Category: Wine, Spirits, Liquers and Drinks

GUANCE DI MANZO BRASATE (BRAISED BEEF CHEEKS)

Red wine and beef seem to be very compatible, and not just for drinking. Beef cheeks are the facial cheek muscle of a cow. They may look ugly but the meat is lean and tender once it is slow cooked in liquid, and in this case wine and marsala.

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Some cooks marinade cheeks in red wine overnight; this will intensify the dark colour and the wine flavour of the final dish. In this recipe wine is added as part of the cooking liquid; the rich taste will still come through so I do not think that the marinade is necessary.

Most Italian recipes suggest using a strong red wine, some also add Marsala (dry). The French do the same and if you have Movida Rustica (Spanish cuisine) by Frank Camorra (the cook) and Richard Cornish (the writer) you will notice that Frank adds Pedro Ximenez sherry to his recipe.

Whether cooked in Italy, France, or Spain the choice of herbs used are the same: bay leaves, rosemary, thyme or sage. Onions, carrots and celery seem to be the common ingredients for what the Italians call the odori (smells), these are the basic vegetables which add ‘smell’ and taste to basic broths and stews.I also added thinly cut orange peel to mine; I do this often with braises.

This dish is so easy. I went out while it was cooking. When I returned I braised some fennel and boiled some potatoes. Polenta and mashed potatoes take a bit more time to cook, but soak up the juices even better.

There were 4 of us.

INGREDIENTS
2-3 beef cheeks
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 onion, sliced roughly
2 stalks of celery, sliced
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup dry marsala
1 cup red wine,

2 cloves of garlic (optional)
orange or tangello peel from one citrus, thinly cut, no pith
several fresh bay leaves, sage or thyme
salt and freshly ground pepper

PREPARATION
Remove any offending sinew and silver skin from the cheeks and cut into quarters.
Brown the cheeks in hot olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan over high heat. Remove from the pan and sauté the onion, carrot, celery and garlic.
Add the beef cheeks, wine, marsala, herbs, orange peel, seasoning and 1 cup of water.
Cover, reduce the heat to low and cook at least for 3 hours – Cook longer if you wish – the cheeks should be very tender and falling apart.
If you would like a reduced, thicker sauce, remove the cheeks and reduce the sauce to desired consistency.Return the cheeks to the braise.
Some cooks remove the vegetables because they have served their purpose, but we ate ours. Waste not, want not.
I do not know the equivalent Italian saying – that’s because they usually eat everything…and I mean this as a compliment.

 

OLIVE FRITTE (Lighly fried, fresh black olives)

I first made Olive Fritte (fried olives) after I bought The Taste of Italy in 1984. Bugialli became a big hit in Australia and I still have several of his books.

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These are ripe, fresh olives (not pickled) that are sautéed in extra virgin olive oil, course- grained salt and freshly ground black pepper. (Bugialli’s recipe: 1 pound of black olives, 2tbs olive oil, ½ tbsp of the salt and a pinch of pepper and sautéed gently for 15 minutes).

South Australia is blessed with wild oIive trees. I was living in Adelaide at that time and you could handpick the olives you wanted according to the degree of maturity, the range of shapes and sizes – and all for free.

Even then I had adventurous friends who were willing to try anything I cooked and those who sampled these were wary at first, but quickly adjusted and enjoyed the fresh slightly bitter taste of the olives. They continued eating them and took more. At the time, I also added fresh bay leaves.

Recently two of my friends brought me a small bag of olives as a gift. They had visited two other friends at Rocky Passes, a boutique winery at the southern end of the Strathbogie Ranges in the Upper Goulburn wine growing region of Victoria. These two friends produce award winning red wines and In their kitchen garden there are some olive trees. This is where these olives (in the photo) came from.

This time when I sautéed them fresh, I added fennel seeds and deglazed the pan with some good quality red wine vinegar. I presented them on two separate occasions to different guests and once again watched them tentatively put the first olive in their mouths, the incredulous expressions on their faces (should I be eating these??) and then the enjoyment of savouring something bitter but at the same time with a hint of sweetness (Campari?). I ensured them that bitter food is good for the liver so we drank some more wine.

INGREDIENTS
Use low heat and sauté 2 cups of unblemished, black, ripe olives in ½ cup cup of extra virgin olive oil. Add ½ teaspoon of salt flakes and ½ tsp of fennel seeds. Cook for about 15 minutes stir frequently. Add 1 tbsp of red wine vinegar and deglaze the pan.
Sprinkle with some fresh fennel fronds (optional)
Serve warm.

There are a number of recipes for pickling olives and that use olives on the blog.

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CATANIA and RISTOWORLD

I have had the most wonderful seafood meal in Catania at the “La Vecchia Quercia” in the Garden Hotel in San Giovanni la Punta.

I was a guest of Ristoworld an online not-for-profit organization dedicated to the restaurant and food production industry whose aim is to showcase Italian food internationally. Ristoworld has organised many congregations and competitions to promote  culinary skills in the restaurant and hotel trade.

This is an organisation that was first formed in Sicily in 2008, by Andrea Finocchiaro a chef who is based in Catania. This group has grown significantly and there are now delegates and representatives from all regions of Italy and from other parts of the world. I am the Australian delegate.

Apart from Andrea and Fabio Trefuletti (secretary) I met other members of the group. The food was cooked by Costantino Laudani, head chef at La Vecchia Quercia (he is also the delegate of Sicily for Ristoworld). My charming waiter and sommelier was Allessio Valenti (vice president of Ristoworld). 
Apparently Alessio is Catania’s best cocktail maker. Pity I am not into night life!

Unfortunately not all of the food was photographed. The antipasti were spectacular and there were so many of them…..marinaded fish, prawns, mussels, octopus……caponata with grated chocolate, cuscus.

This is the Pesce spada and cipollata:

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We said no to fruit and dessert – we just could not have fitted it in.

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COZZE CON SAMBUCA (Mussels with Sambuca- anise flavoured liqueur)

The mussels I cooked with Sambuca with the anise flavour were greatly appreciated. With the warmer weather, I have enjoyed placing a large platter of mussels in the centre of the table and having guests help themselves.

When travelling in Italy to places on the coast in summer, you will often see piattoni (large platters) of mussels presented as a stater to a meal in restaurants; these are a great favourite, and an enjoyable and easy option for me and my guests.

WHY OUZO?

I had some saganaki recently at a friend’s place. She did the usual thing of cutting it into large cubes, dipping it in a little flour and pan frying it in hot oil until golden, but she then added a drizzle of Ouzo over the hot cheese, and lit it – (Flambé). Finally she added a squeeze of lemon juice. We ate this with some tomatoes that had been slowly baked on a low temperature.

It was the Ouzo that interested me. I particularly like the taste of aniseed and us a lot of fennel in my cooking.  I also use wine quite often in my cooking and sometimes if I wish to accentuate the taste of the fennel I use Ricard or Pernod – both are anise flavoured liqueurs. I have also used Ouzo at times (based on a Greek way of cooking them) and recently I cooked some mussels with Sambuca, the Italian version of anise flavoured liquor.

They made a great antipasto.

The following recipe is in my second book, Small Fishy Bites. The food stylist and photographer are in the photo above.

Fishy Bites Jacket

INGREDIENTS
2 kl mussels, scrubbed and cleaned of beards
extra virgin olive oil ½ cup
cloves of garlic, 7-8 chopped finely
Italian flat-leaf parsley, 1 small bunch, finely chopped
black pepper, finely ground
Sambuca, ½- ¾ cup (or Ouzu)
lemon juice, 1-2 lemons (grated peel optional)

PROCESSES
Sauté the garlic lightly in hot extra virgin olive oil. Use a saucepan that will fit the mussels.
Add the mussels and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add the Sambuca, a dash of water, pepper and the parsley. Cover with a lid and cook till the mussels open.
Remove the mussels and place into another warm saucepan with a lid to keep them hot. If you do not mind presenting the mussels warm, place the opened mussels on a platter. (Italians do not seem to bother about keeping food hot). Evaporate the juices until you only have about 1 cup of concentrated liquid. Add lemon juice and pour the juice over the mussels and serve.

P.S. Whilst I was in Adelaide recently I also ate at  a restaurant and enjoyed an Anisetta Meletti, another aniseed flavoured drink from Ascoli Piceno and sold at Mercato (Campbelttown in South Australia). This too would work.

MUSSELS WITH CHICKPEAS

MUSSELS, three ways: in brodetto, with spaghetti and risotto

GAMBERI AL COGNAC (Prawns cooked with cognac or brandy)

When we first come to Australia my mother did a lot of cooking using Vermouth and Cognac. These were used to deglaze the pan when she cooked meat, fish and vegetables and made excellent sauces.

She also doused cakes with both of these before filling them with crème anglaise – she never used cream or cover the cake with icing like the mothers of my Anglo-Australian friends. Needless to say, I never offered my friends cake. (She used Cherry Brandy in cakes sometimes; this was also common in South Australia, but very sweet and from memory did not taste very much like cherries or resemble Maraschino!).

At that time, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, my mother was using Annabella for her recipes; this was a popular women’s magazine (un giornale femminile) published in Italy and mailed to us in Adelaide (via sea) by my aunt in Trieste. I think that  Vermouth (there was sweet and dry styles… bianco come later) and Cognac may have been the only two alcoholic beverages that we knew or purchased.

We cooked with Vermouth and Cognac and my parents drank it as well – Vermoth as the aperitivo  and the Cognac as the digestivo. Commercial wine was pretty limited, but there was plenty of home made stuff around (made by Italians and not all of it was drinkable) and there was home made grappa, some of this was made with potato peels. Australian men drank beer and we did cook veal shanks with this; Australian women liked shandies (beer and lemonade) and Crème de menthe.

Anyhow, all of the above because when we cleaned out my mother’s house I found bottles of Vecchia Romagna (cognac) and all these memories come flooding back.

I cooked the prawns with one of her bottles of Vecchia Romagna; a friend of mine asked me if I was mad.

INGREDIENTS
1 kg green prawns (I used shelled)
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 cup of parsley finely cut
1 cup small glass brandy (or cognac)
½ cup of extra virgin olive oil
30 g of butter
1 lemon, the juice and peel
salt (to taste) and plenty of black ground pepper
PROCESSES
Dry the prawns and sauté them for 3 minutes in the extra virgin olive oil. Use a large frying pan so that the prawns have space to cook.
Add the parsley and garlic, salt, black pepper and the lemon zest and continue to cook for a couple more minutes.
Add the cognac and lemon juice and evaporate over high heat.
Add the butter, swirl it around throughout the sauce and serve.

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A MEMORABLE MEAL (at Libby’s)

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My dear friend Libby who lives in Adelaide has always been my greatest supporter and tester of recipes; I often think that without encouragement from my friends that my book Sicilian Seafood Cooking would never have happened.

I was in Adelaide recently and was invited to dinner at Libby’s. I wish you could see all of the food that Libby prepared, but unfortunately I did not have my camera and the two photos I have were taken with a phone.
I asked her to send me what she prepared. The food was amazing and she must have been preparing for days (as it always the case when I go to her house).

I love this type of meal…the place and a range of small serves (although hers were not small and the range was immense) shared with good friends.

Apart from the food she made the Liqueurs: Vin d’orange (as strong as a liqueur, Prune d’agen liqueur and Limoncello.
She also made the gravlax, the pickles, semi dried tomatoes (baked in a slow oven) and baked the bread (she always makes bread). The salad leaves and herbs were from her amazing garden, the eggs from Muffy, her 7 year old hen and companion (who follows Libby around while she works in the garden). She also made the glace fruit (orange) in the dessert.
I tell you, Libby is an amazing woman!
This is what I had and this was the order of the numerous courses:
Drinks
– Vin d’orange
– Lemon, lime juice and bitters punch
Starters
–  Gorgeres with pickled plums
–  Roquefort, caramelised onion and walnut dip served with celery heart sticks
–  Gravlax served with creamy cucumber and fennel salad, Finnish mustard and sourdough bread
–  Chicory leaves topped with oven dried tomatoes, white anchovies and chopped chives
Second round of starters:
–  Haloumi, pan fried and flamed with ouzo served with olives marinated with lemon and crushed coriander seeds and oven dried tomatoes sprinkled with chopped parsley.
Sorbet and palate cleanser:
–       Blood orange and ruby grapefruit sorbet served with wedges of blood orange.
Main:
–  Prawns lightly fried in garlic served with roasted baby leeks drizzled with mayonnaise, roasted baby tomatoes with thyme and fennel salad
–  Mushroom ragout (fresh shitake, swiss brown, oyster, buttons, wood ear fungus and enoki cooked with butter, olive oil, cracked white pepper and parsley).
–  Mixed leaves from the garden, salad
 Cheese and Dessert:
–  Orange ‘tiramisu’  shaped into a cake(with fresh mascarpone, cointreau and fresh orange juice, Seville marmalade and glace oranges) served with sticky orange and kumquat sauce and earl grey tea ice cream
   –  Manchego cheese served with glace kumquats and quince paste
–  Prune d’agen liqueur  / Limoncello
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And she tells me I am amazing. Libby, thank you…I feel so humble!!!
These are photos taken at Libby’s  at some other times:
A shot of her amazing garden
Missy and Muffy…..Missy died!

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ACETO DI VINO FATTO IN CASA (Home Made Wine Vinegar)

Crockpot used to make the vinegar.

A friend of mine has just returned from a holiday in France. For some of the time she stayed in Aix en Provence and caught up with her old pen friend who makes her own vinegar. I think I would like this woman.

I too used to make wine vinegar years ago – it is really quite easy and I did not buy a special culture.

The best vinegar I ever made was when a friend who had been to a wine tasting of good quality French wines brought all these partly filled bottles to my house. We drank and I used as much as I could in cooking and with the rest of it (there was far too much of it) I made vinegar. I used a clean crock-pot (the old fashion type used by many to store flour) and in it I emptied all of the left over red wine – there may have been the equivalent of four wine bottles. To this I added about a cup of good wine vinegar and a piece of good bread – the sourdough variety (provides the yeast).

I covered the contents with a lid that did not fully seal it, then stored it in a cool place. This resulted in the formation of a thick gelatinous mass that covered the top. I have read that this mass is called ‘the mother’ because it gives birth to the vinegar.

I left it for a couple of months undisturbed and then removed the vinegar very carefully (I used a ladle) by pushing the mother to one side.  I removed about one wine bottle worth per time. I always made sure that I left about 3 cups of vinegar in the crock – pot and then added left over wine and the mother did the rest.

It is not  just people in the South of Italy that make vinegar. My aunt in Trieste always made vinegar by leaving an open, filled bottle of wine (about ¾ full) by the side of her stove. I cannot remember what her vinegar tasted like but when I tried to make vinegar this way I had to deal with the vinegar flies and the smell.

My Sicilian friend says that her brother makes vinegar, he inherited his father’s old wooden wine vat and he pours the dregs of left-over wine into it. That’s the only technique he uses and has never added anything else to it since his dad’s death.

I am going to try to make some more. It is time to resurrect that old crockpot where I now store onions. I will wash it with very hot water before I tackle the vinegar.

Vinegar is used extensively in Italian cookinThere are many posts in my blog that contain vinegar as an ingredient.

BAKED FISH WITH POTATOES, VINEGAR and ANCHOVIES

SALAME TURCO (Turkish salame)

It was not easy to buy Italian sweets in the late 60’s in Australia and SALAME TURCO was a sweet that I used to help my mother make. We kept it in the fridge until it was ready to slice and it came in handy just in case someone dropped in unannounced.
I bought a copy of the Feast SBS magazine recently and noticed that they have a recipe for salame di cioccolato and it appears to be the same thing. I guess that these days this is the politically correct term for this recipe, but salame turco has cultural and religious connections – back in the days of heathens and Christians the invading darker skinned Moors were known as Turks. The chocolate of course makes it dark and when the salame is cut the crumbs and the nuts resemble the minced fat component of the salame.
INGREDIENTS
300 g of biscuits (We used any type of plain sweet biscuits. Most of the time it was a way to use up broken biscuits).
50g of cocoa, (the Italian or Dutch brands are particularly strong and flavourful)
100g chopped almonds
20g, chopped pistachios
1 egg
50g sugar
30g butter (unsalted)
1/2 glass rum, marsala dolce or other liqueurs like Amaretto.

PROCESSES
Separate the yolk from the white.
Beat the egg yolk with the sugar until creamy and the sugar is dissolved. In another bowl beat the white until soft peaks form.
Make coarse crumbs from the biscuits.

Melt the butter with the cocoa and rum. Allow to cool but not solidify;
Work quickly.
Incorporate all of the ingredients one at the time. Stir gently .The mixture should be firm.
Shape it into a salame (log shape – we used to make it about 2 centimetres in diameter)
Place it in some greaseproof or baking paper. (We used to use the paper wrapper from the butter.)
Leave in the fridge until ready to slice approximately 20mm thick.

 

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SELZ, GRATTACHECCA and GRANITA (Icy drinks) )

This photo is of the drink kiosk in Sicily directly opposite The Duomo  (cathedral) in Palermo

The cathedral was founded by the Normans (1184) on the site of a Muslim mosque. There had been a Christian basilica on the site before that. If visiting Palermo it certainly is worth seeing to appreciate the various architectural styles of the Duomo. The cathedral is steeped with history: the decorative Islamic parts completed during the Norman times, added to which are  Gothic, Catalan, Aragonese embellishments – various rulers of Sicily who built on rather than destroying and beginning to build again. I really love this aspect of Sicilian architecture.

This photo is of a kiosk in Catania.

There are drink kiosks all over Sicily and many are much older than the one above and they sell drinks such as coffee, drinks and Selsa (selz) – freshly squeezed lemon juice, seltzer water (sparkling) and a pinch of salt – great for hot weather and drunk since ancient times. Helping replenish the salt you lose when you sweat.

Some readers may be reminded of sorbetto = Italian for sherbet  a beverage from the Ottoman Turks (serbet, sorbet, charbe zerbet ) that was made from fruit juices or extracts of flowers or herbs, exotic ones such as violets roses,musk and ambergris, combined with sugar, water and snow or ice. Italians developed frozen confections  even further during the Renaissance and the term sorbetto  probably came about because of a combination Of the  terms above and sorbire (old Italian expression, to drink’). Salt-and-ice churns later replaced the snow and probably led to the making of granita.

This photo was taken in Naples and this Napoletana (woman from Naples) is shaving a block of ice., which she then pours into a glass. She then asks you to select a syrup of your choice, pours it over the ice, and hands you the drink. This too is from ancient times. Once, of course, it used to be done with snow or ice from mountains and stored in deep caves for these types of drinks.

You may have seen people shaving ice in Rome – it is called a grattachecca (from word gratta – to scratch) and it is prepared with grated ice and topped with syrup or juice. it is different to granita – this is syrup and water which is then frozen and broken up (or churned) when it is frozen. Granita should have enough sugar in it to keep it crystalline. Alcohol also does the same trick and at the moment there is one in my freezer made of good quality, sweet (but gone flat) sparkling wine (Zibibbo), a good glug of St Germain (elderberry liqueur) and very little fresh thyme (from my balcony). I was not going to waste the wine. I present this granita as a palate cleanser – a between courses treat.

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CANBERRA APPRECIATED – Wine, Produce and Pottery

This beautiful platter is by a friend, Sarit Cohen, a Canberra ceramicist. I love its functional shape and I selected this particular one because the motif reminded me of a fish. Sarit was born in southern Israel and is of Turkish and Indian decent. She explained that the simple dark shape is a verse from the Old Testament written in Hebrew script. The Bible is filled with examples of man seeking advice from God about choosing the right path and this is one of them.

And the round motif that could have been interpreted as the eye of the fish is part of a delicate but complex decorative pattern shaped around the text all pointing to the sky. Sarit has further enhanced the upward shape by placing it within a carved motif reminiscent of Islamic architecture.

I was also impressed by some of the produce I found at The Kitchen Cabinet at Old Parliament House – what an ideal opportunity to promote a wide range of quality, local produce in this well visited location. Their 2012 calendar of events also looks very impressive and diverse, for example Marion Halligan telling table tales while guests eat some of Elizabeth David’s recipes, or the Shiraz sunday lunch with Tim Kirk.

I bought some sourdough made by Ginger Bread Bakery, a meat terrine made by Kitchen Cabinet staff and a smoked trout from Cypress Valley near Grenfell – it was incredibly moist and delicate – apparently each trout is smoked one fish at a time using a traditional Swedish method. Each trout is then vacuum packed to preserve the taste and texture. Sarit’s platter was perfect for the above produce.

Guided by two friends who have recently relocated to Canberra, I visited three exceptional wineries, all only minutes from Murrumbateman: Gallagher, Helm and Clonakilla, each of them highly respected for their cool-climate Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling.

Perhaps it is no surprise, but I found the coincidence intriguing that two of these wineries, Helm and Clonakilla, were established by CSIRO scientists based in Canberra. The third, Gallagher, was just as driven by a passion for wine and dedication to research; some excellent cheese is made in-house by Libby Gallagher.

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Greg Gallagher

Meeting and talking to Greg Gallagher and Ken Helm was as enjoyable as drinking their wines. Both were generous with their time and their wines.

Ken Helm below:

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Sadly, I didn’t get to meet John Kirk on my visit to Clonakilla’s cellar door, but did meet an enthusiastic staff member fresh from irrigating the vines to counteract the hot, dry spell of the last week.

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