Monday 26 June 2017

Torta pascualina: an italian-argentine spinach, ricotta and egg pie

This week I made another recipe from our Argentine Grandma's cookbook, La Cocina de Lorenzo Taberna (1961), with a little help from Antonio Carluccio. Torta pascualina is a traditional Italian tart eaten at Easter, with 33 layers of pastry, one of each if Jesus's lives. The Argentine version in Grandma Antonia's book has just six layers of pastry, but if you're short on time her namesake, Don Carluccio, uses one layer of shop-bought shortcrust pastry for the base of the tart, with a lattice of cut-offs over the top. Jesus must be turning in his shroud... 


The pastry in Grandma's book is empanada pastry, so you can also use this recipe to make empanadas if you can't get pre-made sheets from Garcia's in London - here's the link to my empanada post: http://bit.ly/2kvWw8e. The pastry was much easier to make than I expected, had a really pleasant, soft texture and rolled very thin without splitting.

The key ingredients for the tart filling are ricotta, dark green leaves and whole eggs, which are baked inside the pie. Chard is a popular choice for the greenery but I can't seem to find any, and spinach works just as well. Artichokes are another traditional component, and Carliccio recommends braising them with some onions and capers, which adds a little more depth to the flavour. 

One of my favourite things about this pie is how well it keeps for leftovers, because it's delicious cold. It makes a perfect packed lunch or an interesting picnic option.

Ingredients
(Serves 6) 

For the pastry:
350g plain flour
150g cold, unsalted butter
2 tsp salt
1 egg
100-130ml cold water



Or use a 500g packet of ready-made shortcrust pastry, and blind-bake for 10 minutes before adding the filling.

For the filling:
280g jar artichokes in oil (mine had garlic and parley in too)
1 small onion or 2-3 shallots, finely chopped
1 tbsp capers (desalted in tap water for 15mins then drained), finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
200g spinach
250g ricotta 
60g Parmesan, grated
A pinch of grated nutmeg
8 eggs
Salt & pepper



 Method

1. To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour then add the egg and half the water. Mix until the dough comes together, adding more water if needed. Knead gently until thoroughly combined and the dough is smooth. Chill in the fridge until ready to use.



2. Add the artichokes and 2-3 tablespoons of oil from the jar to a pan with the onion, capers, and parsley. Add a little water, cover and braise on a low heat for 15 minutes, then drain.


3. Pour boiling water over the spinach in a colander to wilt then squeeze out excess water.


4. Beat 4 of the eggs with the ricotta and grated Parmesan and nutmeg. Add the artichokes and wilted spinach and mix together. Season with salt and pepper.


5. Split the pastry into 6 pieces, 2 slightly smaller than the others - save these for the top of the pie. Roll out one of the larger pieces until it's really thin and will cover a 30cm fluted, loose-bottomed tart tin. Oil the tin and line with the sheet of pastry, then brush this sheet with olive oil. 




6. Roll out the remaining 3 larger pieces of pastry and layer into the tin, oiling between each layer.

7. Add two thirds of the filling to the pastry-lined tin and make 4 wells. Break the remaining 4 eggs into the wells and grate over a little Parmesan, salt and pepper. Add the rest of the filling, being careful not to break the yolks.


8. Roll out the two smaller sheets of pastry and cover the pie with both layers, oiling in between. Seal the edges of the tart, making a pretty border (artistic skills dependent, not employed here). Brush with beaten egg and bake at 200C for 35 minutes until golden brown. 


To serve, allow to cool a little then remove the fluted ring. Slice into portions, aiming for the baked eggs if you can! 











Saturday 10 June 2017

Pork and pistachio terrine

It's never really "perfect picnic weather" in the UK, but when the wind dies down and the rain buggers off for half a day, I love to pack up some foil-wrapped parcels and head to a sunny patch of grass for some al fresco drinking. I mean dining. Following on from last month's mushroom pâté recipe (http://bit.ly/2rLw7qr), here's another hamper filler showcasing my highly intagrammable Le Creuset terrine.

I made this traditional farmhouse style pork terrine for our quarterly Barbican Life magazine - hello if you've made it here from there. Acquiring some new (secondhand) pots and pans recently sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole into the history of kitchenware style, where I learnt all about the Le Creuset manufacturing process, and made some shocking discoveries, like Catherine Holm is not an actual person... Anyway, I wrote it all down for the magazine article, which you can get here when it's posted online in mid-June: http://www.barbicanlifeonline.com/barbican-life-magazine/magazine-issues/

A few of my favourite kitchen items posing on the balcony (Don't panic, I took everything back inside straight after so they're not blocking the fire escape - Barbican resident private joke)

This recipe is inspired by one in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, first published in 1960. It's a classic pork and veal pairing, subtly flavoured with allspice, port and juniper berries, and I added chopped pistachios for some extra crunch.


Ingredients

6-8 shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
500g pork shoulder, finely chopped 
450g sausage meat
400g minced veal
12 juniper berries, crushed
12 back peppercorns, crushed
1/2 tsp cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 tbsp fresh parsley and/or thyme
100g shelled pistachios, chopped
2 tbsp port or brandy
16 rashers of streaky smoked bacon


As with the mushroom pâté, if you don't have a terrine dish, rethink your life priorities and/or use a loaf tin instead.

Method

1. Gently fry the chopped shallots in a little oil until starting to colour. Add the garlic and cook for another few minutes, then leave to cool.


2. In a large bowl, combine the cooled shallots and garlic with all the remaining ingredients except the bacon. Mix well, then fry a small lump of the mixture to taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.


3. Stretch the bacon rashers over the back of a knife so they are long enough to line the terrine or loaf tin with the ends overhanging (about 28cm) - as demostarted by tmy little helper in the pic-strip below:


4. Add the meat mixture to the bacon-lined dish, press down firmly and wrap the overhanging rashers over the top of the meat.


5. Place the terrine in a roasting tin with an inch of water and cook uncovered at 160C for 75 to 90 minutes, until the pâté is starting to come away from the sides of the dish.


6. Remove from the oven, cover with foil and add some weight to the top of the terrine. Most recipes recommend tinned food, but I found that the digital radio was a perfect fit - feel free to be inventive with whatever you have to hand in your kitchen...


7. Cool at room temperature, then pour off any excess fat before chilling until ready to serve; it should come out of the terrine mould quite easily.


To serve, wrap up tightly for transport to the picnic site then slice thickly - it's pretty firm in texture and shouldn't disintegrate when you chomp into it. It also keeps in the fridge for up to a week and freezes well; just thaw completely at room termperature. 


Happy picnicking!




Thursday 8 June 2017

Baked Alaska: my first Fanny classic

This week's recipe has a slightly different origin to my usual charity shop finds; it's from a pile of magazines sent to me by a very generous Twitter follower, and fellow vintage cookbook addict, Cosmic Apple Pips. The hours I've wasted on social media suddenly seem completely worth it! The magazines in question are part of Fanny Cradock's 1970 Cookery Programme, a weekly publication stuffed full of colour photos and "pic-strips", Fanny's rather severe advice and garlic pushing (we didn't like it in the 70s) and a wine column written by her husband, monocle-wearing Johnnie. 


There are so many things I love about the programme, but I think my favourite aspect is the food styling and use of crockery and props, both old and new, which Fanny name checks in the caption - "we think it looks rather nice sting on its 1/ junk shop plate!". If you like the sound of it, there's another blog entirely devoted to the programme called Keep Calm and Fanny On :)

Baked Alaska appears in issue 7, which is all about omelettes... because Fanny says it's called Omelette Novegienne and the Americans have nicknamed it Baked Alaska. And rather than being a technical challenge as evidenced by the Great British Bake Off and the infamous "Bingate" incident, Fanny assures us that it's "far, far easier to make than Yorkshire pudding". So a bit tricky then.

As usual, I've followed the basic rules, as she's very strict about that sort of thing, but added a few of my own variations. I made a fatless sponge for the base according to Fanny's recipe, but rather than using tinned pineapple under the ice cream dome, I made one of our favourite frozen puds, mango sorbet, which is unbelievably simple if you have an ice cream machine, and layered it into the ice cream. And as I've successfully conquered meringues before (http://bit.ly/2sHCZFw) I used the same recipe and technique here.

Ingredients 

For the filling
1 tin mango slices in juice
500ml vanilla ice cream, softened at room temperature

For the sponge
110g caster sugar
3 eggs
70g self-raising flour

For the meringue
6 egg whites
300g caster sugar
Handful chopped pistachios



Method

1. Make the mango sorbet by blitzing the mango slices and juice, then churn in an ice cream maker for 30 minutes until almost completely frozen


2. Line a pudding basin or similar shaped (domed) bowl with cling film. Add half the softened vanilla ice cream and press down. Add the mango sorbet to make a thick layer then freeze for about 10-15 minutes. Add the remainder of the ice cream to fill the bowl, level and wrap in the overhanging cling film. Freeze for at least 2 hours.


3. To make the sponge, heat the sugar in a hot oven for 6 minutes, then tip onto the eggs cracked into a mixing bowl. Beat until light and fluffy and almost double in size, then gently fold in the flour. Pour into a lined circular cake tin, a little larger than your ice cream filled pudding basin, and bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Cool slightly, remove from the tin and, once completely cold, wrap and chill until assembly time.


4. Heat the sugar for the meringue in a hot oven until starting to melt at the edges (this bit is optional but adds a little caramel taste). Whisk the egg whites in a very clean bowl until foamy then throw in the sugar and continue to whisk energetically until the mixture is very stiff. If you're not going to use immediately, chill in the fridge.


5. Assemble quickly: unwrap the chilled sponge and place on a baking tray; unmould the ice cream (a few seconds in hot water will help if it's stuck), remove the film and place the ice cream in the centre of the sponge base; spoon or pipe the meringue all over the ice cream down to the sponge base (I don't have photos of this as thee wasn't time!) then pop in a hot oven at 220C for 5 minutes to brown the meringue. As its too tricky to take photos and assemble a Baked Alaska, here's Fanny's pic-strip featuring the delectable Peter:


The following circumstances do not facilitate the assembly procedure:
- a blocked piping nozzle
- an audience
- very fresh eggs that don't whip as well
- not starting until 10.30pm
and since I made all of these rookie errors, I ended up throwing the meringue onto the ice cream and sponge, while it proceeded to slip down the sides as everything was getting too warm. But it made it into the oven rather than the bin and the final result didn't look too bad:


The sorbet and ice cream were still frozen and the meringue was cooked and gooey. Cutting slices was a bit messy but a handful of toasted pistachios made a good disguise! The sweet meringue and ice cream is perfectly offset by the fresh mango sorbet, and the light sponge holds it all together. Next time, I'd try making individual ones to avoid the messy serving bit, and Mary Berry says you can freeze them for an hour before cooking which might help the presentation. And I'm getting a bigger piping nozzle!