Frittata di Zucchine e Parmigiano

Frittata di Zucchine

This is the ultimate corner shop low carb classic. Heat up your grill. In a small non-stick saute pan fry off half a sliced red onion until soft (slowly), then add sliced zucchini (2 large cut into 3 mm rounds) and cook until browned. Meanwhile mix six eggs with three handfuls of parmigiano and some chopped parsely, season with black pepper. Pour mix into the pan, cook for about 5 mins on medium hob until it looks as if it is firming up, then brown under the grill for two mins. Serve with salad and a glass of white.

Pate’ di Fegatini / Crostini alla Chiantigiana

You stand over it, pondering on the soft, delicate, visceral mass and you start to feel ever so slightly nervous. Some are bright red, some dark red, some big, some small and the flesh submits to the touch. You have an epiphany that your own liver is equally as delicate, but instead of being the picture of health it is instead probably a bit ratty around the edges and you wonder about all those Sunday mornings when you can just about piece together the night before.

Fact. Once you cook with liver you start to respect your own.

Anyway.

It is technically impossible to find a restaurant in Tuscany which does not offer liver pate served on crunchy crostini.

Pate’ di Fegatini

Probably because most people absolutely detest it, chicken liver per pound is probably the cheapest and most nutritional foodstuff you can still buy for pennies.

The crostini at the back is mashed Cannelloni beans with olive oil, a hint of garlic and rosemary prepared for a girlfriend who grew up in Tuscany but who does not eat liver.

Make your crostini (stale bread, brush with olive oil and bake in the oven until light gold)

For the pate, fry the onion until soft, chuck a pound of livers in, throw in some chopped sage leaves, the juice of half a lemon. Cook through, and then blitz or run through a sieve. Season. Serve warm on the crostini.

Variations – add some chili, sweat some pancetta into the onions etc.

Brasato di manzo con i funghi (e gremolata)

This stew is so rich it could fly you to Monaco in its own spaceship.

brasato di manzo con i funghi ( e gremolata)

The freshness of the gremolata makes all the difference, cutting through and lifting the stew.

This serves about 6.

• 2.5lbs of stewing/ chuck steak, cut up into two inch lumps
• 1 bottle of strong red wine
• three or four carrots, peeled and sliced chunky
• three or four big celery sticks, cut up chunky
• three fat portobello mushrooms sliced 1.5cm
• 1 yellow onion, quartered and sliced
• two sticks of rosemary, a handful of thyme,  5 bay leaves
• four cloves of garlic
• salt, pepper

Marinate the meat in the wine and veg (including 3 garlic cloves sliced thinly) and herbs for 3 hours. Reserve the wine. Reserve the veg. Season some flour and dredge the meat. Brown the meat well in some olive oil or butter. You’ll do this in batches, so start frying off the veg, as they will need at least 10 mins on medium until softened. Chuck the browned meat into the veg, cover with wine, bring to a simmer and sling in a 150 degree oven for 3 hours or so. With an hour to go add the sliced mushroom. To serve, finely chop the zest of a lemon with a good handful of parsley and a clove of garlic. Sprinkle on top.

Remember that all stews improve with a night in the fridge.

Antipasti di vedure

Four different antipasti tonight. Take three zucchini, one melanzana and four portabello mushrooms, thinly slice (3mm-5mm),  brush on both sides with olive oil infused with parsley and garlic and then grill on a very hot pan. The melanaza was grilled and dressed with more chili.  The whole effort took about an hour while listening to the radio. Easily enough for four.

The mozzarella di bufala was marinated in olive oil, basil and chili for an hour or two and served with some very sweet tomatoes. Dress with chopped herbs and more olive oil.

The best bistecca…

Good rib of beef isn’t just for roasting, you can respect it further by cooking it on a charcoal grill. Marinate in rosemary first then give it a good char on each side. You can finish for 10 minutes in a medium oven (rare). I served thinly sliced with new potatoes and a salsa verde.

Bistecca di Manzo

Peposo & Dario Cecchini

It has taken me 6 months of sulking and kicking around to research this recipe.  I ate it in Tuscany where it was cooked for Noni and I by the famous butcher Dario Cecchini. Dario is a fierce, single minded protector of Tuscan traditions. His butcher shop and restaurant are a bastion of how food should be cooked. The lunch he made us was 8 courses of the best meat dishes I have ever eaten – around a large communal table of strangers – two doctors from Pisa, a composer and his wife and a family from nearby village. I will never forget the meal and while sleeping the wine off under a tree I made a promise to learn all of the dishes and cook them for myself. One of those dishes was Peposo.

Peposo is an umido, or stew. Actually, it is more than a stew, it is a rich, concentrated expression of beef of which there are too many versions. You serve it on toasted crusty bread with a glass of the same wine you cooked with. In its purest form it is simply seasoned meat and garlic cooked slowly in red wine. No oil, herbs, vegetables.

Antica Macelleria Cecchini

Voltaire once said – better is the enemy of good.

Two things nearly made me choke today. Whilst eating my potato rosti for breakfast, on TV a Michelin starred chef described out loud how to cook a “perfect” beef ragu by using worcester sauce, tomato ketchup, he even added that a cheese sauce is nice in lasagna.

Whilst quietly contemplating his utter ignorance, and close to drafting a letter to Michelin, I checked out Corriere della Sera the recipe for Peposo.  They awfully, wrongly, disgracefully suggest using lean beef, a splash of wine, a few pepper corns and to cook it for two hours. I am warning you all now to steer clear of this wretched Milanese rag.

If Peposo was this easy why did I bother to get up at 9am on a sunday to smash peppercorns in my pestle and mortar only to be disturbed by girlfriend moaning about a migraine. Why have I mashed a whole head of garlic and tipped a bottle and a half of a very decent Chianti into my 2kgs of beef shin meat? Why is it now wrapped up tight, cooking slowly for 10-12 hours in a very slow oven?

Why do we want to make things better and by doing so, turn it into something else? If you do – just stop calling it something which it is not.

To further understand this injustice here are the words of Dario, the legendary, eccentric butcher from Panazano.

“The story goes that maestro Filippo Brunelleschi, completely absorbed by the building of the wonderful dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence’s Cathedral), thought up a diet to give his craftsmen and labourers the energy needed to carry out their supreme task with vigour and passion.

“What is important is this fabulous beef stew that cooks slowly through the night, steeped in black pepper, garlic, sea salt, red wine, and nothing else but the magic of a hot oven. It is the very essence of Tuscan cooking: intensely flavoured, delicious, energizing, and perfect served with lots of good red wine. Meat and wine; life and life.

“May God bless you maestro Brunelleschi for having given us this fantastic dish and allowing us to dream the Tuscan dream of earthly joy with your Peposo and the breath-taking vista of your dome.

“Tuscany will always remember you as her hero, and I will know contentment every time I eat your stew. And I will think that perhaps you are looking down upon us with a haughty Tuscan smile that says, “I did it, and who could do it better?”

This is who we Tuscans are.”

You think I am compulsive about food?

Next time your are in Tuscany – go and eat with Dario… http://www.dariocecchini.com/solo_ciccia_eng.html

The recipe is simple…

2kg of beef shin meat, cubed (shin is essential as it will cook into a softer texture)

2 teaspoons of salt

3-4 tablespoons of crushed black pepper

8 cups of wine (1.5 bottles-ish)

1 head of finely chopped/ mashed garlic

Sling it all in a big pot, bring to the boil and stick it into an oven at 120 degrees C for 10 hours or until the meat has broken down and the sauce has reduced down into the meat. Serve with any kind of good toasted bread and the rest of that wine. It can also be served with any kind of baked or boiled potato, as a sauce for pasta, a filling for ravioli – and so on.

Ragù di anatra

Otherwise known as Duck Ragu. Duck legs are cheap. We are talking £1.25 for a leg. This is a blessing. There are two things in life which are bogglingly cheap and make my life better – they are duck legs and cans of Carlsberg.

Whilst my Carlsberg supply is as reliable as oxygen, duck supply can be poor at the best of times. I found 8 legs the other day in a Tesco metro and bought them all. I froze 5, roasted three for a duck salad, and we had one left. Tonight I used it making ragù di anatra – a duck meat ragu.

Duck makes a good change from beef and pork. Serves two with plenty of sauce for mopping up with bread… you could easily stretch this to four, but I am clearly a gut bucket.

First roast your single duck leg. 180 degrees for an hour. You should cook a batch of duck legs and just keep them in the fridge. You can make duck shepherds pie, duck spring rolls, duck salads (soy and honey dressing), confit, rillettes. It’s endless. The rendered fat you can freeze or store in the fridge for roasting potatoes.

Once the duck leg is roasted, rest for ten minutes then strip the meat from the bone and tear into small chunks. Take the bones and skin, crack the bones a couple of times with a knife and then simmer slowly in a small pan with about 3/4 of a pint of water with a couple of bay leaves.

While the stock is simmering, cook your soffritto. Half a large onion, celery stick and a medium carrot – finely diced and fried in a good couple of glugs of olive oil. Cook over a low heat for 10-15 minutes. As a guide to when it is done, it smells sweet and is stickier but not caremelised.

Add a glass of red wine, and reduce over a high heat for two minutes, then add the sieved stock and a tin of tomatoes, chuck in a bit of honey to take the edge off the tinned tomatoes. Check for seasoning and simmer gently for 2o minutes. Rest for twenty minutes and serve over fresh egg pasta such as tagliatelle, pappardelle or fettuccine or whatever you like.