Cottage Pie Italian Style

Sheperd's Pie or Cottage Pie is done with beef, this one is done with pork! You can use leftover pork provided you chop it up really fine.

Then, the secret ingredients to give it its special Italian flavor are:

• rosemary, the leaves from one twig
• 1 cup chopped onion or leek (one)
• 1 cup chopped mushrooms (I use porcini but any tasty mushroom is fine)
• 2 tablespoons peas (even the frozen ones will do)
• 2 cups minced pork (roasted - or if using fresh meat, it needs to chopped and stir-fried in the pan where you've started cooking the vegetables - if it's a leftover already cooked, add it only at the very end, just to warm up)
• mashed potatoes, done the usual way with milk and butter added only after it's nice and smooth (with one whole egg beaten in at the end - optional)
• left-over pork roast sauce, or lacking it, add Knorr concentrated broth (one spoonful)
• one small glass of white wine
• salt and pepper to taste (careful with the salt!)

The above is good for 4 persons.

Method: 

• stir-fry the vegetables in olive oil (one small spoonful), together with the rosemary, in a big pan;
• add one small glass of white wine
• add the meat to the pan, early in the process if your meat is fresh and you need to cook it; late if you use leftover meat;
• flavor with leftover meat sauce from the roast or Knorr meat broth

Now you need to warm it up in the over:

• In a baking dish, start with a layer of the stir-fried meat and vegetables
• cover well with mashed potatoes
• sprinkle with Parmesan cheese - be generous with it!
• Put in oven, turn on the grill and watch it turn golden.

Serve piping hot, accompanied by a nice, full-bodied Chianti.

Source for image:

Artichoke Omelet the Florentine Way

How about a nice "tortino" Florentine-style made with some tender spring artichokes?

There are lots of recipes for this on Internet but, as far as I can see, most of them are WRONG!

In principle, with this recipe you should obtain a fluffy omelet that rises in the oven like a soufflé and is filled with crisp, flavorful pieces of artichoke.

I've had this only a couple of times in Florence, in one of those old-fashioned trattoria where you just know that you're eating traditional food of the best kind, and it's taken me several tries before I could perfect the recipe.

I could refer you of course to Artusi, the author of the definitive treatise on Tuscan cuisine, but I'll share with you the little secrets that I have discovered that ensure your tortino will come out just right. 

It's very easy to do but it requires some care. AND good ingredients. Of course, that's a general rule: if you want to prepare good food you just can't skimp on the quality of the ingredients. For example, for frying, I ALWAYS use olive oil. Not necessarily the best most expensive quality, but it's got to be real olive oil: it has a great advantage over all other types of oil on the market. Because of the way it withstands heat, it fries a lot better. AND it's the least bad for your health. AND the best tasting.

Now, back to the artichoke tortino. Turn your oven on (especially if it takes time to heat up like mine does): set it at 180° or mark 6 or whatever heat you normally use to roast a chicken. In other words, hot but not too hot.

Then start with the artichokes. You need 2 small ones per person (or a big one/person - but better small). I use the small variety you find in Italy, the ones with leaves tinged with a lovely violet color.

Actually you can use any type of artichoke, provided you prepare them correctly: you have to peel the stem (to get rid of the thick, string-like fibers) and take out all the external leaves that are tough. Then cut off the artichoke tips, leaving only about half the leaves on, or even less. 

Be vicious about it! 

Once you overcome the impression that you're throwing everything away, it is in fact very satisfying to get rid of all those dark green leaves! What you should have left in your hand is just a tiny, tender, yellow-leaf artichoke, maybe half or less of what it looked like before you started hacking at it.

Then cut it in 4 or even 6 pieces lengthwise. And scrape the inside to get rid of that hair which is in the center and is obviously inedible. 

At that point, quickly throw the pieces in cold water to which you've added the juice of 1/2 lemon: the purpose of this is to prevent the artichokes of turning black on you.

Next, lay all the pieces on kitchen paper and pat them dry. Then throw them in a bowl and flour them.

Heat olive oil in a deep pan (at least a couple of inches) and when it's close to smoking (but NOT smoking!) throw your floured artichoke pieces in. 

You should shake off the extra flour and throw them in ONE by ONE. Let them fry until they're a nice golden color and crisp. Take them out with a perforated spoon and set them to dry on paper.

Now prepare the omelet in the usual way, beating together  two eggs per person (but never make a tortino with less than 3 eggs: it won't work!). Salt and pepper to taste, a little grated parmigiano (optional) and throw in the fried artichokes.

Oil (or butter) an oven-going pyrex dish, pour the egg-artichoke mixture in it, sprinkle with a little grated Parmigiano cheese and put the whole thing in your (now hot) oven.

It takes about 20 minutes to bake (or more depending on the size of your tortino). Watch it rise and turn golden. Check  with a toothpick to see whether it's done, but then it's a matter of taste: some people like it real done, others prefer it moist. In any case, don't be disappointed when it starts to come down after you've taken it out of the oven. That's normal: after all, it isn't a French soufflé! It's just an oven-baked omelet...

Ma che buono!

Have a nice glass of red wine ready and warm crusty bread and let me know how you like it!

It's a guaranteed comfort food...

A Mystery Swiss Cheese: Schabziger and What To Do With It

I recently received from a Swiss friend who stayed with me in our house in Umbria a lovely gift: two little forms of green Schabziger, a mystery Swiss cheese made in the Glarner mountains, following a 550-year old recipe.  

And it's not made anywhere else. Today, there is only one manufacturing plant for this cheese, in the canton of Glarus, run by Geska A.G. since 2000.

It comes in very small forms, each only 100g, and here it is, looking smart in its classic green and white box, I remember it from the time I was a kid (and I won't tell you how long ago that was!):

It is a dry, skim cow milk cheese flavored with a special herb called blue fenugreek that is (surprisingly) also widely used in Georgian cuisine. The plant blooms in June and looks very pretty:

Schabziger reportedly was first made by monks in the 8th century. The exact specification on how to make this cheese was laid down during a cantonal assembly in 1463. As noted by Wikipedia, the cheese from that moment, bore a stamp of origin, making it one of the earliest protected brands in the world.

This so-called "green Swiss cheese" is in fact little known outside of Switzerland. The only two countries where it sells are Germany and the Netherlands though it is commercialized in the United States under the brand name of Sap Sago. Nobody knows why, possibly a corruption of the way the name sounds in German or a reference to "sap" as in tree sap, the vital lymph. Apparently it was brought to America in the 19th century and sold in New York pharmacies, thus presumably seen as having a medicinal value - which indeed it has, since it is very low in fats. But that may also be a reason why its use remained limited, since it was associated with medical use rather than seen as a normal food.

It is normally grated, mixed with butter and spread on bread. But I thought there should be other ways to use it. I googled some recipes and the best site I came across is this one run by Geska, click here to see the website and here to download their best pdf brochure. 

But I thought I'd experiment, using Italian products like mascarpone. One obvious use for Schabziger is to sprinkle it over Fettucine all'Alfredo, replacing the grated Parmesan. But I thought I'd try it over boiled potatoes. So here is the dish I concocted last Sunday, really simple to do: 

Ingredients for 4 persons

• 1 form Schabziger, grated 
• 5 medium-sized potatoes, boiled and peeled 
• 150 g Mascarpone (or any other available cream cheese) 
• butter 
• 1 clove garlic, peeled 
• grated nutmeg 
• breadcrumbs (as needed to cover the dish)  
• pepper and (optional) very little salt (remember the Schabziger cheese is salty even though the Mascarpone isn't)

Method:

1. Rub a pyrex dish (that goes in the oven) with a garlic clove, then butter it. 

2. Slice the boiled potatoes (thick slices) and lay in the dish

3. Mix the mascarpone with enough milk to make it a little creamier and add the grated Schabziger and a pinch of nutmeg

4. Cover with breadcrumbs and dot with butter

5. In a warm oven for ten minutes, then turn on the grill until a golden crust is formed. 

Here it is, enjoy!

Tastes great, it accompanies beautifully any roast meat and is even good by itself with a nice glass of red wine!


 

Shrimps in White Wine with Black Olives and Cherry Tomatoes

Ingredients for 4 persons

-  3 to 5 shrimps per person, depending on size.
-  cherry tomatoes: about 24
-  black olives: 1/2 cup
-  salt, pepper, a clove a garlic
-  dry white wine: one or two glasses
-  olive oil
- chopped parsley

These are the olives I used, dried in salt, they come from my olive grove in Umbria. I did them myself (takes 2 weeks in a jar) and added some lemon peels for taste:

But you can use any kind of olive you like, provided they're tasty.


Method

1. Cook the shrimps whole (unpeeled) in a pan over a fast fire, with a clove of garlic and one glass of white wine - covered, about 5 minutes, until done (they turn a nice pink).

2. Lift the shrimps out of the pan (and the garlic too) and clean them. Of course you can also serve them whole and let your guests peel them but I prefer to do the work for them - once cooled off, it's really very easy to do:

3. Meanwhile, start cooking the sauce in the pan you used to cook the shrimps (that way you start off with the shrimp cooking juices), adding again some wine, the cherry tomatoes cut in pieces, and the olives (whole):

 For extra taste, I add a spoonful of fish broth (Knorr makes a good one in powder form) but that's optional. If you do that, go easy with the salt (or it will result too salty). Add pepper.

4. When the tomatoes are cooked (they turn soft in about 5 minutes), I turn off the heat and go to the trouble of removing the tomato skins, pulling them off with a fork:

See? They're piled up in the lower right corner. But you don't need to do that if you don't want to - but in that case, you had better chop up the tomatoes more than I did (I only cut them in half).

5. Now you put the shrimps back in the sauce and warm them up on a medium heat (not too long or too strong or you'll dry up the shrimps). Add the chopped  parsley too. If the sauce looks insufficient, add a little wine until you have it nice and creamy:

6. Now you're ready to prepare the dish - laying the shrimps around rice you've previously cooked (I used Thai rice, bu any kind will do as long as it's simply boiled) and pouring the sauce over the shrimps:

This dish should be accompanied with white wine, cela va sans dire. Since I live in Italy, I drink Vermentino di Sardegna (in the picture above, it's an Aragosta, the best one in my opinion). But of course any good dry white wine will be perfect!

Of the Importance of Parsley in Sauces and Soups

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One person in my family, very dear to me, hates parsley - this post therefore is not for him!

Unless you're absolutely allergic to the idea of using parsley, here are some suggestions for parsley-based sauces and soups.


One of the most famous one is the Italian Salsa Verde or Green Sauce, a superb parsley-based sauce that accompanies perfectly boiled meat or fish - and there are of course French and German versions as well. Then in Lebanese cuisine, parsley is, as everybody knows, an essential ingredient in Tabbouleh or bulgur salad (along with mint, of course).

You can find these recipes all over the place on Internet or in a library.

But what I want to do here is to tell you about an interesting MEDIEVAL GREEN SAUCE of my own. Another example of serendipity in cooking!

I found my inspiration in French cookbooks on medieval cooking, and if you look at the originals you'd be amazed how our ancestors had neat ways of making sauces for their meat and fish. And naturally, parsley entered in nearly all of them. Unfortunately other ingredients did too and they're hard to find in modern markets. So I ended up with a parsley-based sauce that I use on all sorts of meat and fish. Most recently, I poured it over cold, thin slices of roast turkey (cooked the day before) and served it at room temperature, with extra sauce in a gravy boat. It was a real success with my friends! Of course, the same meat could have been served hot, with the sauce warmed just so, taking care NOT to boil it or it loses all its flavour!

Ingredients:
- 2 thick slices of bread, white or whole meal is fine but the bread should be tasty!
- 1 small glass of dry white wine (alternatively: a tablespoon of white vinegar but it's less refined); you can add a tablespoon of Porto or Madeira if
- 1/2 cup of consommé or meat broth (if you make the sauce to accompany meat; use fish broth to accompany fish). You can use Knorr-type cubes or powder, but make sure you put enough in: you shouldn't need to use salt in this recipe.
- A VERY large bunch of parsley: the more, the better
- one spoonful olive oil
- Pepper to taste (I always put it in abundantly - it exalts flavours)

Method:

It's really simple, no cooking required.

Soak the bread in water and squeeze it dry. Put all the ingredients in a blender and chop up fine and voilà, it's done!

Soups all gain by having a sprinkling of parsley on them, but then, for real parsley lovers, there's... the GREEN SOUP!
Yummy!!
It's just loaded with parsley - literally, two handfuls! Btw, it's not medieval, and it is inspired by the Belgian chervil soup. Since I live in Rome and there's no chervil (cerfeuil in French) here, I use Italian parsley. You know what I mean: the flat kind.

Ingredients for 4 persons
1 big potato
1 small carrot
2 celery branches (be careful to remove the strings!)
1 big white onion
1 leek (white part only)
Bouillon cube to taste
Fresh parsley: at least 2 handfuls (remove most of the thick stems, try only using the leaves)

Method
Peel and cube the vegetables. Throw them in pot, cover with water, add bouillon cube and bring to boil with the lid on - then simmer covered, until the vegetables are soft and ready to be puréed in your mixer, or whatever you use to purée your stuff.

As you finish puréing (and make sure it's turned creamy on you) add the parsley and give it another swirl until the parsley is finely chopped and your soup, originally white, has turned green.

Don't cook anymore: just warm up and serve, so that the fresh taste of parsley is preserved!

Post-scriptum: The illustration I used is chervil...not parsley! Sorry if I played a trick on you, but it's such a pretty illustration, don't you think?



 

Why Another Blog on Cooking...

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Or should I say "cuisine"? Sounds better.

Those of you who follow me know that I started a blog some 9 months ago to vent out ... no, not just my frustrations but my opinions about what's going on in the world. Lots of things are going wrong and certainly deserve a comment. So I'll keep doing that in my original blog where you'll find everything about economics and politics: http://claudenougat.blogspot.com  
 Now retitled: Claude Nougat - It's Political, it's Artsy!


And here? You'll find everything about cooking. 

Well, not quite everything but actually what I've learned over 40 years of cooking for family and friends both here in Europe where I now live (mainly Italy) and over there in America where I began my adult life. 

Those of you who have followed me on my other blog will find some of the recipes I've published there. I thought it would be more convenient to have them all in one place, plus of course new ones - little by little as they occur to me, and depending on the changes in season and, of course, on bouts of serendipity! 

I'm a great believer in serendipity in the kitchen. My recipes, more often than not, tend to depend on what I happen to have in the icebox or come across at the market...And I do welcome suggestions! Food can always be improved with a little imagination. Cuisine, both high (the French and Chinese variety) and low (everyday "square" meals), is definitely one of the main things that distinguish us humans from our animal friends. I do have fantasy when I cook but I don't claim to have a fantasy that exhausts all the possibilities...

I'm also a great believer in METHODS: what makes food really good is more the result of HOW it is done than of WHAT ingredients go into the recipe - what I call "tricks in cooking", something that is often skipped over in cookbooks. 

This said, the QUALITY of the ingredients is fundamental and not something you can skimp on. I also happen to be a great believer in bio-food not so much because I'm against modern agriculture or an avid fan of green agriculture, but because all those chemicals that are put in to grow food fast and make it look pretty is generally achieved at the expense of TASTE. 

And, I suspect, HEALTH. No one has yet proved there is a link between hormones, fertilizer use and obesity in humans, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day such a link is found. How come the hormones in our fattened-up beef don't get transmitted to us when we eat the meat, causing similar (fattening) results? So better safe than sorry, and to the extent possible, I like to stick to traditional, chemical free ingredients. Like olive oil for frying...

That's the kind of philosophy I bring into the kitchen and I hope that many of you will follow me and enjoy the recipes I'm proposing here.

Please join and make comments, add to my recipes, enrich this blog. After all, food is fundamental, it's about LIFE!

Melanzane alla Parmigiana: Cooking Tricks to Make it Perfect!

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I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm convinced that cooking METHODS are far more important than actual recipes if you want to be known among your friends as a "good cook".

Unfortunately, most cookbooks don't give you the tricks of the trade.


No, that's not quite right: some cookbooks do, but they rarely tell you everything. There are cooking secrets so well kept that they never, ever surface anywhere!

That's the case with melanzane alla parmigiana, a cheese and eggplant dish that is a classic of Italian cuisine. In most restaurants, it's a disaster. Lukewarm, oily, swimming in old tomato sauce with gooey cheese that gets stuck in your teeth. Actually the cheese - usually slices of mozarella - tastes of nothing at all. And that yellow and black stuff in the middle, that feels like a greasy sponge, is (presumably) eggplant. Poor eggplant...

Once, a long time ago, in a small trattoria in the countryside near Naples, I had a superb melanzane alla parmigiana. Nothing was oily or tasteless about it, the eggplant had an amazingly light texture, almost like a soufflé, the cheese was flavourful, the tomato fresh. It was made in heaven!

It took me all of twenty years to figure out how that was done. I've asked Italian friends, I've tried every possible variant. And I kept running into the same problems: too much oil was absorbed by the eggplant when I fried it, too much water oozed out of the mozzarella while it cooked in the oven, the tomato sauce was either flat-tasting or overwhelming. I tried grilling the eggplant instead of frying it, on the theory that it wouldn't - by definition - absorb any oil and that it would be good for you. A light diet and all that. Well, let me tell you, using grilled eggplant slices is a sorry substitute. The slices go dry on you as they grill away,and there's not a chance you'll ever get that fluffy wonder that makes all the difference.

So here is how to do it and get super results (in my humble opinion):

Ingredients for 4 persons:

- One very large eggplant or 2 medium
- A cupful of tomatoes very red and ripe
- 150 g mozzarella cheese
- 150 g grated parmigiano cheese or more - to taste
- basil leaves
- salt and pepper as needed
- Olive oil to fry the eggplants - enough for deep-frying, exactly as for French fries

Method

Turn the oven high - on 6 or whatever heat you use to roast a chicken.

Get your ingredients ready:

1. To prepare the eggplant: peal away most of the skin leaving only a few strips then cut it in thick slices and lay on a reclining dish; sprinkle with salt and let it ooze out for about 30 minutes (this serves to get rid of the bitter taste some eggplants may have);

2. To prepare the tomatoes: the tastiest are the cherry tomatoes which you can cut up in very small pieces (at least 4 pieces out of each cherry tomato); alternatively, drop very red, ripened tomatoes in boiling water for one minute, pull out once the skin has broken, cool under cold water and peel them, breaking them up in pieces; in both cases, set the tomatoes aside in a bowl with salt, pepper and basil leaves to flavour them;

3.To prepare the mozzarella cheese, slice it and squeeze it to get most of the water out; don't worry if it breaks up, it doesn't matter; set it to drip dry in a colander;

4. Now for the most difficult part of the recipe. Heat olive oil in a big pot; make sure there's enough oil to cover the eggplant slices abundantly. I always use olive oil for frying, it's better for your health, it doesn't burn so easily and you can use it again at least once (if you haven't allowed it to burn!), AND it leaves a nice taste in your mouth - indispensable for Italian food.

Dry the eggplant with a paper towel and quickly roll the slices in flour: the flouring will create a thin protective crust once the eggplant hits the boiling oil and thus prevent it from absorbing too much oil (if you ever try to fry eggplant without flouring first, you'll see what happens, they become soggy with oil). So, once the oil is really hot (but not smoking!), shake off any extra flour and drop the eggplant slices one by one. Now you have to stay over your boiling oil with a spatula or some such to turn the slices and make sure they cook evenly to a golden colour; lift them out to dry on a paper towel.

5. Last step in the recipe but the most important one: putting it all together in a pyrex dish to go in the oven. This is where it is easy to make mistakes: it has to be done in a certain way and that's what makes the difference. Let me be very, very clear:
a. Start with a layer of eggplant slices and set some tomatoes around them, making sure you're lifting the tomatoes out of the juice they've spewed out, and if needed, squeezing them as dry as you can (you don't want extra liquid here!).
b. Over the slices sprinkle generously grated parmigiano cheese - because, remember, it's in the name: even though you have mozzarella in the recipe, it's the parmigiano that does it!
c. Then slices (or pieces) of mozzarella wrung dry and make sure to top them with parmigiano cheese; add pepper to taste (no salt is needed because the parmigiano is salty);
d. Start again with a, b, c - you  need at least two layers like this and better still if you can make three. Top it off with the remaining tomatoes and basil leaves. If they fall on the side, it doesn't matter.

Put 20 minutes in the oven (middle rack), until the cheese is soft and the parmigiano on top has turned slightly golden. Wait for it to cool down before serving. It tastes better when it's not too hot.

Do let me know how it worked for you!

Chicken Soup Medieval Style

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This is a plain, simple recipe, far away from Nouvelle Cuisine and inspired from an older time than Escoffier and classical cuisine - much older, the Middle Ages actually.

Two years ago, as we spent a couple of weeks in Touraine going around all the various Renaissance castles and gardens, I came across some neat restaurants serving medieval cuisine (or so they pretended!). I was so intrigued that I picked up a couple of cookbooks about medieval cuisine to study it.



Fascinating! Not everything our forefathers ate six hundred years ago is good or in line with contemporary tastes but it's worth digging into.


It would seem that much of medieval cuisine was characterized by a lavish use of meat broths variously done and lots and lots of herbs. And for making sauces, medieval cooks tended to use bread as a thickener rather than wheat flour as we do now. Chinese cuisine of course uses corn flour to thicken gravies - possibly rice flour in older-style recipes - and it would seem natural that Europeans should have used bread, the classic food of Western civilization. Some of them still do, for example the Spaniards when they make Gazpacho which, as everyone knows, is thickened with bread.

By the way, if you try to use bread as a thickener, I've noticed through trial and error that the traditional method for thickening Gazpacho - slices of stale bread soaked in water and then squeezed dry before adding to the vegetable mix - is by far the best. Any short cut you might be tempted to use, such as throwing slices of bread directly in the mix and then reduce everything to a pulp,doesn't give a satisfactory result: your soup or sauce might present itself as thick as you might want it to be, but you'll find it hard to digest. I don't know why, but the step of soaking bread in water and squeezing it dry is somehow essential. Maybe with the water running off, it gets rid of some indigestible elements in the bread (perhaps yeast?), but whatever it is, it makes quite a difference for your internal hydraulics!

Now to my recipe. I use no oil of any kind to cook it - only add a little olive oil at the end when it's done. As to the ingredients, they're very simple: a chicken in pieces (I use only the breast, whole, but you can put in legs or whatever you like) and every fresh vegetable you can find...

It's a little like the Irish Stew in Three Men in a Boat where the dog adds a rat he found floating in the Thames (and that's when you realize half-way through the book that the protagonists are not four but really three men in a boat as in the title - the fourth voice belonging to the dog!). Well, I'm not suggesting you add a rat to it, but it's important to use vegetables that are in season. It's a medieval recipe after all, and they didn't transport exotic produce from abroad. Speaking of exotic produce, that's why potatoes or tomatoes are optionals: medieval cooks probably didn't use them but I do simply because I love them and I am no purist: I'll tweak any recipe to make it better tasting!

Here is the way I did it yesterday (for 3 to 4 persons). I served it lukewarm and it was just the right thing for a summer evening. But it would work equally well in winter if you served it piping hot.


Ingredients:
- 250 g or half-a-pound of chicken meat or more if desired in big pieces (I used breast and cut it in 4 chunks)
- 1 big onion chopped plus 3 or 4 spring onions whole
- 1 leek in chunks
- 1 big carrot scraped and cut in thick slices
- 1 or 2 large potatoes peeled and cubed
- 2 celery stems in chunks
- 4 or 5 big pieces of cauliflower (that's an important medieval type veggie - can be replaced by any sort of cabbage)
- 1 large tomato peeled and cut in 4 pieces or use a handful of cherry tomatoes whole (they're very tasty when cooked and to make it easy to peel, throw them in together with the other veggies without peeling them; let them boil a couple of minutes then fish them out with a slotted spoon; run cold water over them to cool them down and peel off the skin: it comes off very easily; at that point slice them in half and return to the soup)
- 1 zucchini in big chunks
- Some green beans cut in pieces, fresh peas, watercress or spinach leaves or whatever greens you may have at hand (you need a green touch for your eyes...and taste!)
- salt and pepper (instead of salt I use a Knorr cube or you can add consommé or ready-made chicken broth - whatever broth works best for you but not too much of it: remember you've got chicken meat in your soup, and you don't want to smother your chicken!)

To thicken and finish the soup:

- Parsley, lots of it (a handful!)
- 2 Bread slices soaked in water and squeezed dry
- 1 spoonful of wine vinegar (to taste)
- 1 spoonful olive oil (to taste)

Method

This is the big difference with the way one makes Italian Minestrone (where you start off by frying onion in olive oil and then add the vegetables): here, you put all the vegetables together in your pot and you barely cover with cold water. Flavour it with either salt and pepper or broth, but always remember to grind pepper from your pepper mill (the industrial ground variety has little flavour).

Bring to a boil and at that point add the chicken meat making sure it is immediately covered in the boiling liquid and turns white (this prevents the meat juice from escaping and turning the meat dry). Let everything simmer with a lid half on. It will cook very quickly - in about 20 minutes (I like my veggies slightly crisp and in any case chicken meat cooks fast - you don't want to overcook or everything will get stringy and sad-looking).

When it's done, you'll notice you have a soup with little liquid - that's the way it should be and DON'T ADD water! This isn't really a soup - more like a stew and now you need to thicken that liquid. Ladle some of it into your osterizer where you've placed the bread and parsley and switch the machine on, pouring from the top a little vinegar and oil. Taste and see if you like it. It has to have a fresh taste, the way Gazpacho does (it's the vinegar that does it) but not too much.

Then put it back in your pot and swirl it. And don't cook it anymore or you'll lose the fresh flavour of the parsley. Serve it in a deep earthenware dish if you've got one (that makes it look more medieval), taking care to place the pieces of chicken in the middle so people can see them and easily help themselves.

As I said before, if it's summer, don't heat it up: it's very nice at room temperature. And it certainly makes the life of a hostess easier when she's got guests to look after!

P.S. You can experiment with additional herbs other than parsley (for example tarragon). Let me know how it comes out!

P.P.S. Since it's a cross between a soup and a stew, I think a new word should be made up for it: a chicken "stoup" or "stoop"...How does that strike you?

Melted Scamorza Cheese with Ham and Mushrooms

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Heard about serendipity in cooking? No? Well, this is an example.

Today I hit upon a new way to do an old Italian favorite: melted scamorza, and I want to tell you about it.

And write about it here so I remember!


I tend to invent dishes as a function of what I happen to find (and don't find) in my icebox, and sometimes, by chance, I hit on a winner! But then, if I don't write it down somewhere quick, I forget all about it.

I suspect scamorza is not an easy cheese to find outside of Italy: it's similar to mozzarella, but aged some more and therefore it doesn't shed all that water when it melts. It comes in two varieties: plain and smoked (affumicata).

I prefer the plain, my husband the smoked variety but it doesn't really matter. Both are good and easy to cook. Just throw them in a frying pan, let them melt on medium-high heat and flip them over so that they are nicely golden on both sides. It takes a couple of minutes.

Easy? You bet. And if you haven't got scamorza you can do it with almost any semi-creamy cheese at hand, even Camembert or Brie (cut in thick slices - leave the skin on, it has a nice taste).

What did I do today that was different? Simple, I added mushrooms and ham, and when I was finished it looked very unusual and pretty, and the tastes of ham and mushrooms really complemented the cheese.


I happened to have some already cooked sliced mushrooms at hand (they were plain, pan-fried) and a couple of cooked ham slices - but you could use equally well any other kind of ham, including smoked ham.

First step. I grabbed my scissors and cut the ham up in short strips, which I threw into a grease-free frying pan (the Teflon type)over a medium fire, letting them fry (without fat - that's important) until they started to dry (don't toast too much or else the ham strips curl up, shrink and become too salty). By the way, fried ham this way is something I always use in lieu of bacon: much less fat and better for you health. Also it gives a more delicate taste to almost any dish that you'd normally do with bacon.

Second step. Add the mushrooms and chunks of cheese artfully, so that the cheese is in direct contact with the pan, and prettily surrounded by the mushrooms and ham. And proceed as usual: keep frying until the cheese is golden underneath. Don't bother to flip the cheese over but make sure it's soft all the way through.

Et voilà! Slide into a (previously heated) serving dish and serve.

Presto fatto. Tell me how you like it!

About Fish Soups: the Tricks to Make a Super Soup!

Image via Wikipedia Here are some thoughts on how fish soup is made in European cuisine.

Sounds boring?

No, believe me, it's a fascinating subject. Fish soup is immensely varied across the continent, using as it necessarily does, local ingredients.


Btw, I am excluding here any mention of fish soups made elsewhere around the globe: that would deserve another post.

But consider Europe for a moment. The Russians will make fish soup with cabbage and beetroot, the Belgians with leeks and celery, the Italians with tomato and any number of Mediterranean herbs. Everybody of course makes fish soup with onions and...fish. Plus any seafood available, if they happen to be near the sea.

Don't be discouraged by this tremendous variety. First it's fun! And then, there is some definite aggregation of the data around a few basic models. You have essentially a Northern fish soup and a Southern one - plus possibly an Eastern one. When you need to decide on a recipe to follow, it's useful to keep in mind the differences, so that you don't make a mess of whatever fish soup you're doing.

Because these models don't mix. No tomatoes or olive oil should ever go into a "Northern Soup", and no leeks and cream into a "Southern Soup". The Eastern model is less rigorously defined, but certain mixtures are not allowed even here: for example, never mix butter and olive oil in the same recipe, you either go for the one or the other - that is, if you want to be true to the spirit of that cuisine. If not, feel free to sprinkle chocolate everywhere!

The ingredients going into any of these soups have to do with what is available locally all year round, and especially in the "off-season" (i.e. winter). I suspect that is what historically makes any given recipe different from all others: for centuries, people have been making food with the ingredients they found easily around them, and therefore those particular recipes, so often repeated through the years, became, as it were, the "standard".

Take the Northern Soup: the Belgian fish Waterzoie is an excellent example, based as it is on local produce - leeks, onions, celery and potatoes. Likewise the Southern Soup, whether it is the French Provençal Bouillabaisse or the Italian zuppa di pesce. Both have onion, garlic, tomatoes and no potatoes - which is of course not surprising. Potatoes are a quintessentially northern staple.

So what makes a fish soup really good, whether it is Northern, Southern or Eastern ? Any recipe book worth its name will give you the ingredients and a method to follow. You don't need me for that. Go look for whatever you want on Internet or buy a cookbook in a store. But in order to decide whether to follow a recipe and to be sure the results are going to be good, you need some evaluation criteria. This is where I come in and I wanted to share my experience with you. I follow some general rules in preparing fish soup that I have found over time to give the best results both in terms of flavour and health.


Yes, that's right: health. What's good for your health is important too! A recipe that calls for wallops of cream and glasses of olive oil is to be avoided like the plague: it's guaranteed to make you bloat up! It is a matter of common sense. You can follow the recipe but CUT DOWN on the amount of fat suggested: if it says two tablespoons, use one. And to avoid burning ingredients you don't need all that fat. An easy solution is to use teflon-coated pans, but you know that already, I'm sure.

Something else is useful to cut the amount of fats in fish soup: whenever a recipe suggests you start off by frying chopped onions or grated garlic in oil or butter and then throw the fish pieces in to cook them, DON'T DO IT! This business about starting with fried onions (or whatever mixture of vegetables, such as a mirepoix) is for the birds (and most certainly not for fish!) - and that's also true of vegetable minestrone, by the way. I have found that it is absolutely unnecessary from the standpoint of taste. On the contrary, unless you go very, very light on the amount of onions you use and ensure it only turns translucent and never burns, you risk inflicting a strong, unwelcome taste to your soup: it won't taste fresh! And I would take a step further: too much butter or oil in any recipe, especially if it is fried, coats the ingredients with its own taste, preventing the basic flavour of whatever you're cooking to come through, whether fish, vegetable or meat.


For me, that's a GOLDEN RULE: use as little fat as you can to cook and if possible, add it only at the end, after the cooking is done. A spoonful of fresh, uncooked olive oil goes much further to give taste to you soup if you put it in at the end of the cooking process than if you use a whole glassful at the beginning! Ditto for butter.

So how do I prepare my fish soup? Simple, no frying, just cover with water. Not plain water. You need to add salt and pepper, or better , use fish broth instead of water. Fish broth is easy: nowadays you don't need to make it anymore, it comes in cubes (for example Knorr's) ready to be dissolved in water. And I mean COVER your ingredients - just so. Do not exceed with liquid but make sure your soup doesn't dry out! To do this, there are two ways: either a slow fire and a lid on your pot, or a strong flame and no lid. In the latter case, you have to stick around to make sure nothing burns. That's what I do because it cooks faster, and I don't like to waste time in the kitchen. Plus I can control the degree of doneness of the ingredients.

The degree of doneness? That's crucial to make a good fish soup. Much depends on how fresh your ingredients are and obviously your soup will only be as good as whatever you put in it. The fresher, the better but I'm not telling you anything you don't know. What is important, and not so obvious, is the SEQUENCE in which ingredients are dropped into the boiling pot. Start with the vegetables and make sure they are only HALF-COOKED BEFORE throwing in the fish. That's the key, because fish - even crustaceans, clams, shrimps, calamars and the like - cook very, very fast. If you cook these marine little things too long they curl up and dry on you, they become hard to chew and lose their flavour. Overcooking is the death of any good fish soup (or for that matter of any fish preparation). In my experience, the fish in a fish soup cooks UNDER FIVE MINUTES.

Basically making a fish soup is very easy. You first cook the vegetables that give flavour to your soup in a minimum of salted water, or better still fish broth. When the vegetables are half-way there, you throw in the fish. You bring it all back to boiling and then, after one minute or less, turn it off. Put a lid on it for another five minutes max.


Serve hot with croutons or toasted bread rubbed with garlic if it's a Southern Soup. Or swirl in it half-a-glass of cream with the juice of a half-lemon and one egg yolk beaten into it if it's a Northern Soup. I have no special advice for Estearn Soup except to add at the last minute either Paprika or fennel seed - to taste.

The results of following this procedure? Superlative! Ok, I know I sound like I'm bragging but I'm not. Just ask my family and friends. I've had people who hate fish soup (my own mother is one) literally dig into mine. And a very satisfying result this is for the cook!
If you have cooking tips regarding fish,as I'm sure you do, I would love to hear them, and do let me know if my tips have helped you!

Because, bottom line, I believe the secret of good food is less in the inventiveness of a recipe's ingredients than in following a correct procedure that preserves the original taste of every ingredient. It's more a matter of HOW you do it than of WHAT's in it!