The Cat's Mother Guest Blogs - Cook the Books: La forma dell’acqua

La forma dell'acqua - The Shape of Water

I was introduced to Inspector Montalbano through the telemovies. Then I discovered the books were available in English and I have read every one. At the moment we are watching the TV prequel of the Young Montalbano. I dream of Sicily.
 

What is loosely called "Italian" food is my favourite cuisine and I love the way Sicilian food reflects the island’s climate and history. The trouble is, this particular book doesn’t mention many meals and no dish mentioned in this book inspired me. How to solve this mystery?
"I’m not Sicilian; I was born in Grosseto and came to Montelusa when my father was made prefect here." This is how the engineer’s widow begins her explanation about the phrase which leads Inspector Montalbano to the truth about Signor Luparello’s death and gives the book its title.
 

Taking my lead from Signora Luparello I looked up Grosseto and discovered it is a city and province in Tuscany in the Maremma area. Like the better known Pisa, Siena and Florence, Grosseto was an independent city state in the high Middle Ages and Renaissance. Claudia Roden’s The Food of Italy informs me that the culinary specialities of Grosseto are turtle soup and a lamb soup made from heart, liver and lungs with plenty of bread and onions. Where I live turtles are endangered and a major tourist attraction. I have not checked the penalty for catching and cooking a turtle in Queensland but it likely includes jail time. As for Grosseto’s second speciality, the lamb soup had way too much offal for me. Like the Inspector, I sensed I was on the right track but thwarted.
 

Next I consulted La Cucina: the virtual bible of Italian regional cooking. There I read that acquacotta (cooked water) is the most typical and traditional dish of central Italy. It is a soup made from simple ingredients and is based on water (acqua) rather than broth or stock. The three fundamental ingredients are dry bread, olive oil and aromatic herbs, importantly nepitella or calamint. After that the other ingredients vary with local tradition and produce availability.
I have a kitchen garden with a selection of culinary herbs. Calamint was not one of them. I had never even heard of calamint! Glad for the long lead time for this CTB challenge several phone calls and some internet work led to a parcel delivery from a specialist herb nursery. Two little seedlings were planted and have thrived. 

Nepitella or Calamint

Some of the acquacotta recipes in La Cucina include fish but most are vegetarian with the optional addition of an egg. The recipe I chose was collected in the Maremma region. It is something Signora Luparello might have eaten in the summer holidays when she was a girl visiting her parent’s farm in the Amiata, east of Grosseto.

Acquacotta Maremmana

Heat olive oil over a low heat, add a sliced medium onion and sauté until golden. Add aromatic herbs, sliced chard leaves and a little grated pecorino. Cook 2 minutes, then add red wine, passata and water. You may need to add more water if the mixture is too thick. Simmer for 15 minutes. 

Line earthenware bowls with slices of toasted bread. Break an egg per person into the broth and gently poach them for 3 minutes. Ladle into the bowls and wait several minutes for the bread to soak up the liquid. Serve with more pecorino.

Acquacotta Maremmana

Readers of Foodycat’s blog will not be surprised to read that I had to improvise a little (I don’t claim all credit for her culinary talent, but she did learn something from her mother). I did not have a bottle of red wine open so, for a Sicilian touch, used Marsala instead. 

The final dish was flavoursome and filling. Bill pronounced it “good” but added some chilli – a Sicilian improvement. I seasoned mine Tuscan style with olive oil and some extra cheese.
 

So for Inspector Montalbano and The Shape of Water I give you Acquacotta Maremmana – salute!

Seville orange ice cream - BSFIC

To celebrate the fact that Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream is now a year old, Kavey's challenge this month was to make a frozen treat that fit the theme for one of the preceding months. The one I have come up with actually fit the brief for three months gone by - June's fruit, July's condensed milk and December's booze. Three times as good, then.

Last Sunday it was our wedding anniversary. 7 years. We just stayed in and had a nice dinner. Getting married so close to Valentine's Day means we sometimes bundle it up in the set-dinner-for-two thing, but this year it was just a special day for us.

For our dinner on Sunday, I served delicious onglet steaks with duck-fat sauteed potatoes and steamed broccoli topped with anchovy and garlic breadcrumbs. And then I served this light, tangy ice cream for dessert, along with Azelia's marmalade brandy snaps.

Azelia published the recipe and step-by-step guide at just the right time

I'm giving two recipes here - the one that I made and the one that I think will improve on what I did. You see, even though it is the obedient condensed milk base, I put in a bit too much of the deliciously acidic orange juice, so it doesn't scoop so softly. It does have a wonderful fresh flavour and lovely velvety texture though, so it certainly wasn't a failure, it just needed to sit out to ripen for a few minutes before scooping.  Paul even asked for a portion of his own, which never happens. I didn't have to share the brandy snaps though, he found their butterscotchy gorgeousness too sweet for his palate.

Seville Orange Ice Cream (which was not quite right)

300g condensed milk
300ml double cream
Juice and zest of 3 seville oranges
1 tbs marmalade vodka

Whisk the condensed milk into the juice and zest of the seville oranges. It should thicken pretty much straight away. Then add the cream and vodka and whisk until it holds soft peaks. Scrape into a container and freeze. 

Creamy orange-flecked folds of loveliness

Seville Orange Ice Cream (which will be better next time)
300g condensed milk
300ml double cream
Grated zest of 3 seville oranges
Juice of 2 seville oranges
2tbs marmalade vodka

Follow the recipe as above, increasing the booze and decreasing the juice. I think this will be brilliant, but I will let you know when I have tried it!

We ate it with a little shot of the chilled vodka on the side

Meatball pancake canneloni for Shrove Tuesday

Thin pancakes, flecked with herbs

The perfect expression of pancakes is obviously rolled with lemon juice and sugar, but occasionally variations are acceptable. I was planning spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Paul announced that he wanted canneloni. This was the compromise.

I made a big stack of thin pancakes, flecked with parsley and thyme. A couple we ate immediately for lunch with a filling of sauteed mushrooms, the rest hung around until dinner time.

Rolling meatballs in pancakes isn't all that easy

I browned the meatballs and cooked them in a thick tomato sauce with lots of garlic. I rolled 4 meatballs in each pancake with a little sauce and put them in a pyrex dish. Paul felt that a layer of bechamel before the cheese would be a good idea but I thought it would be way too rich, so I just poured the tomato sauce from the meatballs all over the rolled pancakes.

Lovely melty cheese

Then I smothered them in cheese. I used mostly reduced fat cheddar, because that was what I had, but then dotted it with nubbins of mozzarella. Then into the oven until everything was heated through and bubbling.

If I were planning to fast for Lent (which I assure you I am not) this really would be a great way to celebrate Shrove Tuesday - eggs, cheese and meat, all tidily cleared out of the fridge. Of course, it is very filling; two pancakes made a very satisfying portion, so that means leftovers on Ash Wednesday, which is hardly in the spirit of the season.

Kung hei fat choi and farewell Megan

Megan and Ellen

Over the last couple of years, many of my culinary adventures have involved Megan. She's commented a couple of times that my blog has been a useful record of her time in the UK, as we've eaten Lebanese food, had a weekend in Bath, met Nigella Lawson and generally eaten and drunk enjoyably together. But now, as they say, the end is near. Megan's visa is expiring and she has been inexplicably unable to find a man to marry, an unexpectedly British parent or an employer to sponsor her to stay.

Last Sunday we met to send her off in the appropriate manner, with food followed by booze.

Megan has made Soho and Bloomsbury her own and has been responsible for introducing many people (including me) to the extremely delicious xiao long bao served by Dumplings Legend. It seemed only fair that we should have one last dumpling feast. Somehow, I've never previously photographed our dumpling meals, even though they are terribly pretty, but this one obviously had to be commemorated.

China Town was dressed for festivities, preparing for Chinese New Year and welcoming the Year of the Snake. I think red is a particularly joyful colour placed against a miserably dull sky.


My previous visits to Dumplings Legend have all been in the evening, so I was really excited to see that they do a proper dim sum menu for lunch. No trolley aunties of course, but you can't have everything. The Australians at the table got all nostalgic about yum cha at The Marigold and East Ocean.

We had several baskets of xiao long bao, initiating Megan's housemate into the technique for biting them so you can suck the soup out of the dumplings. These were a bit more fragile than I've had there previously - several tore and spilled their soup while I tried to get them off the paper.

We also had a couple of different types of prawn dumplings, with lovely fresh crunchy prawns in them. And I ordered some barbecued pork pastries, although apparently I didn't take a picture of them.

A platter of barbecued meats, some salt and pepper aubergine and some choi sum rounded out the savoury selections.

To order the dim sum you have to tick boxes on a card. I knew it was only a matter of time before I ticked the wrong box (the cards are a bit confusing - I was going cross-eyed trying to see which box lined up with which menu item). And so it was - instead of the custard tarts which are for me an absolute essential, I managed to tick the box for Green tea and smoked plum pudding. As it was my mistake, the waiter quite reasonably showed no inclination to take the green tea and plum pudding away, or take it off the bill. So we ate it.

Turns out to have been quite a happy accident - I would never have ordered it intentionally, but it was delicious and I would have it again. It's one of those cubed layered agar jelly affairs (there's a picture on the Dumplings Legend menu page). A bottom layer of green tea jelly, a middle layer of vanilla-y custard-y substance and a top layer of fruity (one assumes smoked plum). The gelatinous texture isn't my favourite but the combination of creamy and fruity and smoky with an edge of green tea was very nice.

And the egg tarts were worth the wait.

Happy travels, Megsie darling!

Edited to add: Ellen got a picture of the aubergine and the green tea pudding and very kindly let me use them

Smoked salmon chowder

This delicious - and surprisingly light - soup was inspired by Mary's Gold Beach Winter Chowder. I don't even know what shoepeg corn is, and I made a few other changes, but it conveys the same sense of warming, nourishing generosity and colour to make your heart sing that hers did.

Smoked salmon chowder (serves 2)

1 tsp butter
1 onion, finely diced
2 sticks of celery, chopped
1 floury potato, peeled and chopped
250g frozen corn kernals
500ml vegetable stock
100g hot smoked salmon
100ml skim milk

Melt the butter in a large-ish pot and add the onion and celery, sauteing gently until the onion is translucent. Add the potato and the stock and bring to the boil, then cover and cook for about 10 minutes. If you are making this ahead of time, make it up to this point and then take it off the heat, finishing it off about 5 minutes before you want to eat.

When you want to eat it, add the corn and return to the boil for a couple of minutes, then add the salmon, broken into large flakes, and the skim milk. Bring just back to the boil and serve.

This is a soup for Deb's Souper (soup, salad and sammie) Sunday!

Burger Breakout at the Old Crown

One London food trend of 2012 which shows no sign of disappearing is the appallingly-named "dirty" or even worse "dude" food. This is, for anyone happily ignorant of London food trends, the sort of American-style fast food that foodies usually deride made acceptable by careful sourcing, good cooking and social media buzz. Fried chicken, burgers, ribs and fries topped with all manner of extras.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of chicken and burgers and fries, especially when made from high-welfare meat. What I object to is adding value judgements to food - I don't like "naughty" or "guilty pleasure" either and as for the implication that this food is not for girls... well just don't get me started. Anyway, the "dirtiest" food I know, from the point of view of dripping down your elbows, is a beautifully ripe mango which hardly fits this trend.

Most of the places that specialise in this food don't take bookings. So what with one thing and another, aside from a quick solo lunch at Pitt Cue Co I haven't tried any of the new-wave luxury junk food.

Then an old friend came to town. I suggested a couple of lunch location options and The Old Crown got his nod. I've been following @burger_breakout on twitter for a while, so I was very much looking forward to trying their food.

I knew that with only two of us we wouldn't be in a position to try the pig in a pail, but I had hopes for burgers, a few side dishes and possibly one of their boozy milkshakes. Unfortunately Kendal was in recovery from eating way too much cheese and sausage on a ski trip: he shuddered at the prospect of deep-fried pickle spears and was faintly judgemental about the size of my beer. He restricted himself to the Camilla burger (chicken, of course) and the accompanying fries.

With a limited number of seats and the lunch time rush, the staff were pretty keen to get people fed and out (not unpleasantly, though) so I didn't get to consider the menu in quite the leisurely way I prefer. I ordered the first thing I saw, the Bambi Bought It - a thick venison patty, Tunworth (a Camembert-style cheese from Hampshire), beetroot pickle, chocolate & quince BBQ sauce. I also ordered the deep-fried pickles.

As soon as it hit the table I knew I was going to have to cut it in half. There was no way I could approach the monstrous mound of ooze any other way. The bun was good, although I had to turn the burger upside down to eat it - the bottom layer was pretty well saturated and soggy with juice. The lettuce and tomato were redundant as to flavour, but I suspect did help prevent the total collapse of the bun. The patty itself, whilst having a pleasing pink middle and good venison flavour, had spent a little too long on too hot a grill and featured a bitter and crunchy layer of char on the outside. The beetroot pickle could have been a little more assertive to stand up to the sweet barbecue sauce, but the soft cheese was just the perfect thing.

The skin-on fries were just how I like them, although I couldn't detect any horseradish in the salt. The deep-fried pickles were the best deep-fried pickles I have tried so far, with a good, crunchy layer of batter keeping in the explosive juices. I couldn't possibly eat the whole portion myself, sadly.

Kendal said his burger was among the top burgers of his career - pipped by one he'd had in New Zealand. Mine, although flawed, was still excellent and the best burger I've had for ages. I will happily go back to try more of the menu. Next time, though, I have to take a girl with me, because I want a witness for the eccentricity of the ladies' room. I ducked in before we left and was confronted by two toilets occupying one long cubicle. Fortunately I didn't have to share.

Baked peppered potato and aubergine

I had an aubergine that needed to be used. I had a solitary large potato. I was making lamb curry. I didn't know when Paul was getting home for tea.

I decided to cut my coat according to my cloth, so to speak, and take some of the flavours of my old peppered potatoes and cauliflower to make a side dish.

Baked peppered potato and aubergine (serves 2)

1 large baking potato
1 aubergine
Drizzle of olive oil
1/2 tsp white peppercorns
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
pinch cumin seeds
pinch salt
big pinch curry leaves

Scrub the potatoes and cut into chunks. Cut the aubergine into chunks. Toss in a drizzle of olive oil and bake at 180C for about 25 minutes.

While it is cooking grind the peppercorns, cumin seeds, salt and curry leaves in a spice grinder to a coarse powder.

Toss the vegetables in the spices and return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes, until they are cooked through and golden with little caught crispy bits.