Broccoli and anchovy bruschetta

Adapted from The River Café Cook Book, officially one of the best books of all time ever.

Sorry that I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been very busy starting a new job and moving into a new flat. Its been an intense few weeks, but I’m feeling absolutely brilliant, and happier than I have felt in a long while. I started out with this blog because I was feeling terribly unfulfilled, and that is certainly not the case now. That definitely doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop blogging now that other aspects of my life are getting better. I feel like my capacity is just getting bigger. Does that make sense?

This little recipe is the first part of a two-parter, otherwise known as ‘nice things on toast, the mini-series.’ Possibly with more nice things on toast to come, because they are always brilliant.

Bruschetta makes an excellent starter or light meal. I love the messiness of it. The unstructured, loose topping and crunchy toast means that you have to use your fingers, with luscious olive oil dribbling down to your elbow. This is especially rewarding when serving it to guests.

This quantity makes approximately 6 pieces of bruschetta – obviously depending on how big your slices of bread are.

Ingredients

About half a large-ish broccoli. Separate into florets and cut each one in half. You could also use tenderstem or purple-sprouting broccoli, which I suppose would be a bit more summery.

20ml olive oil

A large clove of garlic (or two if you like it super garlicky), peeled and thinly sliced

6 anchovy fillets (in oil)

Juice of ½ a lemon (cut the other half of the lemon into wedges for serving)

Freshly ground black pepper

For the bruschetta:

6 slices of ciabatta, or similar lovely Italian bread

1 clove of garlic, peeled

Really good quality extra virgin olive oil

Method

Blanch the broccoli pieces in salted boiling water for a minute or two, until slightly softened but still bright green. Drain well.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan low-ish heat and fry the garlic until it just starts to colour. Add the anchovies and stir until they melt. Add the broccoli and a small amount of boiling water (roughly 1 tbsp). Season well with black pepper, stir and cook for five or so minutes, until the broccoli is soft. Add the lemon juice.

Toast the bread on both sides, and then rub with garlic (I rub one side only).

To serve, pile the broccoli mixture onto the bruschetta and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, and serve with lemon wedges.

Roasted peppers with tomato, anchovy and garlic

I recently went on a kosher Italian cooking course. In Italy. With my Mum. I’m sure that most of us feel pretty accustomed to what we think of as Italian food, but really it is just scratching the surface. What astounded me so much with the food we cooked, and the food we ate over that marvellous week in Umbria, was how such massive, gutsy flavours could be brought out of a few, simple ingredients. All it took was a little olive oil and salt, and a sense of respect, time and place. And probably a little love. The course was run by Silvia Nacamulli, and I highly recommend it. For information on the Italy trip and the classes Silvia runs in London, see her website.

Making pasta at Sismano's Castle, Umbria

I learnt some great techniques and some new flavour combinations during the trip and over the coming few weeks I will be posting some recipes inspired from my time in Italy. This roasted pepper recipe was in my repertoire already (via Delia Smith and my Mum), but it certainly fits of the theme of the trip – simple ingredients, olive oil and salt, and big flavours. Make these for a starter, light meal with salad and crusty bread, or as part of an antipasti, and the flavours will knock your socks off.

Serve approx 1 pepper per person as a starter, scale up as needed. Don’t worry about making too much, they will definitely all get eaten.

Ingredients:

Red peppers (My Mum uses the pointy peppers, and while they are definitely a bit sweeter, they don’t hold the other ingredients quite as snugly, which I think really helps with the cooking.)

Smallish tomatoes - not as small as cherry tomatoes, I use medium sized vine tomatoes. Approx 1 and a half per pepper
Sliced garlic – approx 2 slices per pepper half
Anchovies (the kind that come in tins or jars) 1 per pepper half
Olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180 C

Cut the peppers in half, through the stalk if possible (it looks prettier).

Carefully remove all seeds and white pithy bits, and arrange the pepper halves on an oven tray. Quarter the tomatoes and put two or three tomatoes into the middle of each pepper half. Add a couple of slices of garlic to the pepper halves, and one anchovy fillet. Pour approx half a teaspoon of olive oil into the centre of each pepper, and drizzle a little more over the tops (this is considerably less oil than in the original recipe).

Season with peppers with pepper (there is enough salt in the anchovy) and put them in the oven for about 45 minutes. It will smell amazing when they are ready, and the peppers will be soft and sweet, and a little blackened around the edges.

Enjoy!!

Panzanella

An Italian tomato and bread salad

After a little hiatus, I am back again with another guest blogger, my amazing Mum. As you will notice, I have been sitting on this for a while, for no other reason than my disorganization.  This was made in the middle of our lovely little heatwave in September, just nearing the end of the tomato and pepper season.  One of the things that I am so incredibly grateful for is that my parents always have interesting things growing in the garden, teaching me from an early age the importance of seasonality, and how much better things taste when you grow them yourself. Every year there always seems to be one thing that grows really well, and we find ourselves scratching our heads trying to work out with the bounty, and sending every guest home with a bag of some home grown veg. this year we had incredible tomatoes and peppers, and this recipe is the perfect showcase for them.  Even though the key ingredients aren’t in season anymore this salad is sooo good – I’m going to recommend that you make it anyway, right now.

Panzanella for me seems to symbolize summertime.  I have noticed over the past few years that over the summer every tv chef will do a recipe for a panzanella, and yet it was only this year that I tried it for myself.  What is so wonderful about it is its simplicity – Nikki Segnit suggests a version with brussel sprouts – shudder and walk away slowly.  Wikipedia describes it as “a Florentine salad of bread and tomatoes popular in the summer. It includes chunks of soaked stale bread and tomatoes, sometimes also onions and basil, dressed with olive oil and vinegar. The 16th-century artist and poet Bronzino sings the praises of onions with oil and vinegar served with toast and, and is often interpreted as a description of panzanella.”

And so now for the recipe, thanks Mum.

I was pondering what to make for supper when I remembered having made this salad fairly recently and thought it would be good for dinner. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I had done, but of course Miriam the gastronaut did. So I duly bought the ingredients that I didn’t already have, even braving Asda on a Sunday afternoon, such was my craving.

This is a particularly great dish for this time of the year (mid-September) as having had a very bountiful season in the greenhouse I have loads of delicious home grown tomatoes and peppers.

Ingredients (serves 4 as a starter)

* The equivalent of one smallish loaf of bread, (stale is fine, good way of using up old bread)

* 7 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

* 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

* 1 medium red onion, thinly sliced

* 6-8 tomatoes (the better the tomatoes, the better the salad!)

* 2 small or 1 large pepper any colour except green

* 2 crushed cloves of garlic

* A generous scattering of black olives

* A handful of drained and rinsed capers

* A well-drained can of anchovies, separated into fillets

* Handful of basil, preferably just picked from the plant on the windowsill

Cut up the bread into chunks, if it isn’t stale toast it in a hot oven for 10 mins or so. Don’t walk away and leave it as I did and nearly destroyed it! Put the dry bread into a flat dish large enough to take it in one layer. Mix the garlic with the oil and vinegar and sprinkle this concoction over the bread. Season to taste and toss it all gently together.

Blanch the tomatoes with boiling water and then remove the skins. Take out the seeds and put these together with any juices running all over your chopping board on the bread. Roughly chop the tomatoes and put in another bowl. Grill the peppers under a high heat to make the skins blacken and blister, turn them regularly to ensure an all over char. When they are done put them in a bag and leave them to cool. When they are cool enough to handle, the skins should easily peel off. Then cut open the peppers, discard the seeds and slice them up. Make sure you capture any juices and tip these on to the bread. The peppers can then go into the same bowl as the tomatoes.

Then gently mix the bread and everything else (not the basil). Depending on how organised/hungry you are now cling film it and leave it for an hour to marinate at room temperature. I am waging war against people who serve this sort of thing straight from the fridge - don’t it kills the flavour. Put the basil on just before you eat it. Enjoy!

By the way used up the leftovers the following day, broke an egg on the top and nuked it in the microwave until the egg was just set. Yummy, like an instant shakshuka.

Produce from the Lewis garden 2011 - peppers, tomatoes and chillis

Whore’s spaghetti

Puttanesca, the ultimate, big-personality punchy pasta sauce.  Named for prostitutes, what’s not to love?

According to Wikipedia, it is a typical southern Italian dish, invented sometime in the mid 20^th century, probably in the Bay of Naples region. I think that the reason why it is so, pardon the pun, saucy, is that the dish is made of store-cupboard ingredients, and extremely quick to assemble, and so very convenient for a lady of the night, or perhaps anyone who is too busy having a good time to go to Sainsburys.  I am not convinced that said ladies actually ate this.  While pasta is a slow releasing carbohydrate and great for stamina, the strong and garlicky sauce probably doesn’t leave your breath that sexy…but maybe some people are in to that, who am I to judge?? And it probably did protect them from horny Italian vampires.  Yeah I really did just say that, clearly I have been watching far too much True Blood.

Difficulty 2/5 time 15-25 mins taste 4/5  serves 2

1 can chopped tomatoes

4-5 anchovy fillets

1-2 garlic cloves, chopped finely

1 dried, crumbled Birdseye chilli or a pinch of dried chilli flakes (you can shake some of the seeds or of the chilli)

big handful black olives, chopped a bit

handful capers

spaghetti

olive oil

parsley

in a large frying pan with a lid, fry the garlic in olive oil.  When starting to colour, add the anchovies and chilli.  When the anchovies start to disintegrate, add the chopped tomatoes, olives, capers and parsley.  Simmer for at least 10 mins, the sauce will get richer the longer you give it.  Cook the spaghetti in plenty of salted water (as salty as the Mediterranean) until al-dente.  A good trick for getting the perfect pasta is to cook it for 1 minute less than it says on the packet, and then add it to the hot sauce for the remaining minute, with a spoonful of the cooking water. 

Etiquette dictates that if onions are added to the sauce it is American, and it should not served with cheese.  If you want a cheesey element, try serving this as I did, with a salad of fresh spinach, oranges, pumpkin seeds and fresh mozzarella, drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

La Dame aux Camelias 1896 - Alphonse Mucha