I took a special trip to Rome last May, for a very particular purpose: I had to initiate a couple of friends, who have been living in Rome for almost 10 years, to the real, unique and exceptional rustic Roman food. Why this urge? Well, these friends are co-founders of our “gastronauts society” and are foodoholics like me. Considering that they are soon to leave Rome, I could not accept the fact that they had never tasted our fantastic delicacies.

So, what am I talking about? Simple: “pajata”, “coda alla vaccinara”, “animele”, “coratella” and similar things. These items would be described by a vast majority of the earth’s population as “offal”. Let’s take these one by one:
Pajata
What is pajata? Looking at Wikipedia’s entry can be scary
“[...] Pajata is the term for the intestines of an “un-weaned” calf, i.e., only fed on its mother’s milk. The intestines are cleaned and skinned, but the Chyme is left inside. Then the intestine is cut in pieces 20 – 25 cm long, which are bond together with white thread, forming rings. When cooked, the combination of heat and the enzyme rennet in the intestines coagulates the chyme and creates a sort of thick, creamy, cheese-like sauce [...]“. I can assure you that it is DELICIOUS!!!

Considering the whole issue with cows and veals and mad-cow disease, real “pajata” has been banned since the early 90s. Instead of calves, Romans have now switched to un-weaned lambs. Anyway, according to the timeless tradition, we had the delicacy served in a tomato sauce with pecorino and rigatoni (see photo).

Next, my guests had another CLASSIC Roman dish:
Coda alla vaccinara 
This is a more common animal part and less “yucky” for many people. It’s a stew of ox-tail, celery, tomato, ham, bacon and many herbs. The dish is cooked for hours, until all the meat is tender and falling off the tail bones. A typical menu would consist of preparing such a stew and, once ready, use part of the tomato sauce to season a “primo” of pasta and use the rest a the meat “secondo”. Sorry, I have no picture of this dish.

While my friends were inhaling their ox-tail, I was inhaling my own plate of roman “delicacies”. The restaurant had its own name for it, but I can clearly say that it was a mix of
Animelle and Coratella
What are these? Sit down, take a breath and get ready. Look at the picture. See anything familiar? Not, unless you took anatomy in college. This dish consists of grilled offal: hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, pajata. Not for the faint hearted. Hard-core stuff, but sooooo tastylicious. As someone once said, “ya cannae not die stoopid”… got taste it all, then decide

So that was the evening. My friends were very positively impressed and gave the “foodgasm!” stamp to the dinner. And the wine: we washed the whole thing down with a couple of bottles of this guy (see photo). Very nice, very nice indeed.

[...]

Buon appetito!

I haven’t written in a while and I do feel guilty about it. That’s how it goes when the writing follows a great food experience. I wish I could do that more frequently. Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy this dish I cooked last weekend. Here’s what happened.

I went to the supermarket to do the usual weekly shopping and decided it was time I passed by the fishmonger as well. Weather is nice, full spring, for sure, some good stuff must be coming out of the sea. I get there and what do I see? Fresh squid. But not the wee ones. The real ones. 2-3 pounders. “mmmhhhh” was my first thought. My brain went immediately into “assembly” mode:

• What can I do with that?
• How should I cook it?
• What other goodies should I add to?

At first, I thought about a stew but then I saw the mussels on the side, there, just sitting quietly in their box, trying to avoid eye contact. “Too late, pals!”. There it was. Illumination. Pasta with mussels and squid. Now we were getting somewhere. Think about it: fuming spaghetti, with bits of squid and fresh tomato, all topped with splendid mussels in their shells. Still, I felt that something was missing. Think. Think. Think. Then I remembered that mussels go splendidly with strong, salty tastes, like pecorino. Have no pecorino. Have bottarga. Jackpot!

You might wonder: what is bottarga? It’s very simple, it’s roe. Caviar of the poor. There are two kinds sold in Italy: tuna and grey mullet roe. Tuna is more expensive, yet tastier and more sought for. I do have both, but my tuna one is fresh, thus I need to use it before it gets destroyed.

Anyway, we now have a dish in the planning and we can start cooking. First, we need to clean the squid and the mussels. Mussels are simple. First of all check that they are alive. To do that, see that they are closed when taking them off the bag. If they are open, “bang” them against the table and make sure that they “react” by closing the valves. If that doesn’t happen a few bangs, throw that shell away. Once they are closed, remove the “beard” by pulling it off the beast.

Squids are a bit more difficult. I asked my fishmonger to clean mine, but he didn’t a proper job and I had ink all over my kitchen. So make sure that everything is removed properly and keep the tentacles!

Start boiling the water for the pasta.

OK, now: prepare a base for the mussels. I used a big deep pot where I added some olive oil, to finely chopped sticks of celery, to chopped leeks, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 glassesand let it all blend and golden up. When that was the case (about 10 minutes), I added 2 glasses of chardonnay (or any white wine you have around) and threw in the mussles. Close the lid and cook slowly for about 15 minutes or until you think they are cooked. The lid is important, as it allows for a proper “sterilisation” of the mussel shells, by entrapping the high temperature steam in the pot.

Next, let’s prepare the squid. First of all, take the squid and chop it into small pieces (like 1×0.5 cm for example), including tentacles. Wash it all nicely under a lot of water. Now, in a wide and tallish pan, crush 2 cloves of garlic, add 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and warm it up. Cut a few thin slices of the bottarga, chop into as finely as you can and add it to the oil/garlic mix. Stir for 5 minutes and then add the squid and half a glass of white wine.

Cook at high temp for 5 minutes, turn down the heat and wait until the next step is ready. In the meantime, get some tomatoes and chop them finely.

Now, it gets “complicated” At this point, the water should be boiling, thus throw the pasta in. Take the mussels off their broth and toss them in the frying pan. Pass the broth through a sieve and put the liquid back in the pot. When the pasta is half cooked (let’s say 5 minutes) take it off that water and finish cooking it in the mussels broth. Just before it’s ready, drain it, put it back in the pan, add the fish together with the finely diced tomatoes.

Ready. Crack open another bottle of white (I love Chablis or Greco di Tufo with these dishes) and enjoy. I loved it!!! Foodgasmic!!!!

Here’s the “precise” list of ingredients:

- Olive oil

- 4 cloves of garlic

- 500 grams of spaghetti

- 1.5 kg of fresh mussels

- 1kg of fresh squid

- 5 tomatoes

- 3 slices of tuna bottarga

- 2 sticks of celery

- 2 leeks

- half a bottle of white wine

- a lot of hunger

- a love for good food

Article first published as Pasta With Squid, Mussels, Tuna Roe And Fresh Tomato on Blogcritics.

I admit it! Alan and I had a wee, mini gastronauts meeting in Rome last month. I was in town for the rugby 6Nations game between Italy and Ireland, and crashed at Alan’s flat. Since we only had a few hours to commit our gastro-crimes (I arrived latish in Rome on friday afternoon, Alan was leaving at 05:00 for teh US), we chose a very simple, yet tasty menu.

First, I got a small 30g can of “entry level” sturgeon caviar from Prunier at the airport in CPH. While on my way from Fiumicino airport, I got a bottle of Greco di Tufo at a petrol station on the raccordo, while Alan was preparing a quick puttanesca. So, as I arrived home, we immediately started with the caviar, washed down with a quite mellow chardonnay and we followed suit with the pasta, wetted by a jar of nebbiolo.

As a secondo, Alan had gotten some straccetti (litteraly translated to little rags) and some fresh rughetta (arugula, for you non romans). Straccetti are very thing and small strips of beef. It was my duty to cook them. So here’s how I made them:

In a large frying pan (or skillet), I did put quite an amount of olive oil. I’m Italian, I can’t quantify how much oil I used as if I were in the lab. I just know how much is right Anyway, I bring the oil the very high temp and throw in and 3 cloves of garlic and let tem get golden. Once that is ready, I bring down the heat and throw the meat in the pan (carful!) and quickly stir the whole thing.When the meat is almost ready, I salt it and add balsamic vinegar until the while dish is covered with a think and brownie sauce. Turn off the heat, serve the straccetti on large plates, covered with fresh rughetta and some slices of parmigiano. Enjoyed with the remaining nebbiolo and the greco di tufo.

Mmmmhhhh! Shame was that Alan’s butcher cut the meat too thick. Bollocks to him.

After a lot of pressure from Alan, here’s the explanation of how I cooked those kidneys at the Gastronauts dinner.

Angus ordered the veal kidneys form an organic butcher in downtown Copenhagen. They came from happy veals, the butcher said, which was nice. Nice thing of ordering them from a butcher, rather than buying them at the supermarket, is that you gain in quality and they clean the buggers for you. Cleaning kidneys is simple, but it takes time. Basically, you soak them in plenty of water for a few hours, rinse them, then soak them again a few times for an afternoon (or over night in plentyplentyplenty of water). Finally, you soak them for an extra few hours in water-vinagre or water-lemon solution, to disinfect the whole thing and remove the last traces of “kidney-essence”. Some people like to then leave them in a milk-bath for a while. ANYWAY, this done and dealt by the butcher, we just need to cook the things. First job, is to cut the nice brownish kidney lobes from the white fat/nerve/duct bits holding the whole organ together. You should end up with little bite-sized lumps of tasty kidney.

Now, for the cooking. You’ll need:

• the kidneys (we had 1kg for 6 ppl)
• 1 onion (or 2 shallots, even better)
• a “walnut” of butter
• 2 spoons of olive oil
• flour
• a small glass of port
• a small glass of scotch
• salt/pepper

Take a large frying pan, melt the butter, add the oil and the onions, chopped finely. When the onions are golden, take the cut kidneys, quickly cover them in flour and place them in the pan. When all the kidneys are in the frying pan, keep moving them around until the flour and the oil/butter make a nice think sauce. Pour the port and the scotch and keep stirring until thick again. All in all, it should take ~ 10-15 minutes for the dish to get ready. Sprinkle the dish with freshly grated white pepper, some salt to taste and and some freshly chopped parsley.

PS: you could use this dish as a sauce for pappardelle. Heavenly. Foodgasmic.

Had my only blog follower “begging” me to add more recipes to the site. Here’s a quick and easy one, for when you are uninspired and hungry.

You’ll need good quality spaghetti, a can of tuna in oil (not the mini ones, but the normal sized cans), olive oil, a lemon, as much garlic as you can deal with (usually 2-3 thingies) and, optional, parley, capers and black olives.

Put the water onto the fire, allow to boil and “throw” the pasta. While it’s cooking, cut your garlic extra small and put it in a bowl. Add the tuna and the juice of the lemon (you can start with half of it and adjust as you like). You can add some capers or black olives if you want. When the pasta is “al dente”, ie: one minute before the time written on the packaging, drain it and toss it into the bowl. Mix well, add olive oil ad libidum and the chopped parsley.

Serve and eat hot, warm, cold, however you like

I love this dish. Cheap and easy and very tasty. And reminds me of the good’ole times when living in Rome alone with my brother.

Enjoy!

I’m on a roll.

This is the dish that Nadia prepared. Fantastic. I am getting more and more convinced that it was my favorite of the evening. I haven’t seen her preparing it (no pictures), but here are the instructions I got from her:

Osso Buco Bianco River Café

2 inch crosscuts of veal hind shank

½c flour

seasalt and ground peper

½c butter (4 oz)

2Tb olive oil

2 small red onions, peeled and chopped

4 celery stalks, peeled and chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

9 salted anchovies, prepared (washed and spine bones and heads removed)

½ bottle dry white wine

Gremolata

Finely grated zest of 2 lemons

1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped

3 heaped Tb chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Preheat oven to 300F.

Dust osso buco with flour, salt, pepper. In large heavy-bottomed casserole just large enough to hold all the pieces in one layer, melt half butter and all the olive oil, brown and seal osso buco on each side. Remove from the pan and pour away fat. Then add remaining butter, gently sauté onions and celery until very soft but not brown. Add garlic and anchovies and mash until anchovies have melted, this will only take a second. Pour in the wine, bring to a boil and reduce.

Carefully put osso buco back into the casserole, making sure that the bones are placed so that the marrow can not fall out during the cooking. Cover with parchment paper and the lid, and cook in oven for at least 2.5 hours. Can be made ahead and reheated.

Mix together the gremolata and sprinkle over each osso buco.

This we served piping hot and enjoyed with a Springbank 12 yo, cask strength. Perfect match.

The day after the whisky tasting, we spent a few hours recovering and putting ourselves back together. There was a dinner to prepare. Here’s the menu Alan and I had designed over the last few months:

I shall put the recipes and instructions on separate posts.

We did indeed spend the whole day shopping, cooking, shoveling the snow, and drinking coffee. Finally, at around 18:00, Angus and his wife Kiss arrived (together with the ordered kidneys and the lagerkage) and we were all ready for the feast. We sat down at ~ 18:30 and finished ~ 23:30. It was a real success. Nothing of what we cooked was left. It was a real foodgasm.

I personally loved the whole thing. Great people, relaxed atmosphere, excellent food and drinks, nice chats, no stress. Kind a of a weekend of “oblivion”. I want more and can’t wait to repeat the experience. Where and when should it be? Here again in the summer with a fish based grill session? or should it be in Campbeltown, with an associated trip to Springbank and Islay? Or something else? I’m veeery openminded

Thanks to all for the fantastic weekend!!!!!

Hello fellow eaters,

I was getting bored at home today and after a bit of thinking, I decided to prepare some fresh pesto. You see, I have this pot of basil in the kitchen which is getting quite big. I bought it 3 months ago at the local supermarket and never thought it would last too long (these guys usually don’t last more than a couple of weeks). Anyway, since these “branches” were getting hard and old, I thought that I could take the older ones and try to make some pesto with them leaves. Better than letting them die.

So, I picked up all the leaves (about two handfulls) and washed them carefully in cold water and dried them in a clean cloth. While the leaves are getting a rest, I peeled 3 cloves of garlic and blended them together with a pinch of coarse salt. I then added the basil leaves, a bit at a time, and kept blending in short pulses (to avoid too much heating up of the mix). Continued adding a handful of walnuts (should be pine nuts,  but walnuts are accepted by the purists) and a half handful of parmigiano reggiano.

Finally, and ONLY at this stage, I added my olive oil. I kept pouring until the whole thing became nicely wet and creamy. This is really important: adding the oil while blending will modify the taste, as the heat generated by the machine will somehow “ruin” it. Trust me, I git this tip from people having lived in Genova for all their lives. And I guess that in Genova, they know their pesto

Ok, since I had the pesto, I cooked some pasta (try adding a diced potato in the water, you’ll see) and ate the whole thing. Tasty it was. Need more!!!

(grazie Giamaica)

Yallo! been a while since I wrote something here. You know, moving across continents, starting a new job and setting up a new house makes things a bit “crazy”. Anyway, we are now all nicely setup and we are starting to cook “real things” again and, after having thought about this for a long time, we finally decided to use those huge nettles we have in the garden.

I was thinking, for a long time, to make nettles risotto, but we finally decided to make ravioli instead. Itchilicious. This is how we did them:

• we “harvested” the top tender leaves from as many nettles as possible from the garden
• washed them in a lot of cold water, trying to remove as many stems as possible
• boiled them until they became just like boiled spinach (or kale)
• drain all the water and leave them to cool down

In the meantime, prepare the dough:

• using our fantastic Kitchenaid Pro600, I mixed ~ 700 grams of flour with 4 eggs and slowly add water enough for the dough to become homogeneous and not too wet
• take the dough-ball aside and cover with a dry cloth for about half an hour

Now, for the nettle stuffing:

• we mixed the boiled nettles with ~ 500 grams of ricotta, 4 cloves of garlic, one egg and enough bread crumbs (~ 250 grams) to make it compact and dryish. You can add a bit of nutmeg if you like.
• mix and mix and mix untill nice and firm

Finally, take out “the machine” and start working small pieces of dough into pasta strips of about 10/15 cm of width, not too thin or else they will break (I did use the #5 setting, ie one before “thinnest”). Place the stuffing onto the strips as little balls, not too big, not too small (you’ll find out how big you need them to be while assembling the ravioli) and fold the dough onto itself. Press the space between stuffings with your fingers and make sure that the pasta is properly sealed all along its length. Finally, cut them raviolis with your favorite cutter device (I like this guy)  and place the ravioli on a well floured tray. Once all cut, you can decide whether to cooke them all, dry them or freeze them.

We had them with a wonderful tomato and porcini sauce:

• soak the dried porcini in a mix of water and red wine for ~ 30 minutes
• in a pan, golden a chopped onion in a bit of olive oil
• add your mushrooms with some of the water/wine mix
• allow for the liquid to evaporate and throw in one/cans of tomato
• cook, at low temperature, for as much as you can before starving (or burning the sauce)
• mix with them ravioli

Well, there it is. A bit rusty in the writing part, so it wasn’t maybe the best description ever. And I lack photos. At least, I got started again. I’ll try to keep this a bit more active from now on.

Cheerius!

Welcome to the year 2010!!!!

We had a very relaxing and easy going evening yesterday. But let’s skip sraight to business. As I was mentioning 2 days ago, I had a sea-creature based dinner in mind, and that’s what happened. Fantastic t’was. Tried a new receipe with a creature I had never cooked before. I decided to get some oysters first, and to folow them with an octopus dish. Oysters are always easy to prepare and very tasty with some horseradish (white wasabi) and 1 or 2 drops of Tabasco. Great!

Now, let’s move to the stew. I bought an octopus that was about 1 kg. Was already cleaned up, so that make life easier. I did check about 30 different receipes, as I ahd not much of an idea on how to cook the beast. I finally started over salivating when I read this guy in an Italian website. Here’s a translation and some easy instructions for you non-italian speacking friends:

Earthware Octopus Stew

You’ll need an octopus, rinsed and cut into bit-sized chunks. Beofre chopping it, I quickly brought it to a boil for about 1-2 minutes, let it cool down and tried to remove as much skin as plossible.

After that procedure, chop a red onion (on the big side), toss it into a pot (preferably clay), together with 3 table spoons of olive oil, 3 crushed garlic cloves and a bit of red hot chilli peppers (as much as you like). Let it golden on the fire for about 4-5 minutes.

Now, add the octopuss together with 4-5 diced tomatoes (Pachino preferably), about 60-100 g pitted black olives, and a glass of white wine. Bring the whole thing to the boil, then put on a lid, turn the ehat to low and cook for about 45′ (or until the beast is soft when pierced witha  fork).

Once it is ready, get four slices of home-style bread, toast it until nicely crips and golden and rub a garlic clove onto it (like if you were making a bruschetta – that’s brusketta, for whoever did not read my previous post), and put it at the bottom of a bowl. Now, overlay your stew on top of it and enjoy it!

I washed it down with a Chardonnay, again from the Chateau St. Jean cellar (california). I prefered their Cabernet Sauvignon.

Happy New Year to everyone!!!!

tshcuessi

Fred

PS: total cost if the dinner ~ 15 US$