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A crunchy Italian salad for summer

July 26, 2010 by jason.gibb

If you are looking for a salad that’s a meal in itself, look no further. I confess that I was sceptical when Cath first produced this and maybe even a tiny bit sulky. ’Like, where are the carbs, dude? I’m a growing man, with energy needs’.

Cath said ‘Try it before you judge it. And please don’t call me dude.’

She was right. Thanks to the ciabatta, this dish is yummy AND filling. The crunchy slightly burnt bread which sops up the juices and oil of the salad is a highlight.

Ingredients for 2 hungry adults
Red onion – ½
Red wine vinegar –  1 tbsp
Ciabatta – a small loaf
Lemon – 1
Extra virgin olive oil with lemons – 2 tbsp
Dried oregano – 1 tsp
Vine tomatoes – 4 to 6 medium
Little gem lettuce – 2
Black olives – about 15
Mozzarella di Bufala – 125g/4.5oz
Salt and pepper to taste

Thinly slice your onion and put it in a bowl drizzling over the red wine vinegar and a good pinch of salt. Cut the crust off the bread, tear the white part into thumb sized chucks and dry-toast them in a frying pan.

Now prep the dressing by grating the zest off your lemon into a small bowl and squeezing in the juice from one half. Now add the lemon oil and oregano, a pinch of salt and ground black pepper.

Now get the body of the salad together in a big bowl  – roughly cut up the tomatoes, leaving out the stalky bit, then wash, dry, chop and add the lettuce, and stone, half and add the black olives (I do this by squashing them with the palm of my hand.

Give your dressing a quick stir then add it to the bowl along with the onions and toasted ciabatta chunks. Mix well and then tear the mozzarella into chucks and place on top of the beautiful mound of salad. Serve in a pretty bowl.

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Simona Fabrizio’s home made ravioli

July 23, 2010 by cathy.rogers

Back in 2005 we decided that we would try to make olive oil soap. We had lots of old olive oil and wanted to find a good use for it. ‘How hard can it be?’ we thought. We bought a few bottles of  mysterious unguents with frightening names, dug out our biggest saucepans and got going…

A short while  and rather fewer soap suds later, we decided to call in the professionals. Searching online, we found a plethora of Italian soap producers and e-mailed all of them (about 25) in faltering Italian. After a week I had received just two replies – one from a mad hippy asking me about my star sign, the other from a lady from Umbria called Simona. It was the start of a wonderfully joyous soapy collaboration. (And no I don’t mean with the hippy).

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce the wonderful Simona Fabrizio (whose English is annoyingly good)….

From Simona:

“I thought to share with you  this recipe to introduce myself.  Homemade pasta, especially ravioli is one of my passions. I thought to use  Baccalà for the  filling. Baccalà is  salted cod, which in Italy is  used in many recipes because it has a wonderful flavor and is not  expensive.  I also decided to use  cherry tomatoes  which  dressed  with a good Extra Virgin Olive oil,  are a perfect combination for this dish. So here’s the recipe.”

HOME MADE PASTA

Ingredients (serves 6)
500 gr Flour (Try to get Tipo ‘00’ flour – this is a very finely sieved flour which is normally used for making egg pasta or cakes. In Italy it’s called farina di grano tenero, which means ‘tender’ or ‘soft’ flour)
4 eggs
1 tablespoon of Extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon salt

How it  works:

Place the flour on a board . Make a well in the centre and crack the eggs into it. Add olive oil and a pinch of salt. With a fork, first mix the ingredients in the hollow together and start to mix in the flour from the edge.

Gradually incorporate more of the flour until a viscous paste begins to form. Put the fork to one side and, using both hands, heap the remaining flour from the outside over the pasta in the middle. Work the flour in to the paste. If the paste does not absorb all the flour, and if the ingredients cannot be easily worked, add a little water.

Push out the dough with the heels of the hands, then form in into a ball again. Repeat this kneading action until the dough has a firm but slightly elastic consistency and no longer changes shape when you remove your hands.

By machine:

Put the strip of dough through the machine’s smooth rollers several times, narrowing the setting each time, until the desired thickness is achieved.

Start at 6 and finish at 2 for: Ravioli

INGREDIENTS FOR THE RAVIOLI FILLING AND FINAL DISH.

Ingredients (serves 6)
200 grams of cod
500 grams cherry tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Chopped parsley

-
How it works:
After soaking the Baccalà over night, boil the Baccalà. When cooked, with a fork, mash it with a handful of chopped parsley. Place the Baccala in tea spoon portions onto a sheet of the pasta you all ready prepared. Cover the Baccala with another sheet of pasta and cut into the ravioli shapes. In the oven for 15 minutes grill the tomatoes, half of them cut in half and the rest left whole. Season with plenty of EVO  oil, 1 clove of garlic ,salt and pepper. Cook the ravioli, drain the pasta and serve with the grilled tomatoes. Sprinkle with fresh parsley.

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Mandarin breakfast cake

July 16, 2010 by jason.gibb

I’m very happy that Cathy pulled this one out of the archives (see the previous blog). It was one of our first toe-dippings into the vast sea that is ‘unconventional uses of olive oil’. Since those first tentative steps, we’ve climbed into our speedos and snorkels and jumped in – first with our olive oil chocolate truffles and more recently – and my current favourite – chocolate mousse with mandarin olive oil. But this cake recipe remains a classic – you can also try it with our lemon or orange olive oil.

Ingredients
Olive oil – for greasing
00 flour – 250g/8.8oz
Caster Sugar – 200g/7oz
Baking powder – 10g/0.4g
Ground almonds – 100g/3.5g
Salt – pinch
Zest – 2 oranges, 1 lemon and 1 lime
Milk – 150ml/5 fl oz
Freshly squeezed orange juice – 50ml/1.7 fl oz
Mandarin olive oil – 100ml/3.4 fl oz
Almond essence
Eggs – 3
Icing sugar – for dusting

Prepare a bundt (ring) tin with greaseproof paper on the bottom and a small amount of olive oil up the sides, making sure also to coat the central spout.

Sift the sugar, flour, baking powder, ground almonds and a pinch of salt together in a large bowl. Add the zest of all the citrus fruits.

Make a well in the centre and into it pour the milk, orange juice (squeezed straight from the oranges), the mandarin oil, a few drops of almond essence and the eggs. Mix well – using a hand or electric beater – for a few minutes until you have a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the bundt tin and put into a preheated oven at 180oC/360oF. It’ll take about 45 minutes with a fan-assisted oven, a little more in a normal oven. You can tell it’s cooked when you start to smell delicious orangey aromas in the kitchen and when a skewer comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool then sprinkle with icing sugar.

The cake can be eaten warm as a pudding served with fresh summer fruit and cream – but is also delicious the next morning as a breakfast cake. The cake keeps really well, retaining its moistness and zest.

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Cake for breakfast

July 13, 2010 by cathy.rogers

It’s too easy to get into a rut of a daily routine, especially with children. By the time you’ve done all the chores – the getting up, the washing, the getting dressed, the (yawn) brushing of teeth, the having of breakfast, the finding of shoes, the last minute doing of homework – and so on and so on, it’s too easy to forget even to think of taking any pleasure in any of it. So one day this morning, just to break with habit, I set the alarm clock for really early, just to mix things up a bit.

I didn’t get up when the alarm went off, it was a preposterous idea. Instead I dozed and had weird dreams (quite nice). Then I got up, not very early in the end, though just early enough, it turned out, to make mandarin cake for breakfast.

Finding the recipe was not easy. Ironic given that it was a recipe we had actually made up. I knew it was in our book but it turned out we don’t have a single copy of our book in the whole house. Not even the one that sometimes props up the wonky table was there. So I looked on the internet (reluctantly – computers before dawn?) assuming that Jason must have recipe blogged it. But no! I had ingredients, a hot oven, the tools at hand and above all an early morning hunger to produce. I could not let it go. I looked again online and eventually found it, on pages further down on the google search than I’ve ever delved, on an old Nudo shop brochure that someone must have scanned or copied or some other miracle, just for me. (Thank you person or robot that you are).

It was very pleasing to be making cake before getting dressed. Especially as people started to emerge to the unusual smell. First Jason, ‘Cake?!’ he said, surprised and pleased. Next Rosie, ‘Mummy?….have you made cake?’ pleased but slightly indignant. And finally Sorrel, who was more direct. ‘Cake’ she stated, ‘Sorrel’s cake.’

And so it was that we all ate mandarin cake for breakfast.

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Half Time Feasts #3: Cacio e pepe

July 2, 2010 by jason.gibb

We lived in Rome for a year and a half during which time I became addicted to this classic Roman primo. I’d try it at every trattoria we went to, comparing richness, pasta texture, pepperiness and all the other nuances of the dish. As you’ll see it’s ridiculously simple, but then so is that first kiss, so don’t be fooled. As the name suggests (cacio is the Roman name for the local pecorino), it’s just cheese and ground pepper mixed in with spaghetti.

Ingredients for 4
Pecorino romano – 1/2 cup grated
Black pepper – freshly ground
Spaghetti – 300g
Salt

Grate the cheese into a bowl (big enough to fit the cooked pasta too) and mix with a very generous quantity of freshly ground pepper. Don’t stint – the piquant pepper is the counterpart to the cheesy richness.

Cook the spaghetti in abundant salted water according to the instructions. When you drain it, keep back half a cup of the starchy pasta water.

Pour the drained spaghetti over the cheese and mix with a couple of forks (sometimes the waiter does performs this ceremonial act before your very eyes). Add a teaspoon or so of the cooking water and toss thoroughly. Serve at once – this needs to be eaten hot, so the flavour of the pepper comes through, and moist.

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Copy cat copy cat sitting on the doormat

June 29, 2010 by cathy.rogers

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Except in two cases. The first is when little children play that game in which they repeat everything you say in your exact, increasingly impatient, tone of voice. The second is in business, when it is sometimes actually illegal and always ‘just not cricket’.

The first case is the easiest to deal with and I would recommend the following technique: commandeer another child, let’s call that child, child Beta; the ideal candidate will be young enough not to understand the copying game but old enough to understand the fun of physcial violence. When the imitating child, let’s call her Child Alpha, starts imitating you, play along for a bit, then throw in a sentence like ‘Oi, Beta, please will you kick me very hard on the bum?’ Child Alpha will repeat this in a loud crowing voice, Child Beta will kick Child Alpha very hard on the bum, Child Alpha will yelp and retaliate, all hell will ensue and you will have to wade in to stop warfare – but you will  have broken the spell of the now long-forgotten game.

The second case is trickier and to be honest, we would like some advice. We have been alerted (thank you, Nudo supporters out there, we owe you) to several cases of the most astonishingly blatant Nudo rip-offs. The olive tree adoption idea has of course, been multiply copied – but that’s to be expected – and we obviously didn’t invent the concept of adoption itself. But whole swathes of our text copied word for word from our website to another site selling olive oil, or our Nudo olive tree (lovingly created over many hours of painstaking labour by my sister) copied pixel for pixel to someone else’s olive oil bottle label! I mean that’s not on is it?

So this is a plea. Firstly, to your copycats out there, if you’re reading this and scouring for future ideas, please don’t do it! If you want our help, ask us, we will almost certainly give it. But not this way. The second is to you Nudo-ites out there: what is the solution for business copiers equivalent to the one for dealing with children above? Elegant, not pious, simple, not too precious, a bit messy and utterly successful?

Over to y’all.

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Half Time Feasts #2: Spaghetti with red onion and anchovy

June 29, 2010 by jason.gibb

This recipe is perfect for when you’re too busy (or lazy) to go to the shops or to spend more than 13 minutes cooking your dinner. It’s a football-lovers’, store-cupboard-deploying classic. The flavoursome salty anchovy cuts through the sweet onion like a defence-splitting cross from midfield maestro Pirlo to galloping Gilardino [translation for non-football fanatics: 'very nicely']

Ingredients for 4
Spaghetti – 300g
Olive oil – 75g
Red onion – 1 finely chopped
Anchovies in olive oil – 7 drained
Parmesan cheese – 75g grated

Cook the spaghetti in abundant salted water according to the instructions. Meanwhile fry the onion in the oil for 5 minutes, then add the anchovies for another 5 minutes, until they break up. Add the drained pasta to the onion anchovy sauce and mix in the grated cheese. If it’s too dry add a spoonful or two of the pasta water (which by now, being a pro, you’ll have kept aside as a matter of course).

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Scendavamo in campo…

June 25, 2010 by cathy.rogers

As I’ve previously confessed, I am no football expert – but I simply cannot let this week go by without reference to the national tragedy that is – or rather was – Italy’s – or rather – the World Cup holders’ performance in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The first people they have offended is you, loyal Nudo customers.  Why?  Because our special World Cup offer promised free shipping for as long as Italy stayed in the World Cup. We thought we were being generous! We thought that would mean weeks and weeks!  We barely had time to announce it before the team were out, slaughtered on the pitch by a game crew of highly deserving Eastern European first-timers.

The Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s leading newspapers had the one word headline ‘VERGOGNA!’ (‘SHAME!’) today and there are no punches being pulled in describing the team’s sickeningly poor performance. One of the more succinct descriptions came yesterday from the team’s midfielder Gattuso (who played with the winning team in 2006); ‘Four years ago we were heroes. Today, we are bollocks.’

As La Repubblica put it, ‘It is the end of a generation, the end of an illusion…now the world is laughing at us.’

Tip to anyone holidaying in Italy this year: don’t joke about this.

[PS - we've changed the offer to Free Shipping on gift sets in USA & UK for the duration of the 2010 World Cup - Ed.]

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Halftime cooking: Tagliatelle with the scent of lemon

June 15, 2010 by jason.gibb

The name might not sound the most macho dish out there but don’t be fooled – this is a fantastic feast to knock up in half time. It will keep you fed in body as well as soul (with a bit of help from the beautiful game) and will also keep any non-football-loving-partners moans at bay. Smile sweetly, serve, then get yo’ ass back in front of the telly.

Ingredients for 4
Garlic – 1 clove
Extra virgin olive oil
Lemon juice – from 2 lemons
Tagliatelle – 200 g
Grated lemon rind – from 1 fruit
Parsley – a chopped bunch
Salt
Parmesan cheese – to taste

Lightly fry a whole, peeled clove of garlic in a good drizzle of olive oil. Once it’s started to brown, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for a minute. Add the lemon juice and remove the garlic.

Add the pasta to a pan of boiling, salted water and cook until it’s al dente.

As soon as it’s ready drain and mix in with the olive oil and lemon juice. Before serving mix in the lemon rind, chopped parsley a pinch of salt and grated parmesan to taste. Now stop the clock (about 8 minutes right?).

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Viva Italia

June 4, 2010 by cathy.rogers

Seven days and counting. And even I, very much a part timer when it comes to football fanhood, have had a couple of shivers of anticipation at the festival about to engulf the globe.

The 2006 world cup was my first insider insight into how Italy play football. As with many other things – lingerie, gelato, embroidered jackets, opera, the Catholic church – it made a different sort of sense when seen through Italian eyes. England’s first game – I can’t even remember who it was against  – made me feel itchy. It was disorderly, chaotic, stoppy-starty, inconsistent, just annoying viewing. Then I watched Italy’s first game and it was like watching a different sport. It really did resemble ballet! There was fluidity in the movement, the team worked together, the ball invisibly joined between adjacent feet, it was smooth, calm feeling, almost like slow motion. It didn’t make me feel itchy at all. It actually made me think I could learn to love football. And it certainly made me love Italy even more.

Then their second game was a bloodbath – that awful match against USA which ended with mutiple sendings off and bleeding heads and I felt that everything that was magical a few days earlier had been betrayed. This was brutality – cheating, faking, diving and barbaric desperate clawing for control. I hated football again.

But I couldn’t quite forget that first game. And in Italy the possibility of being allowed to miss a match was – well it wasn’t possible. And then Italy got through and through. And even though there was never again the splendour, at least there was no more blood.

And then it was the final. Italy against France. A rivalry which conjures in Italians feelings every bit as strong (and in some ways deeper rooted) as England vs Germany. We went early with friends to get a seat in front of the massive outdoor screen erected in the piazza in Mogliano. The screen and chairs (plus motley other furniture brought out from bars and homes) filled every paved inch of this tiny medieval quadrant. The atmosphere was unbelievable, fury at the French palpable in every touch of the ball – and all this fury frothing up into an explosion at the infamous moment when Zidane headbutted Materazzi and was sent off. The bloodlust for his departure would have been more appropriate for a hanging.

Full time. It was 1-1. Extra time. Still 1-1. Penalties. The word that inspires terror in the hearts of the hard. The injustice! The inelegance! The make or break of a reputation. For proper football fans, torture. For me, the best bit. The drama of the penalty shoot out is unrivalled. It is immense. And breathing it with a couple of thousand wired Italians squeezed into a too small outdoor living room was one of the most thrilling moments of pure pleasure I’ve ever shared.

The moment of victory was, for a micro-second, a disappointment. The life-affirming tension was over. But then the celebrations began. From nowhere, cars and little 3-wheeled apes and scooters and people were everywhere, saturated in red white and green, tearing around, making as much noise and mess and movement as was possible. The partying went on all night.

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