My mom is a big fan of veal, I never have been, but this is about to change. In the UK it’s mega expensive and I’m not sure if worth it. But having chatted to Michele, my food buddy from Ubon days I felt like polpettini and Miky said veal is the way to go.
I bought some ground veal, added some grated parmesan, an egg, lots of chopped parsley, a grated clove of garlic, a white bread roll soaked in milk and seasoned it well, before combining. While the simple tomato sauce was bubbling away I quickly pan fried the meatballs and then finished them off in the sauce. Served with penne, as per Izzie’s suggestion, less messy than spaghetti and cooks faster!
All went down a storm with some local Vermentino- another winner, 6 euro for a bottle of wonderful, light, Italian wine. Thumbs up!
We have done it. We have sold the house, packed what was left into Tesla ( a painful experience) and drove to Italy. We’ve spent 4 days without the fridge, while waiting for our stuff to be delivered. But now it all resembles home. We’re rediscovering our favourite food places, so had to start at Piazza Anfiteatro and I must say that Grumpy now treats us like regulars and even addresses me as “cara” (!!). Grumpy’s real name is Marco, he seems to work in that restaurant 24/7 and when he happens to have a day off, this really is an event. And it turns out he does smile sometimes, he is grateful when complimented on their fantastic focaccia and has a nice, sharp sense of humour ( flipping a middle finger at one of the piazza’s regulars while taking order from customers :-).
Spaghetti alle vongole at Grumpy’s for me is one of the All Time Favourites. It is simple. They don’t bother with tomatoes or other seafood. Plus they fry the garlic to the point when it’s nearly burnt, but it’s not. The sauce is seafoody, with lots of parsley, simple and wonderful. A plate of vongole and a small cold beer is 10 out of 10. And the best thing is, we can now have it anytime, 10 minute walk from via di Poggio, where we now reside, until Casa Banks is found and purchased, hopefully sometime next year.
Izzie asked this morning if she could have a treat from the local bakery after school. Gingerbread men and iced buns are what she normally goes for, so once I got home having dropped her off, I quickly flipped through mojewypieki.com and found exactly what I needed. A cross between sweet buns, a muffin, but made of yeasty dough, like for doughnuts.
I used 250 g of plain flour, 12 g of fresh yeast crumbled in, 50 g of sugar and vanilla sugar and a pinch of salt. 125 ml of warm milk, 2 large egg yolks, a zest of half a lemon. All this was working nicely in the kitchen aid, I then added 25 g of melted and slightly cooled butter and continued until the dough was smooth and lovely. Left to prove on the front window sill for about 2 hours and proceeded to pack my daily amount of boxes. 17 degrees today, scorching British summer, but not to worry, we have less than a month and there will be no more complaints about summer being rubbish!
Once the dough more than doubled in size I have flattened it and divided in 12 pieces, formed into balls, each with a spoonfull of good jam inside. Placed each in a muffin case and left to prove again.
Finally it was time to bake them, 180 degrees, less than 14 minutes. Sticky orange glaze completed the job. Floro and I destroyed a couple between us, the head judge will come home in a hour, we shall see. For me a definite keeper of a recipe.
Youtube flashed this video at me this morning, I happened to have all the ingredients needed, there were no excuses. I first made some pesto for Floro and Iza, I knew they would not be interested in what I was about to be cooking.
Started with some chopped spring onions, some chopped ginger, a sprinkle of sea salt and pounded it into a nice chunky paste in my mortar. Heated up a little bit of oil and sesame oil and when it was hot, I poured it onto the spring onion mix, it sizzled and smelled amazing.
While the spaghetti was cooking, I got cracking with a generous handful of prawns. Onto the oiled pan went some chopped garlic, then prawns, a sprinkle of chili flakes and salt. A drizzle of soy sauce. Oyster sauce. A little cooking water from the pasta to loosen it. In went the pasta, it all got tossed together resulting in a dark, beautiful and very promising dish. To finish, the spring onion mixture, some mixed in, some on top.
When I asked Florek this morning what I should bake, he said -something lemony. So I flipped through mojewypieki.com, went to the garden to reduce the amount of rhubarb growing there and proceeded to make a cake. Such a good cake, in fact, that it deserves to be blogged and made again.
I creamed 120g of soft butter with 150 g of sugar and vanilla sugar, a zest of the whole lemon, 3 whole eggs, then slowly added 220 g of plain flour, 1,5 tsp of baking powder, 60 ml of lemon juice, combined it all quickly and got into a lined round tin. On top went about 250 g of fresh, chopped, unpeeled rhubarb and a handful of leftover blueberries. The cake baked in 170 degrees for about 45 minutes. Once baked and cooled I added a bit of lemon icing on top. Excellent with a good cup of tea. 🙂
I fancied something a bit more special yesterday, something maybe a bit more challenging. I saw these little beauties on mojewypieki.com and decided to have a go, although I knew that whatever I’d make would be ready to eat the next day.
I’ve made half a portion from that recipe – the idea of using 500g of butter made me put up 3kg just thinking about it! I ended up with about 11 pastries. So, yesterday I measured out 100ml of cold water, to which I added 7g of salt and dissolved it. 200 g of plain flour, 35 g of melted butter plus that salty water was made into a quick dough, while the remaining butter of 250g piece I had, softened and rolled out into a neat square, wrapped in cling film and chilled in the fridge for 2 hours alongside the dough. Then the dough came out, rolled out onto a square twice as big as the butter one, butter went on top and I folded the pastry on top of it to make it look like an envelope. Rolled it out away from me to make it into a rectangle, folded three ways and into the fridge it went for 1,5 hour. I repeated this process 4 times yesterday, this morning once more and I was ready to use my French pastry ( puff in England, French in Poland we call it).
Today I made a filling of finely chopped apple, some raisin and cranberries, cinnamon, vanilla sugar, lemon juice and a dusting of plain flour. Rolled out my pastry, cut into squares, filled with apples, a little brushing of egg white on the edges- and some of them still opened!-closed with a help of a fork, more egg white, 3 little slashes on top of each pastry so that steam could escape and into the oven for 20 minutes in 200-220 degrees.
Once out and still very warm I applied a bit of glaze and that was that.
What I’ve learned is that French pastry is not difficult to make, it’s time consuming, but it is definitely worth every single fold and chill it took. The pastry is flaky, buttery, light and flavoursome, filling not too sweet, and excellent little treat to go with a cup of tea. I had 2 and left the kitchen before snatching another one. Will wait at least until the afternoon. 🙂
I could stop here, add the photos and be done, but I can’t, as last weekend we have had the best meal of our lives. Hands down. Steve and Christina, our foodie, well travelled friends were also blown away and agreed that we will be talking about this meal for years to come.
It was Florek’s 42nd birthday on Saturday. About 3 months ago I decided that I’ll burn some of my savings and we’ll go to Dinings for a birthday treat. What I didn’t anticipate was Masaki, my former boss, would treat us like royalty, give a table for as long as we wanted and serve his most amazing food to us. We were all lost for words, it was that good.
Everything that arrived at the table was looking stunning and was served in generous amount for 4 people, we didn’t have to be slicing things and sharing pieces of sashimi and such. We started with Dinings legendary tartar chips, some with wagyu, some with tuna, some with scallops. Some wonderful sashimi, where scallop stood out for me, might have been the best scallop ever( hand dived, Cornish). Then dover sole sashimi with sooooo much truffles we started to chuckle. Amazing.
Then the mini burger buns, I don’t think they lasted on the table beyond 3 minutes, ours were extra special with grilled wagyu and foie gras mousse, but the lobster and caviar ones were not too shabby either. Outstanding.
There was grilled aubergine, there was dover sole with morelle mushrooms, my first ever taste of those, I am now a fan!
There was a beautifully presented crab dish, where Cornish crab was mixed with freshly made noodles, none of us ever had anything like that before.
Then, as I was approaching the limit of comfortable food amount, grilled wagyu with pepper sauce came to the table, followed by sushi and sushi rolls. I switched from sake to green tea at that point, it helped with digestion. 🙂
Finally, desserts arrived. A lovely, light chocolate mousse cake for Florek, a yuzu cheesecake shaped like yuzu, light and wonderful, some petit fours. An icing on the cake.
We finished with some negroni at the bar with The Chief, for which I was not allowed to pay. Speechless, 12 out 10, that’s how good it was.
This is not the most brilliant photo of the cake, I admit, but I’m lucky I managed to snap it before the remaining cake was eaten. I came across the recipe on youtube, of all places, copied it quickly and ended up with a surprisingly lovely, moist and lemony cake. I had some nice Italian lemons – amazing what you can sometimes find in Lidl, I thought it would be a good practise before having beautiful lemons much more easily available later this year!
So I started with 180 g of caster sugar, into which I rubbed 2 heaped tsps of lemon zest, then 110 g of soft butter, KA took over here. 2 tbsps of veg oil. 2 whole eggs, one by one. 30 ml of lemon juice. 187 g of plain flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp of salt, all dry ingredients gently folded in, then 120 ml of milk, combined, not overmixed.
Loaf tin was waiting ready lined with paper, the cake baked for about 45 minutes in 160 degrees, till the baking stick came out clean.
Once slightly cooled it was glazed, 50 g of icing sugar and 30 ml of lemon juice, plus a little grated zest on top. Delicious, the next day even more so.
Liz and Ian recommended this place to us a while ago. We finally went last Thursday, escaping the first batch of viewings in our house, today we went there again, this time for lunch, with the said Liz and Ian and the girls.
What an excellent find this place is! It sits in Gloucester docks, overlooking the water. The service is excellent, a few older Greek chaps, who know what they talk about, but also don’t take any crap from anyone. Lovely, exciting menu. Lots of seafood, lots of meat, lots of veggies. Great desserts. Even music on Thursday was pleasant, none of this awful loud shite like in Jamie Oliver’s places.
So on Thursday we went with the chap’s recommendations; Izzie had a lovely kofta with fries and salad, chargrilled, which she scoffed down in minutes. Paul went for souvlaki made with pork tenderloin- and he is not big on pork! I had lamb chops with roasted potatoes, potatoes being the only thing I did not enjoy- they were roasted with lots of lemon.
Lovely pita bread on the side too.
We had to have the baklava, which we did, very good too, not drowned in rose water, which normally puts me off.
Today for lunch we didn’t exactly hold back. We had starters, while the girls munched on their koftas and fries. Liz had calamari, Paul grilled haloumi, scallops for me and grilled octopus for Ian- I’ll be having that next time, it was fantastic, sitting on some chickpea puree thing.
Liz’s Greek salad looked the part and tasted the part, it came with our mains of lamb chops again, souvlaki again, grilled prawns/swordfish.
And then some desserts. There was semifreddo with almonds and pistachios, we all enjoyed it, some mousse thing, a touch too sweet which we have not finished and a baklava again.
We ate really well. Will certainly be going back for more.
March has been mega busy. And when I write this I have a massive grin on my face, as Things Are Happening and we are moving to Italy in summer.
The house is on the market, we’re trying to agree a good removal company to take all our stuff to Lucca, a new school for Izzie has been agreed, all sorts of logistics are being seen to, but yes- we are doing it! Later on this year we will be living full time in the land of the most amazing food ever.
I popped in to Co Op this lunch time to pick up some mozzarella and some cat food, but I came across the first asparagus of the season, early this year, due to a spell of fantastic weather for the last 2 weeks. I hope Italians have asparagus at least as good as the Brits here in the Cotswolds, to be discovered next spring.
I also made a batch of hazelnut macaroons, which I stuffed with the remaining coffee cream- remaining from a really good pannettone we had after Christmas. Hazelnuts and coffee, anytime!
