthy stuff if they know it’s there.
I do not think it is possible to jam one more thing into this bread and still get it to cook through. I think I reached critical mass here. Try it, though, and it may help you overcome the sugar doses we get in summer with sweet drinks, gelato, fruits and desserts. It’s full of scrubbing bubbles for your arteries.
July 25th, 2008
I just clicked on that revolving photo presentation in the margin a moment ago. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. It was a portion of spoonbread! I haven’t even thought of spoonbread since I posted that article and recipe. It was just delicious. Why haven’t I even thought of it?
What food occupies the top layer of the mind right now?
Tomatoes. I bought a book yesterday that is just different recipes using tomatoes. They are late this year, so they are just beginning to ripen and should stay with us until November, when we will take advantage of Puglia’s longer summer and buy from the Pugliese farmers every Saturday. I’ve already Post-It marked several pages to try, and have started wondering if any of the newly discovered regional dishes will make up readily for twenty.
Lamb. I still have half the lamb I bought this spring. I am pondering slow-cooking a leg in the fireplace for lunch in the garden. Or I could invite just one person and flash cook the rack.
Green beans, or fagionlini. I helped Amelia pick hers this morning right after I picked mine. Mine provided two fists full, hers a whole basin full. We discussed various recipes in which the bigger and more mature beans are good. Amelia went in to prepare Fagiolini alla Greca for lunch! I decided to make a puree one day and a sformato another day. Mine, who live under a walnut tree, are never going to provide that many, but this time of year you can pick anyone’s beans and they’ll thank you for it. If they are not completely stripped they stop making new beans.
Pickles. The cucumbers are really coming on and the dill is almost heading. If the plums don’t hurry up and riped, I may make some pickles from them, too. There are too many to just eat, even if you made plum cake everyday until they were over.
Suppers. When the heat recedes and you can take pleasure in making food just-so for happy people who are happy to eat what you make. Here below is a supper from a few weeks ago. What pleasant people they were! Think what size that table must be to hold fifteen and still have room for another fifteen. What a gorgeous villa that is, and what a terrific kitchen it has! If you ever need eight bedrooms, just ask.
What makes you think of food, and what food are you thinking of this season?
July 22nd, 2008
I couldn’t make up my mind. More bran muffins or more zucchine bread? So I combined the two recipes and I like it better than either! After six taste testers, this is definitely a GO!
Zucchine-Bran Bread
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 1-1/2 cup All-Bran cereal soaked in
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil even olive oil
- 1 egg
- 1 packed cup grated or shredded zucchine
- Grease a loaf pan very well.
- Preheat oven to 175°C or 350°F
- Put all the dry ingredients together in a big bowl and stir them together with a fork
- Put all the wet ingredients together in a different bowl and mix them thoroughly.
- Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until all the dry is wet, but no more.
- Scrape the batter into the loaf pan and put it into the preheated oven. At about
- 50 minutes, test with a toothpick, and continue to test every so often until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.
- Let rest a few minutes and then remove to a cooling rack.
- Eat some yourself while it is still warm with soft butter, but serve everyone else cream cheese.
Zucchine-Bran Bread @ Group Recipes
July 17th, 2008
This is the hit of my cooking year so far. I worked up the recipe because a client had a person who would not eat cheese so I wanted a second primo without any. In a meal full of favorites, this salad was the favorite dish.
You can’t make a tiny amount. There are just too many ingredients. You could make less, but not little. Don’t let it stop you. It’s an ideal summer salad because it is safe at room temperature, no matter how hot your room or patio is. Leftovers are delicious from the refrigerator and most of the salad can be pre-prepared ahead of time.
There is nothing wrong with any of that and a whole lot right with it.
The ingredients relentlessly move back and forth from sweet to sour with some crunch added in just for the pleasure. It’s kind of pretty, too.
Insalata Siciliana di cous cous
Serves 8-12
Almost all the vegetable components can be made a day ahead and stored in plastic containers in the fridge to make the preparation very quick. The only ones I would do last minute is the tomatoes and the radishes to preserve a good texture.
3 slices of marinated dried tomatoes, diced
¼ cup or an espresso cup of stoned dry cured olives cut in two
¼ cup or one espresso cup of capers, coarsely chopped if they are large
½ cup or 2 espresso cups of chopped mild onions
1 large or several small cucumbers, diced
½ cup or 2 espresso cups of very ripe tomatoes, diced
the contents of an 8 ounce jar or two 4 ounce jars of artichoke hearts in marinade—reserve the oil for the dressing
a good handful of raisins
1 bunch of radishes, halved and then sliced thinly
about 4 ounces of fresh lemon juice
the artichoke oil
olive oil as needed
2 handfuls of fresh herb leaves—oregano, marjoram, thyme, chives, parsley, basil, choose 3 of those.
2 cups or 400 g cous cous prepared in 2.5 cups or 20 ounces of broth or salted water according to the directions
In a large bowl, soak the raisins in the lemon juice.
Clean and prepare all the other components except the cous cous.
Beat the oil from the artichokes into the lemon juice with a fork. Taste for salt and correct. Add all the vegetable ingredients and the herb leaves (I leave the basil for the top in case there are leftovers, because it will turn black.) Mix all these well and leave to marinate at room temperature.
About 30 minutes before serving, prepare the cous cous (you add it to boiling liquid, cover and leave for five minutes!) and fluff it with a fork and then toss it with the vegetables in the big bowl. It may need some additional olive oil to be light and moist. Taste and correct once more for seasoning. Sprinkle the minced basil over the salad if you are using it.
You can garnish this with sprigs of the herbs you used, or radish and cucumber roses. This is served perfectly safely at ambient temperature.
We ate this yesterday before a Peruvian spicy stew and the plum cake that I called the “easiest cake you have never yet made.” It’s still that easy and plums are in season. Mangiate!
I’ve decided to send this off the Presto Pasta Night this week hosted by Kate at Thyme for Cooking. Chow down world.
July 16th, 2008
My internet connection, not very good at its best, has been completely absent for days and is only partial now. Because of that, we will be taking a brief vacation while Mary gets used to Luigi, I get mad at TelecomItalia, Michele ponders the best way to get her mom back to Italy and Cherrye whips Calabrian tourism into shape. Barb is easy to make happy. Just buy her excellent house for the bargain price she’s asking and she will be all smiles.
Me? All I want is the plumber to do what he’s supposed to do, Telecom to do their job, the plums to ripen… well, forget about it, I can see I am asking the impossible.
But, I have a great new recipe in the works which wowed a recent crowd of eaters– so be right back.
July 11th, 2008
Where I live, in the Italian countryside, everybody wears slippers almost all the time. You put on serious shoes to muck out the chickens or to hoe the cabbages, then doff those and put the slippers back on when you are done.
Since that is true, I can’t think why I never thought up a way to wear slippers and work unconsciously at the same time. If I look at the many versions of slippers I have, almost all of them are dual duty in that they look like they are not slippers, but instead are evening shoes, tap dancing shoes, beach shoes or even shoes one wears in the seraglio in hopes the Sultan will send for you this night.
All these years I could have been cleaning the house instead.
July 8th, 2008
I went away. First I went to Ficulle where I worked, then I went to central and southeast Umbria to play.
Barb had her camera, so I let her do all the work, plus I stayed at her house. I spent time in the very kitchen pictured in her house for sale poster.
I know she’s not said it all yet, so look more than one day.
July 6th, 2008
