On being introduced to fennel bulbs

This isn’t so much a recipe as such, as it is an introduction to a vegetable I never knew you could eat before I set foot in Italy.  In New Zealand, where I grew up, fennel was known as a herb that you sprinkled over a fish while cooking it if you were feeling particularly risqué that day. Actually, back in those days, even having fish that wasn’t battered and deep-fried within an inch of its life was pretty damn risqué, let alone sprinkling some freaky herb on it. I’m glad to announce that things have changed drastically in Kiwi-land since then in regards to the way food is prepared! Though I have to say that a fresh piece of deep-fried snapper and chips is one of the first things I want to eat when I touch down at Auckland airport (and that’s even when the plane arrives at 5:30 in the morning!), Well, it’s a competition between good fish and chips (“fush ‘n’ chups” in the kiwi lingo) or a mince pie.  I’m salivating now just thinking about it.  OK, at this point, it gives me a great excuse to throw in a photo of where I spent my formative years.  The colours are real! That’s me, my Dad and one of my sons on a joy-ride. 🙂

Back to thoughts on fennel

Got….to….get….my….mind….back…..to…..salad…….OK, with a force of will I didn’t know I had, I’m starting to think about fennel again, rather than greasy, insanely delicious comfort food……I do love the crunch of fennel when it’s raw in a salad.  It’s a vegetable that my kids also love to play with. They snap off one of the “layers”, hold it by the stalk so that it looks like an ice-cream and crunch and munch it just like that.  It’s also great cooked, if you like an aniseed-y flavour.  The aniseed flavour is much milder when it’s raw.  I like it braised with stock in the oven. OK, now I’m starting to salivate over that too, which makes we feel a little better about the Pavlovian drooling going on inside me.  It’s not just for grease then!

If you want to get really risqué, you can add a handful of chopped walnuts to the mix when you make the salad.  They go really well with the crunchy fennel and sweet oranges.

Another way with fennel

I have a great friend, Gina, who lives in the mythical town of San Francisco (yes, it really is as cool as everyone says it is!).  She used to be a REAL cook (unlike me!) at one of the better restaurants there and introduced me to making salad with thinly sliced fennel and Portobello mushrooms. Fabulous!!  Unfortunately, where I live now, I have never seen Portobello mushrooms.  It’s OK with champignons de Paris, but it’s not the same.  Luckily, fennel is holds up extremely well as a salad all on its own with just a little lemon juice, salt and olive oil.  This is the way my mother-in-law first showed me how to make it.  When I told my husband’s parents that in NZ we use the leaves and not the bulb, they couldn’t believe it as they had never used the leaves for anything.  Funny world we live in, isn’t it!

By Lisa Watson

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Fennel bulb and orange salad

Easy salad made with fennel bulb and orange pieces

Course Salad

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 3 -4 people

Ingredients

• 2 Fennel bulbs medium sized
• 2 oranges
• 2 Tbsp Olive oil
• Lemon juice from 1 lemon
• Salt to taste

Instructions

• Slice the fennel bulb - the thickness depends on how you like your "crunch factor".  I like to slice it thickly so that it is very crunchy.
• Chop the ends of the oranges, then cut all the skin and pith off.  Cut the oranges into chunks and add it to the fennel.
• Put it in a bowl and sprinkle the other ingredients over the top.
• Mix and eat immediately.

Going where I never thought I would go

A recipe on how to make candied yams is not something that I ever thought I would post, to tell you the truth.  Marshmallows on a savoury dish seemed like one of those foods of American lore, like deep-fried Twinkies, that were better off left to characters in books to eat.  Every year I help an American friend make Thanksgiving dinner, and this year we decided that it had to be as traditional as we could make it as there were a heap of Italians, who had never tried even a bite of a Thanksgiving feast,  coming over to visit her. So, there it started: it was time to dip my toe into the unknown, and slightly threatening depths of this sugary side.

The fear of sugar overload

I had a look at a whole lot of recipes full of things like cream, maple syrup, cups of sugar, and corn syrup.  Just reading about all that sugar started melting the enamel on my teeth, so I decided to go my own way.  I apologize to all American readers for this, as I’m sure the recipe I ended up making is somehow sacrilegious.  I hope it’s not too far from what it’s supposed to be!  In the end, the candied yams were actually pretty good, so now I can understand why they are a traditional part of Thanksgiving dinner.  They go wonderfully with the tartness of the cranberry sauce!  If nothing else, they were a talking point of the meal for all the Italian guests who had never heard of such an exotic dish!

My first try

My son’s history teacher who is American declared that the only kind of marshmallows you should use are the mini ones. I didn’t have any of those, so I cut the big ones I had into smaller pieces.  I would be really interested to hear from other Americans out there if this is a personal taste thing, or if that’s really how the candied yams usually come.  I think if I had used the big ones, they would have formed a softer, thicker crunchy-topped layer on the sweet potatoes.  It could have made for an interesting texture difference.  I baked the yams in the oven before using them as I figured that that would make the taste of them more concentrated.  I did use butter, but no cream, and I only used half a cup of sugar as I couldn’t bring myself to add more.

So, I’m curious: how do you make your candied yams? I’m sure I have a lot to learn about this dish!

Travel Photo Of The Week

Well, this shot has nothing much to do with candied yams, but it was taken in the USA, so I say it counts.  I’d say that they probably ate some kind of Thanksgiving meal there once upon a time. This is a Californian ghost town called Bodie in the middle of nowhere, north of salty Mono Lake on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  It was once a bustling gold mining town, but once the gold dried up, everyone drifted away and left the buildings to moulder in the harsh climate.  About halfway through last century, the remaining buildings in the town were designated as an historic landmark, and preserved in the state they were in at that time, so now you can go and visit it and see an real-live ghost town.  It has to be the best one I’ve seen.  The wind rattling through the tall grass and the isolation of the town really makes you feel as if the long-dead gold-diggers are still drifting around there.

By Lisa Watson

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Candied Yams

Here's a traditional marshmallow and yam dish from the Thanksgiving table

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 10 minutes minutes

Servings 8 - 10 people

Ingredients

• Yams (sweet potatoes)
• 40 g Pecans 1/3 cup / 4 oz
• 20 large Marshmallows
• 75 g Butter 1/3 cup / 2.6 oz
• 200 g Dark Brown Sugar 7 oz/ 1/ 2 cup packed
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 1 1/2 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Heat the oven to 200ºC  (400ºF).
• Prick the yams with a fork 4 times in different places, then place them on a cookie tray in the oven.
• Check them after 40 minutes by pushing on them with a fork.  If they are ready to take out, they with squash easily.  Depending on the size of the yams, this could take longer.  Keep testing them every 15 minutes until they are cooked through and soft.
• Once the yams are cooked, take them out of the oven.  Put the pecan halves on another cookie tray and bake them for 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on them as they burn quickly.
• When the yams have cooled enough to touch, peel the skin off with your fingers and leave them to drain in a colander for 30 minutes.
• Put the yams in a bowl and stir in melted butter, sugar and vanilla essence.
• Grease a baking dish with butter and spread the yam mixture in the dish.
• Crumble the pecans with your hands and sprinkle them evenly over the yams.
• Put the marshmallows on top.
• Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

Soothing food for post-operation patients

I know the photo above doesn’t look much like the whale I promised to write about in my last post,  but it’s been a pretty intense week this week. At the beginning of the week my youngest son had braces put on his teeth, and my eldest son not only got his tonsils removed, but also had the inside of his nose played around with.  Both are sore, and both haven’t been able to eat much this week.  I have had to get a little inventive in my cooking, so that they don’t eat only popsicles all week.

I wanted to share this puree I made with you because although it’s not much to look at, it actually tastes really good, even for a non-invalid. To turn it into a side for any kind of meat, you can just add less milk and maybe mash it roughly rather than blending it.  It would also be good as baby food if you take out the salt and the anchovies.  So, there you go, a vegetable dish that works for three types of people.  That’s got to be a good thing!

Photo of the Week

This is not so much a travel photo this week, since we are kind of stuck at home.  These flowers are out in the moment in my garden.  If anyone can tell me what they are, I’d love to know!  They grew from a packet of mixed seeds of flowers that attract butterflies.  I haven’t seen any butterflies around them, but they are very pretty anyway.

Here’s to next week when we can go back to eating pizza and crispy roast potatoes (not in the same meal). I know I could eat that now, but I would feel really terrible eating it in front of the kids!

By Lisa Watson

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Post-op vegetable puree

After a tonsil operation, my son needed something filling that he could swallow.  This vegetable puree was just the thing!

Course Main Course, Side Dish

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes minutes

Total Time 17 minutes minutes

Servings 2 servings

Ingredients

• 4 Potatoes medium-sized
• 1 Parsnip
• 2 Carrots medium-sized
• 1 handful fresh Spinach 2 - 4 Tbsp pre-cooked
• 2 Tbsp Butter 50 g
• 100 ml Milk
• 1 tsp Salt
• 4 Anchovies optional

Instructions

• Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.
• While waiting, peel the potatoes, carrots and parsnip.  Chop into same-sized pieces.
• Boil the vegetable cubes for approximately 10 minutes; until you can stick a fork through them.
• Add the spinach and cook for a further 2 minutes.
• Drain the vegetables into a sieve.
• Add the butter and milk to the pot. Put on the heat to warm up a little.
• Add the vegetables and stir vigorously to start to break them up and to melt the butter entirely.
• Scrape the mixture into a blender.  Add the anchovies, if using.
• Blend until the consistency is very smooth.  Add more milk if necessary.
• Leave to cool until tepid before eating.
• NOTE:  this can be used as baby food if you omit the salt and anchovies.

Fresh peas are one of my favourite vegetables.  The best way to eat them, as far as I’m concerned, is straight off the vine while you’re standing by the plant.  If you get them small enough, raw peas taste sweet and nutty and don’t even need to be cooked.  As they get a little bigger, cooking takes away the bitter taste that they can sometimes have.  I bought these peas recently as my vines have already given me everything they’ve got.  The screaming hot weather was too much for them, and they collapsed in a heap at the beginning of Summer.  The market ones were still excellent, but I decided that they needed to be cooked.  I modified a wonderful recipe that I found in one of my La Repubblica cookbooks that mixes the peas in with pancetta (bacon) and toasted pine-nuts.

When I was a kid, my favourite way to eat peas was to drown them in ketchup and then pile mashed potato on top of them and eat it all in one big messy mouthful. I had ketchup with just about everything then. So much of it, that it probably counted as one of my food groups.  It’s a vegetable……right? Once I grew up and stopped spraying ketchup around like water,  I had kids who didn’t really want to eat vegetables that much. My sister helped me to get my two boys to eat peas when they were toddlers by suggesting I give them frozen peas straight out of the freezer.  Somehow, they taste even better that way; almost like tiny green ice-creams.  Both my kids loved eating them like that, and still eat them frozen sometimes, even though they’re both wandering through their pre-teen times now.  They skipped the ketchup phase, so I discovered that it’s not genetic.

Adding the toasted pin-nuts to the peas makes them so much more interesting than just boiling the peas and throwing them on a plate as a last-minute side because you should eat something green.  It really makes a difference to toast the pine-nuts, so take the 2 minutes extra to do it.  Be very careful though, as they burn very easily.  Stir them constantly when they’re cooking and don’t leave them in the pan once they’re browned, even with the heat off.

Travel Photo Of The Week

This stunning beach in the photo below is called Arthur Bay. Last year we stopped by in Queensland, Australia to do a little sightseeing and get some sunshine after spending a few wintery weeks in New Zealand.  My absolute favourite part of our visit was going to Magnetic Island, where this beach is.  As you can see, the place was almost deserted as it was winter there at the time.  The temperatures were around 26 degrees C (80 F) and the water was warm enough to swim in.  I love winters like that!  The best part about winter in Queensland is that there are no jellyfish.  In the summer, if you want to go in the sea, you need a special suit that covers you from head to toe and looks remarkably like a large condom, or you have to swim inside designated areas on the beaches that are protected by “stinger nets”. In the colder months, the jellyfish drift off to harass people in warmer parts of the ocean.  At Arthur Bay, there was a coral reef close into shore, so we spent happy hours snorkling and gazing at all the colourful fish and corals, and of course, not picking up any shells.  Rule number 1, so we were told in the Townsville Aquarium, is NEVER pick up shells.  There are tiny molluscs called Cone-shells who live in the shallow waters along the coast which will kill you with their sting in a few seconds.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 300 g shelled or frozen Peas
• 40 g Bacon
• 2 Spring Onions
• 30 g Pine-nuts
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 2 tsp Butter
• 1 tsp Salt
• to taste Pepper
• 2 Tbsp White Wine
• 1 Tbsp Parsley

Instructions

• Shell the peas. Mince the white and green parts of the spring onions. Cut the bacon into small pieces.
• Heat the olive oil and 1 tsp of butter in a frying pan on a medium heat.  Add the green onions and bacon and saute them, stirring until the bacon starts to brown slightly.
• Add the peas and cook, stirring often, for 8-10 minutes.
• While the peas are cooking, add the second teaspoon of butter to a small pan.  Saute the pine-nuts for 2 - 3 minutes until they are browned.  Stir them constantly, as they burn easily. Drain them on a paper kitchen-towel.
• Add wine, salt and pepper to the peas and stir.
• Take the peas off the heat and stir in the pine-nuts.
• Chop the parsley finely and sprinkle over the peas.
• This dish can be eaten hot or at room temperature.

Easy asparagus to delight everyone and make you look good in the process

Spears of asparagus are shooting up everywhere now that the weather is warmer.  I often make it with grated Parmesan cheese on it, but I was getting a little bored with that, so I decided to try something new. In my fabulous series of La Repubblica cookbooks, I found this delicious (and easy) recipe for asparagus salad with Balsamic vinegar and mustard.  The fact that I could whip it up in under 10 minutes drew me to it immediately! I’m always on the lookout for recipes to get food on the table with the least effort and in the quickest time possible.  That’s probably sacrilegious for me to say, given the main subject that I blog about is recipes. I like to cook when I feel the urge, but most evenings, if I could defrost a pizza and leave it at that, I would.  Anyway, as I have a reputation to uphold, just pretend that you didn’t read that last part and imagine me being constantly in the kitchen, passionately cooking whenever I get the chance to.

The history of asparagus

When I decided to write about this asparagus recipe, I figured it would be a good time to find out more about this elegant vegetable.  It has a surprisingly long history of domestication.  Way back in the Egyptian times, it was already eaten so often that some tomb painter factored it into their wall paintings along with symbols of deities and crooks and flails. The Greeks and Romans ate it too, and one of the oldest recipe books know that was written back in the third Century, has recipes for asparagus in it. That’s a pretty impressive lineage for a vegetable.

Use green or white asparagus

In this recipe, just for the photo, I plunged the asparagus into iced water after boiling it. Honestly, I don’t often do this step. It does make the asparagus stay a vibrant green colour, which is nice on the eyes, but it tastes the same in the end. Your family will eat it even if it’s brownish-green.

If you find white asparagus, this recipe would absolutely work for it too.  Just peel the stems of thicker asparagus before cooking them, as they can be quite fibrous otherwise. I was first introduced to white asparagus when I lived in Germany.  I had the lucky pleasure of living near to Schwetzingen, the self-proclaimed “Asparagus Capital of The World”.  They really do have a lot of asparagus there!  During asparagus season, you can buy and eat bucket-loads of white asparagus, and they even have a festival during the short season where there are all sorts of events based around spargel (asparagus in German).  If you’re ever in the South-west of Germany around the end of April/beginning of May, you should go and check it out!

If you want to make a more substantial meal out of asparagus, check out this recipe for asparagus risotto.

Travel Photo of the Week

So, for me this is not really a travel photo, but is taken where I live.  I was trying to take a friend’s dog for a walk in the forest while she was busy.  The dog refused point-blank to walk more than 500 metres away from the building her owner was in, so I gave up and sat down to enjoy the vibrant green Spring all around me. This shot is taken in Valbonne, where a stream called La Brague wends its way along the edge of the village.

By Lisa Watson

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Asparagus with balsamic-mustard dressing

Asparagus spears with balsamic-mustard dressing makes a delicious side for any meal.

Course Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 500 g Asparagus
• 2 tsp Lemon Juice
• 2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Mustard
• 1 Tbsp Cream
• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• Flaky Salt to taste

Instructions

• Cut the ends off the asparagus.  Boil in salted water with the lemon juice in it for 5- 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the asparagus.  It is done when you can stick a fork through the stalk.
• While the asparagus is cooking, prepare a bowl of iced water. Drain the cooked asparagus and plunge it immediately into the iced water.
• Drain the asparagus and place on a serving plate.
• Whisk together the remaining ingredients, except for the salt.
• Drizzle the sauce over the asparagus spears to coat them.
• Sprinkle flaky salt over the spears and serve.

The perfect stuffing for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has crept up on us with the stealth of a lion stalking its prey.  Where does the time rush off to in such a hurry?   Sometimes I with I had a brake-pedal so I could slow everything down just a little. If Thanksgiving is launching itself at us, that means that Christmas is not far behind it with its jaws gaping, ready to bite. It’s now time to push down the mild panic creeping over me and start getting a little organised!  One of the recipes I have been making regularly over the last few years for our Thanksgiving meal is this bread and apple stuffing.  Yes, I know that I’m not an American, but I do have a very good American friend living nearby who we celebrate with.  I’m very willing to sacrifice myself to taking on a festival from another country that’s all about eating!

How to control the cooking panic at Thanksgiving

The stuffing is cooked outside of the bird so that the top of it gets nice and crunchy. It’s perfect to make for Thanksgiving or Christmas too, as you can prepare it the day before up to the last step where you uncover it and put it in the oven to crisp up. While the turkey is resting after its roasting, you can throw the stuffing in the oven for about 20 minutes to finish cooking it. Well, don’t literally “throw” it in the oven, as you may end up with a bigger cleaning job than you already have….just slide it in nice and calmly with none of that last minute panic you may be sliding into because the gravy’s burning, the dog is trying to get at the turkey, half the guests haven’t turned up yet, and all your family keeps barging into the kitchen, one after the other, to ask for random unnecessary things.

Some other dishes to go with the stuffing

To get a full Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, look no further than Italian Kiwi! You could serve this stuffing alongside brined turkey, perfect roast potatoes, Bianca’s Slow-cooked Carrots, and for some extra colour: Stewed Red Cabbage with Apple! Then for a light dessert, you could make ahead some panna cotta.  There you go: a whole menu for you so now you don’t have to think about anything except for the grocery list!

Cookbook of the week

This week, instead of a travel photo of the week, I would like to tell you about a very important collaboration I worked on this year.  I am a moderator on a large community on Google+ called Foodies+, and we have been working to put out a book full of recipes from our members in time for the holiday season.  We’re very proud of the final result! This bread and apple stuffing is one of the many recipes that are in the book. The recipe book can be bought from any Amazon store and put on your Kindle or other device.  The best thing is, that all the proceeds will go to the charity Action Against Hunger: a world-wide organisation supporting those in need. So, get yourself a gift for Christmas and help hungry people at the same time!

By Lisa Watson

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Bread and apple stuffing

This stuffing is perfect to make for Thanksgiving or Christmas too, as you can prepare it the day before up to the last step where you uncover it and put it in the oven to crisp up.  

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 5 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 300 g Rustic bread 10.5 oz
• 1 medium Onion
• 150 g Celery 2 stalks
• 250 g Granny Smith apples 2 medium
• 50 g Butter 1.7 oz./3½Tbsp
• 250 ml Apple cider 1 cup
• 350 ml Water 1½ cups
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Chicken Bouillon Cube
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Heat the oven to 180 C/350 F.
• Chop the celery and onion. Peel and dice the apple into rough cubes.
• Cut the bred into cubes, approximately 2cm/1 in square, and put in a large bowl.
• Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Sauté the celery, apple and onion for 10 minutes on a medium heat.  Stir frequently. Take off the heat.
• Mix the cider, water, eggs, salt and bouillon cube together, then pour over the bread and stir well.
• Add the celery mixture to the bread and stir.
• Scrape the prepared mixture into a baking pan that is at least 20 x 30 cm/ 8 x 12 inch. Cover the pan tightly with aluminium foil.
• Cook in the oven for 35 minutes.
• Uncover the pan and bake for a further 15 minutes.
• The first cooking step can be done a few hours in advance.  When you are almost ready to serve your meal, put the stuffing in the oven for the last baking step and bake for 20 minutes.
• Make this stuffing vegetarian by adding vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.

One of the best roast potato recipes I have ever eaten

Potatoes are one of my favourite foods to eat.  I’ll eat them any which way, except raw….though I would probably even eat them raw if they weren’t bad for you! And one of my favourite ways to eat my favourite tuber is roasted in the oven so that they turn all crispy on the outside and tender and fluffy on the inside. After looking up Wikipedia (as that’s what everyone does these days), I discovered that there are over 5000 varieties of potatoes around.  I’m starting to feel as though I’m missing out.  I think I knew of only 4 or 5 of them. What do the other 4995 varieties taste like?

Who knew that there was a Year of the Potato?

I also found out that 2008 was the International Year of the Potato.  I don’t remember seeing people dressed in potato outfits during the year 2008, celebrating the fact that the tuber exists, but I’m sure I ate many potatoes during that year. What a shame there weren’t more potato festivals filled with potato eating contests, potato throwing contests and best-dressed potato parades.  I would have gone to a festival like that if it was on! The most intriguing thing I read about potatoes on my exhaustive Wikipedia search that took about five minutes was that there are museums dedicated to the potato scattered all over the world.  If anyone has ever been to a potato museum, please let me know what was in it, and if it was interesting. They can’t actually display “live” potatoes, can they?  They’d go moldy after a while, and as we all know, there are few worse smells around than that of a rotten potato.

And the credit goes to…..

This recipe is a slightly modified version from one of my favourite restaurants in San Francisco called Zuni Café.  I have the wonderful cookbook from the café which along with the recipes, has long descriptions on why and how you should do what you do to make each dish.  I also have the dubious claim to fame of having it signed by a friend of mine, who is an absolutely fabulous chef.  She worked at the café for a few years.  I used to adore going around to her place for dinner when we lived in California. She would cook us so many mouth-watering dishes!

Travel Photo(s) Of The Week

Since this post is about a recipe for one of my favourite foods, I thought I’d share a photo of one of my favourite places: Yosemite Park in California. The falls below take a bit of hiking to.  We did an overnight sleep-out with the bears to be able to see them.  They are called Waterwheel Falls, and for a good reason: because of the way the rock slope is shaped, the water hits dips and then sprays up backwards, forming these giant, beautiful “wheels” of white water.

This is a bonus travel photo of a place in Yosemite Park called Cloud’s Rest, for obvious reasons! That’s me in the photo, hiking with my hands on the sides of my face like horse blinkers. There was a 1000 metre drop on either side of where I was walking and I could only get to the viewpoint by pretending that the sides weren’t there. The view was worth it, but I nearly crawled back across this bit on my hands and knees as I was so freaked out.  As you can tell, I’ll never become an expert rock-climber: another job to strike off my list along with astronaut, and trapeze artist.

By Lisa Watson

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Crispy roast potatoes

this may be one of the best roast potato recipes I have ever made!

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6 - 8 people

Ingredients

• 2 kg Potatoes 4.4 lbs
• 1/3 cup Olive oil
• 2 - 3 Rosemary Sprigs
• 3 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Peel the potatoes and cut them into rough shapes about as large as a ping-pong ball.
• Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F.
• Cook the potatoes in a pot of boiling water with the salt in it for 5 - 7 minutes. The potato chunks should be still firm, but soft enough that a fork can start to be pushed into them.
• Drain the potatoes and add them to a large boil containing the oil.
• Stir the potatoes well so that they are all coated with the oil. Small bits of potato may break off.  This is what makes them crispy.
• Scrape the sprigs of rosemary with a sharp knife to release the oil inside, then add the sprigs to the potatoes.
• Pour out the potatoes onto a baking tray with low sides, or a into a baking dish, and spread them out into a single layer.
• Bake for 35 -45 minutes until they are brown and crispy.
• Serve immediately.

Notes

You probably won't need to add extra salt as the potatoes absorb salt during the boiling process. However, before serving, taste and add more salt if needed.

What to do when your vegetables die and the mosquitoes arrive in force

The heat has suddenly arrived with a vengeance.  I went from dodging thunderstorms and procrastinating about sowing seeds to grow some vegetables to realizing that suddenly, just in one day, it is now way too hot for them to survive. When the weather is like this, eating hot food is something I can’t get that excited about doing.  I’m also not that excited about the rush of mosquitoes who seem to like taking holidays in the South of France either. I can’t do much about the mosquitoes, but I can make lots of salads!  This potato and green bean salad is one of my favourites.  It has toasted rustic bread in it, which means that it can be substantial enough to be a meal in its own right.

Hints to make this potato salad even tastier

I love making this recipe for potato salad as it’s so flexible.  You can omit the sweet potatoes and use just normal potatoes. You can play around with the amounts of each ingredient to suit your taste. You can use frozen or fresh beans and it still tastes wonderful.  I’m sure you can even add things to it, like black olives (if you haven”t used them to make tapenade!), pine nuts or almonds.  The only ingredients you really need to have in it consistently are the squares of grilled bread and the fresh coriander.  Those are the stars that make this potato salad stand out from the other regular potato salads.

 Travel Photo Of The Week

This is the port of Antibes, France.  Which boat would you take out for the day? In the distance, behind all these yachts, there’s a part of the port called Millionaire’s Row.  That’s where all the HUGE luxury boats are moored : the private boats with permanent crews, gilded dining rooms, stewards to iron your sheets every day, and helicopter pads on their decks.  How about taking one of THOSE ones out for a spin?

By Lisa Watson

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Potato and green bean salad

This potato and green bean salad is one of my favourites.  It has toasted rustic bread in it, which means that it can be substantial enough to be a meal in its own right. Find the recipe on Italian Kiwi!

Course Appetizer, Main Course, Salad

Cuisine Mediterranean

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 1 serving as a main

Ingredients

• 2 slices Rustic bread
• 1 whole clove Garlic
• 70 g Green Beans fresh or frozen
• 80 g Potatoes 1 medium
• 80 g Sweet potato 1 small
• 7 g Coriander Leaves 4-5 Tbsp
• Lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 2 Tbsp Olive oil
• Salt to taste
• Chilli Flakes/powder to taste

Instructions

• Follow the instructions here to make the bruschetta, but do not add the tomato.
• Bring salted water to boil in a medium-sized pot. While the water is heating, peel and chop the potato and sweet potato into small cubes, cut the beans into shorter lengths.
• Add the prepared vegetables to the boiling water and cook until you can pierce the potatoes with a fork (about 5 - 7 minutes, depending on the size of the cubes.
• Drain and leave in the sieve to cool for at least 5 minutes.
• Cut the toasted bread into squares.
• Roughly chop the coriander leaves.
• Add all the prepared ingredients in a salad bowl. Add lemon juice, olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and chilli flakes.
• Mix everything together gently.
• Eat immediately.

Waiting for artichokes

This time of the year is always very exciting.  As it starts to get warmer, you see glimpses of the bounty to come when peas, asparagus and even the odd punnet of juicy, exorbitantly expensive strawberries start to appear in the shops.  One of my favourite things to eat in the late Winter/early Spring season are spiny Italian artichokes, like the ones you see in the photo below. These artichokes are a little daunting because of those nasty spines, but if you can work up the courage to battle your way past them, the flesh inside of the artichokes is so tender that you can eat it raw. You heard me right: no cooking needed!

What kind of artichokes to use to make salad

These spiny artichokes are grown in Liguria, near the border with the Cote d’Azur in France, or on the island of Sardinia.  The incredible thing is that we live a little less than an hour from the region in which the artichokes are grown, and we cannot buy them here!  Yes, there are other types of artichokes, like the big green globe ones, and the non-spiny violet ones, but they’re just not the same as they need cooking and are not half as much fun to fight with. Once you’ve destroyed the spiny artichokes’s stabbing ability,  you can really feel as though you’ve earned your meal! I have to content myself with waiting for my Italian mother-in-law to bring us some, or take matters into my own hands and drive over to Italy just to buy some (though that’s not such a terrible thing as I usually manage to squeeze a cappuccino and a gelato stop in while I’m there).

If you can’t find the right kind of artichokes, you can always make a celery and Parmesan salad instead, which is very similar.

Just a note: The amount of cheese I have given in the ingredients section is an approximation.  I peel enough Parmesan off until the flakes pretty much cover the cut artichokes.  You can add less, or more if you feel like it! We love Parmesan cheese in our house, so I usually keep peeling until I run out of cheese, or get fed up with the peeler.

Travel Photo Of The Week

This photo comes for the island of Sardinia, which is one of the places where these spiny artichokes are grown. This photo is taken on the North-Western coast near a resort area called San Teodoro.  I think the picture says it all!

By Lisa Watson

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Artichoke Salad with Parmesan Cheese Shavings

Artichoke Salad with Parmesan Cheese Shavings is easy to make and good for you!

Course Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 10 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 4 Small Italian spiny artichokes
• 30 g Parmesan Cheese 1 oz
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 lemon lemon juice
• Salt to taste

Instructions

• First squeeze the lemon juice into the salad bowl. Rub your knife on the lemon half.
• Prepare the artichokes. Pull off the outer, tough leaves. Cut the top part off so you don't get pricked by the spines. Cut the bottom off and use a sharp knife or a spoon to scoop out the fluffy choke in the middle of the artichoke. Cut the artichoke in half, the slice the leaves and the base in thin slices.
• Put the slices of artichoke immediately into the lemon juice and toss them.  This prevents them from turning brown.
• Use a vegetable peeler to shave strips of parmesan cheese into the salad bowl. Break large pieces up with your hands.
• Add the olive oil and salt and toss the salad again.  Add more lemon juice to taste if you would like a more acidic salad.
• Serve immediately.

In my village a new, furtive fruit and vegetable seller recently appeared. A few times during the week, you need to wander through the cobbled streets and, if you’re lucky, you’ll find her and her battered old car full of fruits and vegetables from her garden.  She sells them straight out of the car, along with freshly baked bread-rolls and empanadas filled with vegetables that she’s harvested that morning. It’s probably illegal, but it’s fantastic, so nobody’s going to expose her!  This week, she had some rainbow chard sticking out of one of her boxes, and I grabbed it immediately.  I haven’t seen rainbow chard since I left California all those years ago! As I walked back through the village to my car, quite a few people stopped me to admire the colours of the chard: I think only in France would strangers stop you to comment on vegetables you are carrying! One man even suggested that I should put it in a vase instead of eating it because it was so pretty.  Around Christmas time, I was carrying a platter of cheese from our fabulous cheese shop in the village and thought I was going to get mobbed and my platter wrested from my grasp before I could get back to the car.  In the space of 100 meters, about 10 different people stopped me to ask me about the cheeses on the board and what they tasted like.

When I got it home, I didn’t end up putting it in a vase, but instead immediately chopped it up for lunch. I decided to add some raisins to give it a little sweetness, and some pine nuts, just because the were sitting on the bench and I like them. I sprinkled sumac over the top because everything tastes better with a bit of sumac in it, but if you don’t have any, either don’t use anything or maybe add some paprika. Now, if you don’t have rainbow chard, that’s OK too.  You could make the same dish with normal chard (which is apparently the same as silverbeet) or spinach if you want it to have a milder flavour. The coloured stems just make the dish look much prettier!

Travel Photo Of The Week

I was down in Cannes (you know the film festival place) the other day and just wanted to show you that it’s not always sunny and bright on the Cote d’Azur. I actually like it more at this time of the year when the sky and the sea nearly blend into each other. The beaches are empty of people and umbrellas. The only sounds are the waves lapping on the shore, the seagulls mewing, and the odd Ferrari or Lamborghini gunning its engines as it roars past. Well, some things don’t change in Cannes, no matter what the season!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes minutes

Total Time 17 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 large bunch Rainbow Chard
• 4 Tbsp Olive oil
• 40 g 1/4 cup Raisins
• 15 g 1 1/2 Tbsp Pine nuts
• to taste Salt and pepper
• 1/2 - 1 tsp Sumac
• 50 ml 1/4 cup Water
• From 1/2 a lemon Lemon juice

Instructions

• Chop the stems of the chard into slices. Slice the green leaves of the chard. Put the raisins in the water to soak.
• Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan.  When it is hot, add the chard stems and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often.
• Add the leaves and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the pine nuts and cook for another two minutes.
• Add the raisins in their water and cook for 2 minutes.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Take off the heat and add the lemon juice and stir in.
• Sprinkle with sumac and serve immediately.