A Loaf for Blue Cheese and a Custard Pie Victory

Saturday was a pleasing day. That description probably doesn’t make it sound like I had anything more than an adequate, run-of-the-mill day, but truly, I was pleased by so many things.

I was pleased to be able to make a final visit to my favourite local Saturday food market before jumping the country; I was pleased that my Saturday afternoon baking session was a success; I was pleased that we took a star-speckled evening walk to a local mountain viewpoint and got an amazing night time panorama; I was pleased and grateful that my friends hosted a ‘going away’ get-together for me; and I was especially pleased that people turned up.

So there. I stand by my adjectival use.

Please allow me to share my evening’s little baking victories with you.

First off my wonderful, wonderful fig and walnut loaf. This was divine with a slice of the blue cheese brought to the gathering by one, Mr Black. The original recipe was another Nigel Slater find from an Observer article published back in November 2006. I halved his recipe to make a single loaf; used figs rather than raisins; and used my new favourite type of flour, Bacheldre Watermill’s Oak Smoked Stoneground Strong Malted Blend Flour (which I waxed lyrical about in my earlier post, Smoking is Good). C’était incroyable. Truly.

Second, was my first attempt at Torta Della Nonna, a traditional Italian, pinenut-studded custard pie. And it worked. Oh, how it worked! To begin with, the custard was possibly the best I had ever made (probably all thanks to my lovely market egg lady) and what started out as a tricky, sticky pastry, turned out beautifully.

To the recipes.

Oak Smoked Stoneground Strong Malted Blend Flour – 125g

Strong white flour – 125g

Fresh yeast – 21g

Honey – ½ tbsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Warm water – 175ml

Dried Figs – 125g, chopped into small pieces

Walnut halves – 25g, broken into not-too-small pieces

Tip both types of flour into a large bowl and crumble in the yeast. Add the salt and honey and stir in the warm water, mixing with a wooden spoon. When all is mixed as well as possible, get your hands in and bring the dough together.

Tip the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 4 minutes or so, until the dough feels springy and smooth, and doesn’t stick to the work surface.

Wash the mixing bowl in warm water and dry well. Flour the bowl lightly, put the dough back into it, cover with a clean tea towel and put the bowl in a warm place for an hour. By this time, the dough should have doubled in size.

Once it has had its rising time, tip the dough out onto a floured surface and gently knead in the figs and walnuts. They will feel like they don’t want to go in, but keep at it until all have been used. Don’t knead for too long, or the figs will, er… get a bit messy.

Shape the dough into a loaf shape, replace back in the bowl, cover and return it to its warm spot. Leave, this time, for about an hour and a half, until risen well.

Bake in a 220 degrees Celsius/gas mark 7 for 25 mins, or until the loaf is browned and sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Serve, if possible, with a wonderful blue cheese.

Now, to my latest, greatest achievement. This recipe is one of so very many, which has been lovingly but crudely cut out of a newspaper supplement and pasted into one of my recipe files, and has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to be made. It was featured in an article about an Italian restaurant in London, called Ida. (Unfortunately, I’m unable to reference the newspaper that wrote the review, since – despite frantic searching – I can’t find the review online.) Since I read the article, the restaurant has been on my list of Restaurants to Visit, but since tasting their torta, it has made it onto my list of Restaurants to Visit As Soon As Possible.

For the pastry:

‘00’ flour or plain flour – 500g

Unsalted butter – 300g, at room temperature

Caster sugar – 200g

Medium eggs – 2

Baking powder – 2 tsp

Lemon zest – from ½ a lemon

For the custard filling:

Full-fat milk – 500ml

Egg yolks – 5, medium

Whole Eggs – 2, medium

Caster sugar – 250g

Lemon zest – from ½ a lemon

Vanilla extract – 1 tsp

Pine nuts – 25g

Icing sugar for dusting

Put the flour in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Add all the other pastry ingredients to the well and mix these together with a fork. Once combined, start bringing in the flour from the sides and keep mixing until all is combined and the ingredients form a ball. Knead until smooth (adding more flour as necessary, until minimally sticky) and place in the fridge for an hour.

To make the custard, heat the milk in a saucepan and when it comes to the boil, remove it from the heat. In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla until combined. Pour this mixture into a heavy based saucepan and gradually beat in the hot milk, stirring continually to prevent the egg from separating.

Place the pan over a low heat and continue to stir until the mixture thickens.

After the pastry has had its chilling time, divide the dough in two, so that one piece is twice as big as the other. Roll the larger piece out on a well floured surface and line a 30cm flan tin. Pour the custard into the lined flan tin, roll out the smaller piece of dough and place this over the top, pinching the edges to seal. Scatter the pine nuts all over the top of the tart.

Place the flan tin on a baking sheet and into an oven preheated to 180 degrees Celsius/gas mark 4. Bake the tart for 45 minutes until lightly browned. Allow it to cool completely (something that I didn’t do, which is probably the only thing that could have made it even better) and then dust with icing sugar before serving with pride.

This will serve 12 easily and apparently (we didn’t get the chance to test this out), it keeps well in the fridge for up to a week.

P.S. This reeeally doesn’t do justice to the Torta Della Nonna. It was my fault. In my ‘ooh, we need to try it, we need to try it!’ haste, I forgot to take pictures of the pasticceria-perfect slices. By the time I remembered, only the messy slice was left. Darn my greed!

Apple, Meet Blackberry

So, what did ever happen to those Italian blackberries and all the rest of my free bounty then, eh?

Well, those perfect, weeny figs were split in two, brushed with olive oil and grilled, before being lightly stuffed with a cube of feta.

That was this evening’s starter.

And the remaining fresh walnuts? They were added to a pan of sizzling rosemary (another Valle D’Aosta steal) and garlic oil and then, as promised, drizzled over bowls of pumpkin soup and topped with crumbled feta.

And did those blackberries end up getting friendly with my stewed apples? Well, lookie here…

Valle D’Aosta (or The Other Side of the Mountain)

Yesterday was such a treat for me. I really feel that I need to remember absolutely everything about the day, lest my mind does something terrible with the memories, such as accidentally throwing them in the recycling bin of forgetfulness. So here they are, possibly already not in the right order and a bit fuzzy around the edges…

Earlier on in the week, my other Swiss-living half had arranged to meet up with an Italian friend, Giulia, whom he hadn’t seen in the last twelve years. She has a house in Valle D’Aosta, only a couple of hours’ drive away, and they had agreed that we would come for lunch (“just pasta”) and an afternoon walk, which would give the two of them a chance to catch up.

We met at a tiny car park in a village a few minutes away from her house, since she expected it would be somewhat tricky for us to find. Of course, she was quite right. The house was a further ten minutes away, which involved a sharp left off the main road up a steep track, and then another left turn down a small hill. Oh, and a few minutes walk down a winding path from there.

The views when we arrived were spectacular. Sitting on the bench at the front of the house, we kept marvelling about how different the terrain, scenery and even temperature were from our own, despite only being ‘round the corner’ in mountain terms. We could have sat there and gawped all day.

But after a while, lunch got started. “Just pasta” had already become, “just pasta and sausage”, which Giulia’s boyfriend had had to queue for at the local butcher’s for over half an hour. (I know what you’re thinking: that butcher must make good sausages!)

To begin, there was the pasta, which was penne in a tomato and aubergine sauce, with a sprinkling of, “…you like this? I don’t know in English: pepperoncino?” followed by a plate of cured meats, cheese and bread. There was wild boar salami (cinghiale), wild boar salami with potato in it (which had a wonderful, soft texture), lardo (cured fat) with rosemary, prosciutto and local cheese. All, of course, were delicious.

While we ate this, we drank water and red wine and the long, curling sausage sizzled away in a grill pan on the woodburning stove next to us. When it was ready, it was cut into four and served with spinach. Again, everything was so delicious in its simplicity. I can tell you, I was openly grinning as I ate.

As stove-top coffee was being made, we noticed that a box was being unwrapped at the same time. (Further grins from me.) The coffee was brought to the table along with the box and inside it nestled sixteen little pastry balls, each topped with something sweet, creamy or nutty. These were filled with custard: plain, chocolate or nut; and, by golly, they were good.

After having eaten just one too many pasticcini (and knowing it), we decided that a walk was in order. Earlier on, I had expressed my fear that the Swiss blackberry season would be over now that we’d had our first snow (that’s right, at the beginning of October!), so Giulia had offered me a box to pick some on our walk.

We picked a few as we began to walk and then abandoned the bushes on a promise that there would be a better patch on the way back. As we walked uphill through a forest, Giulia and her boyfriend kept their eyes peeled for mushrooms. She explained that they had looked a couple of days earlier, but due to the lack of rain for about the last three weeks, they had found nothing of worth. Today, however, they were in luck, since we spotted three “sticks you use to beat the drum” mushrooms. I don’t know what variety these drumstick mushrooms were, but Giulia explained that you ate the head only and not the stalk, and that she would cook them for dinner that evening in oil and garlic. It sounded good to me.

Further up the path, I spotted some rosehips and asked whether, in Italy, these would be made into jam (which I have a hankering to try this year). Giulia said that they could be made into drinks and in particular, there was liqueur which was popular, although she wasn’t sure of the name. She also pulled up a plant and exposed the root, explaining that it was liquorice, which she said could be dried and then chewed.

Thoroughly enjoying my lesson in foraging, we continued to walk up to an old fort, strategically placed on top of the hill, with 360 degree views of the entire valley and surrounding mountains. Our host pointed out other forts down in the valley and towers across at the opposite side, which, when the forts were in use in (I think) the 1400s, would send signals back and forth, if invaders were seen approaching.

On the way back down from the fort, we discovered quite a number of yellow mushrooms. Giulia explained that, although the variety would be fine to eat, on this occasion they were far too dry to taste any good. So we left them to wrinkle and continued on down to the blackberry patch.

And what a teaming patch it was for the time of year! We all got prickled and stained while picking, but managed to actually fill the vast box I had been carrying, much to my delight. We even found a few fallen walnuts in their blackened outer shells, and as a reward, we smashed them with rocks and ate them. These were the freshest walnuts I had ever eaten and were far less bitter than the out-of-a-packet variety I was used to. Wonderful. And as we began to realise that a chill had pervaded the air, I pocketed a few more before setting off back to the house.

We reached the path leading down to the house and Giulia mused about whether we could reach any of the apples, perched high in the overhanging trees. Sadly, most apples had been picked two weeks earlier, so there weren’t a lot left, and those that were still clinging to branches were just too high for us. Nevertheless, we found a couple of fallen ones which seemed to be in good condition and I began to have familiar, greedy thoughts of cobbler, crumble and pie possibilities.

Lost in gluttony, I failed to realise that we had deviated from the path and had ended up in a patch of land beneath some wide-branched trees. They were fig trees! These fruits too were added to my increasing bounty (only after the quality had been tested by Giulia, who squashed one in half and gnawed at the insides, before proclaiming it fine), along with small bunches of uva fragola: strawberry grapes.

We nearly reached the house, but before we did, we were shown Giulia’s own garden. “I have enough rosemary here for a hundred people! Do you want some?” Stalks and stalks with tiny purple flowers were tucked in next to my fruits, along with a great, fragrant clump of sage. I felt impossibly happy. It was like a free shopping trip at the most generous grocery shop in the world.

Another stove-top espresso set us up for the journey home and after saying our goodbyes, off we trundled, back to our own side of the mountain.

So today, I am making plans for what’s left of my free goodies. My two apples have already gone, as have a few walnuts, but they made a perfect supper salad for my not-so-hungry tummy last night. My grapes are also a little depleted, since they topped off my breakfast a treat this morning. But I think the remaining walnuts will feature in a topping for tonight’s pumpkin soup: crumbled and heated in some garlic and rosemary oil, before being drizzled over the soup’s surface. (Possibly along with some feta too.)

The blackberries, however, may need a little more thought…

I’d like to think a few might make it into a sweet breakfast foccacia one day this week, but most will possibly end up as a topping for a blackberry and apple tart. I have some stewed apple that’s been sitting in the freezer just waiting for some blackberries to get all juicy with, so this may be the perfect opportunity. I’ll let you know how they get on.

Anglicised Pandolcini

I’m getting the Italy cravings again. Despite the fact that outside, I’ve got a clear blue sky with little pockets of cloud and a jaw-drop inducing view of the Alps, I can’t help wishing it was a different one. The one I’d prefer would have sea instead of mountains and patches of waves instead of patches of cloud. And, taking the daydream a step further, at lunchtime there would be a breeze scented with garlic and fish, rather than with wood smoke and cheese. (On certain days, you understand, the smell of wood smoke and cheese would send me frothing at the mouth to the nearest chalet, demanding fondue. But when the cravings come, nothing but Italy will do.)

I’m not sure whether it will succeed in assuaging my desires, or send them spiralling into a fervour which sees me scrabbling for the car keys and speeding towards Grand-St-Bernard tunnel before I know what I’m doing, but today I’ve decided to make another batch of my new favourite biscuits.

You may recall that in an earlier post, Lemons from Liguria (Crostata di Marmellata), I pretty much vowed that I would one day recreate the flavoursome, textureful little pandolcini that I bought while I was there. As yet, I haven’t built up the courage, nor the Italian language proficiency to make my innocent enquiries at local panificios so that I can learn how to make them properly. Instead, I have devoted some time to developing my own version, which I have since tested on a great many friends.

I am hoppingly happy to tell you that each and every one of the testers gave positive comment, and even though I know that my little bundles of joy will never quite match the original (perhaps there’s a flavour or two missing, and the texture is a little too crumbly than crunchy), I am proud to admit that they’re a darn good approximation.

Here is my recipe. Makes 12 to 13:

Plain flour – 225g

Baking powder – 1 heaped tsp

Caster sugar – 85g

Salt – a pinch

Unsalted butter – 110g

Raisins – 120g

Pine nuts – 50g

Fennel seed – 1 tbsp

Finely grated orange zest – ½ to 1 orange

Eggs – 1

Milk – ½ tbsp

Orange flower water – ½ tbsp

Vanilla essence – a couple of drops

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius/gas mark 5.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into cubes and rub into the flour mixture until you have a bowlful of sandy crumbs. Stir in the sugar, raisins, fennel, pine nuts and orange zest.

In a separate, smaller bowl, beat the egg, together with the milk, orange flower water and vanilla essence.

Tip the egg mixture into the larger bowl and mix together with a wooden spoon or a fork. It may seem as though there isn’t enough liquid to bind all the ingredients together, but go with it. The lack of liquid makes for a crunchier, firmer biscuit later (which is what we’re aiming for here).

Take pieces of the mixture (with your hands or a spoon; the mixture should be quite firm) and make 12 or 13 little heaps on greased baking trays. Pop the trays in the oven and leave them there for 12-15 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown on top.

Once they’ve cooled down a little, place the biscuits individually on a cooling rack until completely cold. Before serving (or storing away for a day or two in airtight containers) dust fairly liberally with icing sugar.

Lemons from Liguria (Crostata di Marmellata)

In May, the Eastern Ligurian coast reeks of blossom. Just walking around outdoors, you can’t escape the smell and it’s pretty wonderful. It’s a bit like being in the world’s most amazing garden centre, only there’s this great, glittering expanse of blue in front of you, dotted here and there by a few white boats.

Whenever we visit Italy, my tastebuds seem to get hypersensitive and I return home with a renewed fervour for cooking, baking and tasting. I desperately want to create that freshness that you experience with simple Italian food and while I’m there, I try to dissect everything I eat to unearth the few core flavours of each dish.

I especially suffer from the desire to try and recreate the sweet things I eat in Italy. On our last day in Liguria, I vowed I was going to purchase some little pandolcini that I’d been drawn to everyday in the window of a small panificio. I wasn’t sure whether they would be hard and biscuitty, or soft and bread-like, I just knew I wanted them. Safely stashed away, those babies made it all the way back to Switzerland in one piece, before making it into my mouth the next morning for breakfast.

It was one wonderful breakfast. The pandolcini were biscuit-like, with a flavour similar to many cantuccini that you can buy outside of Italy. However, the texture was softer, akin almost to a British rock cake.

And the main flavours? Blossom, of course. There was orange blossom, fennel seed and there were raisins, pint nuts and several other ingredients I just couldn’t single out.

I’m not sure whether this was typical of the Ligurian pandolce, since all the semi-desperate research I have conducted over the last couple of weeks would seem to indicate the use of yeast (which I’m fairly sure didn’t feature in our little bundles of joy) and quite a lot of other dried or candied fruit.

I think the single answer is to return to Liguria for a bakery-crawl, so I can grill each baker in my broken Italian about what goes into their version of pandolce. My only hope here is that they see me as a naïve tourist and not the recipe junkie that I really am, as I understand that pandolce recipes are closely guarded family secrets, not given away lightly and especially not to strangers.

Another thing I ate on our trip which made firm friends with my sweet tooth, was our agriturismo’s Crostata di Marmellata. I’d like to hazard a guess at the type of marmellata which featured in the one I ate, but I’d probably be wrong. The owners of the agriturismo seemingly grew every type of fruit imaginable. At breakfast, there was a jam with a citrusy flavour which just wasn’t quite lemon and another which was chunkier and orange in colour. Either of these could have been the featured jam in the crostata. But it was the pastry that made it different to just being any jam tart. It was almost too thick and too unsweet, and it stuck to the roof of my mouth in the clingy manner of a digestive biscuit.

And I’m still trying to recreate it. I’ve made my jam from the world’s most fabulous and fragrant Ligurian lemons; it’s just the pastry that eludes me.

For now, I’ve settled on a standard sweet pastry, the recipe for which I dug out of my Silver Spoon Italian cookbook. But until I make one with the perfect pastry, I fear everyone around here is just going to have to keep eating the daily supply of lemon jam tarts that I keep churning out. And I’ll know the perfect one when I make it. Oh, yes. It will taste of breakfast by the sea.

If you should manage to get your hands on some particularly remarkable lemons, then I urge you to try your hand at some simple jam-making. This jam doesn’t involve any special equipment, just a solid pan, a wooden spoon, lemons, sugar and water. And it doesn’t make a great vat of the stuff, just a couple of jars’ worth. I adapted it from a recipe by Tessa Kiros, which features in her book, Falling Cloudberries.

Unwaxed lemons – 3

Caster sugar – 625g

Cut the ends off the lemons and discard them. Slice the lemons very thinly, removing the pips as you go, then cut the slices into smaller pieces.

Put the lemon pieces into your pan, cover with 625ml water and bring them to the boil. Once the liquid reaches boiling point, lower the heat to a simmer and leave it for about an hour until the lemons are completely soft. Give the lemons a gentle stir from time to time and make sure it doesn’t boil too vigorously.

Once the lemons are soft, add the sugar and stir gently until it dissolves. Simmer for another 45 minutes to an hour, until syrupy. You can test to see whether the jam is done by dabbing a small blob onto a saucer and tilting to see if it runs. If it seems a bit sluggish, then it’s done. If it runs freely, then give it a little more time.

I have to confess, when I made my first batch, I did something which is probably considered a little unethical in jam-making circles. Towards the end of cooking, it looked like my mixture still had quite a lot of fairly sturdy peel in it and, not wanting to end up with marmajam, I removed most of the bits of peel and gave them a whizz in the Magimix before returning them straight back to my pan.

Once it was done and still warm, I filled two sterilised jars, put the lids on and turned them upside down until they were completely cold. Most of it has now been used with great success in several jam tarts, but the rest is residing happily in my fridge.

So, to the pastry. Not quite the perfect pastry for me, but it still makes a damn good tart.

Plain flour – 200g

Caster sugar – 100g

Unsalted butter, soft and cut into pieces – 80g

Eggs – 1, plus 1 yolk

Salt – a pinch

Sift the flour into a large bowl and stir in the caster sugar. Shape this into a big pile and create a well in the centre, into which you need to add the butter, egg, egg yolk and salt.

Knead the mixture together until combined (but don’t overknead), then wrap the pastry in cling film and pop into the fridge for an hour. While the pastry is chilling, preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius/gas mark 4 and grease a tart tin with butter.

When the pastry has had its time in the fridge, remove it and set aside a small piece. On a floured surface, use a floured rolling pin to roll out the pastry to a thickness of 3mm and line your tart tin. I can’t provide any useful tips on how to do this. All I can say is do your best, don’t get angry/cry, and use some of the pastry overhang to patch up the rips that you will make. Fill the tart with jam to a depth of about 2cm.

Take your remaining pastry and roll it out. Either cut it into thin strips and make a lattice across the top of the tart, or make your own pattern. Turn the pastry overhang inwards and pinch to form a rim, moistening with a little water if needs be.

Bake for about 20 minutes until light golden brown. When cool, dust with icing sugar and serve.