Jennie Eats Italy

Spinach, Salami & Mushroom Calzone

I absolutely love calzone. If you pick ingredients that really compliment each other, the flavours all fuze together whilst bubbling away in their doughy casing and it can really have a delicious outcome. My favourite calzone filling is ham, mushroom and spinach with oodles of mozzarella and garlic. The flavours of mozzarella, garlic and mushroom marry so well together and the added salt of the ham with the tang of spinach just makes for the perfect flavour combination. My boyfriend insisted on salami this time, so here we have a really scrumptious spinach, salami and mushroom calzone. 

Spinach, Salami & Mushroom Calzone ~ Makes 2

Ingredients

For the dough (as per Two Greedy Italians):

500g strong plain/high grade flour with a bit extra for your kitchen top

10g salt

10g fresh yeast

325ml lukewarm water

For the filling:

Two tins of plum tomatoes

Three garlic cloves

One onion

One vegetable stock cube

Two handfuls of mushrooms

Two handfuls of salami

One bag of spinach

One bag of grated mozzarella

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Method

Firstly, prepare your pizza dough. Preheat your oven to 250oC. Put your flour and salt in a large bowl. Dissolve your yeast in the water and slowly add it to the bowl, mixing everything together until a dough forms. Shape it into a ball and leave to rest with a cloth over it for five minutes. After this time, kneed the dough for about 10 minutes and the split the dough into two balls, put on a floured surface covered with a slightly damp cloth for 30 minutes.

While your dough is sitting, you can make your tomato sauce to go both in the calzone and to pour on top when everything is finished. Finely chop your garlic cloves and onion and fry in a pan with a good glug of oil. Pop your plum tomatoes into the pan and crumble over your stock cube. Pour in a tin’s worth of water and stir. Season and leave to simmer down for 20 minutes. After it’s reduced down, blend with a hand blender.

Now you should have all the ingredients you need to make your calzone. Stretch out your two dough balls until very thin, like you would with a pizza. Spoon out some of your tomato sauce to cover one half of each pizza. Now sprinkle on quite a bit of mozzarella. Remember that you’re making quite a full little package so you’ll be adding more than you would on a normal pizza. Slice your mushrooms and add a good handful onto each ‘half’ pizza and then add your salami and a good handful of spinach. 

Now you need to fold the empty half over the ingredients and seal the sides by folding and pinching along. Pop in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Once you take them out of the oven, plate up and pour some lovely hot tomato sauce over. Serve with green salad.

Outcome

A gorgeous calzone bubbling with mozzarella, salty salami and tangy spinach. I love the addition of mushrooms and the fresh fruity tomato sauce pulling it all together. This is the perfect Saturday night indulgence. Enjoy!

Pizza Pizza Pizza

This weekend, my boyfriend and I set about making a load of pizzas for his brother’s birthday. My step Mother-in-law made all different homemade versions of takeaways and we contributed the pizzas. Harry always makes the dough (look at my Two Greedy Italians Pizza recipe) and I always take care of the lovely tomato sauce and toppings. We made prosciuto e funghi, salami, red onion & green pepper, roasted pepper & pastrami, and garlic & cherry tomato. YUM.

penne gratinate

This is my first blog post in my new abode - with a new kitchen and lovely new kitchenware. It’s very exciting and I hope to make lots of wonderful Jennie Eats Italy creations here. I’ve been meaning to do a penne gratinate recipe for quite a while now. It’s a dish me and my best friend have when we go to our local Italian and it’s also something I love when my Grandma does it. Everyone has their own method of doing a ‘pasta bake’ - with lots of different ingredients. I like to keep penne gratinate simple and traditional - with a gorgeous tomato sauce stirred in with béchamel sauce, a little mozzarella and finished with a generous sprinkling of parmesan - then baked in the oven. Very easy to do but absolutely delicious and the perfect comfort food.

Penne Gratinate ~ Serves 2

Ingredients

300g of penne

Two tins of chopped tomatoes

Two cloves of garlic

One onion

One vegetable stock cube

20g of flour

20g of butter

20g of cheese (whatever you have, cheddar etc.)

Milk

One small handful of grated mozzarella

Grated parmesan cheese

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Method

Pre heat your oven to 180 oC.

Finely chop your onion and garlic cloves. Put them in a hot, oiled pan and brown. Pour in your tins of chopped tomatoes, crumble the stock cube into the pan and pour over a tin’s worth of boiling water. Stir, season and allow to simmer down.

Now boil a pan of water, adding salt. Pop your penne in and boil for the required time (until al dente). 

In the meantime, make your béchamel sauce. Grate 20g of cheese. Put the butter and flour in a pan and stir over heat. Once mixed, pour in a bit of milk. With a whisk, quickly mix the contents of the pan until smooth. Now add more milk and repeat until you have a nice sauce consistency. Add your cheese and whisk again.

Now drain your pasta and leave in the pan to the side. Get a hand blender and blitz your sauce mixture which should have rendered down (or you can put it in a kitchen top blender). 

Add your tomato sauce and béchamel sauce to the pan of pasta and stir thoroughly. Add your mozzarella and stir again. Pour the creamy, tomato pasta into a baking dish and sprinkle over a hefty amount of parmesan and a nice sprinkling of pepper.

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Outcome

A gorgeous baked pasta dish with lovely flavours of tangy, rich tomato and creamy cheese sauce. I absolutely love this dish - it’s rather naughty but just the thing to have when you’re wanting a little treat.

Pork in breadcrumbs & saute potatoes

Every Monday night I would go to my Grandma’s house as a child with my cousins and we would have dinner. It was a lovely tradition and the food was always beautiful. My Grandma often made pork or chicken in breadcrumbs and it was one of my favourites. I love the thin tender cut of meat enveloped in a tasty crunchy coating, doused in lemon juice, it’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve already blogged about Italian peas and their place in my heart. I am a massive pea fan and I’m not ashamed to say it. The only other element to this dish is sauté potatoes which I remember most from my Auntie Vera, who was my Grandad’s sister and my God Mother. She was always one of my favourite people, so gentle and quiet, but very warm and I felt incredibly comfortable in her company. Like a lot of my family, she lived above our restaurant and in her later years she continued to work in the top kitchen doing beautiful tossed salads and her famous potatoes. I will never be able to do them like her and I was too young to think to ask for her technique when she was alive. 

This meal is really easy to do and it was a gorgeous main course for our anniversary dinner. Here we go..

Pork in breadcrumbs & sauté potatoes ~ serves 2

Ingredients

Three to four large pieces of pork schnitzel (or thin escalopes) 

One egg

Breadcrumbs

Frozen Peas

One clove of garlic

Two large potatoes

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Method

Firstly prepare your meat. If your meat isn’t really thin, bash it with a meat tenderiser or a rolling pin. If the meat pieces are large or long, cut them in half to have nice portions about 10cm long. Crack an egg into a small bowl and whisk with a fork until smooth and combined. Pour breadcrumbs onto a dinner plate and cover the surface. Dip each piece of pork into the egg and then into the breadcrumbs, making sure you thoroughly coat each piece of meat. Pop on a plate and leave to the side.

Throw a good dollop of frozen peas into salted boiling water for 3-4 minutes and as they’re boiling, finely chop your clove of garlic. Put the garlic in a very well oiled pan and fry. Once your peas are ready, drain and put in the garlicy oil. The best way for these peas to ferment in the oil and really get some great flavour is to cook them for a long period of time over a low heat (because black, crunchy peas are not nice, trust me). 

Keep your peas on a low simmer and remember to keep checking and stirring. Meanwhile, peel and very finely slice your potatoes into discs. Now it’s time to get hefty with your olive oil. Get out two large frying pans and put a fair few glugs of olive oil in each one. Put them on a reasonably high heat to get the oil really hot. Throw your potato discs in one pan and they’ll start frying nicely. You want to fry the potatoes first for about five minutes before you put the pork in the other pan.

After this time, put your pork in the other hot frying pan (do the pork in batches rather than over crowding the pan). Fry the pork for 3-4 minutes on each side or until the breadcrumbs start to go a real golden brown colour.

Keep moving the potatoes around so they become browned on all sides. They should take no more than 15 minutes and obviously the thinner you slice them, the faster they’ll cook. 

Outcome

Serve your pork with a nice juicy slice of lemon, your crisp (but soft on the inside) sauté potatoes and your gorgeously soft, oil infused peas. This dish holds so many gorgeous flavours that blend so well together and although I do feel guilty frying things in oil, you have to remember that life without treats is just so boring! (plus olive oil is a good fat, so you can’t go wrong).

Spaghetti Pomodoro with Garlic & Basil

It was my other half and my anniversary this weekend so I decided to cook a romantic meal for two. For starter I wanted to do a really simple pasta, so I decided to just do a spaghetti pomodoro with some really lovely sweet cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic and oil. In Italy it’s very rare not to have a pasta course in a main meal. It often comes before a meat course (which will be my next blog post) so I just wanted something fresh and light, and most of all simple - because it can get quite complicated doing more than one course with lots of stages and components.

Spaghetti Pomodoro with Garlic & Basil ~ Serves 2

Ingredients

100g spaghetti

10 cherry tomatoes

Two garlic cloves

One handful of fresh basil

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Grated parmesan

Method

Boil a pan of water and add salt. Add your spaghetti and stir, leaving to boil for the recommended time. Half your cherry tomatoes and finely chop your garlic. Pop a few good glugs of olive oil in a deep frying pan and get it hot. Add your garlic and fry for 2 minutes. Now add your cherry tomatoes and stir so they are coated thoroughly in oil.

Once your pasta is boiled, drain it and toss it into the hot frying pan. Tear over your basil and add a small sprinkle of salt and a good grind of pepper. Stir the contents of the pan thoroughly so the spaghetti is thoroughly doused in garlic, oil and tomatoes. Sprinkle over parmesan.

Outcome

A seriously tasty, light and simple dish that doesn’t compromise on flavour. It’s the perfect dish to make when you are doing pasta as a starter and have other courses to concentrate on. Lovely!

Beef Rolled With Mushrooms & Pine Nuts

This beef dish is a really nice change from standard meat recipes. Rolling the meat with tasty ingredients just makes the flavours a bit more interesting, and cooking it in a gorgeous tomato sauce adds a real richness. It’s really easy to do but looks quite impressive - I think it’s really tasty!

Beef Rolled With Mushrooms & Pine Nuts ~ Serves 2

Ingredients

Six pieces of very thin beef

One large onion

One large handful of mushrooms

70g pine nuts

One small handful of parsley

One tin of chopped tomatoes

1/2 vegetable stock cube

Two cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Cocktail sticks

Green vegetables to accompany

Method

Firstly make your tomato sauce (I bet you’re sick of reading about tomato sauce now!) Finely chop your garlic and fry it in a pan with a good glug of olive oil. Pop in your tin of chopped tomatoes and crumble half a vegetable stock cube in the pan. Now add 1/2 tin of boiling water and stir. Allow to simmer down for 15-20 minutes.

In the mean time, prepare your beef. Finely chop your onion, mushrooms and parsley, and pop them in a bowl with your pine nuts, mixing them all together. Take your pieces of beef and lay them out on a chopping board. If you can’t get your hands on really thin beef schnitzel, make sure you whack it down with a meat tenderiser or rolling pin. Sprinkle your onion, mushroom and pine nut mixture over the surface of the beef pieces.

Now roll the beef like a roulade and stick two cocktail sticks through the roll to secure it. Pop your beef rolls in a baking/casserole dish. 

Pre heat your oven to 180 oC.

Now use a hand blender to blitz your tomato sauce until it has a smooth consistency. Pour the sauce over the beef rolls and pop the dish in the oven for 30 minutes. Serve with green vegetables (or whatever you like!)

Outcome

When your beef comes out of the oven you can remove the cocktail sticks and the beef will stay in rolls. The flavours of onion, garlic, mushroom, beef and tomato are absolutely beautiful and the texture of the pine nuts just gives the dish an added depth. A really tasty dish that’s seriously easy to do! Just don’t forget about your cocktail sticks when you’re shoving them in your mouth (like someone who shall remain nameless!)

Rocket, Red Onion, Pumpkin & Pea Pasta Salad

Pasta salad is a gorgeous accompaniment to meat and great on it’s own as a light lunch. Most come cold but this pasta salad is great warm too. I would say that you can put pretty much whatever you fancy in a pasta salad, but it can quite easily turn out bland, so make sure you have ingredients with quite distinct flavours. 

For my pasta salad I started off with pumpkin as my main addition. I decided to cube it and roast it with garlic to give the pasta salad a gorgeous flavour, colour and nice soft texture. Red onion gives a nice sharp tang but it’s slightly sweeter than white onion so nicer to ear raw. Rocket has a peppery flavour that worked well with the pumpkin and the peas give a nice popping texture. I just had a play around to see what flavour worked best and I have to say that my RR PP combination is rather tasty!

Rocket, Red Onion, Pumpkin & Pea Pasta Salad ~ Makes 8 side servings or 20 for a buffet

Ingredients

400g Macaroni

1/2 small pumpkin or 1/4 large pumpkin

One bag of rocket

Frozen Peas

One large red onion

One clove of garlic

Olive Oil

Salt & black pepper

Method

Pre heat your oven to 180oC.

Firstly prepare your pumpkin by chopping it into tiny cubes, putting them in a baking tray with oil, salt and pepper and grate over a garlic clove. Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes or until nicely roasted and soft.

Whilst your pumpkin is in the oven, weigh out your pasta and boil it in salted water, when the pasta has 3 minutes left, pour in a generous amount of peas. When the pasta is al dente drain and leave to the side. Chop your red onion very finely.

Get a large bowl and pour your pasta and peas into it. Now pop your red onion into the bowl and empty the back of rocket in. Now take your pumpkin out of the oven (if you haven’t already) and scrape all the cubes into the bowl, making sure you empty any gorgeous, garlicy oil in there too. Add another generous glug of olive oil and give a grate some black pepper and salt and toss everything together.

Outcome

A really scrumptious pasta salad with sweet pumpkin and red onion flavours, complimented by peppery rocket and the lovely plump texture of peas. Roasting the pumpkin with garlic just gives a bit more depth to the flavour and adds to the overall amalgamation of delicious flavours.

Cooking With Italian Grandmothers ~ Usha’s Plum & Almond Tart

Following my interview with Jessica Theroux, author of ‘Cooking with Italian Grandmothers’, I decided to cook a recipe from the book. The book is really gorgeous and it was hard to make a decision of what to cook. As I’ve not posted anything sweet in a while I decided to attempt Italian Grandmother Usha’s Plum & Almond Tart. It looked absolutely delicious in the pictures and I couldn’t resist giving it a go!

Usha’s Plum & Almond Tart, taken from Cooking With Italian Grandmothers by Jessica Theroux

Ingredients:

For the pastry bottom:

8 3/4 ounces (roughly 1 1/3 cups plus 1 tablespoon) all-purpose flour, plus more to dust the pan and dough

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon finely grated or minced lemon zest

10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks frozen unsalted butter)

1/3 cup sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons milk or cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the plum filling:

1/2 cup fine bread crumbs

1/2 cup finely ground raw almonds

1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

3 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 3/4 pounds ripe plums, preferably prune plums

1 1/2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

2 tablespoons silvered  almonds

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

To prepare the pastry bottom, grease a 9-inch springform cake pan with butter, and sprinkle it with a little flour to coat the bottom and edges. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest and place them in a mound on a clean surface. Cut the frozen butter first into think slabs, then long rectangles, and finally into very small cubes, about 5 to 10 millimetres. It is easiest if you coat the butter and knife with some flour; this prevents the knife from sticking too much. Once the butter has been cut, place in the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes to re-firm. Spread the chilled butter cubes around the periphery of the mound. 

Make a well in the center for the flour. Add the sugar, egg, milk, and vanilla extract to the well. Scramble these together using a fork, then slowly incorporate the surrounding flour, using the fork to stir it in.

When the mixture becomes too thick for the fork, use a large knife to cut in the rest of the flour and butter. Continue cutting the dough together, remembering to scrape under and turn over the dough during this process. Do this for a couple of minutes, until the dough is in the form of large, crumbly lumps. 

Wash and flour your hands. Briefly kneed the dough until it is no longer sticking strongly to the board. If the dough is wet, sprinkle on a little extra flour. Do not over kneed. You still want to see the little pieces of butter in the dough; this will produce a flaky crust.

Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic, and place it in the fridge for 15 minutes. After its brief chill, flour your work surface and roll the dough out so that it is about 1 1/2 inches larger than the cake pan. Transfer the dough to the pan and press on it lightly, so that it makes contact with the bottom and sides. Ideally, the border of the dough should come an inch up the sides of the cake pan. If the dough is not high enough, use a floured fork to gently pull it up to an inch in height. Using the tines of a fork, poke the bottom and sides of the dough a number of times, so that it can breathe while baking. Place the dough in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes, and prepare the plum filling.

In a medium bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, ground almonds, lemon zest, sugar, and cinnamon. Sprinkle half of this (about 1/2 cup) on the bottom of the pastry crust.

To prepare the plums, cut them in half length wise - but leave the back edge of each fruit in tact, so that it folds open like a book. Pry out the pits.

Stand the plums upright in the pastry bottom, making concentric circles, working from the outside of the pastry inward until you reach the centre. If there are any large gaps, fill them in with any remaining extra plum halves. 

Sprinkle the second half of the almond mixture of the top of the plums. Slice the cold butter into thin slivers, and dot them over the top of the tart. Sprinkled with the silvered almonds. 

Bake the tart from 40 to 55 minutes, until the pastry is a dark golden brown and is pulling away from the sides of the pan. By this time, the plums should have nestled down into the pastry and released their juices. Serve with lightly whipped cream, or warmed with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Outcome

I thoroughly enjoyed Usha’s Plum & Almond Tart, it was sweet, tangy and rich with beautiful flavours of almond, cinnamon and sugar. I am a massive pudding fan and I really recommend this one to anyone with a sweet tooth!

To buy yourself a copy of Jessica Theroux’s Book, you can go on Amazon and a number of other book stores online.

~ With Thanks to Jessica Theroux ~

Cooking With Italian Grandmothers, Interview: Jessica Theroux

Jessica Theroux

Author of “Cooking With Italian Grandmothers, Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily”

Last week I was lucky enough to speak to teacher, chef and author, Jessica Theroux for Jennie Eats Italy. In 2003, Jessica was awarded an Arnold Fellowship by Brown to travel around Italy and document food traditions throughout the country. As a result of this experience she wrote a book called Cooking With Italian Grandmothers which contain her gastronomic memoirs of traveling down Italy and cooking with 12 Italian Grandmothers, with whom she built inevitably warm relationships. The book is a beautiful collection of authentic Italian recipes, mixed with captivating photography and exuding the warmth and love that Italy’s Grandmothers so naturally give.

The concept of this book really appealed to me because Jennie Eats Italy is an ode to my Italian family and their love of food. This radiates throughout my whole family and the fact that food and eating is able to bring my family together in such a lovely way has always interested me. I think Italians have a unique relationship with food and any exploration of that is thoroughly interesting to me. I caught up with Jessica to ask her a few questions about her wonderful book. I also attempted one of her recipes at the weekend which I shall post tomorrow!

Did you find the Italian Grandmothers and their families welcoming to you and did they try and encourage you to eat in abundance?

Most definitely. In fact one family even locked me into their family compound for a week, until I had eaten every specialty that the grandmother cooked! Needless to say, all of the women I documented in Italy were very welcoming and strongly encouraged me to eat many servings of their food. Eventually I had to buy a pair of elastic-waisted jeans to accommodate all of the food I was eating! 

What was your favourite meal of the entire journey?

I can’t really say that I had one single favorite meal. Rather, there were many instances of perfect meals for perfect moments. For example, Usha’s plum cake with a cup of fresh thyme tea was just right on a rainy afternoon. Or, Daria’s Pappardelle con Sugo di Porcini (Pappardelle Pasta with Porcini-Tomato sauce) was divine for an early autumn lunch, making the best of the garden’s last tomatoes and the first wild mushrooms of the year. All of the recipes in the book are delicious, and there seem to be perfect moments for just about any meal.

In Italy, did you feel like being able to cook well was expected in the women of the family?

Yes, generally family members would boast about their grandmother’s cooking, and if a mother or grandmother did not cook well it was an anomaly and one that was spoken of under hushed voices. 

How important do you think food was to the Grandmothers, and do you think that this joy of cooking has remained throughout newer Italian generations?

For many of the grandmothers food was everything. Cooking was what they did each day, it was their role in the family, along with helping to care for the little ones. The cooking traditions in Italy, as in many other countries, is changing due to the challenges of modernity. So, while some young women are very interested in cooking, unfortunately many of the grandmothers lamented the fact that younger generations did not have the time to fully learn their family’s culinary traditions.

To read more about Jessica Theroux and her book, Cooking With Italian Grandmothers, recipes and stories from Tuscany to Sicily, click here.

~ With Thanks to Jessica Theroux ~

Curried Fettuccine

On one trip back to Valvori, Italy to see my family, about 6 years ago, my Zia Agnese made a creamy fettuccine that was ever-so-slightly curried. At the time it was a very trendy dish in the world of Italian cuisine. I know what you’re thinking, curry and pasta - come on Jennie, don’t be ludicrous. But I am telling you, it is absolutely delicious, especially if you are a fan of creamier pasta dishes.

The thing about women of a certain age in Italy is that they are invariably good cooks and their technique and ingredients are not done with precise measurement. So trying to write down some followable instructions is a bit of a struggle, because your version of ‘a dash’ ‘enough’ or ‘a lot’ will be different to mine, and so on. I think it’s fantastic that they have that inherent feel and ability to know exactly how much of everything to add when cooking without measuring it out, but as I don’t want you to end up with a fettuccine madras, I have measured everything out to as exact as I can get it. I really recommend this recipe, the subtle hints of flavours including lemon, curry, cream and parsley really work well together and create a pasta of quite delicate yet full taste. Give it a go.

Curried Fettuccine ~ Serves 2

Ingredients

300g fettuccine (it’s up to you if you make it from scratch, buy it fresh or dried)

250g crème fraîche 

50g butter

One tablespoon of cream cheese

The rind of one lemon

The juice of 1/4 a lemon

Two heaped teaspoons of mild curry powder

80ml water

A small bunch of parsley, chopped

Salt

A bag of rocket

Salad dressing (I used raspberry wine vinegar & olive oil - something sweet will work)

Method

In a large pan melt your butter. Now add the crème fraîche and stir thoroughly until melted. In a bowl, add your curry powder to the 80ml of water and stir thoroughly.

Boil a large pan of salted water and your pasta (remember fresh pasta doesn’t take very long at all so keep an eye on it. I bought mine fresh and it took 5 minutes to cook). 

A lovely fettuccine dish, lightly flavoured with cream, curry, lemon and parsley. If you follow the recipe, the levels of each ingredient should be just enough to compliment each other and not overpower your taste buds. I really enjoy this dish, though I’m not a massive fan of creamy pastas. It’s a great idea for a start or a pasta course and thus a much smaller portion, especially if you are easily filled. So there you go, curry and pasta can & does work!