Zuppa Di Piselli (Green Pea Soup)

I love peas, and to my mind not many fresh vegetables taste better than freshly podded peas, especially ones that have been picked straight from the veg plot only a matter of minutes previously.

Sadly though, In the northern hemisphere at least, peas during the winter, are most definitely not seasonal. However when you are nearing the end of the shopping week, and the larder is looking decidedly bare, the humble packet of frozen peas tucked away at the back of the freezer is worth remembering.

In fact, I would hazard a guess and probably wager that most people will have frozen peas in their freezer. And although often overlooked in the winter for seasonal roots, they are an outstanding vegetable all the year round. I would argue that they are probably the best frozen vegetable product, you can purchase.

Nutritionally because they are picked, lightly blanched, and frozen in around 2 hours from field to packet. They remain surprisingly comparable, to freshly shelled spring peas.

The taste although obviously clearly slightly jaded, is still superlative, and the intense and vibrant colour of freshly cooked peas, will brighten any dreary day. So whether just as an accompaniment to a meal, or a meal in themselves, as in this soup. Undoubtedly they are a fantastic standby to have at your disposal.

Also lets face it, few things are more warming than a nice hot soup on a freezing cold day.

In the below recipe, frozen peas are used as the base to a delicious thick soup, including a few other ingredients such as carrot, celery, onion and crispy pancetta lardons. 

Being a carbohydrate fiend, I serve most soups with garlic and herb croutons, liberally scattered over the top. And for to my taste no soup is complete without an accompanying slice or two of warmed thick crusty well buttered bread.

When talking about soups invariably stock comes to mind. In my opinion the widely accepted belief that the key to achieving a good soup, is a good stock. Is definitely valid.

However. Since I, and probably most of the working world, don't always have the time to make sure our supplies of stocks are maintained. I often end up using the dreaded dried stock cube.

Recently however, I have arrived at the conclusion, that using a dried stock cube judiciously, sparingly, and bolstered with other fresh ingredients, actually isn't so bad as TV chefs or food snobs would have us believe, and decent results are possible. So personally feel free to subsitute fresh stock, with a weak dilute stock cube mix, and you won't be too far away, by the time the soup is served.


INGREDIENTS:

SOUP
1 teaspoon of Vegetable Oil,
1/2 of a white onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon of finely diced carrot
1 tablespoon of finely diced celery
Frozen Peas, (around a full cup per person, as a rough guide)
1 Pint of Chicken Stock (If not using fresh,use 1/2 a stock cube, quite dilute, or it will over power)
Fresh chopped mint, or a couple of teaspoons of dried mint.
Pancetta lardons (optional)

GARLIC AND HERB CROUTONS
1 thick slice bread, shoot for at least 1 inch thick.
1 teaspoon of dried mixed herbs of your choice:
Taragon, Sage, Thyme, Oregano etc.
1 teaspoon of grated garlic
1 tablespoon of Extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of grated parmesan


METHOD:

For the Garlic and Herb Croutons

-Cube the slice of bread into roughly square chunks, and place into a large bowl.  Into this bowl add the remaining ingredients, and using your hands make sure the bread is thoroughly coated.

-Heat a large frying pan, until hot. If you are using them, fry the Pancetta lardons until crispy. Then set aside for later. Do not wash the pan, we want all these flavours to infuse into the croutons too.

-Next add the croutons into the pan, and 'dry fry' until each side is crisp and lightly golden. Lastly sprinkle over the parmesan evenly, and shake them around in the pan. Then put to one side and allow to cool, uncovered.


For the Soup

-In a deep pan, heat the vegetable oil, and throw in the onion, carrot and celery and cook until softened/translucent. Essentially I use this method for making most soups, it makes a good flavour base.

-Once happy that the finely diced veg have cooked out, add the quantity of frozen peas you are using. You can add them straight from the freezer no problem.

-Make a dilute Chicken Stock with boiling water from the kettle, and pour this over the Frozen pea mix, until you cover them by about a cm or two. Alternatively use a vegetable stock if you prefer. I just like the richness of chicken stock which I use probably more than any other.

-Leave to simmer gently for 5-10 minutes. If you were using fresh peas in the spring, slash the cooking time by at least half. There is truly no worse culinary crime than overcooking fresh vegetables.

-At the end of the cooking time, turn off the heat and add the freshly chopped mint, (or dried) and either using a hand blender, or as we do use blitz in a liquidizer until you have a nice smooth soup.

-Return the soup to the pan, and heat through thoroughly again before serving.


SERVING SUGGESTION:

As always seems to be the case recently, a tradition almost. I managed to take another shockingly bad photo on a camera phone. Taking such a bad photo is a skill, I like to think.
Anyway, you get a rough idea.

Being a carb fiend, I almost always have croutons as well as a side of warm crusty bread with my soup. However you could just serve this very simple soup with just cream, or nothing at all. Enjoy!

Melanzane al Funghetto (Eggplant/Aubergine Starter)

Upon reading this blog title, many people may have correctly guessed that the Italian word Funghetto implies something to do with Mushrooms, given that the latin term for Mushrooms, is Funghi. So if you were out dining in an Italian resturaunt and you were to order 'Melanzane Funghetto' from the menu, you may unless you read it very carefully, sit there quite rightly expecting to get something containing mushrooms.

Sadly however, you will be dissapointed.

Melanzane Funghetto, in context of this recipe, actually just means Eggplant (Melanzane) cooked in a mushroom style.

Actually not only in technique, but incidentally the finished dish gives the eggplant a sort of sliced up mushroom, type of appearance. 

This mushroom less, un-seasonal part of the dish however, is where the dissapointment will end. As this recipe, although undoubtedly, embarassingly ridicolously simple to make, is hugely tasteful.

No really. Considering there are barely any ingredients at all, it  is actually astounding how good it tastes.

As mentioned countless times before, that is the real beauty of Italian cooking. Largely speaking Italian cuisine is about delivering maximum flavours with minimal ingredients.  Just simple cooking with simple ingredients, simply presented, but with results that taste fantastically good.

It is possible to rustle this up in around ten minutes, and easily feed, (if not impress), four hungry people with a nice light lunch, for far less cost than the average price of  a couple of burgers from Mc wotsit.  With, no salt laden ingredients, artery clogging fats, or extra sugars, just nutrionally healthier, natural, and more importantly tastier.

So far as the ingredients, although any Eggplant will do, it is worth pointing out that you should ideally choose a long slender thin skinned Eggplant variety, such as a Violleta Lunga, or similar.  The reason for this, is that the dry center part, which often contains seeds, needs to be trimmed out of this. So it would just be wasteful to use a huge chunky fruit.  When it comes to salting them, don't bother. Aubergines, Eggplants, Melanzane, do not need these days to be salted and pressed to remove bitterness. Modern varieties have had these traits bred out of them. Despite the fact many recipes and chefs still insist on maintaining this tradition. It isn't needed honestly. And especially not needed when cooking them in a rapid 'stir-fry' style, as in this recipe.

However if you want to waste perfectly good salt, and make them even more oil suckingly fiendish when frying them, be my guest.  Be warned though, that once past the "sponge" stage, they do then release the oil back, so don't go crazy with the olive oil, or we'll be swimming in oil.

INGREDIENTS:

1 large eggplant (aubgerine)
3 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly,
1 Anchovy fillet
1/4 of dried pepperoncini finely sliced, or a 1/4 teaspoon of regular chilli flakes
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to season

Few sprigs of flatleaf parsley finely chopped, and an additional 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to drizzle over to finish.



METHOD:

- Firstly, slice up (across the width) your eggplant into approximately quarter inch slices, next chunk them into 1 inch long slithers, but make sure you discard the center parts, which have little taste and are a bit dry.  You especially want to keep the skin, as this adds a smokey taste, and actually gives the dish the right "look".
The photo shown is more or less the right size. Albeit you'll probably be neater than me, but you get an idea of the sort of chunked up size your looking for.


-Next heat a large frying pan over a moderate heat, and add the oil, when fairly hot throw in the sliced up garlic, chilli, and the anchovy fillet, stir till it melts and add the aubergine. Essentially the photo on the left shows the main flavours. Namely, garlic, anchovy, and pepperoncini (dried chilli).


-Keep moving the pan contents around, making sure nothing is "catching" or getting burnt.  You do however, want to get some colour onto the ingredients. You will find the aubergines will render down a little, and colour up nicely, however we don't want mush.  So 12-15  minutes is about the right fry time here.

-On this occasion we served them onto toasted bread, and served with a heap of lightly dressed Aragula (Rocket) leaves, which accompany it nicely. I like Aragula dressed with nothing more than extra virgin olive, and lemon juice, but feel free to use your favourite dresssing.  Unfortunately just a camera phone snap shown on the left, but an idea of what it looks like. Well ok, only slightly mushroom like.



SERVING SUGGESTION:

This is particularly nice served onto some toasted crusy bread, sprinkled with parsley and drizzled with peppery extra virgin olive oil.  Alternatively this can be served as a nice side dish to accompany something like Italian meatballs or a fried Steak alla Pizzaiola Etc.   Enjoy!

Three Way Bruschetta

To most Italians, this is just a cheap and simple snack.  It is quite strange to me, to see this being sold on resturaunt menus at quite a premium price.

It is very easy to make, no harder than say making cheese on  toast, and is alot more healthy for you to eat. No matter how tired I am, I still manage to rustle this up as a snack, or a light meal. In this example, I provide three versions to provide lots of varities to suit all tastes.  You really have to trust me when I say these are delicious. As a note, do not be scared of using alot of Olive oil, it is extremely healthy for you.


INGREDIENTS:

Extra Virgin Olive oil,
Sliced Ciabatta  (but you could use any real bread if desperate, but not the ready sliced bagged stuff)
Tomatoes, Fresh, diced,
Garlic cloves
Fresh Basil*
Salt an Pepper to season,
Slices of Mozarella (Optional 1)
Balsamic Vinegar (Optional  1)
Tinned Cannelini Beans,  Crushed with a fork, (Optional 2)
Blanched Broad Beans, Skinned (Optional 3)



METHOD:

-Chop the fresh tomatoes into a small dice, seeds, skin, everything.  (Forget cutting those huge beef tomatoes into neat slices, or de-seeding and removing skins, that is not for Bruschetta).

-Mix a tiny pinch of salt into the chopped tomatoes, this will extract excess water, and improve flavour, and now add torn (or chopped) fresh basil leaves, and let the tomato basil mix sit for a while.

-Brush some Extra Virgin Olive oil onto both sides of the bread slices, and drop the bread onto a hot grill pan, or under the grill if you don't have one, and toast.  Don't forget if your using a grill pan, always oil the food, and not the pan!

-When the bread is toasted, you have a choice of rubbing garlic onto the bread, for a subtle hint,or if like me you love garlic, crush/finely chop the garlic and combine into the earlier prepared chopped tomato mixture.

- Onto the bread add a tiny extra drizzle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and then add the chopped tomato mix, so that they cover the bread, not too thick.

- Throw the bruschetta under a hot grill for a few seconds, and drizzle with a final drop of the Extra
Virgin Olive Oil and season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

(Optional 1)
Instead of the plain Bruschetta as above, you can make this more substantial by adding a layer of mozarella cheese. The addition of the balsamic really helps to contrast the milkyness of the Mozarella, and in my opinion is essential.

- If you wish you could now heat some Balsamic Vinegar in a pan until the quantity you add, reduces to a syrup consistency. Normally this occurs when you reduce the quantity by about a quarter.

- Place a slice of Mozarella onto the tomato, and grill again until it softens.

- Drizzle the Balsamic reduction you made, over the top (not too much, it is very powerful).

(Optional 2 or Optional 3)
Not everybody loves tomatoes, or just for a change, you could use Cannelini beans or Broad beans in lieu of the tomatoes. The taste is very unusual and a nice change to a plain Bruschetta.

-All you do is mash up the Cannelini beans or Broad beans, with Olive oil, crushed garlic, season the mix well, and paste them generously onto the toasted Ciabatta.

-Again drizzle with copious amounts of Extra Virgin Olive oil and Serve!

Do not use the basil in this Optional recipe. Enjoy!