Italian torta rustica

Don't call it quiche.

In Italy torta rustica is a seasonal staple and a versatile dish: it can serve as an appetizer, as a side dish, or be the main entree. 

With boundless recipes and fillings, the savory rustic pies of Italy were initially intended as thrifty fridge-cleaners, adding bits of leftover vegetables to a mix of cheese, cured meats and an egg to bind it all together in a flaky shell. 

If you're looking for savory pie baking inspiration, here’s a failsafe recipe for quick and easy vegetarian torta rustica filled with spinach and punchy gorgonzola cheese.

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Amuse bouche recipe

To keep our guests busy while last touches were being made on the gargantuan Ferragosto meal, we offered these tiny amuse bouche (French for small, savory items served as an appetizer, literally 'amuse the mouth') presented in lovely little china dipping bowls.

We made deviled eggs and tuna-stuffed cherry tomatoes; and dressed each respectively with a minuscule Salina caper, and a pitted olive. We decorated each serving bowl with some baby lettuce and, voila smiles on faces.

Buon appetito.

Pomodori al Tonno recipe

I'm a hard worker, but not in summer. In summer I'm lazy.

Even in the kitchen.

Plus it's hot, and working by the stove–or even worse, the oven–in this weather, is torture.

Like today, for example. I wasn't feeling too good, I had no appetite (a bad sign for me), and I didn't have the desire to even swim once. What I did do was take a nice walk in the property's orto (vegetable garden) with a large basket, and returned home with inspiration.

And lunch.

The good thing about spending time in the country is that you don't have to bother going grocery shopping. The produce is all home-grown, and every family has a ridiculously well-stocked pantry. Olive oil, wine, jams and preserves, canned vegetables, honey, bottled sauces, eggs, sausages, herbs, bread... everything is sourced or made right here, on the premises.

When I rinsed the field dust off these tomatoes, they were still warm from the sun.

I whipped this dish up in 10 minutes, and it managed to restore a smile on my face.

And a grumble to my tummy.

6 small Vesuvio tomatoes, halved
200 g (1 cup) oil-packed tuna, drained and flaked
2 ribs of baby white celery, diced
3-4 tablespoons of light mayonnaise
Pinch of salt

Scoop out the pulp from the tomatoes, removing seeds and watery parts, and set aside.

Chop the tomato pulp, toss in a mixing bowl with remaining ingredients, and stir to mix well.

Divide the mixture and scoop it into the halved tomatoes. Refrigerate 30 minutes before serving.

Uncork the chilled Sauvignon and put your feet up, it's summer and you deserve a break after all this hard work.


Buon appetito.

Pizza di Scarola rustic pie recipe

Originally a Christmas dish, this savory Neapolitan vegetable pie is an Italian mealtime classic. In the Napoli hometown, the stuffed pie crust has a hint of sweetness and needs yeast and lard. I use regular bread dough for a lighter outcome. It's a different way of eating greens, puts smiles on children's faces and gratifies your taste buds with a piquant filling surprise.

Image © giallozafferano.it

For the crust:
500 g (2 1/2 cups) flour
125 ml (1/2 cup) milk
60 g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
125 ml (1/2 cup) lukewarm water
12 g (1 tsp) active dry, or brewer's yeast
1 pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar
40 g (2 tbps) extra virgin olive oil
1 egg yolk stirred with a little milk for brushing


For the filling:
1 large or 2 medium heads of escarole (broad-leaved endive) washed and chopped
A fistful of Gaeta olives (or small purple Kalamata olives) pitted
A pinch of salted capers, rinsed
2 garlic cloves, halved
1 spicy red peperoncino
1 oil-packed anchovy (optional)
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt

To make the crust, first melt the yeast in a small vessel with the milk, lukewarm water, very little salt and a tsp of sugar.

Now place the flour in a large mixing bowl with the softened butter, olive oil and incorporate the yeasty blend. Mix well with a wooden spoon to obtain a moist ball, pouring the lukewarm water in slowly.

Turn the oily dough onto a clean surface, and knead briefly, just until it becomes smoother, about a minute. Cut the dough into two pieces, one slightly larger than the other. Wrap each piece in plastic, and let rest in a warm place, for about 2 hours. The dough pieces will double in volume.

Preheat oven at 180° C (350° F).

Boil the chopped escarole for 2 minutes in plenty of water. Drain and wring away excess water.

Meanwhile, lightly film a large pan with olive oil, and heat over medium-high. Brown the garlic and peperoncino to release their flavors, and discard when the garlic begins to brown. According to your taste you can decide to leave in the peperoncino. The original recipe calls for an added oil-preserved anchovy too, you're free to omit it but it does give the whole recipe a punch without ever noticing the actual anchovy flavor.

Sauté the parboiled escarole for 5 minutes in the flavored olive oil with the pitted olives, capers and a pinch of salt. Let it cool 10 minutes before the next step.

Roll the two dough disks or squares out; given the greasiness of the dough, no flour is needed, but just in case, you can line your baking pan with some parchment paper.

The larger dough piece should be bigger than your 9-inch pie shell. Drape the larger rolled dough over the lined pie shell leaving some overhang all around.

Fill with the cooked greens and cover with the second dough piece.

Trim away a little of the excess dough, crimp the edge all the way around to seal the pie, and cut 4 small slits in the top, or pierce the surface with the tines of a fork.

Brush the surface with some egg wash and bake 20-30 minutes (depending on oven vigor).

Let the pie rest on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before serving.

Cut generous slices and serve paired with the rest of your meal, generously washed down by big Aglianico wine. Otherwise you can enjoy it cold the next day, with a chilled beer.

Baked pears with gorgonzola and honey recipe

The quirky flavor combination of cheese and honey is recently very much in style on Italian dinner tables. I have adapted that to the ancient Italian maxim that reads Al contadino non far sapere quant'è buono il formaggio con le pere (don't let the farmer know how tasty his pears are, eaten with cheese–intending that once he finds out, he won't share his pears with you).

This 10-minute marvel will gratify your tastebuds and have you imploring il contadino for more.

4 large Williams (aka Bartlett) pears
200 g (2 cups) sharp Gorgonzola
1 oz fluid honey

Pine nuts, lightly toasated

Heat the oven at 200° C (390° F).

Blanch the pears by soaking them in boiling hot water for 2 minutes, then cut them in half, and scoop out about 1/2 inch of the central pulp, to remove seeds.

Place pear halves on a greased cookie sheet flat face up, and cover them evenly with thick, messy slices of sharp Gorgonzola.

Bake pears in the oven for a few minutes, or until the cheese has fully melted, and begins to bubble slightly.

Carefully transfer on a serving platter and drizzle with warm honey and garnish with toasted pine nuts. Serve with bold red wine as a prelude to robust meat courses and hefty lasagna, or simply as a restoring midnight tonic.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. 

–– Luciano Pavarotti

Frittura di calamari, fried calamari recipe

Calamari are a very popular food in Italy. The bodies, sliced into rings and deep fried along with the curled tentacles, are a classic summer meal.

I sometimes get lazy and prefer to eat calamari alone, sparing myself the hassle of having to peel, bone and pick through small prawns, other assorted crustaceans and the (however tasty) bony reef mullet, which are all typical frittura mista staples.

Here's a recipe for a simple summer seafood frittura di calamari.

500 g (1.1 lb) absolutely fresh baby calamari, cuttlefish, squid or any small octopod mollusks
100 g (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
100 g (1/2 cup) polenta flour (cornmeal)
Peanut oil for frying
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 lemon for juice

Cut the calamari in ringlets, leaving the tentacle clusters whole. If you've caught them yourself or the fishmonger didn't clean them, be sure to trim away ink sacs (if any) and remove the indigestible parts, like eyes, innards, cartilage, beak and quill nestled in the center of the head.

There's a video HERE that can help you learn how to do this easily. 

Combine the polenta with the flour, a dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper in a gallon-size zipper seal freezer bag and add the calamari pieces. Seal closed and give the bag a vigorous shake, to coat the pieces well.

Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Remember, temperature shock is key for proper frying.

Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a frying pan, the more the better. When the oil is piping hot, but not quite smoking (that means its burning!), remove the dredged calamari from the fridge and out of the bag, frying it in small batches in the olive oil. Small batches avoid the oil to maintain its hot temperature.

Fry these small quantities for no more than a minute. The oil will bubble up and cook the calamari all over, so there will be no need to turn. The result will be a lightweight crunchy crust and a tender, sweet fleshy inside.

Rest your fried calamari to dry briefly on a paper towel, dribble with lemon juice and eat with your hands, sensually burning fingers and tongue.

Cipolline borrettane - balsamico glazed onion recipe

If you've never tried the small and flat, pearl-white disk shaped onions called cipolline borettane, this is a tasty way to familiarize with them.

These delectable bulbs can be traced back to the 15th century where they were first grown in Boretto in the province of Emilia-Romagna. Now they are sold virtually everywhere in Italy, already peeled and ready for use.

Pair them with aged cheese platters, crusty Italian bread or a rare beef steak. This is our nanny's signature recipe, thank you Yolanda!

400 g (2 cups) cipolline borettane, peeled
1/2 glass balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp brown sugar
Salt

Blanch the onions whole in lightly salted water for 5 minutes, or until they begin to darken slightly. Drain, pat dry with a kitchen towel and set aside.

In a wide skillet, heat the oil and sauté the onions briefly; then splash in some extra old balsamic vinegar and brown sugar to deglaze the pan and caramelize the juices to create a lovely sticky sauce. 

The ingredient quantities should just be indicative, try to adjust to your own taste and desired degree of caramelization.

The onions are done when they are tawny and begin to fall apart.

Wine pairing tip: These sweet glazed onions will sing with a bright and juicy red made with a large percentage of Sangiovese grapes, one that does not have any Cabernet, Merlot, or Syrah in its blend.

Buon appetito!

Friggione recipe

Scarpetta, literally means "little shoe," God knows why. Scarpetta is the word for the act upon which a small piece of hand held bread mops up any delicious food residue in a plate and is devoured. 

Essential. Frowned upon in etiquette manuals. Not the thing to perform at a formal seated dinner. I don't usually care for that sort of table manners, so I do it all the time, regardless of dress code. That is if whatever is left in my plate is worth it and the bread is soft enough.

I'm a huge fan of scarpetta, so my dishes are usually a bit overdressed, in order to enjoy a conclusive good sweep. Be they pasta dishes, fish or meat. I usually clean the plate with the bread so carefully that I have been often called names. Or fed more food thinking my plate had been empty to begin with.

Preeminent scarpetta applies to those dishes that require large amounts of sauce, like for example a slippery plate of Bucatini all'Amatriciana, or homemade tagliatelle al ragù or a very juicy roast. Once you've eaten the food, whatever's left in the plate, is scarpetta material. Otherwise, scarpetta can be performed with those dishes whose sole purpose is being sopped by a spongy chunk of warm bread. Friggione falls into this second category.

Friggione is a tomato and onion sauce typical of Bologna, the epicurean city also known as la dotta (the learned) and la grassa (the fat).

This sauce is exclusively intended for dipping bread as a fully authorised scarpetta antipasto. Rich and absurdly tasty, friggione takes forever to make, and employs politically incorrect amounts of onion.

The time-consuming recipe to exquisite friggione, dating back to 1886, is made with the following ingredients:

1 kg (2.2 lbs) white onions, thinly sliced
500 g (1.1 lb) ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and finely chopped (or a 28-oz can of preserved tomatoes)
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Thinly slice the onion (for best results, use a mandoline) and leave it to macerate with the salt and sugar in a large bowl.

Pour the onion – and the resulting maceration juice – in preferably a terracotta stewpot (not iron, non-stick, copper or enamelled) with the oil, and over a gentle heat, cook it slowly stirring with a wooden spoon.

Keep cooking at a very low simmer until the onions wilt, making sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Add a little broth or hot water should the onions dry. This could take a while.

At this point, add the chopped tomatoes over very low heat, stirring for 2 hours. Yes, maybe even 2 and a half.

No, I'm not kidding.

Adjust seasoning and keep moist with water (or a little vegetable broth) if necessary.

When your patience has completely run out and the onion and tomatoes will have become a lovely geranium-colored purée, the friggione will be ready. And it will have been worth the wait, believe me.

Buon appetito!

Shrimp and zucchini frittelle recipe

I'm forcing myself to post today. It's like a zen exercise. I'm doing it to keep my brain busy, and to force out all the accumulated suffering I've been absorbing from the earthquake drama since Monday at dawn. The relief machine is picking up momentum, the shakes continue (always stronger at night, I can't make out why) and I go on, counting my blessings and thankful for being here, all in one piece. I crave sleep, but I must be vigil. Needless to say I can't wait for that mini vacation.

The only way I'm able to wind down in the meantime is by cooking. Weird.

And since I've been feeding on comfort broth for the past two days, today I felt like making something totally unwholesome, unPC and deep-fried. I'm sure your livers will all forgive me for that.

Ready for sinful? Read on. And hopefully you'll replete like I have with my debauched shrimp and zucchini frittelle, Italian for fritters.

This 30-minute wonder is perfect antipasto fare. Put a batch of it on a platter along with morsels of ribbony mozzarella in carrozza, some crisp fried zucchini blossoms, a handful of French fries or fried artichoke hearts, and you've got yourself a lovely Frittura Mista; Italian for 'assorted deep-fried goodies.'

200 g (1 cup) medium shrimp tails (shelled and de-veined)
2 zucchini (I like to use the ribbed romanesche), julienned into matchsticks
4 eggs
1 garlic clove, halved
1 tbsp unbleached flour
1 tbsp cornstarch (aka cornflour or Maizena)
100 g (1/2 cup) arugula leaves
100 g (1/2 cup) dandelion greens (save the flowers too, they're edible)
Extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic or apple cider vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sauté the zucchini in a medium-sized frying pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1/2 clove of garlic. Do this for roughly 2-3 minutes, and then set aside.

In another skillet, sauté the shrimp tails in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the other half clove of garlic. Do this for no more than one minute; fish the shrimp tails out and rest them on a paper towel. Then coarsely chop and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, mix 1 egg into the flour and cornstarch. Beat in the other eggs one at a time, add the chopped shrimp tails, the prepared squash (or zucchini), adjust seasoning and mix well to blend. Refrigerate for 20 minutes while you uncork the ice-cold vino.

Heat about 1/2 cup of olive oil in a large frying pan, when it is piping hot, drop in 2 or 3 tablespoon-sized dollops of the blend at a time, and fry in small batches for 2-3 minutes on each side. Park the fritters briefly on a paper towel to absorb grease, while you plate the salad bed.

Scatter the arugula and the rest of the greens on a wide platter, dress with a thread of olive oil and your vinegar of choice. Toss and garnish with the fritters and a handful of edible blossoms, like for example dandelions, violets and cowslips. Voilà, frittelle.

♥

Many of you kindly offered solidarity to those dramatically affected by Sunday's earthquake in Abruzzo. In the hours immediately after the first shock, I was unable to provide that information. If you are still interested in contributing, however, here are a few useful places to visit:

National Italian American Foundation: Abruzzo Relief Fund

Red Cross: Donation page

Global Giving Relief and Recovery Fund

Thank you for your touching words of comfort and concern in the past few days. I have treasured them immensely. Much more than you imagine.
Grazie.