Introduction – TV Cooking Show Programmes

I don’t know about you but I took an instant dislike to the Italian version of the TV “Masterchef” show when it started here, however many years ago. It just seemed downright mean and nasty to me the way the contestants were treated by their culinary overlords.  And all this ‘yes chef’, ‘no chef’, ‘three bags full chef’ on the part of the contestants smacked too much of a patriarchal top-down military approach.  If one wanted to be more positive, one could grudgingly concede that the judges, in more recent renditions of the show, are all about tough love.  But who needs tough love?

A competition is all about winning of course, I get that, but why should cooking be likened to boot-camp competition when it comes to acquiring skills in the kitchen? Why the protracted pressure, the terrible hurry, the panic, the adrenal spikes and, unsurprisingly, the shedding of tears – surely a calm cook brings out the best in food? And what message is being cast for aspiring cooks? If you want to be a proper chef, you know what?, you’re just going to have to suffer and go through hell.  Really? Message number two: cooking is difficult, leave it to the professionals, don’t even bother trying, it’s just too much work. Sigh.

A somewhat milder version of a competition in the world of TV programmes came by way of a series called “Cortesia per gli ospiti” (translation: Courtesy for the guest).  I think it was a riff on the British reality series “Come Dine with Me” which debuted in 2005.  Cortesia per gli ospiti featured a panel of three experts to judge two couples and their dinners – the food, the decor of their homes, and the way they hosted.  It turned out to be a very successful series and aired for over ten years, with the experts in the panel being replaced now and then.  Latterly, the stress on the hosting side was more about the correct table setting than on the warmth of the hosting and the poor contestants got a battering more often than not for as serious an offence as not placing the pudding fork in the correct position (horror). 

To put it bluntly, the panel were the very opposite of courteous and could have delivered their critique in a nicer, politer manner. 

Table Etiquette

Speaking of etiquette, this would be an appropriate moment to explain to my readers who have bothered to read this far that … wait for it … saying “Buon appetito” to people as they are about to tuck into their meal is actually considered bad manners by Italians of a certain class.   Yes, bad manners (they wince when they hear people utter the phrase, it’s that injurious to them.  As is saying “piacere” when first being introduced, heaven forbid.)  So here is the tip: if you are seated at an Italian table and someone says “buon appetito”, the polite thing to do is to reply in kind (so as not to be rude, because whoever says buon appetito thinks he or she is actually being kind and polite). Moral of the story: avoid saying buon appetito unless someone else does so first.

These kinds of programmes like to pander to the bully in us, to the I-win-you-lose mentality which is anathema to what the sporting spirit is supposed to be.  Nobody wants to lose but surely learning to be a good loser is what makes a person gracious?

On the positive side, I would add that many people have benefitted, not just from the tips about recipes in general, but also from the advice proferred by the proper etiquette advisor on the panel, one very bourgeois Czaba della Zorza (a TV cooking show personality, as well as food writer). You either love or hate Czaba – she is pretty snooty even when trying to be affable but I can detect an ironic side to her that I can salute with respect.  The lady most definitely has style.

If you care to click on the following link, at 04.40 minutes where it reads “posate”, you will get an idea of her unerring eye (there is a problem with the fish knife for starters):

Chef Giorgio Locatelli’s Advice on Mashed Potatoes

Anyway, the last in this kind of TV series is more recent and entitled, yes in English, “Home Restaurant” – which I reckon is particularly unfortunate, linguistically speaking, because Italians find it very hard to pronounce the English “H” .  So what you end up hearing is ‘om resstoran’.  Again, it’s always about two couples vying with one other as to who prepares the best meal and offers pukkah service in a proper ambiance.

The duo of experts is made up of Chef Giorgio Locatelli and Ezio Miccio. Ezio is  the influencer/ arbiter of taste par excellence on Italian TV shows as regards weddings and attire.  Czaba is like a pet lamb compared with him when it comes to quips and tips.  At the end of the episode, the chef and he have to give their marks out of ten and Ezio’s scale has become legendary – he likes to award an ‘encouraging 3 out of 10’ or a ‘very generous 4 out of 10’ or, rarely, ‘an unbelievable but well deserved 6 out of 10’.  Personally, I find him quite amusing, he is just so over the top I can’t help it, and have to admit I tend to agree with his overall evaluation of the contestants’ decor (to the point that I have to stifle a giggle in self reproach for being so snobby myself).  On the whole, however he and Locatelli make for good company and provide sound advice for future home restauranteurs (you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is for some people to crack open a bottle of wine and serve it comme il faut). 

Anyway, in one episode, Locatelli pops into the kitchen to see how the contestants are going about their preparations and catches them out on how to make ‘proper’ mashed potatoes. It was this very episode that has inspired this post, and I am guessing that by now you wished I hadn’t. He is adamant that a potato ricer does the mash no favours, tsk tsk. I took the trouble of filming this part of the episode (only a few seconds by the way). 

Locatelli makes reference, in another episode, to the way the late French chef Joel Robuchon made mashed potatoes and was famous for them. Robuchon’s ratio of butter to potatoes was – wait for it – 1kg of potatoes to be mashed with 750g of butter!!!! (yes I know, you will forgive the surfeit of exclamation marks on my part). 

Now, coincidentally, a few years ago I had read about this very buttery way to make mashed potatoes and had a go at it myself.  Read on.

When Swallowing Can be Hard

A few years ago our daughter came down with a nasty bout of tonsillitis and parents-to-the-rescue we went to her place with ready made victuals that would be easier for her to swallow – think yogurt, bananas to mash, mushy boiled rice seasoned with butter and parmigiano, scrambled egg, soup of course, hummus and – ta dah – mashed potatoes.  Now, I am sure I did not prepare them the way Joel Robuchon did but I did indeed add a lot more butter than I would have normally.  And our daughter was gastronomically most grateful for them.  So I am all for lots of butter.

My mother, the legendary Agnese who turned 97 last December – well, she did what older people do, she had a fall and broke her thigh bone back in January  She is recovering from the operation in hospital which, as we all know, serve the most unappetising of foods.  The Nurse Nightingale Chef in me would have liked to shower her with all kinds of food but Agnese is a picky eater – not just that, she eats very little (which is probably another reason besides DNA for her long life).  Put another way, she is difficult to please.  And guess what? Unbelievable – she actually liked my mashed potatoes.  FYI in Italy it is usual to add a grating of nutmeg and a little bit of parmigiano to the puré di patate (mashed potatoes).

This time, out of sheer filial love, I made them following Locatelli’s tips – which is to pass the boiled potatoes through a tight wire-mesh sieve more than once.  He says one should not use a potato ricer but I did (please don’t tell).  I passed the potatoes through the ricer twice and then through the sieve twice.  The consistency was amazing. Pace Locatelli.

And my mother, wonder of wonders, did enjoy eating my puré and commented on how good it was.

Conclusion

An admission more than a conclusion.

For a few years, until he died last Summer, my father-in-law came and had supper with us regularly, sometimes nearly every night (he lived next door).  And contrary to my mother, he was very easy to please food-wise.  Only there were certain things he preferred, which is normal and I was happy to indulge him since it was all simple stuff (he liked his minestrina for instance).  One of his favourites was, you guessed it, mashed potatoes.  Someone whispered in my ear that, you know what?, packed dehydrated potatoes are nearly as good as the real thing.  I am a bit snooty about such short cuts but gave in on account of practicality – if I had a busy day and not a lot of time for cooking, well then – dehydrated potatoes could jolly well come to the rescue.  I just added a lot more butter than the amount instructed on the packet.  Result? Well, no, not quite the same as the real thing, let’s be honest, but definitely acceptable.

The whole point of this post is to declare: can we please stop being so bloody snobbish about mashed potatoes, and not think of them as twee or passé!

There is such a thing as ‘real’ mashed potatoes, and we can even resort to a riff on Joel Robuchon’s.  If he could serve them at his Michelin-star restaurant, you will allow that we can serve them in our humble homes and be proud of including them in our menu.

At the same time, I think it’s all right to ‘cheat’ now and then.  We all lead busy lives and we should indeed resort to practical short-cuts when pressed for time when it comes to mashed potatoes (just remember to add loads of butter).

Chef Locatelli’s Instructions for Posh, Fluffy Mashed Potatoes:

Boil the potatoes in their skins, starting from cold water, and do not add salt.

Use a ‘young’ potato (reserve the ‘old’ ones for making gnocchi)

In order to mash the boiled potatoes, use ONLY a wire-mesh sieve – forget about a potato masher or a potato ricer (they are an insult to mashed potatoes). 
Pass the still-hot, peeled potatoes through the sieve three times.
Add half the amount of butter after the potatoes have been through the sieve the second time and mix well. 
Add the other half of butter after the potatoes have been pushed through the sieve for the third time. 

N.B. There was no mention of either salt or milk.

Actually more than one nettle – lots and lots of them, too many of them, goading me with botanic insousiance as they thrived in my pots/planters on the balcony, reminding me – if ever I needed prompting – that I am just not cut out for gardening. 

I am pretty good at watering my plants during the hotter months, the job needs to be done daily here in Fracati where it can get very hot.  But with the colder season, I can relax and not worry … to the point that I even end up forgetting. 

Some of the plants are the kind that need to be replanted every year (basil for instance); others can withstand a bit more drought (rosemary).  Some need hardly any attention and just pop up again the following year (tarragon and chives).  Sage is usually very easy going.  Mint is a bit of a hit and miss story, although pennyroyal or calamint or whatever it is that it’s called in English is just ‘wild’ and does its own thing.  And marjoram keeps going even in Winter, so trustworthy.  Thyme, which I love, does not love me and usually dies by the end of Summer.  Parsely is fun and very generous with its leaves until one day it decides to bolt and bye-bye, off it goes and I need to plant some more. I have two small lemon trees neither of which have come up with any fruit. And during Covid I even tried my hand at planting tomatoes, with a pleasing crop as far as aesthetics was concerned – but not enough to actually eat. 

I love my herbs and can’t cook without them.  I find that those sold by supermarkets lack a je-ne-sais-quoi in terms of aroma, though I do buy them when necessary. And, oh my goodness, I can’t believe how much they cost these days, ridiculous! The one herb you can’t find around here – and not easy to find in Rome either – is dill.  There is a cousin of dill called ‘finocchiella’ (little fennel) but it’s not the same thing.  I tried planting dill many times but to no avail.  To be honest I do not usually crave dill – except around holiday season, it’s so good with smoked salmon.

All this to say that I really must up my game when it comes to looking after the herbs on my balcony because they are so necessary for my cooking.  Also, I am glad to say, they attract the odd bee. A win-win situation all told ….

Question: how do nettles propagate? Why do they so love my balcony? We live on the first floor (second floor if you speak American English).  One does not want to think of them as a a weed  but they are certainly invasive.  Also, I know they are good for one’s health (can’t remember why exactly but trust me – here’s a link: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/stinging-nettle#TOC_TITLE_HDR_8).  There is even such a thing as Nettle Salt.  Nettle tea.  There is nettle soup.  There is nettle risotto too.

That day, that famous day around Christmas, I decided I would kill two birds with one stone – meaning, I would get rid of those pesky nettles and use them as food. I donned some gloves and got on with cutting them with kitchen shears.  I do now own secateurs.

And decided to make some pasta dough with them. Ravioli to be exact.

Sometimes when I try a new recipe I can get all excited like a child before Christmas. This time my attitude was more like “make do and mend”. I ‘mended’ not just by using up the crop of balcony nettles but by cheating when it came to making the pasta dough.

I trimmed and washed the nettles. They were then boiled, drained, allowed to cool and squeezed hard to get rid of residual water before. The idea was to include them in the actual pasta dough.

Yes. Yes indeed. I wasn’t going classic ‘manual’ dough-making that day, I was resorting to the food processor.

I decided to go for 2 eggs, which meant using 200g of flour (half the 0 kind and half the durum wheat/semolina kind).

But first I briefly blitzed the cooked nettles. What follows is pretty straight forward and does not need commenting.

I now added the semolina flour.

And kept ‘pulsing’ until I found the right consistency. It was now time to ‘go manual’ with the pasta dough.

I kneaded the nettle pasta dough until it was smooth, then covered it in cling film (aka glad wrap, saran wrap, plastic wrap —– why so many words for this one thing?).  I let it repose for about an hour and then rolled it out the good old-fashioned way, with a rolling pin.  It was a beautiful deep green colour, I will admit (the dough, not the rolling pin).

This was an experiment, remember? So when it came to the pasta sauce I opted for what I had in the fridge and in my kitchen in the tried and tested make-do-and-mend tradition.  What I had was the inside of a burrata, known as ‘stracciatella’, and some tomatoes. Winter tomatoes never taste any good, true, but they do bring a vivacious colour to the final dish).

There you have the rolled-out dough on the left. Next to the knife is the pan – where I was cooking same garlic in plenty of olive oil. Just until it turned golden – and please note, not cut into thin slices. I’ve noticed on Italian food blogs and television programmes recently that it’s become the fashion to cut garlic into very thin slices – that’s all very well for recipes from abroad but does not make any sense when it comes to Italian recipes. I reckon that it’s all about showing off knife skills and making the viewer feel inferior (OMG! You don’t slice your garlic this way? Tsk tsk).

I then added the roughly cut tomatoes, a pinch of salt, but I can’t make out what the herbs are! Oh dear. Could be sage?

I plopped some stracciatella on the dough and then turned them into ravioli.

They were boiled for only a few minutes in salted water – about five minutes I seem to remember. It does not take long with fresh pasta.

They were finished off inside the pan with the sauce.

A final showering of freshly grated parmigiano and they were ready to eat.

And were they good? Yes, they were – you can’t go wrong with a plain tomato sauce, stracciatella and parmigiano.  Would I make them again.  Not sure.

CONCLUSION

With the remaining pasta dough, I made fettuccine.

I thought I would cook them the following day, using a different kind of sauce.  

So I showered lots of semolina flour over the fettuccine … and placed them in my oven.

Here is a close up …

The thing is – or was rather – I forgot all about these blessed fettuccine until two days later when a strange smell accosted me as I entered my tiny kitchen.  It got worse as the day wore on and I just couldn’t make out its provenance.  After much head scratching bewilderment, I finally got around to opening my oven door — and oh my, the pong! Dreadful!  I got rid of the fettuccine straight away … ugh, so overpowering.

So moral of the story is if ever you decide to make nettle fettuccine, do please eat them up straight away or place them in a sealed zip-lock bag in the fridge to eat the following day. 

On the other hand, a friend later told me that guess what? Nettles make for a great fertilizer and that would account for their smell.

So, if any of you are keen gardeners you might want to read the following article on the benefits of nettles:

https://www.growveg.co.uk/guides/why-nettles-are-great-for-your-garden/

and 

PS here is a link to an article on nettles – suddently, they seem to be all the rage?
https://italoamericano.org/the-goodness-in-nettle/

Yesterday was perhaps the first sign that Winter was finally on its way in Rome.  It was cold enough that jackets had to be rummaged around for in the wardrobe and outside it was grey and dark, with rainy spells that required the protection of a brolly.  Nothing loath, I and my two friends Liz and Alison, went ahead with our plan to meet to see the Escher exhibition at the Museo Bonaparte and grab a bit of lunch later.  Liz and I parked her car at the Anagnina underground/metro station and we took the metro to the Barberini Station and walked from there to Piazza Venezia.  Despite the rain, it is always a huge pleasure to walk about the centre of Rome.  Being a tourist for once!

Fabulous show by the way.  I never expected to like Escher’s work very much and instead I was bowled over and even moved on occasion by some of his output.

This one was called The Puddle. Simply brilliant.

And did you know that Escher lived in Frascati for a while? You see, everything happens in Frascati.

This one is of Liz at the very end in the mind-boggling room.

Later in the afternoon I was to meet up with Vancouverites Phyllis Knudsen and husband Joe.  They are leaving soon and this was our last meet-up before their departure, boo hoo.  Phyllis is a retired corporate cook and you might want to look up her website “https://www.oracibo.com/”.  She and Joe are best friends with award-winning chef Andrea Carlson and her partner Kevin in Vancouver (https://www.vanmag.com/taste/chefs/chef-andrea-carlson-on-what-its-like-to-win-a-michelin-star/) and a lot of our talk was over food and people in the food business.  And blogging.  We walked from there to Piazza Farnese for our aperitivo, stopping at the Lorcan O’Neill Gallery on the way – which is about to host a show by artist Anselm Kiefer.  I know he is (I was going to write ‘supposed to be’ but decided against it, I’m not exactly a contemporary art expert) … sorry what was I saying? Ah yes, I know that he is considered to be one of the most important artists of his generation (look him up) but what I saw yesterday was not to my taste, liking, whatever you want to call it.  Very ‘dark’.  Reflective, I suppose, of a lot of darkness going on in our world right now (sigh).

Anyway, the long and the short of this roundabout introduction is to say that I ended up getting home at around 8.30.  I had had a lovely day, spending time with friends, walking around Rome, getting to do a bit of culture-vulturing that is always good for the soul but it also involved a lot of walking and I was tired with every right to be so.

Dinner was not exactly exciting: all I had on my hands were leftovers: peas cooked with onions and pancetta together with meatballs. Said meatballs are what Romans call ‘polpette di lesso’, i.e.  made from the boiled meat that is left over from making stock.  So these meatballs were in point of fact the leftovers of the leftovers in a way.  All I had to do was pan fry them with some olive oil.  As for the peas, all that was required was some water and turn them into pea soup.  A salad accompanied the polpette.

But this morning, there was still more left over, would you believe!  It’s foods like these that love to keep on giving.  Which brings me to lunch today.

The Venetians have a rice and pea risotto called “Riso e Bisi”.  I’ve never tasted one, I’ve never made one.  And the Brits love their mushy peas … so …. so.  So I ended up with a Roman version of Rise e Bisi (don’t tell the Venetians for goodness sakes) – what makes it ‘Roman’ is the use of grated pecorino cheese and the polpette di lesso (meatballs).

I added hot water to the pea soup and made the risotto from there, toasting the rice first (of course).  Added a bayleaf, butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper, some parmigiano and lots of pecorino.  Job done.

Some would call this comfort food.
Others nursery food.

Yet to me this is mainly about not wasting food. (Which also brings to mind the famous proverb of necessity being the mother of invention.)
During our lunch, friend Alison had made a comment on how sad the waste of food is in the world.  And she is absolutely right.
So an added win-win boon to lunch was that the leftovers turned into a tasty dish without compromising my conscience.

Dessert was a crunchy apple.

The photos below are very unappealing and the colour especially does not correspond to the nice green of the final risotto.  But trust me, the risotto was very good.  I would make it again even without the polpette.

The pea soup before I added hot water.

Parmigiano, bay leaf, butter and lemon.  The pecorino was on the other side of the cooker.

The polpette di lesso look as if they are burnt.  They are not.  It’s just the photo.

The rice bubbling away nicely.

The polpette added at the very end, to warm up.

On the plate with some fresh mint.

COURSE CORRECTION TO THIS POST AS OF 26 FEBRUARY 2024:

JUST THE OTHER DAY (AND HENCE THE CAPITAL LETTERS – I LIKE CAPITAL LETTERS NOW AND THEN) I CHANCED UPON A VIDEO ABOUT THE RESTAURANT WAY TO MAKE THIS RECIPE. AND IT IS CALLED A “FRITTATA ROMANA” – SO THERE YOU GO, THAT’S THE PROPER NAME FOR THIS RECIPE.  FORGET ABOUT MY INSTRUCTIONS, ALTHOUGHT THEY WERE PRETTY CLOSE CONSIDERING I WAS GUESSTING, AND FOLLOW THOSE ON THE LINK:

HERE IS THE LINK: https://www.gamberorosso.it/notizie/storie/frittata-romana-ricetta/?

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If you like potatoes, you might very well like this recipe.

If you do not like potatoes, good day to you.

REQUIREMENTS

You have to make a very simple tomato sauce with just onions and fresh tomatoes.
Or you could use plum tomatoes or a passata, shop bought.
Or even some concentrated tomato puré out of a tube.
The point is you do need tomatoes. And onions.  And salt.  And I suggest olive oil too because that makes everthing tie together beautifully.

Next the potatoes have to be boiled into submission, and the tomato and onion sauce be included in its cooking.  Keep an eye on those spuds, you might want to add some water now and then, and keep a wooden spoon for stirring, as they can stick to the bottom of the pan.  Once tender, you mash everything up and serve.  They can be reheated the following day (but do not reheat more than once please).

I wrote a post about it years ago  (“The Saucy Potato”, see link below) and it’s a bit long so I expect not everyone will want to read it.  However, I do want to point out that MFK Fisher was in raptures over a particular potato dish and if potatoes were good enough for her … well, what can I say?  I quote a passage from one of her books on the subject in my post …

Life without potatoes would be very sad for me indeed …

The Saucy Potato – Patata Schiacciata col Pomodoro

It is often said, is it not, that necessity is the mother of invention. I think it is also true that, sometimes, accidents in the kitchen lead to surprisingly welcome results.  In France, for instance, the upside down apple cake, the Tarte Tatin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarte_Tatin) was the outcome of not paying attention, tsk tsk, but here we are forever grateful for this kind of absent mindedness.  I have something of the sort to tell you today.

It starts with my being neither absent-minded nor lacking in attention but – and it’s a big but – being thoroughly involved in a good conversation with my friend visiting from Canada.  And since it was in preparation for dinner, I am sure there was a glass of wine lending oomph to whatever direction our talking was taking us (you know what it’s like when you start delving into ways of putting the world to right).  I usually pride myself on being able to cook and talk at the same time but I suppose this was the thin end of the wedge when it comes to Kitchen hubris – so, yes, indeed, note to self: next time re-evaluate your capabilities! You are not wonder woman.

If any of you have made spaghetti alle vongole, spaghetti in a clam sauce, you will know that it’s a good idea to let the clams rest in a bowl containing plenty of cold salted water for at least an hour, in order for them to ‘purge’ as they say in Italian, ‘spurgare’, any residues of sand that might still be hanging about in their shells. I mean … how hard can it be to pour salt into a bowl of water containing the clams, right?

Wrong.

I poured sugar instead of salt.  Unknowingly.

Picture my dismay as I went about rinsing said clams and discovered what I had done! Heeeeelp.  Catastrophe, disaster.  But, nothing daunted, I rinsed and rinsed and hoped for the best.  And, phew, the sauce turned out to be just fine and everyone commented on how good the spaghetti were. Oh, and of course, not a sign of even one grain of sand to be found. My wise Canadian friend, who is a dab hand at consoling, patted me on the back and suggested that, who knows?, maybe sugar is a better ingredient when it comes to purging clams of their sand?  That was just over a month ago, in September.

Yesterday I bought some mussels and … you know what? What the hell – mussels are a lot cheaper than clams, I decided I was going to try the sugar treatment on them too. (I found out decades ago that one way of cleaning mussels is to slather them in salt for a while; when it comes to scrubbing them clean, the salt makes the job easier).

Result?  I am beaming from ear to ear as I write this because, for whatever unbeknown chemical reason, the sugar must have interacted with all the crap/stuff that is attached to mussel shells so … when it came to scrubbing them … it all came off super easy!  Yay.

So my friends – from now on, I shall be sugar-coating these delicious pasta addition molluscs!

Talking of pasta recipes.

The menu for lunch today was: home-made tonnarelli with mussels.

For the tonnarelli: 70g semolina flour, 30g Italian 00 flour, 1 egg. 

DIRECTIONS FOR THE SAUCE – PHOTOS FOLLOW

Steam the mussels in a pan with a lid until they all open (I added 1 clove of garlic and a dribble of olive oil to the saucepan), cook the pasta, drain it and finish cooking it directly in the pan to which you add some of the cooking water.  Take the pan off the heat when done, and add plenty of grated pecorino romano cheese.  I happend to have a few king prawns left over from dinner last night, so I cooked them separately and added them too.  Waste not, want not and all that.  It was for lunch for my hubby.  He said it was good.

So the moral of the story is … a mistake (adding sugar to clams instead of salt) … led to new inroads in purging techniques, haha!, and to lunch for my husband today.  All’s well that ends well.

Have a good weekend everyone (those of us who are lucky enough to live in untroubled parts of the world, sigh).

Pecorino on the left, uncooked mussels in the middle, cooked kig prawns on the right.

The mussels in the pan with a dribble of olive oil and one solitary clove of garlic.

Mussels now open.

Below is the broth the mussels released, together with the prawns ready and waiting. I removed nearly all the mussels from the shells and added them too – oops, sorry, don’t have a photo for those but trust me they were there.

Let the tonnarelli cook in the mussel broth for a while, to absorb as much taste as possible. Then add a little cooking water and carry on cooking.

Take the pan off the heat and allow to cool a little. Now add pecorino (about 50g in all I should say, for 100g pasta) and stir stir stir to create a kind of cream.

Sprinkle more pecorino on top and serve with some of the mussels on the half shell.

I can admit that the above photo ain’t exactly appealing but …. see for yourself … the plate below speaks volumes.

Ah well, never mind.  I cooked some chicken, I thought it was good – good enough to write about and share with fellow home cooks.

This post is dedicated to Grace Kennedy in London who claims she hates to cook. Her posts on FB would suggest otherwise …

This time, only one solitary photo.  You shall just have to trust me that it tasted a lot better than it looked … and that the gravy it exuded was phenomenal and called for much bread mopping.  Also, I served it with plain white rice (not in the photo).

And now for the bla bla …

Let me start with a joke, the one below. When I read it, it prompted a chuckle as opposed to any LOL response, it was a little too close to the knuckle for that.

CONFUSION AS TO WHAT TO COOK

WIFE: You pick dinner …
HUSBAND: Burger
WIFE: No
HUSBAND: Tacos
WIFE:  No
HUSBAND: Subs (i.e. submarine sandwich)
WIFE: No
HUSBAND: Then what do you want?
WIFE: It is up to you

This is not too far off what happens regularly in our household.  The litany is thus: favourite husband wants to be helpful in coming up with dinner suggestions when asked.  And by ‘asked’, I mean questioned as a matter of course, as in “What would you like for dinner tonight?”.  The question sounds innocent enough, endearing even.  Yet that is not so. The big fat ‘but’ in this situation is that I need ‘inspiration’ and he needs acknowledgement which neither of us always gets, sigh.
He gets fed up with me because whatever he puts forward rarely meets with my assent.
He has a point, I’ll grant him. 
The flip side of the coin can be that his suggestions do not strike me as proper cravings, deep desires based on a real gastronomic interest – they are an astute way of engaging with me, of showing some level of polite gratitude. If he is not in the mood, he runs through a list of possibilities with the enthusiasm of a British weather forecast of yore (i.e. the pre Climate Change kind) – the one that was all about ‘sunny spells and scattered showers’.  Hardly the stuff to spark off culinary excitement.

Some of the time it’s because his suggestions do not match seasonal offerings and, more recently, it’s been about weight-watching and eschewing a congeries of enticing foods in the name of all that that entails.  In some respects, this makes it undeniably easy for me to rustle up dinner for him – give him any kind of meat/protein and a contorno (a vegetable side dish) and he’s a happy man (burgers without the bun by the way, in case you were wondering). As far as I’m concerned, however, it dials down the ardour and gusto associated with of cooking a meal. 

Cooking is a chore, let us not forget, it’s work, it’s why chefs are paid.  It’s not like having a massage.  I happen to love cooking – but by ‘love’ I mean the expectation, duration and outcome of the meal, the pleasure of all the senses involved in the act of eating.  I truly believe in the power of good food making people happy, making sense of the day at the very least.  What people who do not cook regularly sometimes do not realise is that home cooks are just as needy as professional chefs.  We want to be patted on our backs, we want gratification of the kind that makes us feel the whole effort was truly worthwhile. Hence, asking for a burger because one can’t think of anything else can be a little wide of the mark – unless one specifies, for instance, that it would be super if the burger came with caramelised onions, home-made mayonnaise and a fantastic salad to complement it.  Invoking frills and furbelows to round off the burger imbues the meal with intentionality, It makes the dish sound special and not just food to fill the hole of hunger.

When it comes to a meal, even a plain middle of the week one, I don’t want to hear any of the less-is-more nonsense.  The intention of adding pleasure just cannot be set aside.    Asking for less is just … well … ‘less’.  It’s lack lustre. Not every meal can or ought to be a feast and a repast of the quotidian kind need not be fussy –  but there are most definitely a few unimpeachable limits.  The ingredients have to be good, always, and the presentation should show an attention to loving detail – which in its narrowest embodiment boils down to the basics of setting the table as attractively as possible.  Or even a dinner tray if that is the way people prefer to eat.

Fortunately for the home cook, there is succour to be sought in the trick-tip-hack of novelty that underscores the famous proverb: variety is the spice of life.  Which brings me to a recipe I cobbled together with chicken and the reason for this post.

“Chicken, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. I remembered eating a fantastic chicken at my niece’s house in Sweden many years ago, comprising tarragon and sherry.  I seemed to remember it was a recipe by Elizabeth David.  Well, I have tarragon growing on my balcony.  It is very hard to come by tarragon in Italy, by the way, it’s not a staple herb here.  Except for around Siena I am told.  I did not have any sherry or port in the house but I did have Marsala, which I thought was close enough (all three being fortified wines).  I googled around for David’s chicken tarragon recipe but none seemed to correspond to what I had enjoyed that time in Sweden.  And then it dawned on me that the recipe might have been Delia Smith’s instead.  By then I’d made up my mind and decided to cook the chicken on the stove-top instead of the oven. Put bluntly, I customised and ‘italianized’ the recipe to suit my needs and pace both Elizabeth and Delia.

May I underscore that this recipe is truly very easy to execute and that the result is supremely satisfying – otherwise I would not have gone to the bother of writing about it.  Please note dear Grace Kennedy!

INGREDIENTS
It requires olive oil and butter, the chicken with its skin left on, cut into chunks (I did not use the drumsticks however), some cloves of garlic, left whole, some fresh tarragon and some parsley and a good splash of Marsala – allow the chicken pieces to kinda ‘swim’ in it.  Swim but not drown, please note.

METHOD TO THIS MADNESS
-Melt some butter in a saucepan and add olive oil, enough to cover the whole of the saucepan. 
-Place the chicken in the saucepan, skin-side down, and cook until you are able to move the chicken pieces without them sticking to the pan (at least five minutes, probably more).  And by ‘until’, I mean do not touch the chicken pieces, leave them well alone.
-Then turn them over on the other side and add at least 4 cloves of garlic and a good amount of tarragon and some parsley.  Cook for another five minutes?
-Now pour in the Marsala and cover the pan with a lid.  I honestly can’t remember how long I carried on cooking the chicken … probably for at least another 20 minutes, checking in on the pieces now and then. 

And voilà, lo and behold, you end up with an intriguing, rich, juicy and not-at-all-chewy or dried-up chicken. Oh, I forgot to mention that you should salt the chicken on both sides.  I added pepper at the very end, just before serving.

Favourite husband and I were both favourably impressed by this recipe for all the right reasons: the novelty, the feeling that it was ‘special’, and the simplicity and ease of execution.  If he asks for this recipe in the future, I shall not be at all sniffy about his request.

PS I actually really do love a good hamburger – but I like ‘em with all the trimmings, not as a last-resort meal-planning boring solution.

PPS As I was writing this post, I realised and not for the first time that, as rituals go,  there is a great deal of commonality between sex and food. Other obligations deprived me of the time to go into this topic but if you are interested at all, do click on the following link.  I found myself in total agreement with the author’s article.

Why You Should Think About Food Like You Think About Sex