Ramen. Summer style

By default the hot summer days tend to suppress cravings for warm, soft, and usually heavy comfort food. The warmth of the air takes the role of comforting, freeing food from its responsibility and opening the door for experimental attempts, like preparing ‘Hiyashi-chuka', a cold ramen noodle from scratch (Including jumping on the dough for 15 minutes to form the gluten that gives the dough and thus the noodles, elasticity). 

Such an endeavor took most of the morning and early afternoon, during which people came and left, bottles of prosecco were emptied, and the sound of empty stomachs was getting louder.

Alas, when ready the plate was a technicolor  display of cold ramen noodles, stacked with thin slices of tamagoyaki (a Japanese omelet), shitake mushrooms, poached chicken, carrots, cucumbers, sprouts, lettuce, cured meat and ginger, all of which echoed the noodle form. A dressing of sesame, soy, miso- esque sauce helped to wash it all down in a steady rhythmic motion . Why, it was like summer in a bowl.

Dessert, in keeping with the theme, was strawberry Daifuku Mochi. Mildly sweet, the Daifuku is a strawberry coated in Azuki (red bean paste), and glutinous rice dough capturing within it a pleasing stickiness, a gentle sweetness and a balancing tartness, all of which benefit from the pairing of a whipped cream and a pot of green tea.

We thought 1 each would be more then enough. 

We finished the entire plate. 

A Saturday has gone by.

Coffee. Variations on a theme

1 coffee. 1 shot. 1 espresso. 1 Euro.

Espresso, Multi- way, made easy:

Café lungo

Café normale

Café shakerata

Café macchiato

Café con ghiaccio

Café cortado

Macchiato lungo

All the same. All different.

Why I love this place.

Veneto

The 24 of us are now used to sharing the confined space of the bus. It is a quiet journey. 5 days in Veneto, highlights in pictures.

Perbellini, a modest looking pasticceria on the outside is a mammoth factory behind the scenes. Our visit coincided with the making of millefoglie; layers of butter filled pastry spread with thick whipped cream and amaretti crumbs, then coated in more whipped cream and crumbs. That’s plenty of cream, butter and sugar. There were also éclairs, colorful pastries, custards of sorts, cakes, creams and biscuits. The tour ended with a tasting of all the pastries on show, served with bottles of coke and sweetened coffee. No. more. Sweet. 

A typical Padovan street food is the squid poached in wine and seasoned with garlic, olive oil, and lemon. The squid is fished out of the steel cooker onto a plastic plate, its arms and tentacles chopped, as well as the head, revealing the less appetizing brain and innards. This is accompanied with bread designed to soak up all the juices and remaining sauce.  Cunning.

Melotti rice farm, La Montecchia winery, San Cassiano winery and olive oil producer, Bertani winery, Albertini restaurant, Sorelle Bronca winery,  32 Via de Birrai, Bibanesi artisanal grissini company.

Food miles Brunch

A sunny Saturday, the first weekend of June.

The morning began with an Arancini, an orange size and color deep fried ball of rice filled with cooked ham and mozzarella. This was the fuel that provided us with enough energy to arrive at the organic Market for the weekly dose of good old organic Cannolo. Within minutes of arrival we found ourselves sitting outside a café, enjoying the morning sun with espresso and fresh cannoli, living the dream.

We headed home, weighed down by our goods filled bags and began the mission of preparing brunch. Fast-forward to several hours later of peeling, boiling, frying, chopping, squeezing, poaching and drizzling in a kitchen far too small to occupy more then one person, and brunch was ready.

Kicked off with a Mojito, there was rice cooked in asparagus and vegetable broth, laid on a bed of green leaves and topped with a poached egg (naturally) and Sriracha sauce. A spicy apricot ginger salad, a speck coleslaw, a Burrata, (a form of insanity, this is a fresh cheese made of mozzarella and cream. While the outer shell is solid Mozzarella, the inside a creamy stratchiatella), a Tete de Moine, A pecorino, fried Plantains wrapped with prosciutto, pork fried with Yuzu, Baklava, an organic Nutella ice cream and ricotta pancakes topped with red bean paste and strawberry, green tea and plain whipped cream.

While none of the dishes were local, the ingredients covered all the continents, with Indian spices, a Cretan phyllo pastry, hazelnuts from Sicily, green tea and red beans from Japan, rum from Cuba, cheese from Switzerland, to name but a few.

The food miles on the table were out of control. They could be regarded as seasonal and local SOMEWHERE in the world, just not necessarily close to Parma… but that was where they all found themselves , plump, crisp and ready to be eaten, laid out on a sunny Saturday in the first weekend of June.

Here is the recipe of the ricotta pancakes topped with red bean paste and strawberry, green tea and plain whipped cream I prepared with Naoya, to satisfy my Azuki paste craving.

Ricotta pancakes with Azuki bean paste and 3 whipped creams

(based on Nigella’s Ricotta hotcakes, makes about 25)

For the pancakes

250 grams fresh sheep’s milk ricotta

½ cup semi skimmed milk

2 large eggs, separated

100 grams flour

1Tsp baking powder

pinch salt

butter for frying

For the whipped cream

Whipped cream

Matcha green tea*

Strawberies

Azuki red bean paste**

The pancakes

Put the ricotta, milk and egg yolks into a bowl and mix well to combine. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt and gently whist to make smooth batter.

Beat the egg whites until they become foamy. Fold into the ricotta mixture.

Heat a little batter in a frying pan and drop heaped dessertspoons of batter.

Cook for about 1 minute until golden then flip them over and cook another minute.

The whipped cream

Divide the whipped cream into 3 bowls. Puree the strawberries, (sweeten to taste if needed) and stir into 1 bowl.

Dilute a teaspoon of Matcha powder in a little water and blend until smooth. Stir into to the second bowl of whipped cream and blend until smooth.

Serve the pancakes, Azuki paste and whipped cream for an individual assembly.

* Matcha green tea comes in powder form and can be purchased online and in specialty shops.

**  The Azuki bean is boiled with sugar then made into a paste. Can be purchased online and in specialty shops.Instruction to make your own bean paste can be found here

Italian Sabich

I had a craving the other day. For Sabich. Say what? Precisely. 

The fried aubergine, French fries, hard boiled egg and salad in a tahini and Amba dripping white flour pita bread, Sabich???  I actually managed to crave a dish I never had in my life and one of the staple street- foods the Israeli cuisine has to offer. I simply never allowed myself to have it.

I like holidays mainly because of the food. Any holiday, any reason, any religion,  is a good enough a reason to prepare, cook and eat, so how convenient that this week was Shavu’ot! 

I decided to make my version of a Sabich, a la Italiana, as any attempt to cook any food in Italy undergoes a modification process in order to adapt to the available ingredient, giving any dish that local terroir  twist.

It may be a valid point that eating Mexican in a pizzaria in Crete is a syndrom of what is wrong with our food culture, but cook any dish particular to a place outside of its context and you have just fused 2 food cultures to an honest expression of a new reality. For example, lets take Indian food. I already did this week. Parma is known for its cuisine, as long as its Parmesan cuisine. Steer away to a side road in search of other food and you’re in no man’s land. On Friday Kate and I decided to splash out and get an Indian take out from THE Indian restaurant. The only one.

We walked in and ordered the dishes we recited excitedly on our way, as this was going to be a festive fiesta of curry and rice, spinach and paneer, dahl and chapatti, whatever the cost.

The menu states Indian dishes that are made to fit the Italian perception of food. Primi, primi secondo, main course, etc. again, strange. Its almost unlikely Italians go here, and if they did, surely they understand and for that reason go to, an Indian restaurant, in which they will not be served anything remotely close to Italian food. And yet the menu is dressed up in Italian outfit, made to feel familiar and less intimidating..

We took our dinner home, aluminum take-out containers, wrapped in cling film and then foil, clearly, this system has room for improvement. We ate our dinner with a good wine from Piedmont, as this was a special dinner. An Indian Take-out dinner. This was a ‘good china dinner’. A take- out curry put on a pedestal.

How removed an experience is this from a curry take-out in London, or NY? It’s the parallel universe of the order of things, turned inside out and spoken in Italian.

sabich, Essentially, a meal in a bread. 

the Ingredients required for a self assembly of a Sabich are as follows:

A flour tortilla

A chopped salad (copped tomatoes, cucumbers, raw onion, parsley seasoned with S/P, olive oil and lemon)

Olive oil Roast potatoes ( my method involves steaming potatoes in their own juices, then roasting them in sizzling olive oil, seasoned with S/P and paprika.)

Hard-boiled egg, sliced

Roasted aubergine salad

Tahini

Sriracha chili sauce

Once all the ingredient are prepared, pile them on the tortilla. You should be looking as a colorful assembly of goodness. There is no way you can fold it close, so give up trying, improvise a way to lift it of the plate, and reach out to it.

I don’t know what the real stuff tastes like, but I have satisfied my craving for it. 

Vanilla Ricotta Gelato with Strawberries

Its only May and already its far too hot. Following my recent visit to Bologna, the capital of Gelati, and Sicily, the capital of sugar it was time to experiment with the frozen crystals. My way. 

A dusty old ice cream machine that was laying around in the kitchen must have been left by a previous student. It was either too heavy or broken. Too lazy to figure out which it is, I let Chris test it. He took it home and nursed it as if it was a kitten off the street. He gave it a good scrub, plugged it in and made a test batch.

After it received the all clear I came in the picture. First we tracked down the right recipe. We wanted a gelati made without the use of eggs or cream that we could use as a base for any flavor we chose.

On Saturday morning we headed to Parma’s organic market to check the local, seasonal produce. We bought fresh sheep's- milk ricotta and strawberries, I had a vanilla pod and we stopped by the raw milk machine for a top up of the white stuff (raw unpasteurized milk).

We ended up making a ricotta vanilla gelato served with strawberries and chocolate shavings. It was surprisingly easy to make, so much so that we were both left quite shocked from the whole experience. It almost qualifies as a life changing food experience.

The recipe is based on a David Leibowitz’s recipe for a Sicilian style gelato, using cornstarch to enrich the base and NO EGGS. I take a minimalist approach to a recipe and this one has only the bare essentials; ricotta, milk, vanilla, sugar and (the secret ingredient) corn starch, resulting in a lighter ice cream, with an intense flavor. It almost seems unnecessary to have eggs and cream in the ice cream after making this way…

Vanilla Ricotta Gelato with Strawberries

Adapted from David Leibowitz’s recipe. Makes about 3 cups (3/4 liter).


2 cups (½ liter) whole milk


1/2 cup (65 gr) sugar


2 tablespoons (16 gr) cornstarch (also known as corn flour)

1 vanilla bean

1 cup organic sheep’s milk ricotta

fresh strawberries, sliced


1. Mix the 1/4 cup of the milk with the cornstarch until the starch is dissolved and the mixture is smooth.

2. Heat the rest of the milk in a medium-sized saucepan with the sugar.

Split in half the vanilla bean lengthwise, scrape the seeds into the liquid then add the pod.

3. When it almost starts to boil, stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook at gentle simmer for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

4. Remove from heat, scrape into a bowl through a siv, and chill thoroughly, preferably overnight.

5. Once chilled, whisk in the ricotta until smooth.

6. Freeze the gelato in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturer's instructions.

7. Serve with sliced fresh strawberries and chocolate shavings.

Sicily, a sensory analysis

Fish

A crash course to Sicily, I have returned from 6 days on the Eastern side of the Island, consuming all that it has to offer; the sun, the food, and the passion to all things sweet.

We landed in Catania heading straight to La Pescheria, Catania’s (amazing) fish market. A whirlwind event consisting of local fishermen promoting their catch while gutting it; shiny fish so fresh a new word need inventing just for them. The Mediterranean’s best in show, it was a truly a spectacular display of sea creatures, colors, textures and tastes, with one local vendor slicing thin pieces of tuna, sword fish, raw shrimps and tiny fish for us to sample.

The next morning (or middle of the night as loud, drunk bar goers at next door to our B&B seemed to think), we hopped on a boat and sailed with the local fishermen in search of anchovies. An added bonus was the sun rise, always a spiritual experience, let alone when one is on a boat, among fishermen, at the feet of an active volcano…

Lunch that day was at Ambasciata del Mare, a restaurant in the fish market. It would not be an exaggeration to say this was probably one of the best meals I’d had in Italy, from the Technicolor sea based anti pasti bowls of goodness, to a pasta con frutti di mare, a spectacle of sea fruits gathered from the Med, and picked from the adjacent fish market hours before, finished of with a plate of sheep’s milk ricotta cannoli and tarts. The place, the service, the company and the food all came together and formed a perfect whole.

Remaining on the fish theme, there were two visits to fish farms as well as an anchovies packing factory, where we enjoyed a lunch that consisted of processed crackers topped with a wide selection of anchovies, be it salted, as paste, a pate or grilled. It was nice. It also made me very thirsty.

A new food related word: Rigor Mortis. Say that a few times.  It rolls on your tongue leaving your mouth wanting more.  It’s actually the stiffening of limbs that occurs after death. In Latin. The fish are packed in polystyrene trays arched so that once the rigor mortis kicks in they are laying in the same position. The kind of thing that we learn standing in a fish farm packing room…

Sweet

I knew prior to my arrival in Sicily that I was in the right place for dolci. With a heavy influence from the Arab ruling in the area, added with the high quality local produce of citrus groves, almonds, pistachios among many others, and a highly active local sweet tooth, it is a haven for sweet lovers. Looking at locals in cafes, morning to evening, children and elders as one were all enjoying a Granita (flavored crushed ice), topped with whipped cream, accompanied by a breast shaped giant brioche (symbolic of the local St Agatha whose breast was lopped of because of her Christian beliefs).

Then there was what must be quite a popular dish we were served for dessert in several places: Goo. Red orange, bitter lemon, almond and pistachio Goo’s to be precise. Flavored fish Gelatin.

We visited a chocolateria in Modica, specializing in Modica chocolate. Prepared based on a traditional recipe dating back to the Aztec ancient civilization and handed down by the Spaniards, it is an aromatic chocolate. Characterized by a typical sandy texture, the sensation is similar to that of biting into a chocolate bar that fell on the beach. This is due to its production method of mixing the ingredients over a low heat, resulting in the presence of sugar granules in the chocolate. Its good chocolate with a texture that may require getting used to.

A trip to the small town of Lentini was scheduled to introduce us to the local bread ‘Pane di Lentini’. Made from natural ingredients, and baked in a wood burning oven to burning almonds shells, olive and citrus, this bread left us speechless, our mouths full as we devoured the warm slices seasoned with olive oil, salt and chilli flakes. A highlight.

Let me ask you a serious question. If you were a pastry, which would it be? What form of dough baked with a sweet filling would express and stand for everything that is you?

I’ll go first. A Cannolo. Don’t ask me why. Its something that you feel, not a rational decision. So I was on a mission in Sicily. And Cannoli was it. Finding the best cannoli in town Wherever we arrived was a ritual. Small and large, lined with chocolate, sprinkled with pistachio, freshly made in a bakery, served as dessert in a restaurant, where there was Cannoli, there was me. 

Vegetables

By medieval standards regarding food and diet Sicilys’ is a ‘poor man’s diet, with its kitchen based around local fruit, vegetables, cereals and legumes. Eggplants, fava bean, ricotta, lemons, pistachios, almonds, oranges and sweet sweet tomatoes, It was all that I’d imagined Italian cuisine to be, and had finally  experienced.

Dairy

A visit to Rosario Floridia, the only remaining Modicana cow breeding farm and cheese producer we saw the grass-reared  bronze colored cows. they yield a low amount of milk which is used to produce the local Raguzano cheese. A lactic tasting lunch consisted of dense bread chunks soaked in whey and topped with warm ricotta, followed by cubes of young and mature Raguzano cheese.  Ricotta, let alone warm ricotta makes the world a better place.

The final visit on the last day was to a donkey-breeding farm. All the donkeys I have ever encountered were always badly treated, boney, sad creatures.

So a breeding farm? Donkey milk?

Then I met the donkeys. 160 of them, they were the happy healthy version of any donkey I had encountered. Friendly, affectionate creatures at ease around their owner that referred to them as his family. 

We had cookies and panna cotta, as the low fat content means it cannot be used for cheese making. Then I downed a plastic cup of the white stuff.  The milk is closest in composition to human milk, with none of the aftertaste that comes when drinking cow’s milk. I am now a convert. This calls for a revolution.