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

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.

The story of the ravening monster and the pumpkin

This week, I’m starting with a very sad story of emerging life, and sudden loss.  I had a pumpkin plant sprouting in my vegetable garden. Every day it unfurled its leaves and grew bigger and longer. Unfortunately, also the weeds around it basked in the warmth of the early Autumn sun and grew overnight into a giant forest of prickly heads that covered the valiant pumpkin plant from view. An ignorant monster (that would…ahem….be me), flew into a frenzy and pulled out all the weeds in large handfuls.  In this fit of frantic gardening, the monster snagged some of the pumpkin plant and snapped the growing stem off at ground level. No amount of roaring and gnashing of teeth (nor superglue) could bring the pumpkin plant back to life, thus the monster was forced to go to the supermarket this year to buy pumpkins.  And that my friends, is why you should never let the weeds in your garden grow too much.

A Fall-coloured risotto

So, I went to the supermarket and got a wonderful butternut squash to make this pumpkin and speck risotto.  I know in my heart-of-hearts that the risotto I would have made with a pumpkin from my own departed pumpkin plant would have been much more satisfying, but what can you do? This pumpkin risotto is a wonderful way to kick off the Fall season.  The orange of the pumpkin and the brown of the speck seem like sprinkles of falling Autumn leaves mixed in with the rice (aren’t I just so poetic today!). Of course leaves mixed in with rice would taste revolting, but pumpkin and speck make a very tasty combination.

If you can’t get speck, either use raw Italian ham, or bacon.  The recipe I’ve written below is for making risotto in a pressure cooker.  If you want the traditional way of making it, click here to read the instructions.

Travel Photo Of The Week

This photo comes from the area of Italy called the Veneto region, near Venice, where they often use pumpkin in pasta and risotto dishes. This hill town is called Bassano del Grappa, and if you haven’t guessed already, it’s where they are renown for making grappa, a strong liqueur made from the bits that are left over after the wine-making process.  It has, of course, a museum dedicated to grappa, where you can have tastings then reel out of the museum and fall into the river.  It also has a beautiful wooden bridge and old town to wander around in.

By Lisa Watson

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Pumpkin and bacon risotto

Pumpkin and Speck risotto makes a wonderfully colorful first course or all-in-one meal to celebrate the flavors of the Fall season.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 250 g Butternut Squash 8.8 oz
• 1 half Onion
• 1 cup Carnaroli or Arborio Rice
• 1/3 cup White Wine
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 Chicken or Vegetable Bouillion Cube
• 1 1/2 cups Hot Water
• 40 g Speck 1.4 oz or bacon
• 4 Tbsp Parmesan Cheese

Instructions

• Finely chop the onion. Peel the pumpkin and chop it into small cubes. Dissolve the bouillion cube and salt in the hot water.
• Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a pressure cooker. When it is hot, fry the onion for 2 -3 minutes. Add the pumpkin and sauté it for 5 -10 minutes, stirring often.
• Add the rice and sauté, until it starts to brown slightly.  Stir the mixture often.
• Add the wine and let it boil off.
• Add the water mixture and stir everything together.
• Put the lid on the pressure cooker.  Let it start to whistle and then turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for 6 minutes.
• While the risotto is cooking, slice the speck finely.
• Take the lid off the pressure cooker and stir the risotto vigourously to crush some of the cubes of pumpkin.
• Add the speck and grated parmesan cheese and mix in.
• Serve immediately.

This week’s Travel Photo is a random photo!  Years ago I went to Florida and was amazed at how wild and beautiful it was (as soon as you got away from Orlando). This photo is taken from the garden of a house we rented on the west coast of Florida.  It was incredible!  We could sit on the jetty and watch eagles diving and fish jumping everywhere.  The only reason we weren’t sitting on the chairs enjoying the sunset when the photo was taken is because of the not so incredible wildlife: the tiny “no-seeums”.  These are little insects that look like little black dots that descend on you as soon as the sun starts to go down and they bite and bite and bite, and make you itchy like crazy.  We ran screaming for the house and then realised why the porch had a netting screen all over it.

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 2 servings

Ingredients

• 2 cupfuls Arugula rocket
• 10 - 12 cherry tomatoes
• about 10 Parmesan cheese
• 1 Tbsp Red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar
• 2 -3 Tbsp Good Olive Oil
• to taste Salt

Instructions

• Put the salad in a bowl.
• Add the cherry tomatoes, chopped in half.
• Use a vegetable peeler to add shavings of parmesan cheese.
• Sprinkle the olive oil, vinegar and salt over the top.
• Toss and serve 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.

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.

Travel Photo Of The Week

Now, as a final as it seems to be becoming a theme, here’s the “Travel Photo of the Week” of Portofino in Liguria.  It’s a very pretty, but very exclusive village on the coast.  Forget trying to stay there unless you’re rolling in money!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 bunch Celery white or green
• 20 - 30 g 1 -2 oz Parmesan cheese
• 3 Tbsp Good olive oil
• 3 Tbsp Red wine vinegar
• to taste Salt
• to taste optional White pepper

Instructions

• Slice the celery into thick slices after washing it.
• User a potato peeler to peel off thin slices of parmesan cheese.
• Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and eat!

Risotto with a difference!

This risotto with sausages and spinach has an extra special guest hitching along for the ride.  Instead of using the usual wine to make the risotto, you actually use beer.  It gives the risotto an extra depth of taste, especially if you pair it with good pork sausages. I added spinach to the risotto to make my kids eat something green, but it does actually go very well in the dish!  At the moment there are all sorts of spinach-type things popping up everywhere in the shops.  They probably should be popping up in my garden so I can go all Mother Nature on you and write “and the spinach I gathered fresh from my own garden….blah, blah”, but as I’m terribly lazy when it comes to gardening, all I can offer you is spinach grown in a local market-garden…..it’s almost like it comes from my garden, except I didn’t do any of the work, and I have to pay for it.

Why you should never give a student a home-brew kit for their birthday

This is a much more refined way to have beer.  I remember in my dark, far-off student days, when men were men and beer was free-flowing, some friends and I made the mistake of giving one of my flatmates a beer-making kit for his 21st birthday (turning 21 is a big deal in New Zealand. as years ago it used to be the age to start drinking and voting).  My flatmate, who shall not be named (you know who you are, Al!), took to beer-making with gusto and churned out gallon after gallon of revolting beer.  That being said, we drank the whole lot since we were penniless students, and even better we often dragged our couch outside into the front garden and sat in the sun drinking it (at this point all our parents should cover their eyes)….ahem, probably instead of going to lectures………luckily, digital cameras didn’t exist way back then so there are no photos I can show you of that time.  Instead, let me leave you with a photo of hundreds of sheep staring at you from my Dad’s farm.  That’s enough to make you feel paranoid that someone’s watching you and may even drive you to home-brewed student beer…..

Anyhow, enough about random sheep and drinking home-brew that’s not ready to drink….using beer to make risotto is less damaging to the liver, as the alcohol boils off, leaving the taste of the beer.  Try to use a stronger tasting beer to make the risotto, and not a lager, as it really does make a difference.

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with beer, sausage, and spinach

Risotto with a difference! This one is made with beer instead of the usual wine. It goes wonderfully with the sausage and spinach.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g Arborio or Carnaroli rice 2 cups
• Chicken stock stock cube
• 1 small Onion
• 4 Sausages approx 200g
• 250 ml Beer 1 small bottle
• 150 g frozen Spinach or 1 bunch fresh
• 40 g Parmesan cheese 4 Tbsp
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Put the chicken stock, or pot of water with the bouillon cube in it, to simmer on the stove top.  Chop the onion finely and saute it in olive oil in a second pot. When the onion becomes translucent, crumble the sausage and add it.  Stir the mixture until the sausage is browned.
• Add the rice and saute until it browns slightly.
• Add the beer and let it boil off.
• Add the frozen spinach, or chopped fresh spinach and 1 tsp of salt.
• Pour in enough water/broth from your simmering pot to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.  Now, STAY THERE AND DON'T MOVE!!  As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add water from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times, so I'm being conservative here. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more water and let the water in the rice boil off....and don't forget to stir it.....
• Add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.

I was first introduced to radicchio when I was living in California.  I have an Italian friend who comes from the mountainous area in the North-East of Italy where radicchio is grown and used extensively.  At the time she was living in a to-die-for apartment on the way up to Coit Tower in San Francisco.  One evening she invited us over for a wonderful dinner of fusilli with radicchio, gorgonzola and walnuts, and that was when I fell in love with this vermillion-hued vegetable!  It was the thing I’d always picked out of salads before.  It was a revelation to discover that it could be cooked, and that cooking changed it into something entirely more interesting altogether. Here’s a photo of Coit Tower in San Francisco, just to give this whole post a little travel flavour, and so that you know where I’m talking about!

You may know radicchio by it’s other aliases (aliai???!!!)  as treviso salad, or simply red lettuce.  This guy has enough names to be a C.I.A. spy. And just like a good spy, it comes in a couple of different disguises: round, like lettuce, or long and thin like you see in the photo below.  The taste is the same, which-ever one you find; well at least it is as far as I can tell.  If anyone thinks differently, please let me know! The white parts can be a little bitter, so sometimes don’t add too much of them.  It really depends a lot on your tastebuds.  I read somewhere that the ability to taster bitterness in vegetables like this, and broccoli is a genetic throwback to caveman days, when eating bitter-tasting plants could kill you, since they are often poisonous (now don’t try to throw in that one in in order not to eat broccoli: it’s NOT poisonous!).

To make this sauce, I used milk rather than cream.  It makes for a much lighter sauce.  It you want a richer sauce, use cream.  As long as you have something to melt the gorgonzola in, it doesn’t really matter which one you decide to use (or that you use because that’s all you have in the fridge). Radicchio pairs incredibly well with gorgonzola, with walnuts and with speck, pancetta or bacon.  The original recipe that Helga (the friend in San Francisco) made for me had radicchio, gorgonzola and coarsely chopped walnuts in it.  It was truly divine, but as I didn’t have any walnuts at home, I used speck instead.  It’s a very flexible recipe, as you can see!  Oh, just for general knowledge: you may have picked up that I said my friend is Italian, and yet her name is Helga.  This is because the area she comes from is quite close to the Austrian border.  When she was growing up, her first language was actually German and she learnt Italian when she went to school, like many other Italians who live there.  If you look at a map of that area you can see that many of the towns have an Italian and a German name.

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 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 200 g 7oz - or other short, grooved pasta Fusilli
• 70 g 2.5oz Speck, pancetta or bacon
• 2 long or 1 round Radicchio
• 100 ml 1/2 cup Milk or Cream
• 80 - 100 g 2.5 - 3.5oz Gorgonzola
• to taste Parmesan Cheese
• to taste Salt and pepper

Instructions

• Boil the pasta as per the packet instructions.
• While the pasta is cooking, heat 3 - 4 Tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan.
• Cut the speck into small cubes and add it to the oil. Let it start to brown, stirring often.
• Slice the radicchio into strips and add it to the pan.
• When the speck and radicchio are cooked through, lower the heat to medium-low.
• Add the milk or cream.  Don't let it boil!!!
• Cut the gorgonzola into pieces and add it to the pasta sauce.  Stir until it has melted.
• Drain the pasta, then add it to the sauce.
• Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

My love-hate affair with artichokes

It’s coming into artichoke season!  I have a love/hate relationship with artichokes.  I love to eat them but hate dealing with them: from the minute I pick them up at the market and they prick me with their nasty thorns, to the time when I’m trying to pull the tough outer leaves off (and again not get pricked!), to trying to get rid of the fluffy “choke” in the middle that seems to get its hairs all over everything.  By the time I’ve prepared them, I get to the edge of reason and throw them in the boiling water yelling, “DIE, DAMN YOU!!” at them.  Anyway……I do love to eat them, so every now and then I get them anyway.

Why you you always serve your guests a flan

This recipe for Flan di Carciofi (Artichoke Flan) is one of those things that you eat in a restaurant (flans like this are served often in Northern Italy) and think, “Wow!  This is so complicated and elegant!”.  I’ve always loved eating vegetable flans with cheese sauce whenever I get get them in Italy, but never tried to make them at home, as I thought that they would be FAR too difficult.  Well, do you want to hear a secret that I’ve just discovered? It’s actually super-easy, but looks really impressive! I decided to take the bull by the horns and actually do it myself.  This is the best kind of recipe there is to bowl over your dinner guests!  I made it with artichokes, but you can make the flans with any kind of vegetable you like, e.g. carrots, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower: it is only limited by your imagination.

Hints to make a great flan

There are only two slightly tricky things in the making of this: one is not spilling the water on you from the pan the artichoke flans cook in when you pull them out of the oven (yes, that happened to me), and the other is that when you make the cheese sauce that goes with it, you have to keep stirring it all the time, otherwise you’ll end up with a gloopy mess (yes, that happened to me too).

I used Fontina cheese for the artichoke flans, but if you can’t find Fontina, I’m sure any other flavour-filled cheese that melts well, such as gruyere, or a good cheddar cheese, would work well. The flans can be cooked in advance and heated up later.  I reheated some that I had kept in the fridge for 3 days and they were just as good as fresh.  They can even be frozen (apparently: I’m trying that one out right now and will get back to you in a few days to tell you if it works). The cheese sauce has to be made fresh and just before serving, otherwise it congeals (take that one from me as the truth: yes, that happened to me too!). You can make individual portions in a muffin tin, as I did or make one big one.  They are very delicate to get out of the moulds, so keep that in mind if you decide to make a large one.

Travel Photo Of The Week

So, this photo has nothing to do with artichokes at all, and is not even of Italy, but isn’t it a beautiful place? This is the north-east coast of the island of Mallorca, just off the coast of Spain.  The graffitied building you can see on the left is an abandoned half-constructed house. The view from its terrace was astounding, which is why who-ever started to build it, chose that site in the first place.

By Lisa Watson

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Artichoke flan with fontina cream

Flans are a wonderful way to impress your dinner guests, yet very easy to make.  Try this recipe for artichoke flan with cheese sauce

Course Appetizer

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Servings 10 small flans

Ingredients

• 500 g Artichoke hearts 1.1lbs
• 4 Eggs
• 200 ml Milk 1 cup
• 3 Tbsp Parmesan Cheese
• 1 tsp Salt
• a dash Nutmeg
• to taste Black Pepper

For the Sauce:

• 100 ml Milk 1/2 cup
• 100 g Fontina Cheese 3.5oz
• 2 Egg yolks
• 1 Tbsp Butter

Instructions

For the Flans:

• I used frozen artichoke hearts this time, which just needed to be boiled for a few minutes to thaw them.  If using fresh artichokes, pare them down to the heart and stem, then boil them in water containing lemon juice until they are tender.
• Put all the ingredients (except those for the sauce!) in a bowl and use a blender to puree them all together.
• Grease a muffin tin well, and put little rounds of baking paper in the bottom of each well.
• Bake at 160ºC (325ºF) for 25 -30 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean.
• Leave them to cool for about 15 -20 minutes, then run a knife around the edges before turning them out (CAREFULLY!) onto a plate.

For the Sauce:

• Cut the cheese into small pieces.
• Put all the ingredients for the sauce into a metal bowl placed over a pot of simmering water.
• Stir continually until the sauce thickens.  This will take about 10 minutes or so, so be patient and keep stirring.  🙂
• Put the flans on individual plates and spoon the sauce decoratively on them/around them. (Don't forget to remove the little rounds of paper!). The flans can be reheated in the oven with no problem.