Aperol Spritz

One of the many, many civilised things about Italy is the Aperitivo habit. The idea of starting the night with a glass of something very cold and bubbly accompanied by a few nibbles makes perfect sense to me. For the unenlightened, the Aperitivo ritual is essentially pre-dinner drinks with some complimentary nibbles or "stuzzichini" - all designed to stimulate the appetite in advance of dinner. The antipasti is free, although you often pay a premium for a drink at an Aperitivo bar, which seems fair enough. The drink of choice is usually something slightly bitter like Aperol or Campari and the nibbles range in complexity from a bowl of olives to great platters of cheeses, meats, salads, bruschetta, pizza....well, you get the idea.

You know, I think we unwittingly instigated our own form of Aperitivo when I was a poverty stricken student many years ago. This took the form of starting the evening with a few pints at "Judge Tindals", a Chelmsford pub which handed out bowls of free chipolatas and chips if you stayed there long enough. Oh, the glamour... I pity the poor students of Italy... missing out on the BOGOF lager and low-budget-sausages and leading a much less glamourous existence sipping Prosecco and nibbling aged pecorino.

And if they are really lucky they'll be drinking an Aperol Spritz. We don't seem to have caught onto the Aperol Spritz here in the UK but it is massive in Italy and taking off in the US too apparently. Aperol is a delicious bitter-orange liqueur which is delicious simply mixed with soda and served with a slice of orange.

But it is at its best in an Aperol Spritz, the cocktail which originated in northern Italy but seems pretty ubiquitous across the summer drinking establishments of Italy. It barely needs a recipe but here we go anyway:

Aperol spritz
1 part Aperol
1 part Prosecco
A splash of soda
Slice of orange and a green olive
Fill an ice filled tumbler a third of the way up the glass with Prosecco. Add another third of Aperol and then a good splash of soda water. Garnish with the strange orange and olive combo and enjoy, ideally al fresco. Chipolatas optional.

Caponata (tastes so much nicer than it looks here)

Aubergines are pretty cheap just now, you can get one in a supermarket for about 75p (less in a market) and, because of their meaty texture, I always think they make a pretty substantial meal. The lovely Rick Stein calls Caponata 'a relish' but it's really a yummy antipasti which could also make a good lunch with a wedge of sourdough toast or an interesting side dish to have with chicken or fish. Anyway give it a try - it's one of those 'agrodolce' or sweet/sour recipes that really wake up your tastebuds and it can be eaten hot or cold.

Caponata

• 2 aubergines
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 1 red onion 
• 2 celery sticks 
• 2 red/yellow peppers 
• Handful of green olives (stoned if you can muster the energy) 
• 3 tablespoons good red wine vinegar   
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon rinsed capers 
• Some good olive oil 

Cut the aubergine into bitesized chunks (see pic) and brown on a little olive oil. Remove from pan before they collapse into mush. Chop the onion, celery and peppers and fry gently in the same pan. When browned pour in the vinegar and allow to bubble up before adding the tomatoes and sugar. Allow to simmer for 15 minutes until thickened slightly and then add the aubergines, olives and capers. Simmer for another 5 minutes and season to taste.

I think this is best eaten the next day, if you can wait that long.

Pasta alla gricia (or death by pasta)

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks traveling around Italy over the summer. We (boyfriend and I) made the lovely journey down to Rome from Paris on the train and had a fantastic few days doing all the things you do when in Rome.

I suffer from Travel OCD...which meant that we arrived prepared with a complete folder of information for each destination including 3 guidebooks and at least 100 restaurant recommendations. On our first night we had dinner in a place called Maccheroni near the Pantheon. We'd read about it in our Wallpaper city guide and seen it on a couple of foodie websites where we'd heard really good things about it.

It's an inauspicious and rustic looking place near the Pantheon. It has an open kitchen, whitewashed walls and lots of scrubbed wood tables - very like St John in London actually. Service was initially the typically Roman sulky-with-tourists sort but we were excited anyway.

I didn't have a starter but my BF had ordered the most amazing (and enormous) ball of milky mozzarella sprinkled with bottarga and grass-green spicy olive oil. We both had a 'Primi' of pasta - an enormous portion of good, chilli-ish arabiata - again really very good and quite enough food to be full and in no need of anything more.

It was then that we noticed that the woman at the next table had passed out and slipped onto the floor. Her dining companion called an ambulance and within minutes the restaurant was suddenly full of chain-smoking paramedics - none of whom seemed very keen to move her.

One of the waiters brought over a dish of Pasta Alla Gricia on the house, as a way of distracting us from the medical emergency unfolding before us. I'd never heard of the dish before and had to look it up on the internet when I got back - it's the simplest recipe but probably the best pasta I've ever eaten (and I've eaten a lot!).  Needless to say we devoured the lot, marveling at how fantastic it was.

By now we were both really very full but my BF had already ordered a Secondi which duly arrived. In a fit of "when in Rome" he had bravely ordered the roman speciality Trippa Alla Romana - Roman style tripe. It arrived, it was actually delicious despite my preconceptions but I was just too full to help him eat it and he was beginning to struggle.

The girl who had passed out was eventually carried out to the waiting ambulance and one of the waiters came over to our table to apologise for the incident. My BF asked whether she was alright and the waiter replied that she'd be alright but had just had 'too much heat'. As the waiter left my boyfriend turned to me, panic stricken and whispered 'she'd had too much to eat!'. After reassuring him he'd misheard the cause of her complaint, he seemed to develop a second wind and finished the tripe delightedly.

Anyway, I urge you to try pasta alla gricia - it's barely a recipe as it's got hardly any ingredients! It's also pretty cheap if you keep cheese/pancetta/pasta in the house as a matter of course.

Pasta alla gricia 

• Get some pasta into boiling water and cook as usual. 
• Fry off a handful of diced guanciale or pancetta in a large frying pan (big enough to finish the pasta in). 
• Grate a big handful of really good pecorino. 
• When the pasta is ready, add it into to the frying pan with the guanciale reserving some cooking water. 
• Add the cheese and stir, if it looks too sticky add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water.
• Serve sprinkled generously with black pepper but use that old-school powdery black pepper, it makes all the difference. 

Just make sure you don't have too much to eat...!

Fig, gorgonzola and red onion flatbread (or dining disaster)

Well, after smugly writing about my cheap, seasonal fig purchases I got round to using them last night in a fig and blue cheese flatbread/pizza-ish thing.

It was all going so well. Looking good, smelling yummy but weirdly taking forever to cook.... In the end, after 45 minutes in the oven at the highest temperature, it became apparent my oven has broken!

So, after a last ditch attempt to grill it we abandoned it and had Store Cupboard Spaghetti with lemon, anchovies and bread-crumbs instead.

But if your oven is in good working order I reckon the below recipe could be delicious.


Fig and blue cheese flatbread


For the base:
200g strong plain flour
170 ml water
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
Half teaspoon fast acting yeast
Half teaspoon of salt

Toppings: 
4 super-ripe figs sliced into chunky pieces
Half a 'pack' of supermarket gorgonzola crumbled
One red onion
Parmesan shavings

To make the dough, mix all the base ingredients together and knead into a smooth elastic dough. Leave to rise for a couple of hours in a warm place.

Heat the oven to the highest temperature along with the pizza stone/baking tray that you plan to cook the bread on.

Slice up your onions and fry lightly in olive oil until soft. When the dough is ready, knock it back and roll it out. Sprinkle the preheated tray with semolina or flour and place the dough on the tray. Top with onions first then the figs and finally the two cheeses.

Bake for about 10 minutes in the at the highest temperature and serve sprinkled with fresh basil alongside a rocket and balsamic salad.

And if you are wondering how the grilled version turned out - have a look at the below.

Urgh.

Where are all the recipes?

I have to quietly confess that I really like Jamie Oliver. I'm one of the minority who thought his school dinners initiative was actually brilliant, I think the Fifteen project is a massively well-meaning success and I generally  like the informality of his recipes (not the 'bish bash bosh' business, you understand, but I'm always happy to avoid measuring ingredients).

Anyway, I've been watching his new American Road Trip show (I have to watch it in secret because my boyfriend hates him with an unnatural passion) and I have been enjoying it - it's a nice, easy-watching travelogue really. But I have a problem - there are hardly any recipes. Last night's episode contained one proper recipe and a couple of ideas.

The cynic in me suspects the reason for this is to encourage the viewing public to buy the book that goes along with the series. If that is the case, it's actually had the opposite effect for me. Unless I have an idea of the type of dishes in the book, I am not going to commit £20 and valuable shelf space to another cookbook.

So Jamie, I will continue to buy your funny little magazine (mainly because I like the paper stock to be honest) but I'm annoyed with your American adventures.

Ah well. He'll probably get over it.

Popping to the shops

I'm looking for a job in a shop at the moment - I'd like to work in a local deli ideally. I've just done my 'Food Hygiene Certificate Level 2 For Retail' and am very enthusiastic but I don't have much retail experience. I've got 15 years experience marketing products that people don't really need (Pantyliner anyone? Another cream-based liqueur perhaps? No? What about a credit card?) and have a good conversational grasp of office jargon but my retail experience is limited to charity bar-work in my office bar and a few months of working on the power-tool-selling-market-stall of an unsuitable boy in freezing cold northern towns when I was 19...


However I do have a LOT of experience shopping and one thing I do know is that little shops don't actually make it terribly easy for us independent-shop-lovers to buy from them! 


A month ago I was working in a bank. I had money to burn and dinner parties to cook for - but I couldn't have made it to the lovely family fishmongers or Brazilian butchers during office hours.  I wouldn't have been able to buy lemongrass by the bunch at Ridley Road or source Kefalotiri cheese from that little Greek grocers in Bayswater. Unless I was willing to spend all day on a Saturday running around London (I wasn't), I was pretty limited to doing supermarket shopping after I finished work. 


My slightly anarchist mother was very proud of the resistance to Tesco in her village and I understand why. She argues the small shopkeepers are now all closing down in the face of supermarket competition. 


She's right but the sad fact is that the supermarket is the only practical option for busy people who work long hours. 


I am a bit obsessive about food and sourcing the right ingredients for a dish but even I shopped at supermarkets 9 times out of 10 because I wasn't able to get to an independent food shop during the week. The traditional model of 9-5 shop opening still applies and yet the way the public works and shops has changed. If independent shops could be more flexible in their opening times then I'm certain our reliance on the supermarket would diminish. If Brazilian butcher and the family fishmonger could open late (say until 8/9pm) on even just one night a week I really believe they would see the return on their staffing investment.  And we'd be able to buy great fresh ingredients (that haven't been packaged to within an inch of their lives) as well as support our local economies. 


So if anyone lets me loose in their shop over the coming weeks I'll volunteer for a late shift and see what happens! 


PS. The picture above is one I took of the gorgeous Queens in Spitalfields - a shop that has always been open whenever I've needed a sparkly hanging fairy. 

Frugal figs

This isn't a recipe, its a tip-off that you can buy 6 figs for £1 from Tesco at the moment. I love figs, a bit like a mango, they just seem more indulgent than a fruit should be!

Where fig-friends are concerned, I love all the usual suspects: good cured ham, salty goats cheese, honey etc. You can see from the piccie above that I'm also a fan of the delicious Greek combination of good thick greek yoghurt, honey, walnuts and really-ripe figs. This makes a yummy weekend breakfast or a substantial pudding that mainly uses inexpensive store-cupboard ingredients.

You can tell I've never worked in a kitchen can't you, I didn't wipe the edge of my bowl. Dammit.