Category: Regarding Marisa Raniolo Wilkins

OVEN COOKED KID (capretto)

I am writing about kid, not goat. Unlike goat, there was very little fat and the meat did not exude that characteristic, heavy smell of game that is present when cutting goat and mutton.

Capretto, Italians call it and it is a meat that is not cooked regularly, but is often cooked on special occasions. I bought it from an Italian butcher. I went in to buy  some pork sausages but when I saw what the Italian customers that were lining up at the counter were all buying, I did the same. I bought capretto.

The Italian word for goat is capra and like mutton, goat is not generally eaten in Italy.

I marinaded it overnight with extra virgin olive oil, red wine, fennel seeds, bay leaves, rosemary, onion and sage. As you can see in the photo there is plenty of marinade; I wanted the meat to be quite well covered and intended to use the marinade in the cooking.

Nothing is wasted, the herbs are discarded and replaced with fresh herbs. This is because I have herbs growing on my balcony and I can afford to do this. I added garlic when i ws ready to cook the meat.

The important thing to do in this recipe is to cook the usual soffritto base that is omnipresent in Italian cooking – onion, carrot and celery – in extra virgin olive oil and make sure that the soffritto vegetables are caramilised before combining it with the drained marinaded meat.The meat does not need to be browned before hand making the cooking process easier and quicker. I have a cast iron baking pan that is very convenient for putting directly onto the stove.

The soffritto took about 15 minutes to soften and caramilise the vegetables ad this process adds a much enriched flavour to the dish. A dash of passata or some peeled red tomatoes also adds to the taste and colour to the braise.

Once you have drained the meat  and removed the old herbs use the marinade to the capretto. Add fresh herbs and some stock. As you can see in the photo there is enough liquid to almost cover the meat.

Cover the pan with some foil or a lid and leave it to cook in a slow oven. Mine was set at 170C degrees  and because I have two similar baking trays the spare one made a good lid.

Remove the foil after an hour. Move the meat around and add more broth or water and cook it uncovered until the meat is separated from the bones. I baked mine for about two hours without the foil, but made sure that if I needed to add more liquid, I had some stock to use.

The results were delicious. The vegetables almost melted, the meat was easily detached from the bone, it smelled great and tasted even better. And yes, it was a special meal.

I presented it with baked potatoes and braised endives sautéed with anchovies.

The kid weighed 2 kilos. as you can see there was very little fat.

This is not the first time I have cooked capretto – kid/goat

BRAISED KID (capretto) in a simple marinade of red wine, extra virgin olive oil and herbs

RICETTE per capretto (e capra); Recipes for slow cooked kid and goat

RAGU` DI CAPRETTO; Goat/ kid ragout as a dressing for pasta

SPEZZATINO DI CAPRETTO (Italian Goat/ Kid stew)

KID/GOAT WITH ALMONDS (SPRING IN SICILY, CAPRETTO CON LE MANDORLE)

SLOW COOKED LEG OF GOAT WITH HOT MINT SAUCE

SICILIAN SEAFOOD COOKING, ITALIANICIOUS and READER’S FEAST Bookstore. Recipe for Slow cooked goat in Nero D’Avola

 

BAKED FISH WITH POTATOES, VINEGAR and ANCHOVIES

It is the season to begin thinking about fish and how to cook it to make it special.

This recipe is from my book Sicilian Seafood Cooking (now out of print) and it is so simple to cook that I could do it with my eyes closed.

The fish is a locally caught sustainable Snapper. You can see that I make slits in the fish’s sides and in the slits I insert a couple of anchovies. If you don’t like anchovies use fresh herbs; good for this fish are wild fennel, thyme, rosemary or tarragon.

I made the marinade and marinaded the fish in your baking tray for an hour before cooking.

In the marinade you can see that I have used chopped parsley, quite a bit of onion and grated lemon peel. The liquid is: extra virgin olive oil, some wine vinegar and some lemon juice. Add a bit of salt and pepper also. I have included some quantities in the recipe below, but really, the fun of cooking is also experimenting.

Mix up the marinade and let the fish steep in it for about an hour. Turn it over a few times before you bake it. You can bake potatoes with it if you wish and the potatoes take on that lemon flavour that often Greek baked potatoes have when baked with lemon (usually cooked with chicken).

The Greeks did settle in Sicily after all!

I usually part- cook my potatoes and put them in to bake with the fish about 15mins before I think the fish is ready. Raw slices of potatoes are used in the recipe but do whatever you think is easier for you.

 

PESCE INFORNATO CON PATATE
Sicilian – Pisci o furno chi patati
Baked fish with potatoes (and vinegar and anchovies)
Ingredients
1–1.5kg (2lb 4oz–3lb 5oz) whole fish
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 onions, finely chopped a small bunch parsley, finely chopped
250g (9oz) potatoes, thinly sliced or par-boiled potatoes in chunks
3–6 anchovies, finely chopped (see above)
juice of 2 lemons, plus grated zest of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Suitable fish
Any whole fish or large, thick fillets of medium to firm fish, preferably with the skin on. The fish is cooked whole, filleted and portioned at the table.
Method
If using whole fish or fillets with skin, make a series of slashes in the skin. Mix
the oil with the vinegar, onions and parsley. Add seasoning and marinate the
fish for about an hour, turning frequently.
Place the fish in an ovenproof dish, spoon half of the marinade over it and bake for 10 minutes in a 200°C (400°F) oven. Arrange the sliced potatoes around the fish. Sprinkle the potatoes and the fish with more marinade, the anchovies, lemon juice and grated zest. Bake for another 20–35 minutes, depending on the type of fish. Serve hot.
To see if the fish is cooked to your liking, you can test  the fish with a fork held at an angle. Insert it at the thickest point of the fish and twist the fork. it should flake easily.
Variation
 Place rosemary and bay leaves underneath the fish in the baking pan.
See:
There is a photo in this post where I used red onion and it can look quite spectacular.

The Ugly Ducklings in Italian Cuisine (Scarrafoni in cucina)

Late last year, I was contacted by Massimiliano Gugole from SBS Radio and asked if I would like to contribute to an SBS program on Season 2 of The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine.              

The idea of the program is to showcase nice tasting but nasty looking Italian dishes. Massimiliano wanted to interview me about a particular dish from South Eastern Sicily that starts out looking gruesome but ends up tasting glorious. I think he must have found me through a recipe I posted on my  blog about this particular dish, which one of my aunts used to make when we visited Ragusa for our Sicilian summer holidays.

My recipe and the Ugly Duckling interviews in English and Italian are entitled Zuzzu, described on the SBS website as an ancient, pork terrine that uses everything of the pig, but the oink!

I mentioned to one of my friends in Canberra that I had been interviewed for this program and with his wicked sense of humour said: “Surely the ugly duckling reference has got nothing to do with you!”

Here’s what SBS had to say about Season 1 followed by Season 2:

About Season 1

SBS has today launched its first ever bilingual podcast series – The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine (Scarrafoni in cucina) in English and Italian – celebrating the most delicious, non-Instagrammable Italian dishes that might never have come across your plate.

Over the course of six episodes, the series will follow some of Australia and Italy’s most well-known chefs and food critics, including acclaimed restaurateur and food personality Guy Grossi, celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow, and food blogger and author Emiko Davies, as they explore and celebrate Italy’s least appetizing specialties.

Podcast host Massimiliano Gugole, from SBS Italian, said: “Italy is a country of beauty, with its food celebrated all over the world, but this podcast will introduce listeners to some of our lesser-known culinary treasures, with a healthy dose of irony thrown in for good measure.

About Season 2

SBS’s first bilingual podcast is back for seconds! Season Two of The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine (Scarrafoni in Cucina) returns in Italian and English to introduce six new dishes for the adventurous eater such as sea urchin gonads, stew with chocolate and wild boar, and risotto with a stinging weed.

A line-up of new guests will share their expertise in the world of Italian food including award-winning Melbourne chef Alberto Fava, Sicilian food truck owner Pino D’Addelfio, TV chef, author and former Food Director of Australian Women’s Weekly, Lyndey Milan, and the inimitable queen of TV cooking, Nigella Lawson.

SBS Italian Producer Massimiliano Gugole said the podcast started from a love of weird and wacky food.

“During the first season I talked about a typical dish from Verona – pearà. Not even people from neighbouring cities knew about it. When they saw a picture, they thought it looked like vomit but I, like all Veronese, love it!” said Gugole.

Looking past the superficial, Season Two of The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine will delve deeper into how these unique, local dishes became a proudly acquired taste.

“These dishes are not the celebrities – the pizzas and pastas – but they have strong links to families, towns and history. My intention is to tell their stories,” Gugole said.

“On Instagram, all food is perfect: perfect framing, perfect garnishes, but my research shows that’s not what makes food delicious. Nigella Lawson even once said, ‘brown food tastes the best’.”

Episode three in English features TV cooking royalty Nigella Lawson, who talks about stinging nettle risotto and her special relationship with 98-year-old Italian-British food writer Anna Del Conte. Lawson cites Del Conte as her only culinary influence, apart from her mother. In the Italian version of this episode, we hear from the doyenne herself, Anna Del Conte.

Conte and Lawson join guests including blogger and Instagram sensation Emiko Davies, environmental scientist and sea urchin expert Dr Paul Carnell, Italian food writer Chiara Cajelli, and research scientist Dr Maurizio Rossetto from the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, as well as restaurateurs from Italy and Australia, university professors, medieval food fanatics and more.

The podcasts in both season 1 and Season 2 are worth listening to and are very entertaining.

BS Italian Executive Producer, Magica Fossati, says differences between the Italian and English episodes on the same topic are an interesting by-product of having the same conversation with bilingual guests, but both versions are worth listening to as they complement each other.

“I heard some Italian language teachers recommended our first season to their students because it’s easier to understand and study Italian with English context,” she said.

Both English and Italian speakers can look forward to hearing a fresh perspective on the world of lesser-known Italian dishes in season two, available on the SBS Radio app and SBS Italian website. Episode one launches on February 1, recipes for the dishes featured in the series can also be found on SBS Food.

My recipe of Zuzzu and is in Italian and English.

I have listened to both podcasts about Zuzzu.
The Italian version is different to the English. One happened before anyone ate it, the other after people tasted it. The Italian version is probably more amusing and includes commentary from Lisa Ferraro, who used to live in Melbourne and one of the two who instigated Bar Idda, a Sicilian restaurant in Brunswick East, Melbourne. Lisa now lives in Rome and organises travel tours in Sicily.

Compliments to Massimiliano Gugole who did an excellent job interweaving other speakers in the interviews.

Listen or follow The Ugly Ducklings of Italian Cuisine in the SBS Radio app or your favourite podcast app, to hear all episodes in the series.

Find a collection of recipes featured in the first series on the

SBS Food website, including this recipe for my Sicilian pork terrine (Zuzzu)

Here are some photos about the preparation of Zuzzu:

The head

The head in the pan

The boiled meat drained

The different parts of meat, separated (2 photos above)

Dealing with the jelly (2 photos above)

Dealing with the terrine (2 photos above)

A tasty sauce to pour on top of the Zuzzu or to serve with it, can be made with a mixture of chopped parsley, extra virgin olive oil, some lemon juice, salt and either pepper or chili flakes. At times, I also like to add a few chopped leaves of fresh garlic or mint in mine, but this is optional. The dressing can be as thick or as thin as you wish to make it.

Links:

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/italian/en/podcast/the-ugly-ducklings-of-italian-cuisine

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/italian/en/podcast-episode/zuzzu-an-ancient-sicilian-pork-terrine-that-uses-everything-but-the-oink/okrixs5gn

The recipe has been called Pork Terrine…. not quite right, but maybe no one would look at a recipe mad with pig’s head. Brawn may have been a better title.

https://www.sbs.com.au/food/social-tags/ugly-ducklings

My original posts about this dish:

GELATINA DI MAIALE. Pork Brawn

GELATINA DI MAIALE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAR IDDA (Buon Compleanno Bar Idda).

BEING ELDERLY, TRAVELLING and COFFEE

We have been travelling for the last four weeks around parts of Victoria and South Australia. Along the way we have stopped in cafes that looked like they served a good coffee. And I admit we’ve been pretty selective. It’s obvious to any of us who’ve driven around country Australia the number of cafes, pubs and bakeries serving coffee are flourishing, but not all of them make good coffee.

And at a once great railway town south of Port Augusta, we took a chance on one when there was no other option. We have recently bought a modest VW campervan with a homemade conversion that comes with some compromises. For example, to boil a kettle or brew a coffee, you slide out the stove top through the cargo door, which means it’s open to weather. This day, it was raining heavily, blowing a gale, we were cold and we liked some of the buildings in the town and so we pulled up.

There were two people serving and three people who were waiting for takeaways. When one of the staff asked who was next another assistant said:  “That elderly couple over there.”

My partner and I burst out laughing but I do not think anyone got the joke. I explained with humour how we were indeed elderly and were not offended in any way by the comment, but that elderly people did not necessarily see themselves as being of a certain older age and being called that, may take them by surprise. I said this and meant it to mean that we knew the joke was on us.

But wait, there was still more to come.

I ordered coffees for both my partner and myself. I asked for two caffé e latte. The woman (who we assume to be the owner of the café) took issue with my order. Raising her voice so she could share her proprietorship with her two staff and the three customers waiting for their takeaways, she exclaimed: “What do you want? Oh, caffe lattes?” She emphasised.  “We make lattes here. We don’t have fancy names like you city people.” More added emphasis. “You want two lattes? Is that what want?”

My partner meekly said that we would like two lattes. I felt the need to explain that as a person born in Italy, I don’t abbreviate the order to just latte because if you did this in Italy you would be ordering a drink of milk. I even apologised. Then she said that I was in Australia and needed to fit in with Australians if this was my home.

But wait for it, the performance went on. She said that all the tables inside were booked and we had to sit outside. We looked at the weather and tables under the kerb-side veranda. We meekly said that was OK. But where were these customers, when were they arriving, wouldn’t we finish a cup of coffee before they arrived? However, we didn’t challenge the wet-weather option, we knew we were in dangerous territory here and just turned the other cheek.

The coffee took ages to arrive, the assistant who carried it out to us spilled it in the saucers. She said that she was sorry about this and that we would have to sip it from our saucers. Once again we chose to be agreeable and said that we did not mind it being spilled.

By the way, the coffee was nothing like a caffè e latte, no froth whatsoever and very little taste of coffee or milk. We drank it quickly in spite of it being almost undrinkable and exchanged looks of unbelief between us.

I was in shock and made my way to the car. Not only were we elderly but were from the city and I was a foreigner. When my partner went to pay she was going to charge him for a mug sized coffee rather than a cup. He did mediate and pointed out that we had the smaller size.

I looked up the information on the web about this township and was greeted with the description of it being a friendly, peaceful town, a great place to live and visit.

This experience was worlds away from the experience we had when we ordered caffè e latte in Horsham at the Farmhouse Providore & Cafe which was packed with locals and travellers. The café had been recommended by another brilliant roadside stop in Keith, Henry & Rose. The attendant at the Farmhouse did not blink an eyelid when I asked for caffè e latte and asked how we wanted our coffees. Did we want more coffee than milk or the other way around because she knew people had preferences and she wanted to satisfy each of their customers.

I nearly hugged her!

I take making  coffee and tea very seriously.

These are the camping coffee pots and teapot:

See post:

Do I take making coffee at home too seriously?

I sure do.

MARINETTI Filippo Tommaso, futurist, frequented a bar in Bologna

In Bologna I visited where Filippo Tommaso Marinetti hung out with his futurist friends and discussed the evils of eating pasta. I did not expect to find it to be part of a grand hotel.

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Cafe’ Marinetti is located in the Grand Hotel Majestic “Gia Baglioni”. It is an 18th-century palazzo across the street from the Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Pietro and only a 5-minute walk from the Towers of Bologna.

CFBEA013-5359-47D5-86F8-07AA09D4BDB0The hotel is decorated with Baroque details, expensive paintings and photographs of famous visiting celebrities….Frank Sinatra, Eva Gardner, Princess Diana, Sting, Bruce Springsteen and others.

C28BCA23-F038-4C67-ACC5-88A72257BAEC The hotel is very luxurious…when I was there there was a Bentley Ferrari and a sports BMW out the front collecting and dropping off guests.

0A5F4284-3E7B-454D-838C-57A58180EAE1Cafe’ Marinetti is frequented by well heeled guests as I imagine it was then during Marinetti’s time.

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But who was Marinetti?

And really why would I expect someone who had such strong views about pasta to be anything else but part of the well heeled set?

It is interesting to see that pasta features on the menu at Cafe Marinetti and there is no risotto.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, one of the founders of Futurism in the early 1900:

ADELAIDE REVIEW OF ‘SICILIAN SEAFOOD COOKING

Bolognese recipe, from Great Italian Chefs.

My mother used to add cream rather than milk, and a little grated nutmeg.

BOLOGNESE RAGÙ

  • 300g of beef mince 85% fat
  • 150g of pork mince
  • 50g of unsalted butter
  • 50g of onion finely chopped
  • 50g of carrot finely chopped
  • 50g of  celery finely chopped
  • 125ml of red wine
  • 30g of  tomato paste, triple concentrated
  • 125ml of whole milk
  • salt to taste
  • black pepper to taste
Place a large thick-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat. Add the minced pork belly to the pot and cook until all the liquid from the meat has evaporated, then add the minced beef and cook until golden, stirring frequently. Transfer the meat to a bowl and set aside.
Add the butter to the saucepan and place over a medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook until the onions are very soft and translucent. Finally, add the tomato paste and sauté for 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally.
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Return the meat to the saucepan, turn up the heat and pour in the red wine. Cook over a high heat for 2 minutes, then cover the pan and turn the heat down to low
Leave the ragù alla Bolognese to simmer very gently for at least 3 hours. The meat must not be excessively dry. Pour in the whole milk and cook for a further 40 minutes just before serving
Ragù alla Bolognese is very tasty when just cooked, but is even better the next day. Reheat the sauce over a very low heat with a little bit of milk and use it to season pasta.

……or tortellini or to make a lasagna.

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Pork Hock, Polish Wedding Sausage, Borlotti and Sauerkraut =IOTA (a lean version)

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Iota (also Jota) is always a delight to eat and to talk about with friends, many of them surprised to discover that it is a regional and traditional Italian  dish from Trieste, a town in the region of Fruili Venezia Giulia and north of Venice.

The fat content in Iota can be high, but there are ways to make Iota less fatty.

Borlotti beans, soaked overnight and then cooked.

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Pork Hock, placed in cold water and simmered until soft and used to make broth. Add potatoes about 30 minutes before the end of cooking.  Remove the lean meat and use this for  when you assemble the ingredients together. Skim the fat off the pork hock broth.

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Use the broth to cook the sauerkraut . When the sauerkraut is cooked, add half the borlotti beans and potatoes.  Use a potato masher to mash the contents.

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Assemble the Iota  by combining all of the different components.

Add the whole beans and the rest of the potatoes (cubed) with the mashed  ingredients. Add the pork hock meat and the Wedding Sausage (I prefer to use this type of sausage  because it is lean meat).

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And there you have it – a lean Iota.

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There are other posts for making Iota and these include quantities of ingredients:

IOTA (Recipe, a very thick soup from Trieste) Post 1

IOTA FROM TRIESTE, Italy, made with smoked pork, sauerkraut, borlotti beans – Post 2

GREAT ITALIAN CHEFS’ RECIPES, 10 best Sicilian dishes

This site, Great Italian Chefs, is worth looking at. It is part of the Great British Chefs website and on this site you will find information about  some of the different regions of Italy and regional recipes.

The recipes are ‘great’ and are by professional chefs.

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I too have posted many of these recipes on my blog and a passatempo – pass-the-time, a diversion, you could compare their recipes with mine.

10 best Sicilian Dishes:

https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/features/10-best-sicilian-dishes

I have written about them before:

GREAT BRITISH CHEFS, GREAT ITALIAN CHEFS, Feature articles by Marisa Raniolo Wilkins

PESCE CRUDO, raw fish dishes in Sicily

ALSO: 10 MUST-TRY DISHES WHEN YOU ARE IN SICILY

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LUGANIGHE CON CAPUZI GARBI – Sausages and sauerkraut, and yes, it is Italian regional cuisine

As a child, I lived in Trieste with my parents, and Ragusa, Catania and Augusta were the towns in Sicily where my Sicilian relatives lived. Both Trieste (located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste in the  region Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and Sicily are at the extreme ends of Italy, and as you would expect, the cuisines are very different.

I grew up with both cuisines and appreciate them both for very different reasons.

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Capuzi garbi  (or crauti/krauti) is sauerkraut in Triestino (the Triestine dialect) and it is a very popular ingredient in Triestine cuisine especially when mixed in Gulash (made with pork or beef), or with a lump of smoked pork, or luganighe (Triestine) – salsicce di maiale in Italian, and pork sausages for us mere mortals in the English speaking world.

When you look at a map of Italy, it is easy to see why this part of Italy has common roots with the cooking of Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Istria.

I have German and Polish friends and they too are fond of sauerkraut, and like my relatives and friends from Trieste, they tend to overcook it; my mother also did this when she cooked capuzi garbi.

But as we know, cuisine evolves and some of us have taken on new methods of cooking traditional foods.

In my kitchen, I cook sauerkraut for about a quarter of the time as the traditional method and at times, I also like to add a little fresh cabbage to lighten the taste and to add a different texture.  A little flour  browned in a little oil is added to the sauerkraut towards the end of cooking, but not me, and unlike my Triestine contemporaries I also add caraway seeds, bay leaves and a dash of white wine.

The ingredients are: pork sausages, sauerkraut, bay leaves and caraway seeds. Onion, extra virgin olive oil and pepper (the sauerkraut could be sufficiently salty). Fresh cabbage and a dash of white wine are optional.

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Drain the sauerkraut and squeeze out the moisture. Soften some onion in a little oil (in Trieste lard is also common and added to the oil).

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Adding a little white or savoy cabbage is optional.

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And with the cabbage also add the sauerkraut and the rest. A dash of white wine will keep it moist while it cooks.

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Cover and cook for about 15- 20 minutes on low heat until the sausages are nearly cooked and the flavours have had a chance to meld.

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Remove the sauerkraut and slightly brown the sausages – only for appearance.

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A few of the other recipes from Trieste:

MARINADED FISH and a recipe for PESCE IN SAOR

IOTA (Recipe, a very thick soup from Trieste) Post 1

IOTA FROM TRIESTE, Italy is made with smoked pork, sauerkraut, borlotti beans-Post 2

Traditional Easter Sweets in Trieste in Friuli Venezia Giulia

INSALATA RUSSA (Party time – Russian salad)

APPLE STRUDEL (TRIESTE: Strucolo de pomi)

GULASCH (Goulash as made in Trieste)

PATATE as a contorno (Two recipes for ‘squashed’ potatoes).

PASTA CON LE SARDE, an iconic Sicilian recipe from Palermo. Cooked at Slow Food Festival Melbourne

Slow Fish Festival: Save Our Seafood

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To those of you who attended the successful event at Spotswood – Kingsville, Slow Fish Festival: Save Our Seafood.

As promised, here is an update of the recipe Pasta con le Sarde I cooked at this event.

There are already two posts about this recipe:

PASTA CON LE SARDE (Pasta with sardines, from Palermo, made with fennel, pine nuts and currants)

PASTA CON SARDE – the baked version, Palermo, Sicily

Here are some useful photographs to compliment the recipes:

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Wild fennel plant.

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Wild fennel shoots.

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Packing wild fennel for the winter season – used to flavour the pasta water.

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Extra flavour with sachet of fennel seeds. It can be removed when you also remove the boiled wild fennel.

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Wild fennel sold in bunches at Catania Market.

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You will need a plate to serve it. This is an Alessi Plate ( not THE Alessi, the Sicilian Alessi) They use old stencils, colours and images from the past to decorate their plates.

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Recipe in Sicilian Seafood Cooking, Tim White from Books For Cooks (Melbourne) may have a couple of this book left for sale.

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Timballo, made with left over Pasta con Sarde

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Reference was made to  Il Gattopardo – The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampadusa. Film made by Visconti, an historical epic, based on Lampedusa’s novel.

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TUNNU `A STIMPIRATA – TONNO ALLA STEMPERATA (Tuna with onions, vinegar, capers and green olives)

Albacore tuna is sustainable, cheap in price and much under rated in Australia. It is not sashimi grade so the Asian export market does not want it and therefore in Australia we also tend to undervalue it. It is denser in texture but still excellent for cooking (lightly or cooked for longer).  As in Australia, Blue fin tuna is the preferred tuna in Sicily; if it is sustainable depends on how and where it is caught – it should be wild caught and aquaculture is not an option.

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Unfortunately I rarely find albacore tuna where I live in Melbourne and if I do, I always grab it when I can and cook it as I would cook blue fin tuna.

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I like tuna seared and left rare centrally but my Sicilian relatives eat tuna very well done and this is also how it is presented in the traditional home-style restaurants in Sicily.

In Sicily there are numerous ways tuna but Tonno alla stemperata is one of the favourites  in the south eastern part of Sicily. It was first cooked for me by one of my cousins, Rosetta, who lives in Ragusa. She and her husband have a holiday house on the beach at Marina di Ragusa, and she usually buys most of her fish from the fishermen on the beach.

Although Rosetta prefers to use tuna in this recipe, any firm-fleshed fish, thickly sliced, is suitable. She prefers to cut the tuna into large cubes – this allows greater penetration of the flavours in the sauce and of course, it will cook to a greater degree and more quickly.

Rosetta cooked the fish in the morning and we ate it for lunch, at room temperature…in Australia you may find this unusual but eating it at room temperature and some time after it has been cooked allows the flavours time to develop.

A version of this recipe is also in my first book: Sicilian Seafood Cooking.

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I have used Albacore tuna, trevally, mackerel or flathead (better choice category) successfully in this recipe.

tuna or firm-fleshed fish, 4 slices
sliced white onions, 2
capers, ½ cup, salted variety, soaked and washed
white wine vinegar, about 2 tablespoons or for a milder taste use 1 tablespoon of white wine and one of vinegar
extra virgin olive oil, about 2 tablespoons
salt, black pepper or red chilli flakes (as preferred by the relatives in Ragusa),
celery heart, 2 or 3 of the pale green stalks and young leaves, chopped finely
green olives, ½ cup, pitted, chopped
bay leaves, 4

Soften the onion and celery in about half of the extra virgin oil, and cook until the onion is golden, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

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Add the fish, olives, capers, seasoning and bay leaves and sear the fish. The pieces of fish only need to be turned once.

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Add the vinegar and allow the vinegar to evaporate and flavour the dish.

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Remove the fish from the pan if you think that it will overcook and continue to evaporate.

Optional: Decorate (and flavour) with mint just before serving.

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You can tell I am in South Australia by some of the photos of the fabulous varieties of fish I am able to purchase in Adelaide when I visit.

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