Food | Robin Ellis

Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Keith and Helen’s olive oil wins top prize!

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, tagged Boggioli, frantoio, Italian olive oil, Keith Richmond, picking olives, pressing olives, prize winning extra virgin olive oil, Tuscan olive oil on November 25, 2013| 10 Comments »

We woke up to the news that our friends’ organic Tuscan olive oil won First Prize last night at the local Tuscan competition!

Complimenti, Keith and Helen!

Here’s their website for Boggioli, pictured below–1100 olive trees on a hillside in the Valdarno south of Florence: http://www.boggioli.com/

The judges got it right–the oil we brought back last week is exceptional.

We arrived at Boggioli this year, as last, in a rainstorm that disrupted the olive picking process.

Our usual contribution to the work–gathering the olives into the plastic paniers and pulling out any twigs and small branches that have fallen in–was minimal–limited this year to one afternoon.

The torrential rain had made it impossible for the five-man team of professional pickers to work. This left Keith with a problem: He had booked a visit to the frantoio (oil processing plant) but only had a small quantity of olives waiting to be transported from the previous day’s limited picking.

Olives begin to degrade fast and waiting more than two days might affect the overall quality of this year’s yield. So to make up the quantity a little, Keith, Helen, Meredith and I picked some trees nearest to the house where the ground is flat and relatively dry.

Pas grand choses but it was fun and made more sense of the next morning’s trip to the frantoio.

The health benefits of extra virgin olive oil are well known–and Tuscan oils are especially highly prized.

Keith and Helen’s dedication to the cause has been justly rewarded.

We sped home last week with our precious cargo on board–highly prized now in more senses than one!

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White Bean and Parsley Soup

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Recipes, tagged bean soup, creamy white bean and parsley soup, diabetic recipe, haricots blanc, hearty soup, vegetarian soup, winter soup on November 22, 2013| 30 Comments »

Our friend, Romaine Hart–a wise counsellor–was adamant last night that we were not getting enough PROTEIN!

Our tales of how long it’s taking to shake off the virus that has been a companion (on and off) for nearly three weeks was all the proof she needed.

So we agreed that a couple of lamb chops for lunch today would be a step in the right direction.

Vegetable soups–all very well, but they need backing-up!

We are eating meat less frequently now.

This is reflected in the meat section of my new book, Healthy Eating for Life (to be published January 8th–my birthday!).

I awake this morning intending to visit Lautrec’s Friday market, pick up some lamb chops from the local butcher and see what’s up.

It’s a chilly, grey November day and I light the fire.

My determination wavers and I start to think, “Maybe chops tomorrow–how about a heartwarming vegetable soup?”.

Then I remember this soup from my first book–and rationalize: White beans are a good protein source!

I picture it steaming in a bowl with a swirl of the new, green olive oil and thoughts of driving to Lautrec disappear in the mist!

for 4

1 clove of garlic – peeled and chopped

8 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp parsley – chopped
1 kg/36 oz canned or–preferably–bottled white beans – drained and rinsed

salt and pepper

250 ml/1⁄2 pint/1 cup vegetable stock

toasted wholewheat bread with a little olive oil

for 4

Sauté the garlic in the oil gently until it colours.

Add the parsley and stir a couple of times.

Mix in the beans, salt and pepper.

Cover and cook gently for about 5 minutes to warm through.

Purée a quarter of the beans in a mixer and return with the stock to the pan.

Simmer for another 5 minutes.

Check the seasoning.

Serve over the toast with a swirl of olive oil in each bowl.

Optional: Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top before serving.

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“Socca”–chickpea flour pancakes

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged chickpea pancakes, socca, street food on November 16, 2013| 17 Comments »

Chickpea flour is also known as Besan and gram. A good substitute for wheat flour for those with gluten intolerance, it has other nutritional virtues and it tastes delicious.

This is street food and is still sold on the streets of Nice and Marseille in southern France. The pancakes are about 20 cm/8 inches wide and are good for parking things on – a fried egg or some bacon bits or as I did recently a spoonful of leftover green pepper and aubergine ratatouille.

170 g/6 oz chickpea flour

400 ml/14 fl oz/1½ cups sparkling water

60 ml/2 fl oz cup olive oil

salt and pepper

1 tbsp rosemary leaves

olive oil for frying

Shake the flour gently through a sieve into a mixing bowl.
Add the water and whisk it in until you have a smooth runny paste.
Add the oil and whisk in.
Add pinches of salt and pepper plus the rosemary.
Leave to soak for 20–30 minutes.
When you are ready to make the pancake, heat a swirl of olive oil in a 25 cm/10 inch frying pan.
When the oil is hot, put a tablespoonful of the stirred mixture in the pan and let it spread.
Cook for a few seconds until you can ease the pancake loose with a spatula.
Now you have to turn it over–be bold!
Practice makes perfect and anyway the first attempt, if not completely successful, will be edible.
Cook the pancake a further few seconds and remove from the pan.
Both sides should be a golden brown.
Add a few twists of the pepper mill on each.
Add what you will and serve with a green salad.

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Tunnelling for truffle pasta…

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, tagged Driving in Italy, tunnels in italy, white truffles on November 12, 2013| 21 Comments »

Doing the tunnels is the only option.

There is no escape if you are driving from southeast France to Tuscany.

The tunnels thread through the Ligurian hillsides that slope down to the Mediterranean water’s edge. Some are just a few hundred feet long, others a mile or more. We count them for fun and tally 136!

It’s the slow lane for us on the last leg of our annual journey to Tuscany and the olive harvest.

There are some great sea views, if you’re not driving. It can feel a little ‘hairy’ at times, as a big black beetle-like vehicle–you wouldn’t call it a car–hurtles past, followed closely by a purring, predatory Porsche.

Sunday morning and we’re making for a little bar/ristorante in Marina di Carrara called Ciccio. We found it by chance years ago–as sometimes happens with the favourite places.

The restaurant looks onto the port from where the historic Carrara marble–still being cut out of the hillside–is shipped.

The cranes and modern lifting machinery make us wonder–in both senses–how Michelangelo transported the huge marble block back to Florence and the workshop where he fashioned the David.

Meredith has the seasonal ‘special’ in mind–freshly made spaghetti in a cream sauce with black truffles. She had it once years ago and has never forgotten it.

Today the truffle is the rare white variety (though perversely a browny pink in colour).

Then it’s ordered–for both of us. (I decide to live dangerously and indulge!)

Meredith is delighted, though she says when we’re back in the car ‘On the whole I think I prefer the black truffle best…’ Well…!

We head off back to the autostrada, truffled out but happy the tunnels are behind us.

Marble mountain

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Broccoli Parmigiani + tomato sauce

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Recipes, tagged broccoli parmegiano, vegetarian dish on November 7, 2013| 14 Comments »

Betsy Webber–who attended my cooking workshop in May–recently commented that this was one of her favorite dishes. Thanks Betsy for reminding me!

We are having it for lunch–I had just enough tomato sauce left over to make it work.

I’ve been looking forward to trying it again for a couple of weeks.

It heralds the new season we are glorying in here.

Comfort food for the new chill.

An autumn/winter replacement for the Italian classic–Parmigiana Melanzane.

Here it is with a slice of sweet potato and some baba ganoush.

450gms/1lb broccoli–broken up into florets

4 tblsps tomato sauce*

parmesan cheese–freshly grated

salt and pepper

Steam the broccoli florets until they soften–but retain a bit of crunchiness.

Put them in a bowl and pour over two tablespoons of olive oil and season.

Heat a grill pad to hot.

Char the the florets lightly and remove.

Oil a shallow oven proof dish and spread some tomato sauce over the base.

Cover this with a layer of broccoli florets and season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle over some parmesan.

Repeat the process finishing with a layer of parmesan.

Dribble olive oil over the top.

Heat the oven to 200C/400F.

Pop in the dish and bake for 15 minutes.

It should come out sizzling!

*Tomato sauce

3 cloves of garlic – peeled and finely sliced

4 tbsp olive oil

2 x 800 g/28 oz tins tomatoes – drained of their juice

salt and pepper

Fry the garlic gently in 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan but do not let it brown.
Add the broken up tomatoes and the salt and pepper.
Cook on a high heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning, and watch out for splattering!
(Use the biggest wooden spoon you have!)
Cooking time is about 20 minutes.
When little red pock marks appear, making it look as though the surface of the moon has turned red, you know it is almost there.
The sauce will have reduced considerably and thickened, with very little liquid left.
Add the last two tablespoons of olive oil, taste and check the seasoning.

We decided that Betsy’s right–it’s delicious!

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Chickpea and fennel soup

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Recipes, tagged battuto, chickpea soup, soffrito on October 30, 2013| 21 Comments »

Yesterday I found myself fancying chickpea soup.

There was a bottle of chickpeas three-quarters (300gms) full in the fridge.

We had plenty of onions, a couple of carrots, some celery and two fennel bulbs in the crisper.

I put a third of the chickpeas in the small blender bowl with some of their liquid and whizzed them smooth.

Soffrito/battuto (what’s the difference?!*) next–the engine room of the soup–to give it some oomph.

So I chopped up 2 smallish onions, a couple of garlic cloves into small dice and sweated them in four tablespoons of olive oil in a medium saucepan for 20 minutes.

While the soffrito was softening I chopped the fennel into larger dice.

I added the chickpeas–mashed and whole–to the pan and stirred it well together.

Then in went the fennel dice and added a small stem of fresh thyme.and two bay leaves

I squeezed a scant tablespoon of tomato concentrate from a tube in the fridge, stirred it into the mixture and added a pint/500ml of vegetable stock and a tablespoon of chopped parsley—next time I’d add this to the soffrito.

Seasoned well with salt and freshly ground black pepper, brought it all up to the simmer and nearly forgot to add a small piece of the rind of parmesan cheese–cooked it all on for about 20 minutes until the fennel had softened.

We swirled some olive oil into our bowls, ate it slowly and sighed!

*A battuto is a pile of chopped raw ingredients, in this case just vegetables but sometimes it involves smoked or green bacon.

It becomes a soffrito when the pile is cooked slowly in oil, fat or butter as the base of a soup or a casserole.

This serves 2/3 or 4 at a pinch.

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A trip to Spain and a plate of tripe!

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Poldark, Robin Ellis, tagged angharad rees, jay rayner, Poldark, tripe on October 28, 2013| 58 Comments »

For the past few days I’ve been holed up in bed with the “lurgie” (a tummy bug).

In a reversal of roles, Meredith has been cooking and caring (she was ill first)–serving up simple, delicious, restorative vegetable soup and scrambled eggs.

Yesterday I had stomach enough to read a brilliant piece in The Observer newspaper by food writer Jay Rayner challenging people’s reluctance to give a second try to food they have detested eating (or in my case, the thought of eating)–tripe for instance.

It transported me back nearly 35 years to Madrid.

Angharad and I were in Spain to promote Poldark, which was proving enormously popular there.

At that time there were only two TV channels–and the other one was devoted to parliamentary debates.

The visit was an extraordinary experience.

Two thousand plus fans at the airport to welcome us. We were mobbed everywhere we went–it felt momentarily like being a Beatle. (Nobody waiting for us at Heathrow on our return, however….)

Years before Angharad had spent some months in the city au pairing for the family of a well known psychiatrist–a friend and professional colleague of her father Professor Lynford Rees.

Her return had a particular resonance for her and the Spanish family.

To celebrate, they threw a lunch party for us at their home.

It was a moment of peace, an escape from the craziness of the celebrity culture that was new to me and which I was finding both exciting and at times hard to handle.

(At one point, the tabloid johnnies were crowding me with questions about how it was that at the age of 35 I wasn’t married. Angharad–sensing the danger of an explosion–whispered in my ear, “Smile, Robin, for heaven’s sake, SMILE!”.

The party was delightful, of course, except for one detail: The main dish was tripe in tomato sauce.

Photo found on the Internet–but strongly resembling the dreaded dish.

Tripe, I’m told, is a delicacy in Spain–and cooked by an expert (I have to take Jay Rayner’s word for it) it’s delicious.

I eat most things–growing up in the fifties, fussiness about food was not encouraged in our house. The starving children in India featured often at meal times when a reluctance to polish off the last crumb was shown. My mother never tried tripe on us though.

I remember looking down at the plate I’d been offered and after a moment mastering feelings of politeness, guilt and hunger, turning discreetly away from the crowd and parking the plate of offal, untried, behind a palm tree.

There have been moments since–in Florence for example where street stalls selling steaming piles of tripe are a regular sight–when I have thought about giving it a second try. So far I have managed to resist the temptation.

Anyone else willing to own up to a food phobia?

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Butternut squash gratin–revisited

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Recipes, tagged butternut, Halloween, Martha Rose Shulman, richard olney, Squashes, toussaint on October 21, 2013| 9 Comments »

Autumn is the season of squash.

This is an early post I found on a mining the past exercise last week.

I cooked it again and the recipe didn’t disappoint–in fact we finished the lot as we’d done way back in February 2011.

Butternut squashes dress modestly in light fawn leaving their showier cousins in orange and red to hog the limelight around this time of year–Halloween and Toussaint.

Under the skin though they show their true colors.

A wonderful autumn glow emerges, mustardy yellow–warming heart and body–as in the soup below (recipe here).

“What’s on the menu today?”
“Gratin of one of us”
“Scary–after you, ClaudeI”

This is delicious–I’ll stick my neck out.

We had it with some seasoned quinoa (sautéed onion, garlic, a small chili and a little steamed broccoli) last night for dinner and finished the lot.

The recipe is adapted from one in The New York Times*, which in turn was adapted from a recipe in a cookbook by a legendary American food writer**, who most likely adapted it from something he ate in a restaurant in Provence***, which was probably invented by the grandmother of the restaurant owner****–who had passed it on to her daughter*****.

In other words it’s a version of a traditional seasonal gratin dish.

It can be eaten as a vegetarian main course as we did last night or as an accompaniment to a roast chicken or lamb chops–for instance.

for 4

1kilo/2 lbs of butternut squash–peeled, deseeded and cut into small chunks

4 cloves of garlic–peeled and chopped small

1 generous tablespoon of wholewheat breadcrumbs

1 generous tablespoon of parsley--chopped

1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves

salt and pepper

3 tablespoons of olive oil

set the oven to 190C/375F

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and turn them over and over mixing them thoroughly together and remembering to season well with the salt and pepper.

Tip into a roasting tray or better still an earthenware ovenproof dish.

Roast in the middle of the oven, for about an hour and a half–(the time depends on the size of the chunks)–so it comes out nicely charred on top.

* Martha Rose Shulman

** Richard Olney–author of Simple French Food

***, ****, ***** All three names lost in the mists of time!

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Courgette tortino

Posted in Food, other sides to this life, Recipes, tagged courgette tortino, paola gavin on October 17, 2013| 11 Comments »

Another last “hurrah” for the courgette-zucchini!

Two of the three I used for this dish came from our vegetable patch–even in mid-October the last surviving zucchini plant is turning out courgettes–and perfect specimens they are. Almost a pity to cook them!

However they made a light and creamy lunch!

This is adapted from a recipe in the excellent Italian Vegetarian Cookery by Paola Gavin.

4 eggs

6 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves of garlic–peeled and chopped

1tbsp parsley–chopped

salt and pepper

3 medium courgettes/zucchini–passed through the thin slicer of a food processor.

1oz/25gm wholewheat breadcrumbs

1 oz/25gm parmesan–grated

Heat the oil in a large pan.

Add the garlic and parsley and cook, stirring, for less than a minute.

Mix in the courgettes…

and cook until they wilt and take on a bit of color.

Turn off the heat and let them cool.

Tip the pan a little to drain off some of the oil.

Heat the oven to 190c/375f

Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk.

Add the breadcrumbs and grated cheese and mix thoroughly.

Season well with salt and pepper.

Add the courgettes to the egg mixture and blend carefully.

Oil an oven dish and pour in the mixture.

Cook in the middle of the oven for about 25 minutes.

It should be nicely browned on top; but check after 20 minutes–ovens vary and you don’t want to lose the creamy interior; inserting a knife through the top, will help you judge.

This was taken half-way through lunch!