It's been so long since I updated here hasn't it? Life has totally gotten in the way... well I say life, I really mean the PhD has gotten in the way, which seems to be life anyway so hey ho... I've been scootling around the UK to archives and conferences and all that kind of stuff and I also started teaching! That's right, they let me loose on the first years at the uni! It's been fun but pretty exhausting, I also have way more sympathy for my Professor's than I ever had before! But now term is ending and I finally have a few moments to myself so it felt like it was time to crack open the blog and share some recipes that have kept us going over these past few months. This is one of my favourite bread recipes to make, so easy, simple, quick and delicious.
We love bread in this house. We eat it every day, more than once a day. There is nothing better than a warm slice of bread fresh from the oven. I am quite simple in my tastes and quite enjoy it on it's own with a tiny bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt or just alongside a slice of Salami, oh and of course slathered in Nutella for breakfast, lunch afternoon snack. Mr Grad will eat it with pretty much anything, Salami, Cheese, Chilli, Artichokes, Tomatoes, you name it.
One of my favourite breads though is one that is purely savoury, Focaccia. I adore it! It's insanely delicious, all nice and fluffy and chewy with a delicious olive oil taste. It also makes the best sandwiches (amazing with Porchetta!) and is even incredibly tasty as a grilled cheese!
I have a recipe for Focaccia that I've been making for at leat 6 years, I don't even remember where I got it from, I just know that I love making it, it's so easy and versatile! When I say easy, I mean EASY, no kneading, no fancy equipment or anything, just a bowl and a spatula and you get the fluffiest, tastiest bread you can imagine. You can also flavour it in almost anyway you want which is awesome, I love it with Rosemary or Sage.
 |
| So fluffy!! |
It's been just over a year since Mr. Grad moved over to the UK with me and whilst we eat Italian style food most days there are times when he hankers after a taste of home that is something more that just pasta. This week was one such week when he had a craving for Porchetta.
Porchetta is a traditional Italian street food made from a whole deboned pig that it stuffed with herbs and spices and slow roasted in a fire pit and then pulled apart and usually put between two pieces of delicious crusty bread. Driving through any place in Italy you are likely to come across a roadside trailer selling this magical food. It is really out of this world delicious, just the smell when you are driving by is just heavenly and the panino itself... oh man...
So anyway, Mr. Grad got on about wanting some Porchetta, now I don't have the space nor inclination to roast a whole pig, let alone the stomach to debone the poor beast, but I promised I'd try to make some for him. I began my research in earnest, there are so many Porchetta recipe's out there with all kinds of ingredients and I think a lot of them have tried to jazz up the dish to make it less humble street food and more gourmet 'look at what I made' kind of food. I didn't want any of that because the great and wonderful thing about Italian food is that it is simple! Forget all this Pine Nuts, Raisins and Chicken Livers nonsense. I'm sure it's delicious... well kind of... raisins and meat never particularly struck me as good together... but it's not Porchetta as I know it. A lot of recipes also are intended for slicing the meat which Mr. Grad informs me is not particularly common, rather it's more reminiscent of pulled pork. This is why if you are going for that kind of feel the Shoulder is better than the Belly as it falls apart so much better. We are also not huge fans of Pork Belly because of the amount of fat it has in it, nothing really worse than chewing through fat.
After a good few recipes I came across a few that seemed to fit the bill so I set about making porchetta.
We were also really lucky because at this time I had just received a new programme invite by Tesco Orchard for their meat campaign. If you don't know what Tesco Orchard is you should totally check it out. Basically you fill in surveys and they invite you to try out new products based on your survey answers. They send you out vouchers which usually entitles you to a free product and extra vouchers to give to your friends. All you have to do is just talk about the product and report back to Tesco in the form of Tweets, Facebook Posts, Reviews, Blogs and so on, whatever you like! It's so much fun!
So onto Porchetta, thanks to Tesco Orchard I had a £10 voucher for fresh meat and they were also running a promotion on Pork Shoulder at £2.99 per kg. I managed to get a 3.6kg piece of deboned Pork Shoulder for 90p! Talk about a bargain! Now I had to butterfly it and well that was my first attempt and whilst perhaps it wasn't the neatest it did the job just fine! There are plenty of videos on youtube if you don't know how to do it, or you could ask your butcher to do it for you. Unfortunately I don't have a butcher but perhaps with time I will get better. I'm pretty sure I'll have plenty of practice because this went down SO well... I actually gave some to another Italian friend who loved it too so it does have the native seal of approval! I promise you if you make this you will LOVE it. It has so much flavour and is so fall apart tender and moist! and then you get the delicious crunchy skin running through and oh my just delicious!
Pizza, boy do we love Pizza in this house, we eat it atleast once a week! We are not fans of premade pizza though. I mean some of them are edible like the super expensive supermarket 'fresh' ones that cost as much as a small child but they are quite convenient when they are on offer. Frozen pizza? never ever liked it, in fact, confession time.. as a child I hated pizza, like really loathed it because we only ever ate that icky, super cheap, frozen pizza at home. You know the kind, they cost about £1 for 4 and are full of sugar, salt and other nasties. Take away pizza? Forget about it, they are so horrificly bad and over priced! It was only when I tried making my own pizza once I got into cooking that I discovered that actually it was pretty good! Then I met Mr. Grad and tried proper pizza, made in a pizza oven in a resturaunt run by a little old mamma and there was no turning back! It was heaven... it was also gigantic! Ever since then I've developed a very good appreciation for pizza and enjoy it quite a lot!
There are many recipes out there for pizza, some good, some not so good. Whilst you will rarely ever be able to make the awesome pizza that you eat in pizzeria's in Italy at home (unless you are amazing enough to own a pizza oven in your back yard, and if you do... can I be your friend??!!) this one is pretty darn good! This recipe I got from a little old grocer in the village that we stay in in Italy and it's soooo good and tasty! It's also really easy and cheap. In the time it takes for your pizza to be delivered you could be eating this and I guarantee you it's a million times better and has no hidden nasties in it!
This recipe is also so customisable. Once you've made the base, go wild! .We added sliced onions at the same time as the mozzarella to one of
ours. You could add thinly sliced Aubergines, or break apart some
sausages and scatter over or perhaps some pepperoni. Mushrooms also go
really well, just slice them thinly and add with the mozzarella, try
adding some mascarpone with it too, or ricotta! Artichoke hearts are
tasty too. To jazz up a plain old margherita scatter over some fresh
rocket and a few shavings of Parmesan. Even bacon works well on pizza!
You
can also totally skip out the tomato sauce and make 'white pizza'. Just
follow the instructions above omiting adding the tomato sauce and cook
as directed. Onion and Mozzarella are super tasty. You could also go the
Quattro Formaggi way and add dollops of Ricotta, lashings of mozzarella
and pieces of creamy gorgonzola (or stilton!) topped with a sprinkling
of Parmesan for a truly delicious cheesy pizza (you can also add cheddar
if, like me, you don't like blue cheese.)
There are some foods that, no matter how popular Italian Cusine is around the world, you just can't find in the UK.
Since moving here Mr. Grad has embraced british cusine quite well, though I admit to cooking alot of Italian based dished because they're usually so quick, cheap and yummy! So he hasn't missed his staple foods too much! But, there have been a few things that he's hankered after, good Salami, proper Italian Sausages, not the spicy kind that I don't know what the heck they are but I've never seen them in Italy, but proper Italian Sausage that you can eat raw on a slice of bread and also, Zuppa Inglese.
Zuppa Inglese, or English Soup in well... English, is a traditional Italian dessert that somewhat resembles the British Trifle but its way more delicious... at least according to Mr. Grad. I think it's an Italian thing. I mean I like it but I don't love it... perhaps its the alcohol taste that is pretty strong! I think I miss the fruit too.
Anyway, Zuppa Inglese is Savoiardi biscuits dipped in Alchermes Liquor and Rum and then layered up between copious amounts of Chocoloate and Vanilla Custard and topped off with whipped cream. It's not for the faint of heart or anyone trying to stick to a diet.
The difficulty in making it in the UK is finding the staple ingredient, Alchermes. Alchermes is a spiced liquor that is bright red in colour and has a really wonderful flavour, kind of aniseedy but sweet and more subtly spiced. You cannot find it anywhere in the UK and the few places online that you can buy it are prohibitively expensive which is really annoying since in Italy its so cheap!
So, Mr Grad was craving a taste of his childhood favourite and after a week or so of searching for Alchermes, there was only one thing to do: Make it myself! I poked around online and found this recipe at All Things Sicillian & More. It takes a few weeks to make, and by make I mean stuff everything in a jar and leave it in the cupboard for a few weeks then add vodka, lots and lots of vodka, oh and some sugar and ta da! It tasted amazing! The addition of a little food colouring for the obligitory red colour (traditionally they used cochenial but you can't find it here and this way it's also vegetarian!)
He had to wait a few more weeks to satiate his craving but boy was he overjoyed by the result! I mean it has such a rustic homemade charm about it, none of this plastic looking, perfectly packed nonsense. It's messy and uneven and looks just like it should! and tastes even better! You could perhaps layer it up in a trifle bowl and make it all neat and tidy but 1. I don't have a trifle bowl, 2. This is how I first ate it and 3. I like the rustic look, turned out onto a plate, dusted with cocoa and then attacked with a giant spoon! Mr Grad likes to add an extra drizzle (or flood) or alchermes over his portion for extra flavour.
Probably one of my favourite foods is Lasagna. I only really started to eat it after I met Mr. Grad all those years ago. I grew up in a very poor family with 6 children and parents who couldn't work due to illness so we tended to eat what we could afford which meant a lot of potatoes, stews, cheap meats etc nothing very fancy. I was 13 before I even ate a strawberry! 22 before I tasted cherries for the first time and 24 before I ate an aubergine! The list is endless really, I am still discovering foods that seems so exotic to me but you see everywhere! Lasagna was way off the list as a kid, beef was too expensive and fresh pasta sheets pretty much unheard of. We were more of a shepherds pie kind of family, which is still my go to comfort food.
But Lasagna... I'd had Lasagna before but it was the ready meal kind, you know, way too salty, way too mushy and far too many calories. I never really liked it until I tried the real deal. Proper Italian lasagna made by a proper Italian Mamma. One bite and I was in heaven, oh the delicious savoury yet slightly sweet meat sandwiched between layers of handmade pasta, oozing creamy bechamella sauce. Sooo good!! It's also one of Mr. Grad's favourite foods so I had to get down to making it!
It took me a while to find a recipe that really hit that sweet spot, there were a few requirements. Primarily, no celery. In my humble opinion celery has no place in a lasagna, or anything else for that matter! I've never eaten a Lasagna in Italy that's had this monstrous thing in it. It's probably one of the most disgusting things I can think of, seriously just... ugh. Béchamel sauce is a must it's not lasagna without it and none of this fancy schmancy one with cheese and goodness knows what else, yeah I've even seem some with celery in it, what is up with that?? Why would you do that? Just a simple, traditional Béchamel is what you want.
So I had a search around and found this Jamie Oliver recipe. The meat sauce totally hit the spot, the creamy sauce, not so much but I just ignore that! Seriously butternut squash? Just... no. So a few adaptations later and I had this Lasagna to serve to the almost in-laws. Nervous? moi? you betcha! But... it's probably the one thing that I've cooked that really turned the almost in-laws opinion, the meal that said 'I can take care of your son.' It was incredibly delicious and they quickly suggested that I could open a restaurant with this dish. High praise indeed!!
I mean look at it, all golden and bubbly and steaming hot with the gooey Béchamel and Mozzarella oozing out and those beautiful crispy bits on the edges that taste soooo good. What more could you want?? It's perfect for these cold winter nights!
So without further ado I give you Lasagna!
We eat a lot of pasta in this house easily 3-4 times a week. Mr. Grad gets withdrawal if he doesn't eat a big steaming bowl of pasta at least once every 2 days. Left to his own devices I'm pretty sure pasta would be his sole food source for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Myself, I love pasta but I can't eat it everyday, I get bored with eating the same food too often. I do have a good repertoire of pasta dishes, most of them are really simple and quick and totally delicious.It's a really cheap way of eating too, you can buy giant 3kg bags of pasta for around £3-4 from the supermarkets which will feed you for a good few weeks! We always have a couple in the cupboard, it's even better value when they run promotional offers and you can pick up a bag for £2!
What I love about Italian cooking is that it doesn't have to be expensive and fancy, in fact expensive and fancy is pretty much the antithesis of Italian cooking! It's all about simple food with good ingredients that are healthy and delicious Pasta is quite central to Italian food and its eaten in one form or another most days. There is also something so comforting about sitting down to a big old bowl of pasta surrounded by family all laughing and joking and sharing in the deliciousness in front of you.
So, Spaghetti Carbonara, we've all heard of it. Spaghetti, Eggs and Bacon combined to make an amazingly delicious dish that ticks all the boxes, cheap, easy, quick, yummy. But, on the market there are some just awful imitations, really I've never understood the need to buy Carbonara Sauce in a jar, it's full of sugar, salt and unnecessary ingredients and additives. Then there are the ready meals that you cook in the microwave, one look at the bowl and its just so unappetizing, a gloopy white mess with stringy things in it... yuck! You can even buy the whole meal in a can, you know the famous baked beans brand, horrifying! We jokingly took a
tin of it back for one of Mr. Grad's friends, 4 years later he still
dare not open it! Seriously people it takes 4 ingredients to make your own (plus the spaghetti) and I guarantee you it's 1000x better!
Carbonara is probably Mr. Grads go to comfort food and I often make it for him at the weekend when he's home for lunch and it always goes down particularly well. Sometimes if he's had a tough day at work I'll make it for dinner, although I don't usually partake in that meal, it's a bit too heavy for me in the evening! But that eggy, carby goodness seems to cheer him right up, or it might be the glass or two of wine... but lets go with the carbonara shall we?
