Marco's Temptations

Health, Organic and Hygiene - Part 3 Hygiene

2008-08-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, it won't be easy talking about this subject. But I'll take the rick, even if someone may think I'm an environmental danger.

How important is hygiene? A lot!

Nevertheless all the information and the issues about it has to be interpreted in the right way.

Again supermarkets set up for us the best deal. And here they come all this greens (spinach, rocket, mix leaves etc.) in their perfect sealed bag. Already washed (because they do it better than us), and packed in protective atmosphere.
I thought only organs transplant where executed in protected atmosphere.

I saw an ad lately on telly where they (the product manufacturers) informed us that the gathering of bacteria on our chopping boards is ridiculously higher than the one on our toilet seat. And? What kind of information is that? I mean I'm sure is true and I wasn't aware of that, but I've never thought to chop my onions on the same place where I discharge my personal waste.

I cannot buy a bunch of spinach any more. Lots of people probably think «Oh my God today is the 18th and this bag of rocket expired yesterday. Let me throw it away before I get sick....
But Hello? Rocket with a label bearing the date after which I can no longer eat it?

Unfortunately many people don't understand the difference between USE BY and BEST BEFORE. Few months ago The Observer published an article where we can read that a third of the food thrown in the bin in Britain is still edible.

Now we should spend few words about antibodies? Antibodies, as defined by the website Antibody Station, are a class of immunological proteins (immunoglobulins) produced by B-cells, and are antigen-specific. An antigen is defined as a substance that can be bound by an antibody molecule through its antigen-binding sites, also called epitopes.

What does it means? Well put in this way is probably clear only for few elected luminaries, but translate like if we are in the pub down the road, it basically means that B-cells produce antibodies in response to infections, to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses (antigen). Antibodies recognize and latch onto antigens in order to remove them from the body. A wide range of substances are regarded by the body as antigens, including disease-causing organisms and toxic materials such as insect venom.

Why don't we want to use them then?

Here are some parts of an article appeared on At Home With... in this case Antony Worrall Thompson. The article which has the title Our obsession with hygiene is not healthy, is complementary with this post.

«When I grew up my grandmother didn't have a fridge. She had a larder with a marble shelf and a bit of gauze covering the windows to keep out flies. All the food was stored there – ham, cheese, bread. There was no silly rules about keeping raw meat separate from cooked meat.

We'd have a joint on Sunday, the leftover meat cold the next day and make a sheperd's pie the day after that. The milkman left the bottles on the doorstep and sometimes a bird would peck through the top. But we drank it anyway.

Eventually, when I was four or five, my gran got a gas-powered fridge. She always made trifle and one day I noticed that the cream on top was a bit pink. After I'd eaten it I asked gran whether she had used a different recipe and she said she hasn't. But we worked out that the blood from a piece of beef had dripped down into the trifle. No doubt the food police would be up in arms about this sort of things, as was a group of busybody food scientist from a Canadian university who watched 60 hours of food program (including our favourite British ones). They found there were, on average, seven shocking hygiene errors in a 30-minute show.

[...] Instances of food poisoning are indeed soaring, but I would argue that this has nothing to do with chef occasionally licking their fingers and everything to do with the way our immune systems have been shot to ribbons by a combination of the chemicals and preservatives in our food and our obsession with cleanliness.

These days, everything is sterile-wrapped, yet there is still more and more food poisoning. No one had food poisoning when I was a boy. Kitchen are infinitely cleaner these days but it does not seem to make us any healthier.

Recently, at a conference, I was approached by a scientist who said his team was working on a vaccination that would effectively put dirt back in our bodies. I mean, how mad is that?
These days, kid's can't go out and get grubby anymore, like they used to. It's no wonder to me that allergies as well as food poisoning are on the increase. We are killing ourselves by being too clean. We are loosing the natural plot.
When I lived in India, I ate anything. They used to hang meat in the trees and the servants would go and twitch it now and then to get the flies off. I would eat ice cream from street vendors, which sounds like a sure-fire way to catch salmonella. But I was never ill.
[...] Meanwhile, every man in white coat conspires to make British nervous about food. Instead of enjoying it for the pleasure it gives us, we have this unhealthy fascination with dirt. There's nothing we like more than a programme about a vermin-infested kitchen. Meanwhile, in schools children are taught all bout hygiene and encouraged to swab down their work surfaces with medical wipes, but they're not taught anything about cooking.
Our obsession with hygiene also leads to a shocking amount of waste. We are so scared of our food that we ditch things as soon as they are past their sell-by dates, even though it's not always necessary.
The bottom line is this: if you bought a prime fillet steak for £5-6 then dropped it on the floor, what would you do? Would you throw it away or would you dust it down, cook it and enjoy it? If it happened in one of my restaurants, I'd have to follow the rules. But I know what I'd do at home.»
A couple of years ago I was stocking some bananas in the basket in the shop where I worked back then. Accidentally I dropped few bananas on the floor. I then picked them up and put back in the basket, thinking there was nothing wrong with that.
At that point a customer, that look terrified by my action, approached me and asked:
«Excuse me why did you put those bananas back into the basket?»
«Why shouldn't I?»
«I think it's obvious, because they've just been on the floor.»
The shop was very busy and initially I didn't want to waste my time with such a stupid human being, nevertheless I asked anyway:
«Do you eat bananas with the skin on?»
«Well...no...but this is not the point.»
And walked away.
I'm still wondering what the point was!

An Ode To The Waterfront

2007-10-17T11:42:00.001-07:00

THE OLD CITY
(Fabrizio De Andrè)

In the quarters where our God doesn’t send any sunbeam
Since he’s already busy keeping people warm in other environs
a child is singing the old songs of the tart
you will learn what you don’t know yet only into my arms

And if she is wanting of skills for her age
soon she will refine them with the experience
what has become of the old days for God’s sake
when to do the ‘job’ was needed also a little vocation

One leg here, one leg there swollen with wine
four pensioners half embittered by the table
you will see them, with any weather, summer and winter
gulping down and cursing, women, weather and government

They seek happiness there, into a glass
all forgotten they have been taken the piss
there will be jolliness even in agony with strong wine
They will carry a hint of a smile into the arms of death

Old professor who are you looking for on that door
Perhaps the only one who can give you a lesson
the one with defiance you call during the day of ‘public wife’
the one who fixes the prices during the night

You will seek her, you will invoke her more than one night
You will please get up, putting it off until the 27^th
When you will cash and spend half of your pension
Ten thousands liras to be called ‘ cute little sweetheart'

If you will penetrate the old docks’ quays
In the air filled of salt, swollen of odours
You will find the thieves, the murderers and the odd person
The same who sold his own mum to a dwarf

If you will think, you will judge as a good bourgeois
You will convict ‘em to 5000 years plus the expenses
Ma if you will understand, you will seek them to the end
If they are not lily they still are children, victim of this world

This is a song written by one of my favorite Italian songwriter. Fabrizio De André. The liryc sounds much better in Italian because of the rime, but I did my best. Anyway Fabrizio was from Genoa, a city by the sea. Being by the sea involves that Genoa has its own harbour, fishing boats, quays and docks.
Genoa is bigger than Livorno (my own town), much bigger and with much more history behind; ironically, actually, Livorno used to be property of Genoa which eventually sold it to Florence in 1421.
Livorno and Genoa, and Marseille, and Liverpool, and Barcelona, and you name it. All cities with an important point in common. His majesty The Sea.
The tie between the people and the sea is really strong. If you talk with someone born by the sea, he will always tell you how can’t stay away from it. I was born by the sea, and now living in London if someone ask me what you miss the most of Italy, the answer comes automatic: the sea. No question asked.
I think this places are more exciting, give you more inspiration. Painter and photographer are more likely to immortalize a sunset on the beach than a foggy plan country.
The harbours. The doggie docks where any kind of goods is smuggled. The gateway to far away destinations. The fishing boats coming back from days offshore, loads of any sort of fish. Divine.
The last two verses of the song in particular are what you need when you feel a kind of home sick. They take you back at least mentally in that place: especially when it says if you will penetrate the old docks’ quays, in the air filled of salt, swollen of odours and again you will find the thieves, the murders and the odd person….. and that’s it I’m there walking along the docks at dawn, perhaps with that little wet fog typical of the places…..are you with me?
Now think about centuries and centuries ago where people were more likely to settle in a land by the sea rather than inland. In the countryside it might have been more secure from the possible attack, but less convenient.
The problem to be an easy target was offset by being the first to come across new cultures, new trades and new adventures. And it was also clear to any good general and emperor that the supremacy over the seas was a difference between winning or losing a war.
But probably what most attract people by the sea were the trading, since back then the fastest way to travel and to transport a big quantity of goods was, in fact, sailing.
In the begin most of the trades were in the Mediterranean, also for the fear to overtake the Pillars of Hercules. But the discover of the America boost profits of the trades. The most curious thing shipped over from Central and South America was food. Dozens of ingredients reached the shores of the European harbours included the king of them and now: the tomato. Imagine today cuisine without tomatoes. Unconceivable.
The new world was definitely the place where the currently most loved ingredients originally come from.
For this reason harbours started to be busier and busier. This cities started to flourish, to attract foreigner, probably mainly merchants, to become more indulgent and liberal.
I can bring as example my own town, Livorno. When the Medici family, at that time already Lords of Tuscany, bought the city from Genoa they finally obtain what they aspired for long time, an outlet on the sea to increase their commerce. And there it was, but they need people to populate the place at that time not too much hospitable due to the marshes that surrounded the town. But the Grand Duke Ferdinando I in 1590, enacted what are known as Leggi Livornine, Livorno Laws. A document that begin in this way: «To all of you, merchants from any country, Levantini (easterner), Ponentini (westerner), Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Jewish, Turkish, Moors, Armenians, Persians and others […] we grant real, free and utter safe-conduct and liberty and permission to come, stay, trade and live with your family or without….» And that was it. Jewish persecuted in Spain came over, as well as basically anyone listed in the law, especially if they were convicted, because they wouldn’t have been prosecuted in Livorno. In fact lots of people in Tuscany says that we (people of Livorno) all come from pirates and whores. But the brainwave was to declare Livorno as duty free port.
All culture settled in Livorno, brought also their own food tradition especially the Jewish, which apparently where the first to trade tomatoes, brought straight from Spain. The so called Livorno style involved the use of tomatoes chilli and parsley as base for the recipes such as the famous red mullet. But also the north African spices found a place in the typical Livorno cuisine, one for all is the large use of ginger.
Right from North Africa we adapt what is probably the most famous dish in the Arabic cuisine, the cus cus or cous cous for someone.

CUSCUSSÚ ALLA LIVORNESE (Cus Cus Livorno Style)

Ingredients: (makes 8)

400gr semolina wheat
1 chicken about 1,5 kg chopped
1kg gelded lamb or just lamb chopped
300gr tomatoes peeled, seeded cut julienne
200gr courgette or pumpkin chopped
1 onion sliced
4 artichokes sliced
few leaves of chard included the stalk cut julienne
2 cardoons cut julienne
200gr broad been
200gr chickpea soaked overnight
Nutmeg, pepper, chilli and salt

Method:

Add a generous quantity of olive oil in a large pot. Brown the onion with a little salt. Add the meat and brown for 2-3 minutes, add some water and bring to boil. Add all the vegetables, salt, pepper, chilli and nutmeg and cook for at least 2 hours with the lid on, until the lamb is tender.

Now take the semolina wheat add water and knead it with the hands until you get a well-blended mixture. Create little tiny balls a set aside on a clear dry towel (this operation is usually done one day ahead).
The wheat is then cooked in a colander put on top of the pot where meat and vegetables are being cooked. When the cus cus is cooked add 50gr of melted butter and lay on a tray. Add the meat on top and the vegetables around. You can complete the dish with some beef meatball prepared as follow: 400gr of minced beef mixed with one garlic clove chopped and one egg, salt and pepper. We make then the meatballs and we cook them a part after we pass them in a little flour and breadcrumbs.

P.S. North African and Arabic in general don’t drink wine with this dish, people from Livorno do!

Health, Organic and Hygiene - Part 2 Organic

2007-09-05T05:45:00.002-07:00

Great thing organic food. You are sure that your food don’t contain any nasty additive or preservative; in the case of fruit or vegetable for example starting from the sowing until the harvesting the products are only treated with natural product. I myself often ordered organic mixed box from one of the by now numerous company. But again we need to be careful to what we buy. When organic wasn’t trendy, as currently is, few years ago we were more sure of the goodness of those products. Currently organic is a huge business due to the wake left by all the campaigning about healthy heating. But as everything becomes more popular and then a good business all the speculative will jump on the train; in this way the very first thing that gets affected will be the quality, hence the final customer. Us. Whoever produce food, will launch, if hasn’t already, the organic version of their product range (someone tried anyway but with poor result) in order not to be out the games. So it happens to hear unbelievably often about new organic products, new organic farm and new organic store; my question is why didn’t show up earlier? Because now people care more about what they eat, and it’s a good business too, could answer someone. I totally agree with that and that’s exactly my point. My worry is that organic thoughts and philosophy will be exploited just to make more money, as usually happen when the latter is involved. Good organic products are like good wine; it is not enough for a producer own the knowledge or the money to carry out the business. You definitely need more than that, you need the belief, the passion in what you are doing. I am sure there are, even among the organic, better and worst product; better and worst organic fertilizers which will result in a better or worst final product. Lots of farm are currently turning organic to keep up with the market, but at this point my doubt is if all the products labeled as organic really are. There are standards that settle what can be considered organic and what can’t. But I don’t know if there are bodies that check if the products are really organic; I know that if a product is certified by the Soil Association is definitely good but then I may assume than if it the Soil association certify only the 100% organic food what’s the rest? 80% organic and 20% not. It’s a 50-50. Or worse is 20% organic and 80% God knows what? Probably the label would say anyway organic even if we are under the threshold of the standard, then I’ll pay more for something that actually it means to cost less. Recently in The Guardian appeared an article about how the supermarkets deal with the change of food habits, especially concerning organic and fair-trade. The Cooperative understood that its customers are mostly aware of the truthfulness of the label. Again the label plays a fundamental role in the purchasing, we are more motivated to buy if we see that a product is organic, but sometimes I saw labels and products unbearable. The funniest was probably the organic eggs sold by the biggest English retailer(I don’t know if I can say the name but I can give you an hint, starts with T and finishes with esco). The label reads:

Organic
6 Free range eggs
Free range hens fed on an organic diet, free to roam on organic pastures during the day

I swear it says that, and they looked desperate to assure me about that their eggs are really organic and they’re absolutely not mean to the hens. Maybe soon it’ll appear also and during the night they also go out for a couple of drinks, but we swear they never come back home pissed.

It’s also funny see what product are labeled organic. I won’t be tedious listing all these products but one in particular caught my attention, which was Organic prawns. Thought I was an idiot because I couldn’t find a reason for which a fish could be organic I found something interesting in the website aboutorganics. This really well done websites in the section about organic fish quote as follow:

An EU directive has decreed that nothing captured or harvested from the wild can be labelled as 'organic'. The reasoning behind this is obvious, if you can't be sure of the history of a product how can you be sure it will meet organic standards without extensive and very costly testing. Currently only farmed fish can be given the organic label with only salmon and trout being readily available but swimming over the horizon we have organic cod, halibut and sea bass […]

As you see it’s all about the label.
Another issue is what to do with all the ingredients you get when you order a organic box. I found an interesting blog about that. I had the same problem also because i don't fancy vegetables every single day of the week, so I suggest that you may use all the ingredients at once and add something more as well with this minestrone.

MINESTRONE ALLA LIVORNESE (Soup Livorno Style)

Ingredients (makes 6):

300gr rice
400gr cannellini beans
300gr spinach
2 beef tomatoes
2 celery stick
half savoy cabbage
5 leaves of swiss chard
2 courgette
2 potatoes
2 carrots
50gr row ham in one slice and with a big rind
40gr of salted pancetta in one slice (you can use bacon as substitute)
1 little pig's trotter
2 garlic cloves
50gr parsley
half red onion
2l of beef stock
Olive oil, salt and pepper
Parmesan to serve

Method:

Soak the beans over night or at least 12 hours in lightly salted water. Boil the pig's trotter in water with a little salt. Meanwhile wash, clean and then blanch in another pot the cabbage, swiss chard and spinach roughly chopped. Now in the same pot you will cook the soup, chop ham, pancetta, garlic and half of the red onion in a little olive oil. The old recipe reads when the odour of the lightly fried perfumes the room, add the blanched greens and leave to flavour for few minutes. Start to add little by little, together with the water of the pig's trotter the onion left, carrot, celery, and courgette sliced, the potatoes skinned the pork rind and diced and the tomatoes peeled and deseeded. Free the pig's trotter from the bone (if there's one), and add to the soup with salt and pepper. Stir and add the beans bring to boil add the rice and simmer for 20 minutes until the beans are cooked. At the end add a generous amount of Parmesan and wait the soup cools down.
This particular soup has never eaten hot. Usually is consumed lukewarm with a bottle of good red wine and more Parmesan added on top. Some people enjoy this soup also in summer and in this case has to be at room temperature, and the Parmesan previously added has now form a delicious white crust.

Health, Organic and Hygiene - Part 1 Health

2007-08-17T07:49:00.001-07:00

Unhealthy: ‘causing or conducive to poor health / unwholesome / of a risky nature’ (from The Free Dictionary by Farlex); ‘in poor health / no conducive to health’ (from The Oxford Dictionary). There is no mention to fat whatsoever.

I have to say I’m kind of tired of seeing ad campaigns and inevitably, within a short time, hearing those who have jumped on the bandwagon, saying, for example, ‘sausages are unhealthy’ and even ‘olive oil has to be avoided!’’ It may be better to say that too many sausages and too much olive oil can be fattening, and that an unvaried diet can clog your arteries, leading to heart attacks and other scary things. The point lays precisely in the words themselves; fat is not unhealthy but too much of it definitely is. You add a little adverb and everything changes, including people’s thoughts and eventually the market as well. Let’s get something straight, I’m not against eating lighter. Everyone is free to eat whatever they like, but give me a break big brother!
I think the situation is getting out of order. If you fancy a sausage more, or a stuffed pork loin, you may be pointed at as an unhealthy person. Yes sir, because now more than ever you are what you eat and you may feel different somehow from others who eat lighter, but perhaps not necessary healthier, foods than you. Probably the same people who use spray oil and no fat cheese but then drink tanks of fizzy drinks and munch buckets of crisps, just because the drinks are “zero sugar” and the crisps have “less salt than ever!.”
Sometimes I’m really scared that we’re going to end up with the eating habits of characters in sci-fi movies such as Demolition Man or The Island, where everything is laboratory made and has in it no food-stuff that has ever seen the light of day, yet contains the perfect amount of salt, protein and fat for our own well being. This is a scary vision of the future.
I understood then, that the issue is the fat and not the health. People don’t want to cook with butter, yet drink things that contain no natural products whatsoever. Have you ever watched the video of the experiment made with sweets, coke or some other fizzy drinks?

But the blame has to be taken by the media, TV, newspapers and magazines. It seems there’s a crusade against fat, salt and cholesterol (actually there is); take it easy guys, listening to you makes it feel like fat is more dangerous than the virus chased by Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak. The brain washing carried on by all the media can even be considered fascist, they warn us we are disgusting if we eat all that fat; we are constantly under the attack of advertisers that say ‘eat healthier’ (when they actually mean ‘eat lighter’), and then anytime we visit the supermarket we always try to buy the “healthier” version of the product; products that inevitably cost more than the fuller fat option.
So we have cheese with “only” 2% fat, no fat yoghurt, ‘be good to yourself’ products, Weight Watchers and so on. They show on the label the percentage of fat but what about how healthy the product is in comparison with the original (which people ate for centuries)? They can never say how early you’re going to die if you drink full fat milk or if you eat a steak with the fat still clinging to the edges.
These days it seems that the supermarket only has room for “healthier” products and this puts the classic products further and further into the corner. So in the future when fat will most likely be banned or perhaps criminalised you could be spotted straight away sneaking a fat product from the little corner where the traditional food eaten for centuries has been squeezed into.
I work for a catering company, and a couple of years ago due to all the campaigning around health issues, ‘less mayo’ sandwiches were launched. So this customer walks into the shop and after he saw that all the food had less mayo he asked me, “excuse me are all your sandwiches less mayo, mayo free or whatever?” and I reply “yes sir we’ve just launched this new range of lighter products. You know with all this talk about fat and junk food….” He interrupted me saying, “Yes I know, but what about people who like more mayo in the sandwiches?” He was right. Big Time.
Why do they only advertise light products? What if I want a fatter cheese? What if I want the milk so fatty and creamy than you’d need to slice it rather than pour it? What if I want to be mean to myself, sometimes? Why would I buy pork mince meat with less than 2% fat? The pigs are fattened before being killed, so basically you fatten the pig and then you take the fat off. Well done idiot! But perhaps the pigs are actually size 0. Who knows! But do we want to have some respect for the animals that have died for our own sustenance and pleasure; if they (the animals) knew that all the fat, and therefore the goodness they had, was eventually taken off, they would probably be on hunger strike before long. We’re showing no respect whatsoever to them and to the farmers who work to fatten the animal.
Do we want to find a conspiracy in all of this? Yes? Right, listen to this: what if Supermarkets used health as excuse to sell more expensive products? They advertise, “Don’t eat fat or you’ll burn in hell you fat bastard” but “eat our new range of products with only 2% of fat, -10% of flavour and 25% more in price. Isn’t it a bargain?” Yeah you twat, you’re fattening the wallet of the supermarket.

Personal health is what all of us care about the most. It’s the same old story; we are constantly bombarded with information about what food is healthy and what is unhealthy until we convince ourselves that we are all sinners and that eating that loin stuffed with herbs, butter and garlic is almost certainly a free pass to a premature death. Think about it. If all the campaigns were about fat instead of health it wouldn’t have had the same impact. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that eating burgers everyday makes me fatter, but the supermarkets use our health to sell lighter products. However, these products are lighter only in calories. Light food was made originally for people who want to be in shape, for those who needed to be on diet, so not for all customers. Now everybody wants to be good to themselves. So the bigger the audience the higher the earning power of the supermarket. I think it is all psychological; if the range “be good to yourself”, was called “keep yourself in shape” or “don’t get fatter you pig”, the product would have been ignored by most people but not the ones on a diet, who lie outside the subject of this post. Because at the end of the day we don’t mind gaining a little bit of weight due to consuming some fat in excess as long as the food is good, but everyone wants to be healthy. Hence brainwashing by the media plus adding a funky name equals buying “be good to yourself”, equals slimmer in shape but more so in wallet. And this is another issue; can anyone tell me why lighter products cost more than others? If the fat is taken off, if you add less salt than before and the product contains actually less substance, shouldn’t it be cheaper? I know that probably the industrial process used in order to get rid of the fat is probably more complicated (we’re not sure anyway) and expensive, but who asked you to do that? People have eaten these foods for years and those who wanted managed to get in shape even without these overpriced products. Top models and pin-ups girls don’t eat these foods anyway, vegetarians ditto and vegans would probably blow supermarkets up if they could.

You see my point is that health and fat do not always go together. I know that too much fat is unhealthy but a little is so good, and isn’t it better to eat a little of tasty food than a lot of plain boring tasteless stuff?
Somebody once said that we only live twice, but he or she must have been drunk, because I can tell you it’s officially proven that we only live once. So make the most of it!

You only live twice,

Or so it seems.

One life for your self,

And one for your dreams.

You drift through the years,

And life seems tame….

So you can enjoy your life and also dream about being good to yourself and buying lots of “healthy” products.
If you like a further reading about the subject try ‘Fat’ by Rob Grant
Now talking about fat here I suggest a recipe which will destroy the efforts you did in the past three months in order to loose weight.

CASTAGNACCIO (chestnut cake)

Ingredients (for a 24cm baking tray):

250gr chestnut flour

250gr water

50gr sultana

30gr pine kernel

Method:

In a bowl dissolve the flour in the water, a pinch a salt and a tbsp of olive oil. Allow to rest at least one hour. Meanwhile soften the sultana in a little water. Pour the mix in the baking tray and add the sultana and pine kernel over the surface. The mix has to have a density that doesn’t let the sultana drawn completely. Put in the oven at 180°C for about 30 min or until the surface is dark and cracked

The Alien's List #2 - Stuff to eat before you die... Eat your own catch

2007-07-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

The Alien's List #2 - Eat Your Own catch

Welcome to the second episode of the favourite list on the web: The Alien's List. We'll be talking about eating your own catch. Eating your own catch or hunt is probably one of the finest food experience, not only because you are more than sure about the freshness of what you are about to eat, but also for the whole experience that lead to the catch itself.
I’ve never hunted but I’ve been out a few times for fishing, and it is really satisfactory when you get home and you cook what you just fished.
Despite the reliability of your fish monger, the freshest fish he can sell is at least 12 hours old. He goes to the market, which is probably Billinsgate if you live in London, he picks what you wants to sell he go back to the shop and starts trading. The fishes he just picked at the market are caught by the fish boats no later than the night before. Your own catch has definitely met his death later.
If I have to talk about my best experience I could go back in time last February when I was in Mexico and precisely in Puerto Escondido on the pacific coast. Here we met two guys from Italy as well who invited us for a day out fishing; they previously had a great deal with a guy in the harbour and they wouldn’t mind had another go.
When we left the shore the sea was almost flat but the farer we go the rougher it got; despite it seemed we were in trouble our guide didn’t look bothered at all, but was actually excited because he was told earlier that lots of little tunas and sailfishes were around.
We were navigating with about 15 dolphins running parallel to us jumping out of the water and if you stood at prow you could see them crossing their path in front of the boat. Then suddenly they disappear and about 100 metres far away we spotted two killer whales and when we were all excited for the view, taking pictures of the animals suddenly the fishing line started to go like crazy. Something took the bait. We stood up and the guy closer to the rod hold it and began to spin the reel backwards and moving the rod as you do in this moments. While he was rewinding the reel he could feel an extremely strong opposition, and after a good ten minutes we saw this sailfish jump out of the water with the fishing line in his mouth but as soon as he got back in the sea the hook lost it. Everything had been so exciting that we couldn’t believe we lost such a great catch. We start swear. We kept swearing for long time and with big disappointment we had to go back home but eventually we had our fish. We were just before Playa Zicatela where our shore was and a fish called Frel or something like that decided to make us a favour. Unfortunately I haven't found anything in english about this fish, and I don't know the equivalent in italian either so if someone has more information is more than welcome the sharing of them.

When the mum of the driver filleted the fish, plenty of blood came out from the flesh, which was really dark even darker than tuna.
With those huge bloody fillet we headed back to the hotel and start to think what to do with it. As good Italians we decided to make a sauce to toss some pasta with and I tried to do some carpaccio salad out of it and to grill the fillets.
So with the whole fish you just saw we had a three course meal.
We start with the carpaccio of frel with lime and salad, followed by pasta with frel and tomatoes sauce a finished with grilled frel fillet guacamole and tomatoes.
For the making of carpaccio all you need is a freezer and a very sharp knife, so if freezed the fillet which has to be quite thick and after an hour or so you start to cut as thin as you can. The knife we had was quite crap but the result was all right eventually.
For the sauce for the pasta you need olive oil and ripe tomatoes. We first wash the fillets under running water to get rid of the blood and I then cut in stock cubes sizes portion. I heated the oil in a frying pan and then I sauté the fish for a couple of minutes and add the tomatoes peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped. Cook the tomatoes for about ten minutes and the sauce is ready. Drain the pasta and add to the pan with the sauce. Add a knob of butter if you think the sauce is too dry. I was quite amazed to see how good the mexican tomatoes were, the sauce that came out was perfect as I never achieved, and the taste was great too; as a matter of fact tomatoes are originally from Mexico. The grilled fillet, which were more steak look like, I guessed they behaved as tuna do. I first marinated them in olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper and grilled them shortly on both sides to keep the middle quite as rare as possible and we prepare a tasty guacamole with all local products. In fact not only tomatoes are original from Mexico but also the avocados are. Apparently the word avocado comes from Náhuatl word ahuacatl from which we have aguacate that means avocado in spanish. During the Conquest times, Spanish men conceived it as one of the natives' favorite fruits, which was included in their food and was considered to have healing properties. In some restaurant guacamole is prepared in front of your eyes by the table; the original recipes included avocado, of course, tomatoes, garlic cloves, coriander and lime juice. All the ingredients are mashed in the traditional molcajete or with a fork until you get the desired consistency.

The Alien's List #1 - Stuff to eat before you die... Broad beans and Baccellone cheese

2007-07-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

The Alien' List #1 - Baccelli e Baccellone (Broad beans and Baccellone cheese)

Welcome to the first episode of The Alien’s List. As first episode I’d go back in time a couple of months in Tuscany. The period across the end of April and the begin of May is when the broad beans, baccelli in fact, are harvested. If it happens to you to be in Tuscany (actually anywhere in Italy where you can find broad bean under the name of fava) in that period it won’t be difficult to find in almost any town or village markets, groceries or just simple stalls along the road in the countryside, heaps of fresh broad beans.
And also if you enter in any cheese shop or market in the area of Pisa or Livorno, you will see big sign labelling something called baccellone.
But if you want the ultimate broad bean experience you better attend on one of the uncountable Sagra del baccello. In Italy with Sagra we mean a festival that 99% of time involves food and most of time take place at the same of some particular harvesting whether is broad bean, wine, aubergine, tomato. Of course there’s space also for meat lovers with festival of wild boar, sausage, hare and all the other games.
Broad bean was the ancient tribute the Romans offer to some of their divinities in particular Pluto the god of the underworld and Proserpina abducted by Pluto himself and goddess of fertility. Ancient Egyptians instead refrained to eat it, they didn’t sow it, they didn’t touch it with the hands and the priests didn’t even laid the eyes on it because they thought it was filthy.
Last April I was in Italy and the groceries down the road sold Baccelli dell’Ardenza, Ardenza is one of the district of Livorno, so I bought 2 kilos of them with some baccellone, and the feast was done. I ate with my parents all the raw broad beans with little salt and the cheese and of course a flask of wine.
Now some restaurant offer the dish as a starter, with the beans already without the shell and served together with the diced cheese; you can have them at the end of the meal in the same way but I think the best experience is to feast with them. In the countryside you can still find people eating beans and cheese in the field on the shade of some tree.
As I said the cheese used with the beans is called baccellone and there is no equivalent in English. As in Greece the same beans are eaten still raw together with Feta cheese, the experience can be easily done in England too.
The baccellone is basically a particular ewe’s cheese, pecorino in fact, with took that name because is commonly eaten together with baccelli. It is a little salty and peppery and the one used with baccelli has usually a white colour differently from the aged one which is more brownish.
Broad beans can be boiled or just cook in pan with some oil and bacon, but if I have to suggest a recipe it would be:

BROAD BEANS' FEAST

Ingredient:

At least 1 kilo of broad beans still with the shell each person
Feta cheese as much as you like
Salt
Lots of wine

Method:
Take a car and go for a picnic in the countryside. Sit on the shade of any tree you like. Start to feast. Open the shell eat the beans raw with same salt and cheese and sip a good wine. You you find a shell that contains 7 beans is good luck. Let me know.

The Last Supper and the alien's list

2007-07-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ok this is the situation: you are sleeping in you room, dreaming about a beach in Thailand, when suddenly some aliens Predator look like crack in your room. They announce that they are about to kidnap you for experiments on human beings held in their own planet called Vegan69. However they let you have what presumably is your last supper on planet earth; you can have a four course meal plus dessert. You can ask anything you want even something you had long time ago, no worries they’ll recreate this for you with exactly the same flavour (don’t ask how, you know aliens beside being uglier are also always more clever and more developed than humans. And they usually do lots of cool stuff!) of the original. What would you have? I’d panic straight away, too many things I’d like to have. Which starter? Pasta or main? No I’ll have some pasta. Fish or meat? What about cheese! Bloody hell I’m in trouble I can’t decide. No I can’t help it, probably the aliens would shot me after I had taken too long to decide……nothing at the end because for every choice there are hundreds regrets……bastards of aliens they could do at least one fishy, one meaty and one veggie meal. I think it’d be one of the toughest decision ever. OK let’s do the aliens less mean then, something like the ones in The Simpson’s. They say before kidnapping you they want experience all the best meal and food you can suggest them. You tell them and they can recreate exactly the same (for the same reason than aliens are more clever and cooler than us!).
That’s better, isn’t it? We have a wider range of action and a little longer to live before we say goodbye to the earth. Now that it sounds nicer what would they be? I mean what would you choose? Would they just be the tastiest dish you ever had, or maybe something linked to some special occasion? Something you have never tried but always heard about. Tough shit!
I’ll have of course all cheeses, hams, salami and fruits, but here we’re mostly talking about a meal, or a whole course. Something that involve cooking or anyway create something from scratch.
We might be in search of the perfect meal, but what is the perfect meal? What makes a meal or a dish perfect? Anthony Bourdain in his “A Cook’s Tour” tries to find out the last experience in terms of meal. He eats anything and more, going up and down the globe. Asia, France, North Africa, Sahara Desert, Spain you name it. His conclusion is that there’s not a perfect meal, too many things are involved; as he wrote, the food is important as much as the situation. Who you are with, when, where.
In my past post called travel and eat I told the story of when I had fresh made pasta with prawns. Honestly this dish itself it wouldn’t be in my list for the aliens, but trust me eaten on the desert beach of Zipolite with the sand between the toes, a chilled beer on the table and some organic weed screaming for being smoke…..well if the aliens have the teletransport (they must have it) let’s go to Mexico and have that dish!
So here it is, ladies and gentlemen the new section of my blog; I could call it To die For, but some else did it already, and in the foreword of the book he mentioned also To die After. It could be something like Stuff to eat before you die, but it sounds to common; I tried to google “eat before you die” and the response is quite vast.
So I thought that the aliens forced me to do list and the new section it’ll be called THE ALIENS’ LIST (Stuff to eat before you die)

The art to make shift (poverty, creativity and food)

2007-06-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

In the old times when poverty was more spread in the countries nowadays known as developed, when fridges and freezers were even over sci-fiction, and take-away were yet to come for many and many years, cooks, chefs and ordinary people had to be clever and practical. Few of them could afford to waste food and not to use the leftovers at all. So perhaps the greater gift that an housekeeper could have, in order not to waste food and therefore money, was to create dishes with what was left in the larder, or from the day before. And especially with the leftovers they had to be ingenious for not being boring.
There were no books at that time or TV programs, everything was made from scratch from what was available, and sometimes was so simple than it might look even naïve.

Italy

is a land where people are really devoted to their traditions and roots, and everybody, whatever region they come from, will always extol the quality of their own land and that the food and the wine from their region is the best in

Italy

. People from Tuscany don’t have a clue what’s typical in Piedmont or which wine is from where, and this is a rule effective all over

Italy

. Well of course we know what’s going on in the rest of

Italy

but we don’t really care about it. Perhaps because every single region as such a plenitude of products, cheeses, wines and oil than we wouldn’t need to look further, but we do.
But let’s do a step back. We were talking about the art to make shift especially in my city: Livorno. Here housewives were really creative both in the dish and in the name given to them; the recipes now known as part of the peasant or poor cuisine are plenty, and all of them had as main aim to fill up the stomach as much as possible. We can start with the heroic minestra sui discorsi; the translation it’d come something like speeches soup. Referring to the speech and than something not real, underline the poverty of this dish; in fact when the stock cube didn’t exist and there were no money to buy any kind of meat whatsoever the housewives put water and salt in a pot and then add both dry and fresh herbs, and a beef bone if the butcher was so generous to present one. Once the “soup” was eventually ready they’d cook pasta in it. Not really appetizing but you know what can’t be cured must be endured (If you were “rich” you could add also pig rind). Another one has as basic ingredient what in

Italy

is called lesso (boiled beef), which is the beef the stock was made of. When the stock was done, no way that this meat was thrown away, the recipe to reuse it are hundreds all over Italy, and in Livorno would possibly ends up for the making of the francesina (little French), so for 4 people they’d brown 500gr of white onion in 1dl of olive oil, then add the meat thinly cut and at the end 50gr of tomato puree dissolved in a little water. Seasoned and cooked for about an hour.Still with the lesso left from the day before there is the Inno di Garibaldi; what Garibaldi has to do with it? The heavy use of tomatoes and tomato puree results in a dish with a powerful red colour that reminds of the uniform of the soldiers loyal to the hero of the two worlds, Garibaldi in fact. So for 4 person you need to brown four cloves of garlic and two twigs of rosemary in one dl of olive oil, then add 4 big ripe tomatoes (or 50gr of tomato puree) with tree tbsp of water and at the end 500gr of potatoes cut into big chunks; when the potatoes are almost ready add the lesso in chunk as well. Add a little more water and the “red” dish is ready. There would be another one but research says that is more an anecdote than a real fact; I’ll propose you anyway, it’s called brodo con i sassi (stock with rocks). So this is the story: hundreds years ago when poverty and hunger where widely spread in Italy (we’re talking about a period between half 1700 and the end of 1800, a period of foreigner occupation and fights for the unification eventually obtained in 1861), housewives in Livorno were used to go by the quay in the clean waters of that time and gathering rocks from the bottom of the sea, in particular the one with all the seaweed stuck on. Those rocks they were not supposed to come in contact with the air, so they were put in a big bucket with sea water in; once back they eventually boiled the water with rocks and herbs inside, and cook in some pasta.
And then we had fishes, especially the ones consider as the rabble of the ichthyology such as picarels, brogues, grey mullets, scorpion fish, the not really fancied fishes, or even worst the one partially bitted by water-fleas therefore not sellable. So people created the fish stew famous all over italy and know as Cacciucco all livornese (alla livornese is translated in some book as livornaise), and as often happen on this days, what used to be addressed to common and low classes people, is now became something for which you must own a quite fat wallet consider the cost of the first matter. Fishes was and still is a kind of good that perish faster than any other good, whether is meat or vegetable. So people use to keep fish mix with salt to keep it for long time, baccalà or bacalao in Spanish is nothing more than cod. Is actually salt cod, and in the past centuries cod had to survive all the way from the North Sea down to the Mediterranean, so if wasn’t dried on the air as the Viking us to do (in this case is no more baccalà but stoccafisso) you had to keep in salt. From here was born the way to marinate small fishes and vegetables known as scapece.
In Livorno we called this marinate sotto il pesto and are famous the picarel scapece or as we say Zerri sotto il pesto.

PICAREL MARINATED (picarel scapece)

Ingredients (makes 4):
800gr of picarel
8 garlic cloves
3 small chilli pepper
flour for dusting
1l white vinegar
3dl extravirgin olive oil
salt
10gr black peppercorn

Method:
Open the fishes and take off the interior. Wash and dry them. Dust them with flour and fry in a frypan. Once fried lay down the fishes in a tray sprinkle over the garlic and chilli pepper finely chopped. Add the peppercorns and vinegar. Allow to rest for 12 hours and taste as starter.

Travel and eat

2007-06-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

I have never chosen, my travel destination purely on food or drink (well maybe some of them…), but every time I went somewhere I have always tried to make the most of it.
I’m usually more interested in dining in typical restaurants or checking out some natural wonder rather than visit museums and churches or staring at paints or statues.
I think is great thing that any part of the world has its own food and traditions, and food that comes from traditions; lots of time particular ingredients can be find only in certain places, therefore a recipe which has as base that ingredients, it can be tasted at its best only there. You may cheat using similar or ingredients or some from the same family but it would never taste the same. Take for example pesto sauce, or Pesto alla Genovese, from the city of Genoa; the ingredients you need are really easy to find, we have basil, pine nuts, extravirgin olive oil, parmesan and pecorino romano, garlic and sea salt. You then mix all the ingredients and whether you use the old fashion way with pestle and mortar or just a blender you get the sauce, and as long as the ingredients especially the basil are really fresh the results are great. But you’re never going to get the real taste of the pesto as in Genoa, because they use local basil that grows in the district called Pra and also obtained the rank of DOP (Protected Designation of Origin). I used this example because most of the people know this sauce, but heaps of others case could be quoted, check out the previous link to have an idea. Not to mention wines DOC and DOCG.
Upon on that people use those fine and unique ingredients as base for great dishes and therefore if you don’t put your hands on them you can never recreate the same taste for which they are famous. You can use any basil to do pesto sauce with great result but you won’t get any closer to the original.
Still talking about Italy, which is the place I know best, you can easily find different product just moving 20 miles further; or you can find the same recipe slightly changed because perhaps the soil offers different products. I think about the anchovies pour style in Livorno are different from the one in Pisa, and Pisa is just 10 miles north, or the Cacciucco. In Livorno is made in a way different from Viareggio. You could go around Tuscany and taste in every village different breads, cheese, oil or wine.
I keep talking about Italy but every country has its own protected products and its own differences between villages and towns.
So if you think how unique are these ingredients you can easily realize how difficult it might be found them abroad the country of origin. Living in London widely opened my way to view food, I can appreciate new things but still I’m Italian and I really miss the food I usually enjoy back home. Sometimes I find some store that sells Italian products but when I check the prices I feel a mix between amused and annoyed.
But I think the problem isn’t only about Italian food, is it?
On the other hand it is interesting to visit restaurants, as long as you know they are worth the visit, that cook food where you are from, and check how they do with local ingredients.
Few months ago I was in Mexico in a little tiny place called Zipolite 40 km from Puerto Escondido. We had been in Mexico for 20 days already and all the people we met in the way said to us «guys if you pass from Zipolite you must have pasta with prawns, it’s just great.» So we did. We were walking down the beach and we saw the place. We knew the pasta was fresh handmade everyday, so we sat by the table and we ordered tres cerveza and three pasta with prawns. The girl who took the order came back shortly and she was about to tell us that no prawns were available that day, when this fifty something Mexican fisherman showed up behind us with a bucket of prawns. We ate our pasta with the quite possible freshest prawns we have ever had. And yes it was terrific.
It was nice, actually as I said was great, but after all not all of us travel just for the sake to relax and leave the job behind for a while; we also travel to have a new experience and I think food has to be considered an experience, perhaps The experience.
So I went in Antwerp drunk myself to the obesity (I gain 2 kilos because most of Belgian beers are fermented) with the widest choice of beer I’ve ever come across, in Australia I barbecued with kangaroos and marlin blue, in Mexico I had lots of funny thing not having a clue what they were and you name it.
Talking about local products and ingredients, in Livorno when you visit the fish market you'll find basket with a label saying seppie nostrali, which means local cuttlefish. With this wonderful mollusc, in Livorno we prepare a great risotto, using only little cuttlefish

CUTTLEFISH INK RISOTTO

Ingredients (makes 6)
500gr of little local cuttlefish
1 small red onion
1 small white onion
2 garlic cloves
Pinch of ginger
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
6 large spoon of pilaf rice

Method:
Clean the cuttlefishes e take away the ink bag paying attention no to break them. Chop the cuttlefish in bug chunk (they're going to get smaller when cooked) and cut the head in two. Chop roughly both the onion and add to the saucepan with a little oil, garlic and a pinch of ginger. when the onions start to turn golden brown, add a glug of white wine, leave to evaporate and then add salt and pepper. When the cuttlefishes start to turn red cover them with fish stock and add 500ml of water. Now take a strainer put over the saucepan and start to cut the ink bags with the scissors, and dip the strainer in the pan to make sure that all the ink has gone. Remove and discard the empty bag 9they're extremely bitter) and simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes. After that cook the rice in a pan and pour over the sauce. Despite all the pasta fish dishes don't require any parmesan, this one does. And when you finish you can politely rub the restaurant's napkin over you teeth to clean them from the black. Be ready or the orgasm!

Italian Restaurants

2007-04-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Italian food is great. Everybody likes it and an Italian restaurant or a pizzeria are quite a sure investment as long as the location is good.

That it was probably lots of people thought before open a restaurant or a pizzeria anywhere abroad from Italy whether they are Italian or not. «Pasta? You boil some water, put the pasta in, you follow the packaging instruction and eventually you mix with some sauce and that's it, I saw it lots of time on TV.»
Well I tell you, it might be right, there's only a little concern about this. Italians are everywhere, and wherever they are they rather walk around all the city for hours until they find an Italian restaurant than walk in the first restaurant they find. Me myself used to be like that, but not anymore because London changed my mind but this is another story. This to say that too many times in my travel I ended up in so called "Italian restaurant" or "pizzeria" just to find out how rubbish the food was and thinking «for god sake if this is what people think about how we eat in Italy is a total disaster.»
Personally I've never been too much to Italian restaurants here in London, but I can suggest to check on line on the Harden's websites to find the best choice. I also suggest, actually I pray you to stay away from the big chain such as Bella Italia, Caffe Uno and stuff like that. You can easily doing better in 20 minutes at home......and they claim to serve the real Italian food. Sad.
Don't expect anyway to come to Italy and eat well wherever you go, we have our problems too. However and fortunately the average of quality is good, with lots of excellence spreads around; if you go to Italy I think the best thing to do is asking to the locals where you can have the best meal. And what's better is that you can even ask where to head to have something you really fancy, like where to find the best fish, the best boar, the best hare.....and all the Italians would love to inform you what's the local speciality and where to have it. Think about that in Italy every city, every town and village has its own speciality.
What will follow is an hypothetical menu you might find in some of the tavern in Livorno. It's been really hard for me choose the recipe to put in it consider the wide range we have, especially for the starter; anyway as all the last recipes were fish based, here you'll find something more earthy.

Antipasto (starter):
Sformato di porri e ricotta (Leeks and ricotta cheese pie)
Pappa al pomodoro (Bread and tomatoes soup)
Crostini di funghi (Mushroom crostini)

Primo (pasta):
Pappardelle al cinghiale (Wild boar pappardelle)

Secondo (second course):
Coniglio in umido (Rabbit with aromatics)

SFORMATO DI PORRI E RICOTTA (Leek and ricotta cheese pie)

Ingredients (makes 6):
4 leeks
A whorl of pennyroyal
A small bunch of other aromatic herbs
3 eggs
Breadcrumbs
200gr ricotta cheese
30g butter
1 dl extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
Wash and clean the leeks, chop them finely and brown in oil with the herbs. Take off from the heat and add the ricotta cheese and the eggs beaten previously. Knead well the mixture. Spread the butter on the bottom of a pie tray and pour over a layer of breadcrumbs. Now you can pour in the tray the mixture and put in the oven for 30-40 minutes 180C

PAPPA AL POMODORO (Bread and tomatoes soup)

Ingredients (makes 6):
500gr stale good quality bread
500gr peeled, deseed and roughly chopped ripe tomatoes
8 tbsp extravirgin olive oil
1/s glass white wine
Garlic, fresh sage and basil
Salt and pepper

Method:
Soak the bread in cold water. Brown garlic and sage with the oil and then add the tomatoes. When the tomatoes are almost ready add the wine and the basil. At this point squash the bread to eliminate the water and crumble it in the pot with the other ingredients. Cook for further 10 minutes. If during this time the soup gets to thick you can add some vegetable stock or hot water with a stock cube. If you want the soup more «redish» add a little tomato paste. The final result should look like the above picture

CROSTINI DI FUNGHI (Mushroom crostini)

Ingredients (makes 6):
12 slices of farmhouse good quality bread
500gr mix mushrooms (porcini, royal agaric, field mushrooms)
1 garlic clove
A small bunch of parsley
50gr pine nuts
A small chilli pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
1dl extravirgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
Chopped together most of the mushrooms, parsley, pine nuts and chilli pepper and then add the rest of the mushrooms cut finely lenghtway. Toss the mix with olive oil and lemon juice. Spread on the bread

PAPPARDELLE AL CINGHIALE (Wild Boar pappardelle)

Ingredients (makes 6):
600gr home made pappardelle
500gr lean boar meat
1 red onion
1 celery stick
1 carrot
2 garlic cloves
4 sage leaves
Few sprigs of parsley
Rosemary
2 bay leaves
150gr peeled, deseed and chopped ripe tomatoes
250ml red wine
1dl extravirgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Method:
Take a pan and add all together the herbs chopped and the lean boar. Cook over medium heat and before the blood of the boar has evaporated, add the red wine e allow it to boil off. At this point add the tomatoes and finish to cook the meat. Cook the pasta and toss with the sauce

CONIGLIO IN UMIDO (Rabbit in aromatics)

Ingredients (makes 4):
1 rabbit of about 1200gr
2 garlic cloves
2 rosemary sprigs
2dl dry white wine
300gr peeled, deseed chopped and ripe tomatoes
1dl extravirgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
Cut the rabbit in pieces (you can ask your butcher to do so). Put in a saucepan, enough big to contain all the meat, the oil and the garlic chopped together with the rosemary (but only the leaves). Add the rabbit and brown for few minutes. Pour the wine turn the heat up until the wine has evaporated; turn the heat to low and add the tomatoes. Cook until the rabbit is tender (about 35 minutes).
This way to cook in Italian is called in umido, and it can be used for other animal and also fishes

The simplier the better

2007-04-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

«This salad is very healthy: just cannellini or borlotti beans, onion, tomato and sage. People always ask how something so simple can taste so good.»
«If I learnt anything from Italians about fish, it is definitely that less is more.»
The first quote is taken from the food magazine Delicious (may 2007), from a chap named Giacobazzi who runs a deli store in Hampstead, London; the second is taken from a more famous chef who made a fortune with Italian food, and known under the name of Jamie Oliver.
It's not difficult anyway understand the sense of both whether you like better the first or the second quote, in fact the sense is that about food you don't to complicate your life on the hobs too much in order to get the best results.
Instead cook simple should be a boost to actually cooking more and not to buy ready to use meal or tinned pasta (Oh my god only saying tinned pasta make me feel sick, but as a matter of fact I'm Italian...). Why buy tinned pasta when you can use pasta like you might do with salads for brush off what you have in the fridge? Two of my favourite pasta recipe take few steps and few pence to be done and involve an IQ of 12
PASTA AL BURRO (pasta with butter)
Ingredients: any type of pasta, good quality butter (no low fat), fresh ground black pepper, parmesan
Method: cook the pasta - drain the pasta - put pasta in the bowl - add a good knob of butter - let the butter melt - add pepper and parmesan - Love it!
SPAGHETTI AGLIO, OLIO E PEPERONCINO (spaghetti with garlic, oil and chilli pepper)
Ingredients (makes 1): spaghetti, clove of garlic, olive oil, chilli pepper, pecorino romano
Method: chop the chilli finely - peel the garlic - put the pasta in boiling salted water - take a pan - add 4 tbsp of olive oil - add the garlic and the pepper - cook under medium heat paying attention not to burn the garlic and the pepper - drain tha pasta when ready add in the pan for 30 seconds tossing it - put in a warm dish a sprinkle with pecorino romano or parmesan
Cooking simple also involves that you can use most of your shopping budget for the main ingredient, so that you it can be first quality product, instead of share the money among hundreds ingredients of average or under average quality.
But simple doesn't necessary means boring or tasteless, in fact I just mean not to over complicate the dish with lots of flavours, so that even if you get an overall good final result, the star of your dish might get lost trying to put itself in the foreground.
Besides you can, of course, achieve great dish not being simple and actually being really elaborate. But I think this is more Michelin's starred chef duty and concern.
At the end this is obviously my personal point of view about cooking, and me myself don't dislike experiment; so keep preparing your food as you prefer as long as you give up microwave rubbish (especially, please please, tinned pasta) and unbearable flavour mixing. Respect your star...
Here some recipes I love and served as main "attraction" in some of the finest restaurant's along the Riviera degli Etruschi.

TRIGLIE ALLA LIVORNESE (red mullet livorno style)

Ingredients (makes 4):
12 red mullets of 100g each
500gr of ripe tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic
Handful of parsley
1 dl extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
Take a pan add the oil and the garlic. Saute' the garlic until is golden brown. Add the tomatoes peeled, deseed and roughly chopped, 4 tbsp of water, salt and pepper. Cook for 20 minutes to allow the sauce to reduce. Lay down the fishes, scaled and cleaned, and cook for further 10 minutes. Because the red mullet gets really fragile when cooked, do not turn them, just shake gently the pan to move them. Before serving sprinkle over the fishes chopped parsley.

ACCIUGHE ALLA POVERA (anchovies marinated)

Ingredients:
500gr of fresh anchovies
30cl white wine vinegar
1 red onion
Salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil

Method:
Take off the head of the anchovies, cut them lenghtway and eliminate spine and bones. This is a really easy operation but if you don't feel confident you can ask your fishmonger to do that (perhaps you can keep one and trying yourself). Cut in half the fillets an lay down in a terrine. Dissolve a little salt in the vinegar and pour over the anchovies. Marinated for 4 hours. Once marinated, drain the anchovies, lay down on a tray and toss with olive oil and red onion rings. Enjoy as a starter with bread and white wine. (Literally transalte it'd be anchovies poor style)

Temptations

2007-03-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

Where's the name of the blog come from? To be honest it's not exactly what I had in mind, but as matter of fact, it suits quite well.

A friend of mine just told «Marco the idea of a blog is nice, but the name it sounds to me like a porno ad». Even better I thought, considering that porno websites are probably the most hit on the net. Lots of people are going to hit this......

But let focus on it, food is a temptation. And as a temptation it's also been consider a sin, as you know gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. Dante Alighieri wrote in the Divine Comedy what happen to the gluttonises, when he entered in the third circle (6th chant), and he saw this damned forced to crawl in the mud under a constant unchangeable rain:

«In the third circle am I of the rain
Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy;
Its law and quality are never new.
Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow,
Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain;
Noisome the earth is, that receiveth this.»

And on top of that the lovely Cerberus, the guardian of the circle take care of them:

«Cerberus, monster cruel and uncouth
With this thre gullets like a dog is barking
Over the people that are there submerged.
Red eyes he has, and unctuos beard and black,
And belly large, and armed with claws his hands;
Herends the spirits, flays, and quarters them.
Howl the rain maketh them like unto fodgs,
One side they make a shelter for the other;
Oft turn themselves the wretched reprobates.»

But this is a food blog not an Italian literature lecture...so we were talking about, food and temptations. We said, actually I said, food has been considered a sin and eventually the human race is damned for the eternity, not because Adam and Eve killed somebody or they declared war to Allah and the Muslim Eden, but because they stole some food. An apple to be exactly. The problem is that the tree from which the apple was stolen from, it was God's favourite tree. How dare! Stupid dumbs! They had all the food they wanted, for free and it's must have been organic too! They could feast with everything in the Eden, but they wanted the apple. And then they blamed the snake. I wonder what they smoked to hear a snake talking...
But anyway when God came back from a night out and find out, He got really angry and in those words spoken to them: «Right now listen to me you stupid fat bastards! That's enough! I worked all the week while you were hanging around, And then I can't go out on my day off that you pick and eat my cox orange pippin apples. How am I supposed to do my cider now?»
And then Adam, Eve and their offspring were banned from the Eden and God noway he'd have let them in back and now we're all damned for the eternity. For some food!
But then God had his revenge if you remember Al Pacino plays Satan in "The Devil's advocate":
«...Well I'll tell you. Let me give a little inside information about God. God like to watch, he's a prankster. He gives you instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift and then what does he do? I swear for his own amusement, his own private cosmic gag reel, he sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch...touch but don't taste...taste but don't swallow...»
So I could say that this blog has made to let you fall in temptation, and eat for the pleasure to do so and not just for the sake of surviving. Here you can look, touch, swallow and even digest. You won't find any low fat butter or oil spray here, this is the home of fat and cholesterol. This is like Weight Watcher but the other way around. Yes people you have to fall in to temptation and be sinners, and if that's the case then we can all go to mass on Sunday and confess (as long as you're catholic), and thereafter have barbecue.
Because as the law are made to be breached also the temptations must be made for the same reason.
As someone said the best things in life are either, illegal, immoral or fattening.....
Here I have my girlfriend's secret recipe for the Janssons Temptations, which usually is the most popular course in her legendary Swedish Christmas party here in London. Ready to gain half a Kilo in one go?

JANSSONS TEMPTATIONS

Ingredients (makes 4):
8 potatoes
100gr anchovies fillets in olive oil
2 dl single cream
1 dl double cream (or milk)
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp Mayo
Breadcrumbs
Fresh ground black pepper

Method:
Cut the potatoes into matches shape and let them soak for 2 hours in cold water, to get rid of the starch, then drain them. Take a baking tray grease with butter and cover with a third of the potatoes. Add the mayo and stir with the potatoes. Fill the tray until half with other potatoes and add the anchovies fillets on top. Season with the pepper. Add the rest of the potatoes then mix the cream and pour over evenly. Sprinkle some of the oil of the anchovies over as well. Finish with breadcrumbs to cover all the rest. Put then in the oven at 200°C for 45-50 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and the breadcrumbs have a nice golden brown colour.
Enjoy with lots of snaps of good quality vodka

Where everything began

2007-03-27T07:35:00.001-07:00

Labronicus from Labronico, inhabitant of Livorno, Tuscany, where everything began in 1979. Yes that's right, because Livorno is the place where I come from, the city where I enjoyed all my food experiences, wisely driven by all my feminine relatives, mum, grannies and aunts. Always sure of the pure goodness of what I had in front of me ready to be eaten, without bother too much of all the work that was behind it.

Then in 2003 something happened....I moved to London. Yes that's right again and therefore I had to help myself for any meals issues, from shopping to cooking and I did it. Once in England I was barely able to boil an egg but now, after training, books and advices, I happily cook for everybody who wants to. Here in London and even back in Italy I'm always by the stove. I'm not exactly a three stars Michelin chef, but still few people complained and more often than I could hope the plate were always wiped out.

I'm not glorifyng my chef skills, but I'm just trying to make clear my thoughts about food and cooking. In fact I believe, at least as far as I'm concerned, that is quite difficult make something inedible or anyway with an awful taste. I think demands much more efforts cooking something extremely revolting and reject able by your guests than something fairly good or anyway enough good to be eaten and make the night enjoyable.

It is also true that is not enough follow a recipe to get the best result or to get the taste of that particular dish as much as you aim close the original. Otherwise we'd all run a restaurant or a bistro.... As everything experience and passion are needed as well as some basic skills.

This blog come for both unemployness and passion for food, and most of the recipes will be from Italy and my hometown. Beside I'm going to post other recipe taken from friends, especially from Sweden and Galicia for the peace of mind of my girlfriend Jennie and my great friends Pablo and Ana.

All the recipes I'm going to post, they've been done at least once in my kitchen. However the followings it's not. It's a tribute to my hometown, to my sea.

It' a fish stew that come straight from the cliffs and the rocks leading south, a soup that cannot be beaten from any other fish soup. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the mighty:

CACCIUCCO ALLA LIVORNESE

Ingredients (makes 6):
500gr cuttlefish
500gr octopus
300gr dogfish
500gr mix no less than 5 types (red gurnard, scorpion fish, weevers, goby, moray eels or basically whathever little your fishmonger have that day for the making of fish stew. Just make sure you have gurnard and scorpion fish)
500gr mantis shrimps or langoustines
White vine
1 spoon tomato puree
Olive oil, garlic, sage and chili pepper
12 slices of stale Tuscan bread (unsalted), (farmhouse loaf)

Method:

Take a casserole and put some olive oil, garlic sage leaves and chili pepper. Brown for a little while then add octopus and cuttlefish roughly chopped, pour the white wine and also add the tomato puree. Cook for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add the fishes and the smooth hound cut (the heads of the fishes should be cook aside in broth with herbs and then sieved. The result, quite thick, is going to gain a lot the quantity and the flavour). Keep cooking and when the octopus and the cuttlefish are tender and the mantis shrimps, cook other 5-6 minutes.

Meanwhile roast the bread and spread with garlic cloves and pepper. Put the bread on the bottom of a bowl and with a big spoon serve fish and sauce in equal parts.

Despite is a fish stew the wine to match this recipe must red better if young.