Pasta is always a great comfort food.  Just don’t use chicken!

The world is experiencing a very difficult time right now.  I hope you are all safe, well, and staying out of public areas.  In the meantime, it seems that a lot of us are cooking up a storm.  Everyone is on the prowl for new recipes as we are having to cook far more than we did before when we were footloose and fancy-free.  This eggplant, speck, and fresh tomato sauce is very comforting to eat, and also very easy to make.  It is also very adaptable.  If you don’t have fresh tomatoes, used canned, or pureed tomatoes.  If you don’t have eggplant, try it with zucchini.  If you don’t have walnuts, just leave them out or add some other kind of nut in their place. If you don’t have speck, use bacon, or ham.  Just don’t use chicken.  Most Italians hate it when you use chicken in a pasta sauce.  I still haven’t worked out why it’s so horrendous to join chicken and pasta, but as I have an Italian living in my house, I can’t even make it behind closed doors to figure out the reason for this mysterious food rule.

To salt or not to salt

I used to always cut up my eggplant, put it in a colander with salt, then let it sit for an hour or two before using it so that all the bitterness would seep out.  It turned out that many times that I wanted to use eggplant (aubergine), I would have forgotten to do this step and then was at a loss as to what to make for the upcoming meal.  One fateful day when I felt like taking enormous risks, I just used it anyway (yes, my life is pretty low-risk, as you can see).  Do you know what?  For my taste-buds, it didn’t make one iota of difference.  From that time on, I have never salted another eggplant. It certainly made cooking life a lot simpler.  My risk-taking capacity hasn’t risen much from that moment though.  I’m still not planning to try parachuting or base-jumping any time in the near future.

Spice the sauce up!

If you like to feel the burn when you eat pasta, go ahead and sprinkle in some chili flakes.  Now, this is actually another Italian food rule that’s a no-no:  chili and cheese should never be mentioned in the same sentence.  I’m waiting for the lightning to come and strike me for that one.  Sometimes, I manage to get away with it when I’m cooking, and nobody gets their knickers in a knot about it.  In fact, I make pizza every week in my outdoor wood oven and my favourite pizza topping recently has become spicy Chorizo and Gorgonzola cheese.  I don’t make anyone else in the family eat it though.  Don’t tell anyone I told you about this….they may take my Italian passport off me.  It is really delicious though!

Travel photo of the week

The only type of travel we can do right now is virtual, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t look at beautiful places, does it! The photo below was taking last Spring in Urbino in the region of Italy to the east called Le Marche.  We went there to visit friends.  I wasn’t expecting anything much as I knew very little about this area.  I was blown away with how beautiful it was!  This is a secret that Italy has kept under its hat for way too long.  Even though it was Easter and prime tourist season, there were only Italians around, which doesn’t often happen in Italy.  Go there……when you are able to again!

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Pasta with Eggplant, Speck, Walnuts, and Fresh Tomato

This eggplant, bacon, walnut, and fresh tomato sauce is an easy one to throw together while the pasta is cooking.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 200 g short pasta (penne, fusilli)
• 1/2 onion
• 1 eggplant medium-sized
• 75 g speck or bacon
• 2 tomatoes medium-sized
• 6 walnut kernels
• 60 ml olive oil 1/4 cup
• 20 g Grated Parmesan Cheese

Notes

1.  Chop the onion finely.  Chop the eggplant into small cubes. Chop the tomato into small pieces. If needed, cut the speck or bacon into thin strips. Crumble the walnut halves.
2. Put a large pot of water on to boil.
3. Heat a 4 Tbsp olive oil in a frying pan.  Add the onion and eggplant cubes. Stir frequently until they start to brown slightly.
4. Add the speck or bacon.  Stir frequently while it is cooking.
5. Once the water in the big pot boils, add salt, then cook the pasta as per the instructions on the packet.
6. Add the chopped tomatoes to the frying pan mix.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook for 5 minutes until the eggplant is cooked through.  Add the crumbed walnuts. Note: if the pasta hasn't finished cooking yet, turn the heat under the frying pan down to low to keep the sauce warm.
7. Drain the pasta when it is at it's al dente stage. Add 1/4 cup olive oil to the big pot.  Tip the pasta back in.  Scrape the eggplant sauce over the pasta and mix well.  
8. Sprinkle the grated Parmesan Cheese over the pasta and mix in.
9.  Eat immediately.

How to learn to like blue cheese

This recipe comes from the mother of a good friend of ours who originates from Florence in Tuscany.  When we all lived in California, Simone used to make us Pasta with zucchini and Gorgonzola cheese whenever we went to dinner at his place, which I was always very happy about!  I am a big fan of Gorgonzola.  Well, it wasn’t always this way.  Once, way back in the mists of time, when I had just left the familiarity of the country I grew up in, and when the only cheese I really knew about was mild Cheddar, I tasted Gorgonzola and thought it was horrible.   Over the years, mainly thinks to the pasta sauce, I have become almost addicted to this blue cheese and devour it scooped onto hunks of baguette without even hesitating.  Actually, I think I was initially scared of the whole blue cheese family by a story my mother told me when I was little. She used to tell us that when she was young, her uncle would often tell them the story about how he’d seen a cheese crawl off the table when he visited Europe because it was so blue.  I actually remember believing this story when I was a kid, which must’ve delighted my Great-Uncle as he LOVED to play jokes on people.  Now you can see how myths are created from one piece of fake news……

Where is Gorgonzola Cheese made?

Gorgonzola cheese, made of pasteurized milk from cows, can be almost hard and crumbly in consistency to soft and gooey. My favourite kind is the meltingly-soft and squishy Gorgonzola dolce, but if I’m presented with it’s aged cousin, the harder, crumbly Gorgonzola piccante, I won’t say no. It comes from a town to the North-East of Milan in the North of Italy called, you guessed it: Gorgonzola. I haven’t been there yet, but given what good cheese they make there, I figure that it must be a lovely place! The town of Gorgonzola is just a bit east of Milan, so if you are in the city of fashion, you can take a trip to the epicentre of where it is said that Gorgonzola cheese was first produced back in 879.  There are other towns in the area that dispute that claim, but since this town got the cheese named after it, I think they have won the battle of ownership without much of a fight.

Travel photo of the week

Ok, so the travel photo of the week has nothing to do with Gorgonzola or the area around it.  It is only about 100 km away though, so it almost counts. The photo you see below is of The Langhe in Piedmont, Italy, just south of Turin.  It is a fabulous wine region where they make some of the best wines in the world (in my humble opinion).  The vineyard-clad hills roll this way at that, and at the top of many of the highest hills are small villages with views that are out of this world.  The one you can see on the top of the hill here is called La Morra.  If the panorama and good wine is not enough for you, The Langhe is also very well-known for its food.  This is the kind of place that lunch takes at least 2 to 3 hours.  It’s not just a meal, it’s an experience!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Pasta with zucchini and Gorgonzola Cheese

How to make pasta with zucchini (courgette) and Gorgonzola cheese

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g Fusilli
• 2 Zucchini medium sized
• 200 g Gorgonzola 7 oz - or more or less depending on how much you like it!
• ½ cube Beef bouillon cube or ½ a vegetable bouillon cube
• 80 -100 ml Cream approximately ⅓ cup
• 40 g Walnuts 1 ½oz
• Parmesan cheese to taste

Instructions

• Cook at the pasta as per the packet instructions.
• While the pasta is cooking, slice the zucchini thinly and saute it in olive oil until it's cooked through and browned a little.
• Take the pan off the heat.  Add the cream, the bouillion cube and the Gorgonzola.  Stir until the cheese is melted.  If you have very soft gorgonzola dolce, you can mix it in a bowl with the cream until it becomes a uniform mixture, and then add it to the zucchini .
• Chop the walnuts and add them in to the sauce.
• Drain the pasta then add to the sauce.
• Grate Parmesan cheese over the finished dish.
• Sprinkle with cracked black pepper

Last time, I wrote a post, it was all about the amazing archaeological site of Segesta in Sicily.  This time, I thought it would be great to  introduce you to a delicacy made in Sicily.  Bottarga al Tonno, or cured tuna roe (it sounds much better in Italian!) is this brown lump you see in the photo below.  This is one of those occasions in which you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, as my mother always says.  The pungent odour and vibrant taste of the bottarga will win any fish-lover over as soon as they take their first mouthful. In fact, it seems to be almost addictive for those who like it.  My eldest son and husband can’t get enough of it.  When we visited Sicily and went to the Osteria i Vitelloni in Trapani, my son ordered two plates of it, one after the other, and went back to the kitchen to congratulate the chef afterwards.  It turns out the chef, Gianni Zichichi, is renown for his cuisine in the culinary world, and has won a slew of awards, so it was very cool that he took the time to have a chat with a 12 year old who appreciated his food!

Bottarga making seems to stretch back in history so far that it’s origins are clouded in the mists of time.  Imagine: the method used in modern times for making it is the same that was used about 3000 years ago by the Phoenicians!  As it is a very delicate process to extract the intact egg sac from the tuna (or mullet), this part of the job must still be done by hand. The egg sac is then washed, salted, pressed between heavy objects, like wooden planks, for a couple of weeks, then air-dried for a while.  It keeps for a very long time, and is very protein-rich, which is probably why it was made in the first place all those thousands of years ago.  The process of making bottarga shows up in history all through the Eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt, Turkey and Greece, to Sicily, the Western Italian coast, and Sardinia.

I had a quick search around the internet and discovered that you can buy it online in most parts of the world, so, if you have internet connection, which you must have if you are reading this,  there’s nothing to stop you from trying it!  It can be bought in grated form in packets or jars as well.  Also, there are two types of bottarga from the Mediterranean area, just in case you come across a type which is a more golden colour than the one in this photo.  The golden one is made from mullet egg sacs and is said to be more delicate in flavour.

Just a note for the cooking: I have read recipes that say you don’t actually need to saute the bottarga before adding it to the pasta.  I like to cook it briefly in the oil so that the flavour infuses through the whole sauce. That choice is up to you!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

Travel Photos Of The Week

This week, the travel photos need to come from Sicily, since that is the home of Spaghetti alla Bottarga. You can see an abandoned tuna-processing factory below, that is situated just below the village of Scopello on the Northern coast of Sicily. The factory has been turned into a changing room/bathroom area for anyone who wants to swim in the crystal-clear waters around the pinnacles you can see jutting out into the sea.

Following on the fishing theme, these fishing-boats are moored in the port of Favignana Island; a small patch of paradise just a short ferry ride from Trapani in the west of Sicily.

The photo below is also from Favignana.  We rented some rickety, no-gear, no-brakes bicycles to ride out to this bay.  To get into the enticing water, you need to jump off the rocks as there is no proper beach.  It took some courage to do it, but it was absolutely worth it to float in the transparent water and see fish swimming underneath you.  I felt as though I was in a scene from Gerald Durrel’s wonderful book “My Family And Other Animals” where he floats around in a bay in Corfu, with his dog trying to catch fish beside him.  I didn’t have the dog, but I did have fun diving down and chasing the fish!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 200 g Spaghetti
• 6 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 4 Tbsp Bottarga
• 1 whole clove Garlic
• 20 g Italian parsley

Instructions

• Cook the spaghetti as per packet instructions.
• While the pasta is cooking, grate the bottarga with a cheese grater or peeler. Peel the garlic clove. Finely chop the parsley leaves.
• Heat 3 Tbsp of the oil in a small pan on medium heat.
• Add the bottarga and garlic clove.  Saute for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Break up the larger pieces of bottarga with a wooden spoon.
• Add 3/4 of the chopped parsley and saute for 30 seconds, then take the pan off the heat.
• Once you have drained the spaghetti, remove the garlic clove from the bottarga sauce. Scrape the sauce into the large pasta pot. Add the rest of the olive oil to the pot, then tip in the spaghetti.
• Mix the pasta and sauce together until all the spaghetti is coated, then sprinkle with the rest of the parsley.
• Eat immediately.

We have pasta for lunch nearly every day.  We have to, otherwise we would be disowned from Italian society.  It’s one of the rules of holding an Italian passport.  In the Summer months, the thought of a hot pasta dish can sometimes feel like a little too much, so we welcome pasta salads!  You CAN have your pasta and eat it too!  The great thing about pasta salads are that they can even be made the day before.  That way you don’t have to be standing over a hot stove-top in the middle of the day, wiping sweat from your feverish brow in order to feed your family.

This pasta salad is a fabulous Spring dish as it uses fresh fava beans (or broad beans) and peas.  It’s best for this salad to use the freshest vegetables you can get, though frozen peas and favas work well too. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret…….I actually did use frozen fava beans for this recipe as I didn’t get around to buying any fresh ones…….

As the temperatures are starting to climb up to Summer levels already, I thought I’d leave you with a Travel Photo of the Week from sunny Florida, U.S.A. this time around.  Just look at that beautiful turquoise sea!  We were there quite a few years ago, but the coastal western side of Florida still stands in my memory as one of the more beautiful and interesting places I’ve been to, with its abundance of wilderness and wildlife.  We saw manatees, alligators, eagles, and even a cougar sloping along the side of the road one time! The only wildlife I wasn’t so keen on were the “no-seeums”: these tiny black midges that showed up in rave party dimensions when the sun went down to crawl into your hair and bite you.  Now I understand why all the big houses have giant net cages over the top of them!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 2 servings

Ingredients

• 200 g 7 oz Short pasta (such as penne rigate or fusilli)
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup Fresh fava beans
• 3 - 4 medium sized Tomatoes
• to taste Parmesan Cheese
• 2 -3 Tbsp Olive oil
• to taste Salt and pepper

Instructions

• Cook the pasta as per packet instructions. Drain and run cold water over it to cool it. Put the pasta into a bowl and stir in 1 Tbsp of olive oil if not using immediately, so that the pasta doesn't stick together.
• Prepare the fava beans.  If they are fresh, open the pods and boil the beans for 5 minutes in lightly salted water. Run cold water over them and then slip each bean out of it's papery skin.  If they are frozen, thaw them as per packet instructions.
• Chop the tomatoes.
• Use a vegetable peeler to shave off pieces of parmesan cheese.
• Put all the igredients together in a serving bowl. Add 1 Tbsp of good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Toos the pasta salad and serve immediately or cover and chill until needed.

What not to put in Amatriciana sauce

There was a huge kerfuffle in Italy recently when a famous chef made Spaghetti All’Amatriciana and put onions in it.  The crowd went wild (in a bad way) and there was nearly a lynch mob sent out to get the chef.  That’s how seriously the Italians take their food.  So, it is with trepidation that I actually put this recipe up on my blog.  I often make Spaghetti All’Amatriciana the non-traditional way and actually put onions into the sauce, but please, please……don’t spread the word around!  Let’s keep that one between you and me and the lamp-post…..

Where does Spaghetti all’Amatriciana come from?

What is an Amatriciana anyway, I’m sure you’re asking.  It’s actually not a thing, but a place. The sauce comes from a village called Amatrice (said Ama-tri-chae”), which is in the province of Lazio, in the centre of Italy.  I haven’t actually had the pleasure of going there yet, but I plan to one of these days, so that I can visit the beautiful village and, of course, eat the real spaghetti all’Amatriciana. I didn’t realise that I had come so close to Amatrice until I started doing a little research for this post. I’m now kicking myself that I was only a couple of hours away a few years ago when I went to visit a fabulous village called Todi. Well, I guess it gives me a good excuse to go back that way again!

One of the main ingredients of the Amatriciana sauce is a cured kind of meat called guanciale, which is made from pig cheeks. For all you Americans out there, I see on wikipedia that it is similar to “jowl bacon”.  If you can’t find guanciale, just go ahead and use thick-cut bacon as a replacement.  Just don’t tell any Italians that you did that!

Travel Photo of The Week

Since I mentioned the closest place in Italy I’ve been to that’s not Amatrice (but nearly!), I thought I would feature the village of Todi in Umbria  this week . The village is very beautiful, and as you can see from the photos, there is a fabulous view stretching for miles all around it.  If you are ever in Italy on the way to eat Spaghetti all’Amatriciana in Amatrice, stop by Todi on the way.  It’s really worth a visit!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Spaghetti All'Amatriciana

How to make the real Spaghetti All'Amatriciana

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g Spaghetti 14.1 oz
• 75 g Guanciale or bacon 2.6 oz
• 300 g 10.6 oz Fresh tomatoes (or tomato pulp)
• ¼ - ½ tsp dried Peperoncino flakes or 1 fresh
• Pecorino Cheese to taste

Instructions

• Boil the water for the spaghetti and cook re packet instructions.
• Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan. Add the guianciale (or bacon) and sauté until browned.
• Chop the fresh peperoncino (or add the dried flakes).
• Turn the heat to low and add the peeled, deseeded and chopped fresh tomatoes, or tomato pulp.
• Let the sauce simmer until the pasta is cooked.
• Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce.
• Grate pecorino cheese on top, and serve immediately.

An irresistible spaghetti sauce

When you don’t have fussy kids hanging around who only like pasta with sauces in which the main constituent is tomato (writing from bitter experience here), this sauce with dried beans, bacon and herbs makes a wonderful change. It suits long pasta, such as spaghetti or linguine perfectly. Even if you don’t have the fussy kid issue, this spaghetti is delicious and worth making! And don’t start to think about all the work of soaking the dried beans and then toiling over a hot stove to cook them for an hour, you can push that thought straight out of your head.  Canned borlotti or canellini beans work so well that I think it would be difficult to tell the difference between freshly cooked and out of a can beans.

Get ready to chop the herbs

The only kind of annoying bit of this spaghetti sauce is mincing up the herbs, well, at least it is in my opinion.  I hate cutting up rosemary leaves.  I really should invest in one of those automatic chopper thingies for herbs one of these days.  Anyway, we have SCREEDS of rosemary growing all over the garden; some of it in hedges, some of it draping over rock walls and some of it just going plain crazy.  I grab any opportunity I can find to use some of it, Last year , when I pruned it, I had a mountain of rosemary almost as tall as me.  It almost made me cry to think of how much money I could make if I were able to send it to colder parts of the world and charge two euros for a few little sprigs!

This spaghetti sauce is very flexible.  You can omit the spice by leaving out the peperoncino, or you can leave out the cheese, or even both.  The spaghetti essentials are the herbs, beans, olive oil and bacon.  It’s up to you!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

Travel Photo of the Week

This photo was taken very close to where we live.  It’s on a part of the Cote d’Azur called the Esterel.  It’s a natural park and is full of red rock formations.  Apparently, when Africa and Europe split up, it’s a bit of land that Africa forgot to take with it.  It must been left in a box in the basement for many years, so now Europe’s decided to keep it as Africa obviously isn’t missing it. Can you imagine what would happen if Africa ever found out that Europe had secretly kept some of it’s most treasured possessions?  Maybe they’d destroy the Mediterranean Sea in the huge fight that would follow. That would mean we could just walk from one continent to the other, which would be pretty cool!  I digress!  So, the area is fabulous for hiking around and very picturesque.

By Lisa Watson

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Spaghetti with Herbs, Cannellini Beans and Bacon

How to make a delicious sauce for Spaghetti with Herbs, Cannellini Beans and Bacon

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 200 g Spaghetti or other long pasta
• 1/2 Red Onion
• 75 g Bacon or pancetta
• 3-4 sprigs Rosemary
• 2 leaves Sage
• 10 g Italian parsley + a small amount for garnishing
• 150 g pre-cooked Borlotti or cannelini beans 1 cup
• 1 clove Garlic whole
• Peperoncino to taste
• 5 - 6 Tbsp Good olive oil
• 3 -4 Tbsp White wine
• Grated Parmesan Cheese to taste

Instructions

• Boil the pasta in salted water using packet instructions.
• Dice the onion and chop the bacon/pancetta into cubes or strips. Mince the rosemary, parsley and sage. Peel the garlic clove, but leave it whole.
• Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a pan. When it is hot, add the garlic clove, peperoncino flakes and the onion.
• When the onion starts to become translucent, add the pancetta and herbs.
• When the pancetta has browned, add the beans. Add salt and peeper to taste.
• After 3 - 4 minutes, deglaze the pan with the wine (poru it in and mix everything together until it evaporates).
• Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Add the good olive oil and mix everything together.
• Grate parmesan cheese over the top and garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Making fresh pesto takes no time at all!

Pasta with pesto is the fall-back meal in our household for when I can’t figure out what to make for a meal, or don’t have much motivation to cook.  It’s easy (especially if you get it out of a jar!), and nobody complains about it when it’s put in front of them.  Fresh pesto is astonishingly delicious, and is worth the effort to make it.  I already posted a recipe for it a while ago.  Actually, even making pesto fresh doesn’t take much effort if you have a little blender.  You just throw all the ingredients into the blender and whizz them into a mush. You can almost do that in the time it takes to yell, “DINNER’S READY!” and actually have everyone sitting at the table.  That can take a while, at least at our place, by the time each person says, “I’m JUST finishing…blahblah”.  Now I know why starting a sentence that way used to drive my Dad crazy (Belated sorry, Dad!!).

This pasta dish is a one pot meal

This pesto-smothered pasta recipe ups the ante a little, but is still very quick to make as you cook the vegetables with the pasta in the same pot. The added advantage is that you only have to wash ONE pot! The only little bit of work is cutting up the green beans and potatoes.  You should definitely make this pesto dish with spaghetti and not short pasta.  Don’t ask me why.  It just tastes better that way!  Make sure you chop the potato into quite small chunks so that the cubes almost fall to pieces to coat the spaghetti when they’re cooked.

If you don’t have time/the inclination to make fresh pesto, just use a good quality jarred one.  It’ll still taste good! The amount of pesto you add to the pasta depends a lot on how “pesto-y” you like your pasta with pesto.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

I’m very excited to share a link to a great blog on Italy and all things Italian written by a friend Margie Milkas, who is very passionate about Italy.  She recently compiled a group of photos from some of her favourite blogs on Italy and posted them on a great site all about Italy that she helps to edit called Italian Talks.  Go have a look.  If you ever had any dreams of visiting Italy, after looking at these photos from all around the country, you’ll be packing your suitcases immediately!

This week’s Travel Photo is from a town called Ragusa in Sicily.  It is the setting for one of Italy’s best TV series (in my opinion!) called Montalbano. Ragusa is an ornate town full of Baroque architecture.  It’s absolutely worth a visit if you ever make it to Sicily!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Spaghetti with pesto, potatoes, and green beans

How to make Spaghetti With Pesto, Potatoes and Green Beans: a specialty from Liguria, Italy.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 380 g Spaghetti 13.4 oz
• 1 medium potato approximately 100 g
• 100 g Green Beans (fresh or frozen) 3.5 oz
• 1/2 cup Pesto approximately 150 g

Instructions

• Make the pesto with fresh basil using this recipe, or use a good quality store-bought pesto.
• Boil water in a large pot.
• While you are waiting for the water to boil, peel the potatoes, wash them and chop them into cubes about 2 cm (1 inch) big. Chop the beans into segments about 5 cm (2 inches) long.
• When the water is boiling, add a small handful of large-grained salt, and add the spaghetti, potato chunks and beans. Cook the pasta, stirring frequently, as per the instructions on the packet.
• When the pasta is al dente, drain it, put it in a large bowl and add the pesto.  Stir it well so that the potato chunks break up slightly.

Notes

Serve while hot.  You can sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over the top if you like.

Time to make pasta with some radicchio

I’m  a little late, but happy New Year to you!  Sorry….things got a bit busy over Christmas and New Year so I haven’t had much time to write anything.  My blog has been sitting in a corner sulking from all this neglect, so I thought that I had better coax it out from where it’s hiding by posting a recipe.  And, what better way to start the year on a blog of Italian recipes, than with a pasta one!  I know that I’ve often thrown radicchio (sometimes known as Italian Chicory) in your face for other pasta dishes, but that’s because it’s one of my favourite vegetables, AND, more importantly, radicchio’s in season right now as we speak!

My sad gardening attempts

I tried to grow radicchio in the garden once, but was incredibly underwhelmed by the results.  I think that has less to do with the plant and more to do with me forgetting to water it, or take any care of it at all.  After growing up in New Zealand where you can stick pretty much anything in the ground and it will grow (except for a feather….I have it on good authority after trying it when I was a kid, that it will NOT grow into a bird), I am still not used to the concept of actually having to take care of things that you plant. So, I gave up my half-hearted attempt of  trying to grow radicchio and now just go buy it when I can find it in the supermarket.

A pasta sauce with a difference

I made this pasta dish with a curly pasta called “cellentani”.  It can also be called “cavatappi”, or “corkscrew” in English (for obvious reasons!). I like this type of pasta for this sauce as the bits of radicchio, pancetta (bacon) and olives stick well in the spirals of the pasta shape, however if you can’t find this type of pasta, any short pasta with work fine.  The sauce is very flexible in that you can add extra ingredients and it will still taste good, such as a sprinkle of chilli flakes, or halved cherry tomatoes. It is an unusual pasta sauce as most sauces for pasta have a base of cream, egg or tomato.  When you make this one, the “base” is a little bit of oil. It’s important to add the oil, otherwise the pasta and sauce will just stick together in one gloopy mess.

Travel Photo Of The Week

This photo was taken at the Cap d’Antibes on the Cote d’Azur in France. The Cap d’Antibes has a super-exclusive hotel on it, where many of the celebrities, such as Madonna, go to hide out during the Cannes Film Festival.  Luckily for us plebs, nobody can stop us walking around the coastal part of it! The town you can see in the distance is Nice, and if you crossed the mountains behind it, you would end up in Italy, if you don’t get eaten on the way by the wolves that wander all through the mountains there.

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g 14.1 oz Short Pasta
• 1 Shallot
• 75 g 2.6 oz Pancetta/Bacon
• 1 head Radicchio
• approximately 10 - 15 Black Olives
• 4 -5 Tbsp Good olive oil
• 30 - 40 g 1 oz Parmesan Cheese

Instructions

• Finely chop the shallot. Slice the radicchio into strips. Roughly chop the olives.
• Boil a large pot of salted water.  Cook the pasta per packet instructions.
• While waiting for the water to boil, start making the sauce. Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan on a medium heat.
•  Saute the shallot for a few minutes until it becomes translucent.
• Add the pancetta and saute until it starts to brown.
• Add the radicchio and olives, then cook them until the radicchio wilts. If the sauce is ready before the pasta is cooked, just take it off the heat.
• Drain the pasta well.  Add the sauce mixture to the pasta, along with the good olive oil and the grated parmesan cheese. Stir well to mix everything together, then serve.

Spaetzle, mountains, and intriguing areas of Italy

The kids are back at school.  All is quiet on the Cote d’Azur as the tourists have flown back to the far corners of Europe from whence they came.  We can start thinking about Autumn and writing blog posts (oh, that last bit is about me, not you!).  During the Summer we spent two weeks wandering around the Dolomite mountains in Alto-Adige, Italy. The area is very confusing, and therefore incredibly interesting.  Everything is bilingual Italian/German.  The vast majority of people living in the region speak German as their first language, although they officially live in Italy. And, many of them speak Italian badly or with a very heavy German accent. The fabulous thing about the valley we stayed in, aside from the mountains, Heidi fields and quaint villages, was the food. They’ve taken the best of Austrian and Italian cuisine: spaetzle, frankfurters, sauerkraut and wonderful cakes along with great coffee, pizza and gelato.  Lucky we were hiking and biking all the time.  That way we could stuff ourselves with all these goodies! “Spaetzle?” you say. “What is spaeztle?” Well, you’re in for a treat!  It’s……..dare I say it without getting my Italian passport ripped out of my hands……even better than pasta! It’s a batter made of flour and eggs.  You drop bits of it into boiling water to create puffy little morsels.  It’s not pasta exactly, but not dumplings either.

Yearning for more spaetzle

After coming home, we had a longing to eat Spaeztle again.  A fabulous German friend of mine gave me the recipe for it years ago.  She used to make it for me often when I lived there. Another fabulous friend gave me a spaetzle maker years ago too, so all I had to do was scramble through the cupboards to find the recipe and spaetzle grater, and voilá!  Off we went!  Lucky that I have these thoughtful friends around to help me on my spaetzle quest.  It’s really very easy to make if you have the grater.  The hand you see in one of the photos below is that of my 10 year old son.  He also made the batter.

Alternatives to try if you can’t find a spaetzle grater

If you don’t have a special grater, never fear!  You can use a colander with big holes in it, or a flat grater and a knife, or even (so I read somewhere), drip the batter off a fork.  I think the last method would be pretty tricky and you might get big lumps of batter in the water…..when you use the special piece of equipment you see in the photo above, you dump a large spoonful of batter into the white plastic chamber and then run it back and forth over the grater part.  The strips of batter fall into the boiling water and cook almost immediately. You need to then scoop them out with a large spoon with holes in it (what are those spoons called?) and put it into the sauce you have already prepared ahead of time.

I made a sauce with cream, speck that we brought back from San Candido, and peas.  You can use pretty much any sauce that you would use for pasta, such as ragù, tomato or cream and cheese sauces.  You can also eat it as a side with a little butter or oil added to it so that it doesn’t stick together.  Just for the record, unlike spaetzle, this eating it as a side thing is something you should NEVER do with pasta, especially if you have an Italian coming to dinner!

Travel photo of the week

This magnificent landscape is in the Dolomite mountains in north-eastern Italy.  Here you can only see two of the three peaks that tower above you as you ant-hike far below them.  the day we were there (and I imagine on my other days too) there were climbers who made it to the top of these pinnacles.  you could see their tiny figures sitting on the top and swinging their legs into the void.  As I have a bit of vertigo, I had enough trouble with some of the trail that ran along the moiddle of the scree slope far below, without going to those crazy lengths.

By Lisa Watson

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Spaetzle with cream, peas, and bacon

Spaetzle: Alto Adige's Ingenious Answer to Pasta. find out how to make it easily at home.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine German, Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 minute minute

Total Time 11 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups All-purpose flour 440 g
• 4 Eggs
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 cup Water 250 ml
• 1 pinch Nutmeg

For the Sauce

• 3/4 cup Single cream
• 100 g Cooked Peas
• 150 g Cubed Speck or cooked ham 1 cup

Instructions

• Put the flour, salt and nutmeg in a bowl.
• Add the eggs and half the water.  Mix everything together.
• Add the rest of the water bit by bit and mix until the batter is thick.
• Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.
• Use the spaetzle grater, or a colander, or a flat grater to drip bits of batter into the water.
• It will puff up slightly and cook immediately. Scoop it out and place it in the already prepared sauce.

For the Sauce:

• If you are using speck, sauté it in a little olive oil until it is cooked. Boil the peas in salted water.
• Drain the peas. Drain the speck on a paper-towel to remove the oil.
• Gently heat the cream (but don't let it boil). Add the speck (or cubed ham) and peas. Don't add salt as the sauce will already be salty enough.

Notes

Spaetzle is also good reheated.  Just add a little oil or butter to it after it is cooked, and then keep it in the fridge.

Pasta with tuna and borlotti beans is a favourite in our house when we want a tasty, but quick pasta sauce.  It’s great as all the ingredients come out of cans, so they can be stored in the cupboard for the occasion when you look in the fridge and realise that either you forgot to go shopping, or that everything’s gone mouldy, or, of course, in the event that there’s some kind of zombie armageddeon going on outside and you can’t leave the house to buy fresh vegetables. The sauce is actually worth making, even if you’re not under any of those constraints.

You could make the tuna and bean sauce from scratch by chopping tomatoes and simmering them until they are reduced, soaking the beans overnight and then boiling them for an hour, making the pasta with your own two hands, and well,  you could even go out and catch the tuna if you want to go that far, but none of that is necessary, unless you have someone coming over that you REALLY want to impress.

If you can’t find borlotti (cranberry beans), any white bean, such as cannellini or navy, will work just as well.  Who thinks up these names?  Navy beans should be dark blue, right?! Just DON’T use kidney beans. Somehow, they don’t seem to gel well with the tomato and tuna. Though, I’m always suspicious with anything with the name “kidney” in it…..

Honestly, right at this moment, even writing about food is a little much.  The temperatures are hovering over 30 degrees C every day and not getting much cooler at night, as we’re in some kind of weird unseasonal heat-wave (let me shake my fist at climate change for a bit here).  The most I can eat right now is bruschetta or melon and prosciutto as it’s just too hot to turn on the oven.  Let’s hope the heat goes away soon or my next posts are going to be about how to eat a nectarine as a full meal without squirting juice all over yourself, or how to make ice…..our cat is suffering mightly with her thick fur coat.  She’s spending her days lying on her back with her legs in the air (oops..maybe she’s actually dead…I haven’t checked for a while). Here’s Phoebe the cat in an elegant pose……

and here she is in a shameless hussy pose.   For the record: she doesn’t eat much at our house, but goes “restauranting” around the neighbourhood, so I can’t get her to slim down.  The vet told me off for her being so fat.  I asked her, “What do you want me to do?  Lock her in a cage?”.  Oh, and it has to be said that the vet herself had a triple chin.  She’s lucky I didn’t tell her off! Anyway, Phoebe’s fat and proud of it!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

Print Pin

Prep Time 2 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 12 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 360 g 12.2 oz Short Pasta
• A 120g 4.2oz can, drained Tuna in olive oil
• 4 - 5 Tbsp Borlotti or cannelini beans
• 400 ml 1 1/2 cups Tomato puree
• to taste Salt

Instructions

• Boil the pasta following the packet instructions.
• In a medium-sized pot, heat 2 - 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
• Add the tomato puree, salt and beans.
• Drain the tuna and break it apart with a fork.  Add it to the tomato mixture.
• Let the sauce simmer on a low heat until the pasta is cooked and drained, then mix into the pasta.