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.

An easy meal in just five minutes!

I hope you’re starting to be ready to cope with food again now, since a couple of weeks have passed since the excesses of the holidays.  Bean and tuna salad is a great one as it’s incredibly quick to make and tastes delicious (of course, otherwise I wouldn’t put it up on my blog!).   If you want to upmarket this tuna salad, you could always cook dried beans from scratch, buy fresh tuna steaks and grill them before cutting them into chunks and mixing them in with the cooled beans, but who has time to do all of that?! The tuna salad can be eaten as a side, a first course, or as a main meal with good crusty bread and green salad. It can be whatever you want it to be, except maybe dessert…….if you add pasta you can even make it into another recipe that you can find here.

Bean and tuna salad is very difficult to get a good photo of, so please just bear with me and trust me that it tastes really great, even if it’s not very photogenic.  To make it a little less brown, you can go all out and chop a little parsley to garnish it with if you like.

Travel photo of the week

As a compensation for the uniform brown-ness of the salad, I’ve put in two travel photos of the week this time around.  Both are from Nice on the Cote d’Azur in France. The photo below shows the newly renovated Place Massena, which borders on the old town on Nice.

The photo below was taken in the off-season, as you may be able to see by the people in the distance dressed in coats.  This is the beach that fronts onto the old town of Nice.  In the Summer, it is plastered with lounging people in various states of undress. We like to go in the Fall and Winter so that the kids can throw stones into the sea without hitting anyone in the process.  They just have to watch out for old ladies in flower-studded bathing caps who slowly breast-stroke their way through the sea at all times of the year.

By Lisa Watson

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Borlotti bean and tuna salad

For a quick lunch with crusty baguette or a delicious side, try Italian borlotti bean and tuna salad .

Course entree, first course, Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 1 can Tuna in olive oil
• 1 can Borlotti or Cannelini beans
• 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 2 - 3 Tbsp Good olive oil
• Salt and pepper To taste

Instructions

• Drain the tuna and beans.
• Break the tuna up into small chunks.
• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix.
• Cover and keep refrigerated until needed

Enjoying the food in Munich, Germany

Recently, we were lucky to be able to visit the beautiful city of Munich, Germany and took in a visit to Legoland. The Munich part was for the adults in the family and the Legoland part was to convince the younger members of the family to wander around a city for a couple of days. Nothing like a good old-fashioned bribe of a near-future visit to a fun place to get the kids to not whine about their tired legs and about how we’ve already seen two churches and why do we have to see another one! Aside from the architecture, one of the great things to do in Munich is eat (you thought I was going to say “Go to the Oktoberfest and drink like a fish, didn’t you!). Well, the Oktoberfest wasn’t on, and with a couple of kids in tow, fish-drinking is not the done thing, so we went to eat.  One of the delicious sides that you can get everywhere is red cabbage stewed with apples; a dish that brought back many good memories from when I used to live in Heidelberg many years ago. To make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything, I also made myself eat large helpings of fabulous cakes and pastries.  Of course, it was only in the name of research and something I would never normally do…..

Red cabbage everywhere!

While wiping pretzel crumbs off our faces, before moving onto a beer hall to eat large amounts of meat with sides of red cabbage, potatoes and sauerkraut, we stopped to watch the show of the Glockenspiel in the tower of the town-hall on Marianplatz.  At certain times of the day a whole procession of figures cavort around to the tune of the chiming bells: knights, dancers and wedding guests all take a turn to spin in and out of sight of the crowds watching below. The different scenes show events that marked Munich’s history.  It’s worth reading about before you see it (um, which I didn’t do) so that you can really appreciate the show.

Must-buys when you go to Munich

After stuffing ourselves, we went window-shopping and decided that maybe the traditional dirndls and lederhosen weren’t quite for us.  Though it would certainly make us into talking-points if we wore them back in the French village where we live.  It maybe better just to stick to recreating the red cabbage and apple side dish and leave the dirndl wearing to the Bavarian experts.

Just a note for slicing the red cabbage: if you have a mandoline slicer, it’s actually very quick to shred.  Chopping it by hand will take quite a long time, unless you are an expert knife-wielder.

This cabbage goes exceptional well with brined turkey!

By Lisa Watson

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Stewed red cabbage with apple

Stewed red cabbage and apple is a typical South German side dish. It's good enough to eat by itself!

Course Side Dish

Cuisine German

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 1 Red Cabbage
• 50 g Butter 2 Tbsp
• 1 Onion
• 2 Apples
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 150 ml Red Wine 1 cup
• 150 ml Vegetable Broth 1 cup
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 2 Bay leaves
• 4 Cloves
• 3 Juniper Berries
• 1 Tbsp Flour
• 1 Tbsp Redcurrant Jam optional
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Slice the cabbage into thin strips. I used a mandoline slicer for this.
• Chop the onion finely. Peel, core and chop the apples.
• Melt the butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Sauté and onions and apple until the onion becomes translucent.
• Add the cabbage and lemon juice. Stir.
• Sprinkle with 1 - 2 tsp salt, then add the vinegar, wine, broth, bay leaves, cloves, juniper berries and sugar.
• Cover and simmer on a low heat for 1 1/2 - 2 hours, stirring every 10 -15 minutes.
• Mix the flour with a little water in a cup to make a runny paste. Add this mixture to the cabbage and stir in to thicken the sauce.
• Add the redcurrant jam, if using.
• Taste and season with more salt if needed.
• The cabbage can be made a few days in advance and kept refrigerated until needed.

Sicily gets into your blood

This week I’m taking a little trip down (my) memory lane with this swordfish steak dish. I love this recipe for baking the fish with a coating of breadcrumbs, almonds and parsley! It was difficult to take a good photo of it, but I hope you can get an idea of what it looks like once its cooked.

A few years ago we visited Sicily; that island that looks as though it’s being kicked towards the African continent by the toe of Italy.  When you look at a map of Italy in that way, you realize that the Italians were destined to become completely football mad.  It’s in the shape of their country already! Ok, it’s true that the island of Sicily looks like a ball that has a very serious air issue, but still…..anyway, back to the subject I’m meant to be writing about: you may remember my ravings a few years back about how wonderfully fabulous Sicily was. If you don’t, you should probably breathe a sigh of relief as I squashed Sicily into nearly every post I wrote for months afterwards.  If you are afraid that you may have missed something monumental, you can read some of the old posts by clicking on this link about pasta alla Norma, and here on how to make caponata, a delicious vegetarian dish made of eggplant.

How Sicilians catch the swordfish

Swordfish are caught between May and August, when they are swimming through the Straits of Messina, the channel between Sicily and mainland Italy, on their way to and fro from breeding grounds in the warmer, shallower part of the Mediterranean Sea. The traditional way of hunting for swordfish in this area goes back thousands of years.  The boats have a tall tower, which can be up to 30 metres high, sticking up in the middle of them.  One person who does the job of the spotter stays in a cage at the top of this tower and looks for the swordfish.  Once they spot them, the chase is on! Swordfish can swim at speeds up to 100 km/h (about 60 mph), so the hunt is not an easy one.  Using these traditional methods, many swordfish managed to escape the fishermens’ clutches, so the species continued to prosper.  Nowadays, with the rise of those terrible driftnets that catch everything in their path, and long-lines, the Mediterranean swordfish population has started to decline.  So, if you decide to buy swordfish steaks, check first that they have been fished in a sustainable way!

Travel photo of the week

The photos below were taken in the beautiful Sicilian town of Siracusa on the Eastern coast.  If you look not very carefully, I’m doing a “Where’s Waldo” impression at the market. That market was so incredible!  I stuffed my hand-luggage with so many goodies that it nearly burst at the seams!

By Lisa Watson

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Sicilian Swordfish steaks

Find out how Sicilians catch swordfish sustainably, and how to make a traditional Sicilian swordfish steak recipe on Italian Kiwi

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 35 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 2 Swordfish fillets
• 2 Tomatoes medium-sized
• 1 Onion
• 3 Tbsp Breadcrumbs
• 1 Tbsp Almonds
• 1 handful Parsley leaves about 40 g
• 2 Tbsp Capers
• 6 Tbsp Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

• Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
• Put 4 Tbsp of the olive oil into an oven-proof dish. Slice the onion and scatter the slices to cover the bottom of the dish.
• Place the swordfish fillets on top of the onion.
• Chop the tomatoes and scatter them over the swordfish.
• Add the capers.
• Chop the almonds coarsely. Chop the parsley. Mix these two ingredients with the breadcrumbs, then sprinkle the fillets with the breadcrumb mixture.
• Bake in the oven for 20 -25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the swordfish fillets.
• Turn the oven to broil and grill the top until the breadcrumbs start to brown.
• Serve immediately.

A quick and delicious dinner:  shrimps are great to keep on hand!

I always keep a bag of frozen shrimps/prawns in the freezer for those times when I just don’t know what to make for dinner.  They’re quick to thaw out and very fast to cook, and it doesn’t take much to make them into something special.  What more could you ask for in a food?  Oh, and they’re actually good for you!  Extra bonus points for that one!

This shrimp recipe is adapted from one I found years ago.  It’s very flexible, as the marinade can be made with whatever you have on hand (whatever goes with shrimps anyway….don’t start trying to throw nutella and strawberries in with them!). If you don’t have lemons, use limes; if you don’t have oregano, use thyme or herbes de Provence; if you don’t have the ingredients for the salsa, make only the shrimps!  The combination of shrimps and tomato salsa is a winner though.  I highly recommend making them both.  This shrimp dish is also very flexible for the course it’s served at.  You can plate it in small helpings to make an appetizer or first course, or eat it in larger quantities as a main course.  Dessert is a little weird, so maybe don’t try that one…..

I haven’t written a quantity for the shrimps as it depends on how big they are and what course you are making it for.  If they are large, count about 5 per person for a first course and 10 per person for a main.

This is a short post today as it’s the last day of school holidays and I’m running around trying to find the kids’ bags and pencil cases.  It’s amazing how a couple of months can addle your brain so much that you forget where you put everything away safely!

Travel Photo of the Week

I know that it almost looks fake, but I can assure you that the colours are real.  This was taken on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. I remember sitting on this beach and watching a Labrador dog that would stand in the water, intently staring into the sea, and then suddenly plunge his head under and come up chewing.  We chatted to his owner who told us that if he couldn’t find the dog at home, he knew that he would be down at the beach fishing.

This recipe has been adapted from one I found on the recipe site www.Epicurious.com years ago.

By Lisa Watson

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Marinated Shrimps With Tomato Salsa

A quick and delicious meal to make on a weeknight that takes less than 30 minutes!

Course Appetizer, entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Mediterranean

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 minutes minutes

Total Time 32 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• Large shrimps/prawns

For The Marinade:

• Lemon Juice From half a lemon
• 6 Tbsp Olive oil
• 1 tsp dried Oregano
• 1 clove crushed Garlic
• 1/2 tsp Chilli Powder
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Coriander Powder

For The Salsa

• 3 - 4 Tomatoes
• 1 Avocado
• 1 small can corn or 1 fresh cob Corn
• 1 bunch Fresh corinader
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
• Lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon

Instructions

• Clean the fresh shrimps and deshell them, or thaw the frozen shrimps.

For the Marinade:

• Mix all the first ingredients in a bowl and add the shrimps then mix to make sure the shrimps are coated with the marinade.
• Cover the bowl with cling-film and place in the fridge for 20 - 30 minutes.
• Either cook the shrimps on a grill-plate on a bbq or sauté them in a frying pan for a few minutes, stirring often, until they become pink.
• While the shrimps are marinating, made the tomato and avocado salsa.

For The Salsa:

• Wash and chop the tomatoes into cubes.
• Chop the avocado.
• If using fresh corn on the cob, boil the corn in salted water for 7 -10 minutes, then cut off the kernels.
• Wash the fresh coriander and pick off the leaves.
• Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them together gently. Leave some coriander leaves for decorating the shrimps.
• Tip the shrimps on top of the salsa and sprinkle with coriander leaves.  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.

Making the perfect roast leg of lamb

Easter has been and gone, but roast leg of lamb is not just destined for that long weekend!  This roasted lamb leg was what I actually cooked for my Italian side of the family on Easter Sunday.  Now, it’s not because we actually celebrate any kind of religious holiday, but my husband’s parents and some of his cousins and his uncle happened to be over in France for the long weekend to go to the beach, so it was the perfect time to cook up a leg of lamb. We always try to take advantage of the fact that (nearly) everyone is in the same place at the same time, otherwise we’d end up seeing them just at Christmas time.

I already have one recipe for roasting lamb on my blog, but I figure that you can never have too many, right? This one is really easy to do.  If you’ve ever felt daunted by the though of cooking such a large piece of meat, this is the recipe for you, and if you’re perfectly comfortable with whipping up a roast, then it’s still a good one as the tomatoes help the lamb to become very juicy and tender.

When rosemary bushes go rogue

The rosemary jungle in the garden is getting out of hand again, so whenever I can I try to throw a few sprigs of the herb into things I’m cooking.  It’s a shame you can’t use more than a couple of sprigs at a time.  I need a recipe for rosemary jam, or rosemary liqueur where you use kilos of the stuff.  The problem is that they would taste really revolting……

I used a little bit of it to rub the lamb with, and when I snipped it off one of the bushes, the bush looked as if it was laughing at me…..I can see a horror movie plot in which rosemary bushes take over everything and destroy houses all around them.  It may be a slow-moving movie, as they don’t grow that fast, but eventually (when the audience is asleep), the plants would triumph and take over the world!

Travel photo of the week

This one is from New Zealand.  These are actually not trees, but are large ferns called punga.  They’re scattered all  through the forest(or “bush” as you call it in NZ) in Northland, which is the area I grew up in.  The punga is a very important plant for New Zealand as it is the symbol you see on the jerseys of the All-Blacks (do I need to explain who they are?), the logo for NZ butter, and possibly the symbol that it going to be on the new New Zealand flag , if they ever change it.

By Lisa Watson

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Roasted lamb leg with tomatoes

how to make an easy Rosemary Leg of Lamb with Baked Tomatoes

Course entree, Main Course

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Total Time 2 hours hours 40 minutes minutes

Servings 1 leg

Ingredients

• 1 Leg of Lamb
• 3 Cloves Garlic
• 3 - 4 sprigs Rosemary
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 750 g Cherry Tomatoes 1 1/2 lbs
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

• Take the leg of lamb out of the fridge 30 minutes before you want to cook it.
• Heat the oven to 200ºC (400ºF).
• Peel and slice the garlic cloves. Wash the rosemary, dry it, then scrape a knife over it to crush the leaves a little.
• Put the garlic slices and rosemary in 1/4 of a cup of olive oil. Rub this mixture all over the lamb.
• Wash and dry the cherry tomatoes.
• Cover the bottom of the roasting pan with a thin layer of olive oil, then place the lamb leg in the pan.  Arrange the cherry tomatoes around the lamb.
• Roast for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 130ºC (260ºF). Baste the leg of lamb with the juices from the bottom of the pan every 20 minutes.  Cook it for another 1 1/2 - 2 hours depending on how done you like your lamb.
• Slice the lamb and serve it with the tomatoes and juice on top of it.

The joys of scraping ice, cycling in the snow, and kale

It’s getting a teensy bit colder….not as cold as it should be at this time of the year, but cold enough to start making soup every now and then.  I feel cheated: I’ve only had to scrape ice off my car window twice so far this Winter!  Usually, it’s pretty much every day.  I actually enjoy doing it.  Probably because I now live in a place where it doesn’t get too cold.  I remember having to do it in Germany for months and cursing the fact that I had to get out of bed two minutes earlier every day to do some scraping.  Well, actually in Germany, I gave up on my car as it never wanted to start anyway and just slipped and slid my way to work on the snowy bicycle paths. Nothing like riding a bike on snow to wake you up quickly in the morning! But, I’m waffling;…this post is meant to be about soup and the kale I found the other day to put in it.

What’s so great about kale anyway?

So, I’ve been hearing about this wondrous green stuff called kale for the last few years. People rave about it and eat it as though it’s going out of fashion (or more because it’s in fashion, maybe!).  Anyway, a new greengrocer opened up recently near us and when I went to have a sniff around, lo and behold! I found some kale staring at me from the shelves!  I had to buy it of course, and then had to decide what to do with it as it lay gently wilting on my kitchen bench. In the same greengrocer I found some topinambour (Jerusalem Artichokes) which were another thing I’d heard about, but never really seen here, so of course, I bought some of them too.  All this impulse buying is a little dangerous, but it did get us to eat something new.  I also didn’t really know what to do with these tubers. So, what to do with vegetables when in doubt? Make soup!

The wonderful thing about soup

I chopped everything I had (vegetable-wise) up and threw in in a pot with some chicken broth and simmered it for a while, and yet another miracle (after the kale appearance) happened: once I blended it all up, it tasted really good!  I love soup!  It has so many possibilities for subterfuge. Anyway, the kale gave the soup a wonderful bright green colour. I’m still not sure that it’s worth all the hype, but I’ll be buying it again.  Maybe next time I’ll figure out a recipe to use first before going to buy it.  Actually that would make a great phone app: when you’re in the supermarket you point it at a fruit or vegetable and it gives you a recipe along with a list of ingredients you need to buy to make it. I’ll take a commission from whoever develops that one!

Travel photo of the week

I sprinkled on Piment d’Espelette at the end.  It’s a not very spicy chile with a smokey flavour that comes from the Basque Country area in the South-West of France. If you go there you can see strings of these chillis hanging up everywhere to dry.

And now for the travel photo of the week!  Since I’ve written about piment d’Espelete here, I thought I’d show you an area in France near where the powder comes from.  Unfortunately, I have no photos of the Basque Country to show you as we went there way before digital photos, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s very beautiful!  This photo is from near Toulouse, in the Tarn region of France. It’s the South-West of France as well, so it will give you an idea of what the countryside is like there.

So, all that’s left in to say Happy Holidays!  I hope you all have a wonderful time doing whatever you are going to be doing.  See you all next year!!

By Lisa Watson

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Kale and root vegetable soup

How to make kale and root vegetable soup

Course entree, first course, Main Course, Soup

Cuisine Mediterranean

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 1 Onion
• 200 g Jerusalem Artichokes 7.9 oz
• 200 g Pumpkin 7.9 oz
• 200 g Parsnip 7.9 oz
• 1 bunch Kale
• Chicken broth or stock cube with water - to cover
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Piment d'Espelette to taste

Instructions

• Chop the onion finely and sauté it in 3 Tbsp of olive oil.
• Peel and chop all the root vegetables into cubes of roughly similar size (for even cooking).  Wash the kale, then cut it into strips.
• Add the vegetables to the pot, then cover with broth or water.
• Let the soup simmer at a medium heat for about 10 - 15 minutes until soft. (When you can stick a fork or knife through with little resistance).
• Take the soup off the stove and blend it with a handheld blender until smooth.
• Sprinkle with Piment d'Espelette (or another mild chilli powder) just before serving.

When the cold weather hits, it’s time for soup

I think we’ve been picked up by Dorothy’s tornado and transported somewhere not half as interesting as Oz. We live in a place where it hardly ever rains, until a couple of weeks ago.  It started and pretty much hasn’t stopped since.  My husband and I were out in the torrential rain last week trying to stop water from flooding into our back door and over our lovely new floor tiles and freshly painted walls (we succeeded!).  Every day there are photos in the paper of people sitting on top of their cars with water lapping up around the driver’s door, mudslides and flooded shops.  What is going on??!!  Well, we all know what is going on, even if some people don’t like to admit that it’s true.  Since this isn’t a political blog, or even a scientific one, I’m not going to start raving about climate change here, except to say, how can people not see what’s happening?! Deep breath…..  Anyway……since we’ve been having all this rainy weather, I decided we needed a good dose of farro and chickpea soup to warm ourselves up.

What is farro?

Farro? Chickpeas? What are they? Farro is an ancient grain, used often in Italy, that goes by many names. You quite probably have heard of it under one of it’s other aliases, such as wheat-berries or spelt.  It’s one of those super-good-for-you grains that have come back into fashion lately. If you can’t find farro, barley makes a pretty good substitute. The other name for chickpeas is garbanzo beans.  There is contention as to whether these names signify two different legumes of the same species, or whether it’s just an American thing to call them garbanzo (I love that name!  Makes me think of Gonzo from the Muppets). Feel free to call them what you will.  They will taste the same!

How to cheat at making soup

Now, you can go all out and make this soup from “real” scratch if you want (or you can just catch a plan to Lucca in Tuscany and have some of their farro soup.  It’s fabulous!). It is honestly worth it, but I don’t do that very often either as it takes lots of pre-planning.  Who ever remembers to soak beans and chickpeas the night before, or have a container of chicken broth ready to go?  It is already incredibly good if you use canned borlotti or cannelini beans and chickpeas.  The chicken broth can be made with water and a boullion cube. The farro, you have to cook, but it only takes about 20 minutes if you get the right variety, or the pre-cooked kind. Oh, and of course, you can make it vegetarian by using vegetable brother and omitting the bacon.  It’s that kind of guy: super flexible and still will taste great!

Travel photo of the week

So, I think at this time of the year, the travel photo for this week should be something snowy, right?  Or, how about an Autumn scene? Ooohhh, here’s one of my favourite photos from when were in Quebec a few years ago. I love the colours of the maple leaves.  If you ever get a chance, try to get there in the Fall. It’s stunning!

By Lisa Watson

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Chickpea and farro soup

How to make Spelt and Chickpea Soup, with a special cheat's way included. Nobody will know the difference!

Course entree, first course, Soup

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Soaking time for dried chickpeas 1 day day

Total Time 1 day day 2 hours hours

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 medium Carrot
• 1 medium Onion
• 2 leaves Sage
• 50 g Bacon
• 4 Tbsp Tomato puree
• to cover Chicken broth or bouillion cube with water
• 100 g Farro (Wheatberries)
• 200 g Cooked Chickpeas 1 cup
• 125 g Cooked Borlotti Beans (or other dried beans) 4.4 oz
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

• If you are using dried chickpeas and beans, soak them for 12 hours, then boil them in unsalted water for 20 minutes  to 1 hour depending on the type of legume.
• Finely slice the onion and chop the carrot into small cubes. Slice the bacon into small strips or squares. Mince the sage leaves.
• Heat 2 -3 tbsp of olive oil in a large pot. Sauté the onion, sage, carrots and bacon until the onion becomes translucent.
• Add the tomato puree.
• Add the farro and pour in broth or water with a dissolved bouillion cube in it into the pot until the farro is covered. Let it simmer until the farro is nearly cooked.  This depends on the type of farro. Add more water if needed.
• Add the precooked (or canned) chickpeas and beans.  Let the soup simmer for 5 minutes more then season with salt and pepper.

Sarde in Saor; better late than never

I’m a little late with this traditional Venetian recipe for Sarde in Saor (Fresh sardines with red onions). One year has already flown past at the speed of light since we were in Venice.  I’m not sure where it went.  I had all these great plans for doing a series of Venetian recipes when I got back, but instead someone put me in an invisible time-machine and sent me forward a year. I do wish that they’d put me forward in time a little more as they’ve dropped me in the middle of our house undergoing major renovation.  There’s dust and broken stuff everywhere! Well, since I’m here now, and while there are no jackhammers shaking the house, I’ll tout this traditional Venetian recipe using sardines as a “celebration of our (almost) one year anniversary since we were in Venice post” and leave it at that!

Even I like eating sardines made like this

I’m honestly not a super fan of oily fish, even though I know that they are supposed to be awfully good for you, make your brain grow, reduce your risk of cancer, make you a swimming champion etc.  Even so, I have difficulty getting past their “fishiness”.  With sardines in saor, I can actually eat them, and can even say that I enjoy them!  The fish smell is a little overwhelming in the kitchen when you are cooking the fish (but I think that’s just me!), but after that, they’re macerated in an onion, vinegar and wine mixture that changes them into non-smelly delicious fish.  Convinced yet?

The Venetians originally used this method to cook sardines so that they could be conserved for a longer period of time.  Once you have prepared the fish, you need to leave them for a couple of days (in the fridge) to marinate and almost become pickled. I managed to get fresh sardines that were already prepared, which saved a huge amount of work, but if you can only get whole ones, you need a little patience to clean them.  It’s all worth it in the end!

Travel photo of the week

Here’s how Venetians go fruit and vegetable shopping.   It makes the supermarket run so much more fun if you can buy your produce off a boat!

By Lisa Watson

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Sarde in saor

This recipe is for a very special fish dish that is traditionally prepared in the Veneto region of Italy.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Fridge time 2 days days

Total Time 35 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people as a first course.

Ingredients

• 400 g Fresh Sardines 14 oz
• 350 - 400 g Red Onions approx 2 large
• 1- 2 Tbsp Sultanas or raisins
• 100 ml White Vinegar 1/2 cup
• 100 ml White Wine 1/2 cup
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

• If the sardines haven't come fileted, remove the heads and clean the insides.
• Dredge the fish in flour and fry them in vegetable oil, turning them carefully every now and then, until they are cooked through. Cooking time will depend on the fish.  It took about 8 -10 minutes for the ones I had.
• Drain the sardines on a papaer towl.
• Put the sultanas or raisins in warm water to soften.
• Peel and slice the onions thickly. Sauté in olive oil until they are soft, but not browned.
• Add the rest of the ingredients. Squeeze the sultanas to remove the bulk of the water and add them to the mixture.
• Let the onions continue to cook for a few minutes until the liquid is reduced by approximately half, then take the pan off the heat.
• In a non-reactive container, put a layer of sardines, then a layer of the onion mixture.  Continue layering until all the ingredients are used up.
• Put in the fridge and leave for 2 - 3 days.

Notes

Sarde in saor is eaten at room temperature or warm, but not hot.