Category Archives: Main Course

Meat, fish…

Gravadlax

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Gravlax

Gravadlax sounded like the perfect recipe to come back writing on this blog.

I have the great fortune to have found a wonderful fishmonger at the Saint Louis (in Alsace, France) market on saturdays morning: she has everything fished, nothing from farms, and most of the fish is from French part of sea and ocean.

She has an outstanding salmon, fished in the Atlantic ocean. So what a better use for a wonderful fish to be cured in the traditional Swedish way?

Ingredients

1 salmon fillet, skin on, approximately 1 kg
500 g vergeoise (if you don’t find it you can use cane sugar)
350 g sea salt
3 oranges
1 lime
100 g de ginger
1 bunch of dill

For 6-8 people

  1. Wash the salmon under fresh water and pat dry.
  2. Lay the salmon, skin down, in a glass baking dish.
  3. In a bowl mix together salt, sugar and the roughly chopped dill.
  4. Directly over the salmon, grate the zest of oranges and lime, then the ginger. Cover with the salt mixture.
  5. Cover with film or close hermetically.
  6. Let it marinate in the fridge for at least 48 hours.
  7. Scrap away all the marinade from the salmon and pat dry.
  8. Cut it the thinest you can and serve with black bread.

Freely adapted from this recipe, first found on the printed copy, december 2011.

Greek cake with spinach and feta

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Torta salata con feta e spinaci

I love Greece and every year, when summer comes, I think about it and how much I would love to go back!

So I try to sunken myself in Greek recipes! This combination, feta cheese and spinach, just scream Greece, and the fillo pastry, with its crunchiness is perfect!

Ingredients

1 pack frozen fillo pastry, thawed following the manufactures instructions

1 shallots or 1 little onion

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 kg fresh spinach

1 handful raisins

1 handful pine nuts

200 g of feta cheese

2 eggs

50 ml milk

50 g butter

For 6 people as starter, 2 as main dish

  1. Pre-heat the oven at 180° C.
  2. Finely chop shallot or onion.
  3. In a big pan fry the chopped shallot or onion, then add all the spinach: it will look like too much, but believe me, they will fit once cooked. Cover with a lid.
  4. After a few minutes, when spinach are reduce, add raisins and cook for few more minutes. Remove from the eat and add pine nuts.
  5. In a bowl mix spinach, crumbled feta and 2 eggs.
  6. In a sauce pan, melt the butter with the milk. Let it cool.
  7. Brush the bottom and the sides of a cake tin with some butter and milk.
  8. Open the fillo pastry, take 4 sheets and let the rest under a damp tea towel.
  9. With your 4 sheets, cover the bottom and the sides of the cake tin.
  10. Add half of your spinach, cover with more sheets of fillo pastry, add the rest of the spinach.
  11. Fold all the over layer of fillo pastry inside your cake tin, add two more sheets and fold them to fit the size of the cake tin.
  12. Brush with loads of milk and butter.
  13. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
  14. Serve still warm.

Ragù di carne

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Il sugo

Bolognaise sauce, sauce bolognaise, ragù alla bolognese. Call it as you please, but please please please, make it in the right way! No strange stuff, like cilantro, cream, spring onions…

Keep it simple and plain!

The only difficult part, if you can call it so, it’s the long cooking hours, but you can cut them down making it in a pressure cooker.

Lets’ start from the basics.

Ingredients

500 g premium choice minced beef

100 g diced pancetta (or diced bacon)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 onion

1 garlic clove

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

1/2 glass of dry red wine

1/2 glass of milk

800 g canned tomatoes, better whole, using even the sauce inside the cans

1 tablespoon triple tomato purée

Salt and pepper

2 pinches of sugar

For 6 people as pasta sauce or for a 4 people lasagna

  1. Finely chop the onion.
  2. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the carrot.
  3. Clean and finely chop the celery stalk.
  4. In a large sauce pan, possibly with high-sided, heat the olive oil. Add the pancetta and the onion and mildly brown them.
  5. Add the carrot and the garlic, and finally the celery.
  6. Add the minced beef and turn it with a wooden fork, crumble it. Let it cook, stirring, until brown. Salt and pepper.
  7. Turn up the heat and add the wine. Let it evaporate.
  8. Add the milk, and always keeping you fire up, cook the sauce and let the milk to be absorbed by the meat.
  9. Add the caned tomatoes, tomato purée and sugar, stir, lower the fire to the minimum, cover and let it cook for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.

Note

You can add, if you really really want it, some basil leaves, but they are superfluous.

In season, you can substitute the canned tomatoes with fresh skinned ones. Bring to the boil a big pan of water. Cook the whole tomatoes until the skin begin to pop off. Drain them, pell, chop and add them to the sauce like the canned tomatoes.

Scotch Broth

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Scotch Broth

We had some barley in the pantry, sitting there since ages. At my call “What can we possibly do?”, my husband answered “Isn’t there a Scottish soup with barley?”. And there was, of course: Scotch Broth!

The cooking method is traditionally British: everything is boiled. No browning of the meat, no frying of onion, nothing… Water, boil, food. Which is, sometimes, when you have good, fresh and tasty ingredients, a good method. I gave it a try :)

Ingredients

1 kg lamb, any cut

1,8 l water

250 g barley

3 carrots

1 big leek

3 celery stalk, with leaves still on (if really fresh and green)

Salt

For 4 to 6 people

  1. Bring the water and lamb to the boil.
  2. Add the barley, cover and cook for 1 and 1/2 hour.
  3. Clean the vegetables: trim, peel and slice the carrots, trim and slice the leek, trim and slice the celery, slicing even the leaves.
  4. After the lamb and barley are cooking since 1 and 1/2 hour, add the vegetables, salt. Stir and cover. Let it cook for another hour.
  5. Check for thickness: it has to be tick, not too watery.
  6. Serve still hot, with warm bread&butter.

Note

I freezes perfectly (if all the ingredients were fresh at the beginning).

Tajine au citron confit

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Tajine aux citrons confit

It has been more than 1 year since my last update. Many reasons, the biggest: our son entered our life one year ago. Shall I say more?

Now, to the recipe!

Last September my friend Domitilla, coming back from her home town Mondragone, brought us some wonderful organic lemons, directly form her mother’s tree! Is there a better use than preserve them in salt? Sure no!

The lemons where ready after 2 months, but only recently I had the inspiration to use one in this classic moroccan dish: a Tajine with home made pickled lemon.

Ingredients

4 chicken tights

1 citron confit (brined lemon)

3 courgettes

1 onion

2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon of ground ginger

1 teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Water

For 2 portions

  1. Halve the chicken tights with a sharp knife.
  2. Wash and cut the courgette in thick sticks, as big as your thumb (in the picture you see them bigger than I just wrote: I find that cutting them as big as your thumb makes them more tender in less time).
  3. Finely chop the onion.
  4. Heat the oil in a tajine dish or in a heavy, sturdy and big saucepan.
  5. Gently fry the onion, add the spices and meat and let it brown.
  6. Add the courgettes and the citron, cut in chunks.
  7. Stir and add enough wanter to cover it.
  8. Let it cook on a low fire until all the ingredients are tender.
  9. Serve with couscous.

Note

If you don’t have pickled lemon, or you cannot find them anywhere, do not despair: use a normal lemon!

Lamb and artichokes fricassea

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Lamb and artichokes fricassea

Well, a fricassea, oh my, what the hell it is? Actually it’s something very simple and very traditional in the Mediterranean cuisine: you can find in Italy, Greece and even France.

8 artichokes
Juice 1 lemon
700 g lamb leg, cut in chunks
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion
1 tablespoon flour
Freshly ground pepper
Chopped fresh parsley
Chopped fresh dill
2 eggs

Clean the artichokes: remove all the hard leaves and the stalks. Cut them in two, remove the beard inside and cut every half in two and put them in water with the juice of half the lemon.
Chop the onion.
Heat the oil in a dutch oven. Add the onion, let it color, add the lamb, sprinkle with the flour and add enough water to cover the meat.
Stir, bring to boil, add salt and pepper, the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Add the chopped herbs and artichokes too.
Lower the heat, cover, and let it cook for 45-50 minutes.
Beat the eggs with the remaining lemon juice.
Let the lamb and artichokes cool a little.
Take 3 tablespoons of the cooking juices and add it to the beaten eggs. Beat and add to the pan, reheating slightly and briefly, keeping mixing.

Serve immediately.

Lamb and artichokes fricassea

Pasta with leek, endive and bacon

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Pasta with endive, leek and bacon

A few months ago I opened another food blog, in Italian, and I published the recipe that it’s at the base of this pasta. While I was cooking it I though it could have done a perfect side dish, *and* a perfect pasta dish :)

For 2 people

200 g high quality pasta, short kind

200g diced bacon

1 Belgian endive

1 leek

1/4 glass white wine

Finely slice the leek and the Belgian endive.

In a large no-stick pan, heat the diced bacon and when the fat is begin to split out, add endive and leek. Stir fry for few minutes, then add the wine and let evaporate.

In the mean while, cook the pasta according to the package instructions.

Drain it al dente (the pasta must still have  a slightly hard heart) and toss it in the endive and leek pan.

Give a good stir and serve immediately.

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