The Moveable Feast blog
THE GREEN DINNER SET
This pale green set just cries out for seafood. I love the fact that it comes with a pitcher and tumblers, which of course suggests ice-cold lemonade, but I guess if you were to roam globally, a cucumber-infused green gazpacho wouldn't come amiss.
Prawns, scampi, avocado, or cucumber, would all would be very happy on these plates, with a bit of fresh dill to perk it up as a change from basil. In Britain, prawns seem forever joined-at-the-hip with Marie Rose sauce but life was not always like this. An American 'shrimp', or prawn, cocktail, usually is accompanied by the tangiest, most full-flavoured red salsa, with lots of lemon, and a blast of Tabasco, but absolutely no mayo to soften the blow. You'd find a slash of tomato red in your seafood cocktail glass,with a wedge of lemon or lime, not the softly coral-coloured seafood cocktail sauce you find over here.
Calorie-wise, cutting out the dairy is a good idea, considering the fact that shrimp are quite high in cholesterol (although low in fat); it really depends on whether or not you like your seafood sauce to put up a bit of a fight, demanding to be washed down with an ice cold drink, or whether you'd like your cocktail sauce to gently carry you into the evening on the coat-tails of something kinder like a white wine spritzer, or Prosecco.
I recently had a gorgeous moulded prawn and mozzarella starter from Palazzio Petrucci (www.palazzopetrucci.it ) by the coast in Naples, which I thought was going to be quite mild, but they paired it with a flavourful broccoli reduction which gave it punch, so I think if you were looking at prawn, avocado, dill, and burrata on this plate you'd be a happy bunny.
I have been thinking a lot about this dinner set. It is azure blue, incredibly blue, and it comes from Ireland, apparently. There are small bowls next to it which are white with tiny painted flowers of the same blue.
I think this set is for the heat of summer: the hottest, baking, most scorching Amalfi day you could imagine. A blue this strong would stand up to anything the Italian summer could dish out.
I think this dinner set hardly calls for a recipe to do it justice - it would be too hot to cook any sort of a recipe on a day this hot. You really could only manage to
assemble some beautiful items of food on a day this hot, present them in as refreshing a way as possible.
Were I to use this dinner set I would buy the freshest local mozzarella, from high up in the 'Mountains of Milk,' first thing in the morning, before the heat would set in. I would trawl through the vegetable stalls and find an exquisite, glossy, fulsome San Marzano tomato, ripe and ready to pop. I would slice it carefully and fan it out, slice by slice, slowly, onto the plates.
With a bunch of fresh basil in my hand, I would pick only the biggest, best, and unbruised leaves - no more than three or so - and tuck them artfully under the tomato. Two or three pungent black olives would accentuate the dish.
I would carefully drizzle some of the finest extra virgin olive oil across my salad, patiently, measured, with relish. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a final flourish of salt and pepper.
The result would be blue, and white, and red, and green, and black, and so cool, calm, and refreshing. The scents in the heat would be tantalizing. I am so greedy I probably would have this for breakfast, before anyone else was up.
Now, on an altogether different note, I might just prepare a fresh display of pungent Sicilian blood oranges across these plates. Just picture the deepest scented pink against this blue! Alternatively, using the enormous lemons from the garden, next to the pool, I might just make a fresh punchy lemon sorbet for the little floral bowls.
Whatever your plans for this dining set, make it fresh, scented, and full of flavour, to celebrate the height of summer!
THE PLATES OF LA MADONNINA
There are many dinner sets in Villa La Madonnina. I know nothing about their history but they are an important part of the life of the Villa. I have counted five separate compete dinner sets, and when I say complete, I mean not just dinner plates, and side plates, and salad bowls, but also chunky platters for big feasts, and large bowls for salad, and cruet sets, and cups and saucers.
The navy-blue-and-stone coloured set is by far the largest. Underneath, it says 'Casola,', Positano. I would use this set for winter, and for heavy cooking. A lasagne would display nicely on this set. It comes with a five large oval serving platters, a soup tureen, a coffee pot, and a set of coffee, as well as espresso, cups.
We cooked 'Bistecca alla Fiorentina' on these plates, and the huge grilled, t-bone steaks perfectly suited the solemn, stone background, and the confident, stalwart grape-and-vine decoration. Bistecca ala Fiorentino is not a dish of the region - Amalfi cuisine is seafood, mozzarella, and pasta at it's finest - but Luca managed to find us enormous red and shiny steaks, which the Americans would describe as 'Porterhouse'.
To prepare the steaks, I brought them to room temperature and seasoned them lightly with a cut garlic clove, and rosemary from the garden, rubbing the meat vigorously with both. I took some leftover stalks of rosemary, bruised them to release their oils, and let them sit in a bowl of extra virgin olive oil. I basted the steaks with the scented oil when they were turned.
The task of cooking steaks is for a patient person, and usually involves a glass of wine. My husband sat by the grill with a glass of Giardino di Klingsor, from Ravello, and monitored the progress of the steaks with interest. An announcement was made to the family: "The steaks are on", and everybody carried on with whatever they had been doing but fully aware that, soon, all activity would cease when the steaks were done, and we would all respectfully assemble at the table for the eating of the meal.
The side dishes were simple, and didn't dare compete. Sauteed potatoes were crispy in the local olive oil. Enormous sweet peppers, the size of my hand, were charred, steamed, peeled, and settled into a bath of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and seasoning. Charring the peppers is an efficient way to pre-heat your grill for the steaks, and also make your vegetable side dish at the same time. The broccoli here is amazing: small florets on tender stems that melt away when you eat them, nothing like the woody trees you find in Britain.
The steaks took time - always more than you'd expect - and after long, solemn, studious observation, they were tested, discussed, returned, and turned, and discussed again, and finally presented proudly on their navy-and-stone emblazoned platters, to the waiting family. There is no need for horseradish, or mustard, or ketchup, with a steak like this. The gentle scent of rosemary/garlic oil, grilled peppers,
and sea air, is the perfect accompaniment.
For pudding, a small cup of granita, made with fresh lemons, sugar, and rosemary tea, cuts through the richness of the meal and freshens the taste buds. Limoncello, the pungent and heady lemon liquor of the region, wraps you in a gentle, alcoholic haze, and is an important part of the ritual of watching the goats on the hillside, at nightfall.
Marcie Layton
8th April, 2019
from La Villa Madonnina, Praiano, Amalfi Coast, Italy
For more information contact amalfi-villa.com, or reserve@villa-la-madonnina.com.
Stress-free holiday cooking has been a goal of mine for years. I used to devour every article and blog that I could find, giving advice on getting organized, planning ahead, staying relaxed, and enjoying the holiday. Frankly, the best advice on relaxed holiday preparations is purely psychological:
not minding seems to be the healthiest way of coping with all of the annoying, niggling, and sometimes catastrophic events that life can throw your way.
I've tried every possible method of stress-free holiday cooking: elaborate do-ahead charts with tick-boxes; oven-ready meals provided from posh shops with fool-proof instructions attached; plain and simple "I don't care" meals with nothing to do but microwave, etc. The fact is: I love cooking, and love family feasts, but if I do too much I get stressed and fractious, and if I do too little I feel sheepish and a little guilty.
My advice for stress-free holiday cooking? Pick your battles wisely. Concentrate on your favourite element on the menu: something you can cook really really well, in your sleep, with your eyes closed, and with your hands tied behind your back. I'm rubbish at baking: I don't go there. Putting enormous stuffed poultry in the oven at 4.00a.m. just plain worries me: I don't go there either. Sliding things under poultry skin and anything involving basting regularly rarely gets my attention as that's just the problem: paying attention. I have the attention span of a very young child, and get distracted easily by things like opening Christmas stockings and hunting for Easter eggs.
SO: the following is my contribution to the challenge of holiday cooking. This Easter I personally will be preparing the most beautiful bung-in-the-oven roast Bronze Turkey Crown (www.gressinghamduck.co.uk ), with braised leeks, ginger & brown sugar-glazed baby carrots, and the following magical stuffing casserole. Woolley Park Farm (www.woolleyparkfarm.co.uk) is a fantastic local supplier of poultry in Bradford-on-Avon.
Stuffing casseroles don't go in the bird. Treat them like a side dish (big plus, here: you can re-heat a sausage casserole, whereas you shouldn't re-heat stuffing that's been inside a bird, because of bacteria issues). These casseroles can be made well in advance and re-heated gently, covered with foil and spritzed on top with a little spray cooking oil to prevent sticking. They incorporate sausage, and fruit, and veg, and bread, all together in one dish. The Midnight Fridge Raiders will thank you, as they make the most marvellous leftovers when sliced thickly and stuffed into a turkey sandwich. If you are visiting friends or relatives, and are asked to bring something, bring this. It travels really well, chilled and covered, all in one dish, and doesn't take up too much room in somebody's else's busy kitchen, when you reheat it.
The origin of this particular recipe came from THE SILVER PALATE NEW BASICS COOKBOOK, and was an elegant dish involving dried sour cherries, hazelnuts, port, and all manner of good things. I've streamlined my stuffing over the years, and it changes every time I use it, based on where I am and what looks good in the shops. (I've actually lost the recipe now, as I tore the pages out of the cookbook and brought them to Tivoli in my luggage, from whence they did not return). I personally don't use nuts, as my son is allergic; they do add a nice bit of crunch. So, without further ado:
MOVEABLE FEAST CATERING COMPANY STUFFING CASSEROLE (Serves 6)
PRE-HEAT OVEN TO 190C.
Ingredients:
2 chopped yellow onions
1 stalk of celery, chopped finely
1/2 c. dried apricots, chopped
1 tart red apple, unpeeled, cored and chopped
fresh or dried thyme, to taste
6 cups stale bread, cubed into 1" cubes
6 pork and herb sausages, skinned (or equivalent bulk pork sausage meat) broken up into bits
1/2 c. chicken stock
olive oil for frying
(1/2 c. chopped walnuts or pecans)
Method:
Fry onions and celery gently until wilted.
Add sausage meat and brown, breaking up into smaller pieces with a spoon
Place ingredients in a large bowl, add bread cubes, fresh and dried fruit, nuts if using, and herbs
Gently stir to combine and add stock as needed to moisten, if your bread crumbs are really stale.
Lightly grease a casserole dish and add the stuffing mixture. Cover with foil and refrigerate until ready to use, or:
Bake, loosely covered, for 30 minutes, uncover, and cook 15 minutes more. This is a very forgiving recipe if you've timed your bird wrong: it can rest happily. Make sure it is piping hot when you serve it.
HAPPY EASTER!
I’m sitting here at my kitchen table, having lunch and fiddling with our desk globe.
It’s an elegant little globe, Portugese, deep Mediterranean blue, inlaid with semi-precious stones, delicately cut into the shapes of continents. The latitudinal and longitudinal lines crisscross the globe in gold.
I’m having Mexican- style guacamole on Sardinian flatbreads, and sipping homemade Italian sweet pepper soup. As I spin the globe around, I trace with my finger across the latitudinal lines from Central Italy across to Southern California, where I was raised. Rome and Los Angeles are on a par with each other, half a world away.
It’s a popular misconception that all Californian food is Mexican
As I’ve mentioned before, America is a big melting pot of cultures and tastes, and so my inspirations really come from all across the globe, Italy included. For example, a popular attraction in Southern California is Venice Beach, with it’s bridges, canals, and white sandy beach. It was inspired by Venice, Italy, with its long, sandy Lido.
I’ll be in Italy soon, writing to you from my grazing tour. My shopping list for the villa where we’re staying would not be out of place in an American supermarket, and as I look up in my food guides what produce to expect in the regions I’m visiting, the foods are just as familiar as in the Central Valley of California.
Once, when I was in a beach café in Positano, on the Amalfi coast, I was served an enormous bowl of fish stew, which was a speciality of the house. I was expecting my first child, and feeling a bit fragile. When the dish arrived, I was confronted by the heads of several fish, staring soulfully at me from their soupy grave.. THAT you wouldn’t see in California: fish heads!
Here, for you, my ’fusion’ soup recipe
To celebrate Spring and the sunny produce of Italy and California. It is a rich terracotta colour. A crumble of English, or Italian, blue cheese, would round it off perfectly. (Karen at Bloomfields greengrocers found some enormous, glossy, fabulous red and yellow sweet peppers for me. Don’t use green peppers for this recipe; it’ll turn everything a vaguely khaki colour).The Sardinian flatbreads are from M&S: (Pane Carasatu from Giulio Bulloni)
SWEET PEPPER SOUP (serves 6)
4 large red, and yellow sweet peppers, cored, deseeded, and chopped roughly
2 medium plum tomatoes, cored and chopped roughly
1 stalk celery, trimmed and chopped roughly
2 cloves fresh garlic, diced
1/8 cup vegetable stock powder ( I use Marigold brand organic Swiss vegetable bouillon)
¼ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
METHOD:
Sautee vegetables on a medium heat in the oil until soft, about 10 minutes.
Sprinkle over the stock powder and stir to combine.
Add about six cups boiling water and stir again. The amount of water used depends on the size of the vegetables you are using. Use your own judgement.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Allow the soup to cool slightly, and then remove the solids from the soup with a slotted spoon, and process in a food processor, with a little of the cooking liquid, until all vegetables are pureed.
Return the puree to the saucepan with the soup, and simmer for another five minutes.
Season to taste with salt & pepper, and garnish with crumbled blue cheese if you wish
BUONA MANGIATA! (Good eating)
Mozzarella gets such a bad rap.
For many people, their only encounter with mozzarella is to wade through a slightly yellowish, gummy dairy mass, designed to glue selected toppings onto a delivery pizza. Mozzarella is often seen in the high street shops, grated and bagged, or cut into bricks and vacuum packed, destined again as a go-between for cardboard-like pre-packed pizza bases, and chosen toppings.
Discerning restaurant diners may come across water buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region of Italy: pungent, with an edgy, tangy finish. Italian water buffalo look so exotic, and baleful. Their origins, and their existence in Italy, could spark heated discussions throughout the duration of a long Italian meal.
But burrata? Ohh, burrata.
Burrata is the unsung hero of the cheese world, made from either cow, or buffalo, milk. I ferreted out a fabulous, special source of fine Italian cheesemakers, deep in the Wiltshire countryside, when I went on a hunt for a local supplier.
The Basics: Burrata means ‘buttery’ in Italian. It is a by-product of mozzarella preparation. Thrifty Italian cheese producers use every scrap of their product, and burrata is produced when the end scraps of mozzarella production are filled with double cream, and tied neatly into a small parcel. A typical portion would be about 125 grams.
I use burrata in many ways, in sweet, as well as savoury recipes. Imagine cutting into a perfectly poached egg, allowing the sunshine yolk to trickle gently down your plate, and you will begin to see the delights of burrata. Burrata has the same texture and consistency of a poached egg, so when you use it in a dish you have the combined delights of a firm outer casing, and a rich, runny interior, to accompany other elements in your dish.
DE LUCA MOZZARELLA COMPANY
An organic, family-owned mozzarella producer, is busy making traditional method cows’ milk mozzarella, burrata, butter, ricotta, and provolone products, from their dairy farm, tucked away in a peaceful corner of Bishopstone, Wiltshire. We went to see mozzarella and burrata being made, proudly guided through the process by CLAUDIO SARFATI, artisan cheesemaker.
It was so peaceful when we arrived, more than you’d expect from a rural farm. Claudio explained why. The calves are allowed to stay with their mothers. There was a level of contentedness in the animals that permeated the farmyard. I promise you, the little calves were smiling at me! It was utterly entrancing. (My youngest has just gone off to university for the first time and I’m suffering from ‘empty nest syndrome’, so it was lovely seeing these little animals, so relaxed, with their mother by their sides).
Claudio then led us towards the cheese-making facility: a most delightful little thatched converted outbuilding, and positively Turneresque. He opened the door and suddenly it was like the Tardis inside: thick clouds of steam hung from the ceiling, half-concealing enormous steel vats of milk, being tended by the artisan cheese makers. An extremely petite, and extremely polite, lady came forward, asking Claudio some questions in quickfire Italian. I stared, speechless, at the giant cauldrons of cheese product, and this unexpected mix of new and old methods.
DE LUCA MOZZARELLA is an organic farm, and uses ‘Bio-dynamic’ methods of making cheese. On their website, they describe the method as “…a combination of science and artisanal recipes, integrating the traditional values of Italian cheesemaking with the local best organic cow milk, from the English countryside….”
The tiny lady disappeared into the steamy room and quickly re-appeared with tubs of freshly-made cheeses, still warm from the vats in which they were made. This included an enormous mozzarella ball floating in a brine bath, a tub of thick, rich, creamy ricotta, and my beloved burrata, fat and shiny, tied smartly with a blue tie.
I carried them carefully over to the car, my head filled with all sorts of plans for my new acquisitions. We thanked Claudio for the tour and left, completely charmed by this integration of old methods and new ideas. In this photo I have prepared a fruit, burrata, and chocolate board. Try dipping fresh cherries into dark chocolate fondue, then add creamy burrata and salted cashews. Claudio recommends using walnuts, as they are more Mediterranean and lower in calories. Tell us what you think in the box below.
For more information:
Website:
delucamozzarella.com
Email:
info@DLM.com
Rosemary Barron sits quietly by the wood burner, nibbling pitta bread, gazing at the glacial February weather through the window of The Greek Taverna in The Sun Inn.
She is a striking woman with a sweep of silver hair and elegant wardrobe, reminiscent of Christine Lagarde. Rosemary is forthright and articulate, confident in her subject, and delights in discussing the world of food. She smiles as I tell her how glamorous her life sounds, travelling around the world, writing about food and food cultures. When we hear from her, it’s often a fabulous postcard from Romania, or Crete, and when we meet up it’s usually sandwiched between food writing journeys and deadlines to be met, for her publisher.
Flavours of Greece
Her culinary classic, FLAVOURS OF GREECE, is still in print after 27 years, and was written at a time when there were very few English language books on Greek cookery, and none on Cretan cuisine.
“It’s very difficult to earn a living now as a food writer” she explains. “We don’t have the outlet for our work, that we used to have.”
By this she means the increasing challenges that magazines and newspapers face to keep publishing, and the perpetual struggle of the literary community to compete with the readily available flow of content online.
Over a traditional Greek lunch, book-ended with taramosalata and saganaki starters and finished with pungent Greek coffee, Rosemary takes us through her culinary journey, from a California branch of Williams-Sonoma to her current place as a top-ranked writer of cookery books and articles.
In addition to her impressive body of literary work, and writing Greek cookery books, Rosemary founded and ran the Kandra Kitchen cookery school for six years, in Crete and Santorini. She is a frequent contributor to FOOD AND TRAVEL MAGAZINE.
Rosemary’s culinary career began in an unexpected way.
Armed with a British teaching credential, she arrived in California and discovered that she was not permitted to teach without a local qualification. Happily, she met up with Chuck Williams, founder of Williams-Sonoma, who quickly gave her a job demonstrating their top-of-the-line kitchen equipment to the food-curious, who poured into the legendary food emporium, keen to out-do each other with their culinary achievements. Rosemary, a qualified educator, and blessed with a natural articulacy, excelled at demonstrations, and soon found herself teaching culinary skills to the customers.
Her love of, and keen interest in, Greek cooking, allowed Rosemary an outlet for her teaching skills in her favourite part of the world, and Kandra Kitchen Cookery School was born. “Greek food is made for company, “ she explains, and extols a cuisine that is ‘classless’. You can go into any café, taverna, or estiatorio in Greece and find a cross-political demographic from all walks of life, eating the same food in the same establishment. But food is an ephemeral product: it has a shelf-life, and is designed to be consumed: the best way to preserve and promote cookery skills is to write about it. Thus Rosemary’s literary career began, as she wrote books and article about the foods she found in Crete, and the dishes she was producing in the cookery school.
“Who are your heroes?” I ask her.
Not surprisingly, she gives me an eclectic list of the world’s top culinary chefs and writers: Patience Gray, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Rowley Leigh, Jeremy Lee, Robert Carrier, and Sally Clarke, to name but a few.
For new home cooks, she recommends turning to the classics for inspiration, and advises beginners to “attend a cookery school, be prepared to make mistakes, and work out what you like.” Putting your stamp on your own cooking means deciding what works for you, and honing and clarifying your personal mark on the food you prepare. “Food is knowledge, but cookery is a skill and needs practice” she states, and very much encourages learning by doing, over and over again, until the skills you aim for are second nature.
I ask her how to find safe, accurate information about food, online. With the onset of the food blogging culture, research can be a bit of a minefield. “There is a lot of food snobbery and fear of food now”. It’s important to use common sense and decide what you like, rather than be led by trends and fads in food. When sourcing information online, look for credentials at the bottom of the article, and check if a blog is a sponsored post; this tells you that your author has been paid to promote a particular product, which would have an effect on the content. Ultimately, use your own common sense. If what you read feels logical, then it probably is sound advice. Trust your gut, and use your head.
I ask Rosemary where she thinks the food journalism industry will be in five years’ time and she looks at me, bemused. It’s a difficult question to answer. “Whatever we do, we’re hard-wired to look after ourselves, so cooking is good for us”. There will always be a need for education and understanding about food, but the methods by which we learn about food and nutrition are changing, perhaps forever. It’s a credit to Rosemary’s skilled authorship that her Greek cookery classic is still in print after nearly three decades, and still commands a place in the culinary world, which is filling up fast with television cookery shows, online blog and vlog-posts, and the onslaught of social media.
Eat, enjoy, learn, be inspired: a journey into the world of food can be a fascinating adventure.
For Rosemary Barron, an unexpected change of job has led to a vibrant, colourful and far-reaching career which spans the globe and continues to grow daily. For information on Rosemary’s latest project, read below.
FLAVOURS OF GREECE, published by Grub Street (London) is available through AMAZON, retail price £18.99.
Rosemary has had seven Papers published by the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery, and has been published in DECANTER, BBC GOOD FOOD, BON APPETIT, and CUISINE (U.S.).
Rosemary’s next project is as a lecturer on a Gastronomy Tour, with Martin Randall Travel. GASTRONOMIC CRETE: Ambrosia and diaita (diet) from land to table. This 9-day tour celebrates Cretan gastronomy, from ancient to modern, country simplicity to epicurean sophistication.
Find out more.
