A tale of two halves here: cheeky Essex boy meets Eastern-influenced vegophile.
Jamie Oliver’s current series Jamie Does… visits different cities and squeezes the food out of them. I’ve scribbled quite a few of them down, but his recent Andalucian pork chop recipe really connected with me. He cut a slit in a pork chop, then stuffed it with a juicy raisin stuffing. Mine is simplified to my store-cupboard. I couldn’t quite manage the meat pocket, my chops were more steaks and I couldn’t get enough knife in to stuff without going through. I instead plonked the marinade on top after cooking on one side on the barbecue. The flavours were there but I imagine it would be sensational properly stuffed. Next time I’ll get proper fat chops.
The other part of the dish was courtesy of Ottolenghi’s new book Plenty. I was fortunate enough to get one of these courtesy of their Twitter competition and couldn’t decide where to start, it’s stuffed with great ideas and brilliant (yet simple) invention. I started simple: mozzarella rendered to fluffy, yummy gooeyness. Fennel seeds popped in the mouth among the creamy cheese. Simply delicious.
Moorish pork chops with marinated mozzarella and tomato salad:
For the pork:
4 pork steaks
A handful of raisins
A good splash of sherry vinegar
A dash of extra virgin olive oil
A couple of teaspoons of thyme leaves
For the mozzarella salad:
A couple of tomatoes, cut into chunks
400g mozzarella
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
A couple of teaspoons of thyme leaves
A dash of extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
Zest of 1 lemon
Fry the fennel seeds in a dry pan until they pop. Put them into a pestle and mortar and crush lightly. Add the thyme, garlic, oil and lemon zest and toss with the mozzarella. Leave this alone while you get on with everything else.
Combine the raisins, vinegar, oil and thyme and leave for a few minutes so the raisins absorb the juice.
Cut a slit horizontally in the side of the pork. Push some of the stuffing into the gap.
Barbecue the pork on each side until nicely browned. Serve with the mozzarella and tomatoes, garnished with a drizzle of oil.
The sun shone in my corner of Rayleigh this weekend, and with family coming over for dinner a roast or stew didn’t seem right for the occasion. I was browsing the ol’ recipe book shelf and a skinny little booklet fell out: Jamie Oliver’s Red Nose Day Recipes 2009. I was bought it as a gift, which is great, but it’s so slender it disappeared between dusty volumes in my collection. Mrs. RoastPotato took one look at this salad recipe and that was it, it was on the menu.
It’s a fairly simple affair, a celebration of tomatoes matched with milky mozzarella. I managed to pick up some arancia variety at the Co-op, and they were beautiful – sweet grape-sized amber tomatoes with bags of character. Paired with some more luscious vine toms they were a pleasing mix. Unusually there was only vinegar on the salad items, with the oil component coming from a punchy basil dressing, and as a combination it was brilliant. Lots of bright, sunny flavours and a celebration of it’s core ingredients. Dust this one off for a barbecue this Summer, it will be an instant hit.
Salad from Capri (serves 6 as a side-salad):
600g mozzarella, torn into chunks
A few handfuls of mixed tomatoes
A handful of baby salad leaves
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
For the basil dressing:
Large handful of basil leaves
Large pinch of sea salt
Extra virgin olive oil
For the basil dressing, bash the basil and salt together in a pestle and mortar. In seconds it will turn to a spinach-y mush. Add enough oil to make a vibrant green paste.
Strew most of the mozzarella over a large serving dish. Hold some back for another layer.
Toss the tomatoes and salad with the vinegar and a sprinkle of black pepper, and drape over the cheese.
Top with more mozzarella, and put splodges of basil dressing around the salad – these will provide big hits of salty basilness through the salad.
I am an RSS addict. When bookmarking first appeared the idea was sound but I knew I would never actually revisit that site to read it again. Then RSS became popular and lazy forgetful types like me were able to not bother hitting F5 again. I’m a subscriber to the very American Epicurious.com, and there’s often very interesting articles in there. This recipe flew in this week and I was interested straight away. Chicken and cheese? Ta.
I made it according to the recipe below, but couldn’t help feeling it was missing something. There’s too much onion for the chicken – it becomes acidic – and there’s one big flavour lacking. Perhaps paprika, but definitely more parmesan. I’d do it again, but with tweaks.
“Sweet sausage, in little pieces? And a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese? That’s Carmela’s lasagne.”
-Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano
I came to The Sopranos far too late. Early 2008 More4 ran every episode back-to-back and I devoured them all. I was utterly gripped by the boyish yet chilling Tony, the larger-than-life Paulie, sly yet affable Uncle June, the big mouth braggadocio Christopher, and the uneasy balance of family life with ‘mafia’ life. It’s easily one of the finest series every created, a masterpiece of character study and beautiful dialogue. If you haven’t tried it, I heartily recommend it.
And the food of the Sopranos is a thing unto itself. Whether’s it’s baked ziti, sfooyadell, cold cuts, Sunday gravy, moozadell, there’s barely a scene goes by without food being mentioned. I took the Sopranos bus tour while in New York, and ate onion rings at Holsten’s too 🙂
I also got given the Sopranos cookbooks for a birthday. It’s a little cheesy, part-written in character, but the heart and soul of Italian-American cookery is there, with it’s hearty and rib-sticking fare. As an existing fan of lasagne, I was keen to try the lasagne-with-layer-of-basil as mentioned in the show (it can be found in this volume).
In truth all the recipes are written by prolific author and cookbook writer Michele Scicolone. I can only imagine how much fun she must have had coming up with ‘authentic’ food as eaten by Tony Soprano. She has written over 20 books, won all sorts of awards for recipes and also lives in New York area so was an obvious choice to co-author this book. Even if the Sopranos stuff isn’t for you, they are solid recipes.
Like many Italian-American dishes, it requires a ‘gravy’ which is not the meat juice we might expect. I’ve simplified it down, veal is a pain to get hold of here and Italian sausage… sort of isn’t a thing here. Not in the way Americans mean. But sausages seasoned with fennel, and pork and beef mince hint in the right direction. Here it’s a meaty, tomatoey sauce that forms the base of lasagne. This gravy is the base for a lot of dishes, such as this lasagne and baked ziti.
“What, no f*!#ing ziti now?”
-Anthony “AJ” Soprano Jr
This takes a good couple of hours so it’s not a dish you can just bash out on a whim, because after that you’ve got lots of layers and another 45 minutes in the oven to finish it off. But it does have lots of hands-off time while it cooks so it’s a good one for a weekend.
The gravy is superb though, rich and flavoursome. I’ve kept some back for something else another day. And every time I use a ricotta instead of a white sauce I forget how good it is in a lasagne. And without the faff of a bechamel! The basil was nice though, a pleasing herbal aroma that carries through and it’s tender from cooking. Uncle June was right.
3sausagesif you can get them, Waitrose have incredible 'Italian' style sausages
400gmincebeef and pork
1oniondiced
3garlic clovesminced
1tablespoontomato puree
700mllitre passata
For the lasagne:
Lasagne sheets
A large bunch of basil
250gricotta
250gmozzarellasliced
25gparmesangrated
Instructions
To make the gravy, fry the onion and garlic until soft in a large pan with a little oil.
Skin the sausages and squish each into 3-4 hazelnut size pieces. Add these to the pan and brown a little on all sides over.
Add the mince and continue to cook until browned.
Add the puree and passata and bring to a simmer. Cook partially covered for 1½ - 2 hours until rich and thickened. At this point check for seasoning - plenty of pepper is welcome here.
Beat the ricotta with the parmesan, adding salt and pepper to taste (you may want to add a couple of tablespoons of milk to loosen it, as you're going to spread it in a minute). Preheat the oven to 180°C.
In a 6cm deep oven dish put a thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom. Cover with lasagne sheets, then another layer of meat sauce.
Top this with ricotta and some parmesan, then a layer of basil leaves. Top this with mozzrella, then lasagne. Start the layering all over again until you reach the top of the dish.
Make the top layer meat sauce, ricotta and mozzarella. Bung in the oven until you can push a knife through with little resistance, about 45 minutes - 1 hour. Cover with foil if it's starting to darken too quickly.
Leave the lasagna out for five minutes to allow it all to meld together - this makes it easier to cut up.
Video
Notes
The order you layer everything up in doesn't really matter. Just do what feels right.
