Easy-cook risotto, couscous, rice puddings, fruit compotes all made by us

Greece with Gusto

2011-09-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Seems like months ago but it's just six weeks since we were in Greece on the tiny, unfashionable, road-and-car-less Trikeri island. Trikeri (Palio Trikeri) is tucked away in the South East corner of the Pagasitic Gulf - the gulf of Volos. Getting there by boat is quite easy - the island is popular with locals as a Summer weekend destination - but by car it's a two-and-a-half hour drive from Volos. That's when you get to Volos of course which itself is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Thessaloniki airport. We found Trikeri in the course of an internet search for places to stay on the posher East coast of the Pelion peninsula. But in the end the idea of a tiny unspoilt island only a mile-and-a-half long with 75 inhabitants, one village, one minimarket and two tavernas seemed too good to miss.

The (only) downside was to be the limited choice of food available in the shop - no fresh fish, bread delivered once a week - so our cooking choices were limited, too. We treated ourselves to the Taverna three or four times - the limit being money since the island has no bank or bancomat and a recent storm had somehow knocked out card readers in both taverna and shop, so conserving our cash was the order of the day.

Luckily I'd brought a selection of Gustosecco products with me - as one does - and we had several memorable meals using them as a base. The most delicious combination was our Pumpkin risotto with sausage and Kefalotiri cheese. The long, fresh sausages in the shop were made from pure, lean pork and herbs. Chopped into chunks and dry-fried they went wonderfully with the risotto into which I'd grated that lovely, semi-hard ewe's milk cheese that was sweeter and milder than Pecorino.

Pumpkin risotto with sausage

Vegetables from the shop were so fresh I cooked with them almost every day. Small aubergines, pointy mild green peppers, pale green bell peppers, sweet pink onions were all perfect for sprinkling with salt, rigani and chilli flakes and baking with olive oil. We ate them hot with Greek pasta, cold with fresh bread (once a week) and best of all with Siciliana risotto.

Siciliana risotto with roast vegetables

Vegetables ready for roasting

I'd also carried with me some packs of our new Grain Gourmet Bulghur with Red Pepper and Olive. We all love bulghur wheat which also features in Greek cooking but is most popular in Cyprus. We made lunches in minutes from our Grain Gourmet version adding chopped tomatoes, fresh feta and black olives.

Grain Gourmet bulghur with tomatoes and feta

Risottos and bulghur were perfect for us not only because they combined so well with local ingredients but also because cooking them was quick. One or two longish spells in front of the cooker in the combined heat of the early evening and the oven were enough! Cooking, eating, daily shopping, swimming, reading and siesta were the rythym of our delightful Trikeri days that passed happily and far too quickly.

If you're interested in Trikeri Island with its olive groves, rough tracks, little coves and calm, clean sea then I'd recommend visiting www.pelionlookoutvilla.com where you'll find the very informative website of Gail Egan from whom we rented her simple, pretty villa with its views over Pelion and Mount Tisaoro.

Island signpost

The lookout

Trilling News

2011-06-01T05:25:00.000-07:00

Last year I got a call from Romy Fraser who'd recently bought Trill Farm just over the border into Devon, near Axminster. Romy wanted to talk about drying fruit, vegetables and foraged produce on a commercial scale so naturally I said yes and we fixed a date.

The lane down to Trill can take the sump out of your car if you're not careful but as soon as I got past the last pothole I knew the journey was worth it. Trill Farm sits in a secluded valley just a few fields away from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage HQ Park Farm and it's beautiful.

Outside the house is a courtyard with lovely old wooden buildings on two sides one of which has been converted into a little reception area and an office for Romy and her team. The third side of the yard is a beautiful old stone barn with just one doorway capped with a carved mullion.

Go through the door and you enter the amazing, cool and dark space of the barn with its high open rood and huge wooden rafters. Stepping out again into the sunlight you see a wood-clad building on your left. Open the last door and you're into the dehydrator.

Unlike the way I started drying which is all about exposing the fruit or vegetables to hot air and ducting the moisture away Romy's setup uses a powerful dehumidifyer to extract moisture. It takes longer than conventional drying but it works. Around the room on the built-in shelves are lovely hand-made wooden boxes deep enough for loads of produce and each with a wire mesh at its base to aid air circulation. Looking into one of the boxes I found dried nettles - just like I used to make!

We talked about what kind of produce I'm looking for to use in Gustosecco products and also what hygiene controls need to be in place. With luck we'll be able to start incorporating real, local dried produce into our products later this year. Bringing provenance into dried foods and getting away from the industrialisation of the industry is a dream for us so fingers crossed we can make this happen.

In any event I really recommend you check out the courses and activities at Trill Farm on their website www.trillfarm.co.uk including their upcoming August family fun event:

Last but not least I still can't get Sicily and its wonderful choice of dried vegetables, fruits, herbs and even fish out of my mind. I'm using the Bottarga I brought back to shave over salads and pasta. Bottarga is wind-dried tuna roe and it's like tasting the sea itself. I've used uve pasolini - tiny Sicilian currants - with pine nuts, fennel fronds from the garden, sardines and bucatini to make pasta con le sarde and based on a recipe from the Greek cookbook Vefa's Kitchen published by Phaidon I've used the glorious datterini variety I bought at the Siracusa market to make fried sundried tomatoes. Delicious - and I'll be sharing the recipe in my next blog.

In the meantime waving a goodbye to and from Sicily are Angela and Francesca with Camilla the dog in their fantastic Siracusan emporium of Sicilian produce including bottarga, wild fennel preserves and pesto, Trapani sea salt and scarlet-red dried cherry tomatoes that I'm going to deep fry for the intrepid Stephen just back from clambering around Sicilian volcanoes. I'll add some chilli since he obviously likes things hot!

Edible Sicily - part 2. The pics

2011-03-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

Images to add relish to our second blog posting

Herbs, spices, nuts, nuts and fruits at Dainotti in Palermo's Capo market

Angela and Francesca (and Camilla the dog) at their shop selling sundried tomatoes, bottarga and a wonderful selection of pesto on Via del Corso in Siracusa

Wild fennel - essential ingredient of Pasta con le Sarde - growing wild in the mountains at Pantalica

Sardines on sale at Bellaro market, Palermo

Edible Sicily - part two

2011-03-02T10:42:00.001-08:00

Although the (fairly indistinct) tan on my face is starting to fade after our trip ended two weeks ago my appreciation of the food we ate in Sicily just continues to grow.

Traveling around the island in Winter and looking at the markets shows just how much respect Sicilian cooks have for dried vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs, legumes and fish. They show up on market stalls and in shops, proudly displayed, and trade is brisk. From wind-dried sardines to sundried tomatoes, bunches of mountain herbs, heaps of beans and pulses, candied fruits, piles of Bronte pistachios, seasoning blends of herbs and garlic or onion, spices and dried fruit. For me it's wonderful to see how obviously dried foods fit in to this cuisine. British cooks and food manufacturers by contrast prefer to disguise their presence if they use them at all. Do you agree?

One of Sicily's most famous dishes relies on two dried ingredients; pine nuts and currants. Pasta con le Sarde is an aniseedy, sweet and fishy sauce for spaghetti or bucatini. It blends those pine nuts and raisins together with Sicilians' much-loved wild fennel (finocchio selvatico) sardines, anchovies, a little saffron and onion. This sauce may be an acquired taste but I fell in love with its distinctive flavour when I first visited Palermo almost 25 years ago and struggled home with tin after tin of the mixture in my luggage. For me part of its distinction is the way in which it naturally blends fresh with dried ingredients. Of course they're no ordinary ingredients. The pine nuts must be the long, ivory, waxy kind and the currants can't be ordinary currants. Instead Sicilians demand uve passolini; tiny, intensely sweet raisins found, as far as I can see, only in Sicily. Naturally I've brought some home to cook with in the hope that I can somehow recreate that wonderful flavour that is the essence of Sicily's diverse culinary heritage embracing Arab, Spanish and Italian and using ingredients of the land - fresh and dried.

There are many recipes for Pasta con le Sarde on the internet - browse and choose and you'll find many that recommend slightly different ingredients and suggest substitutes for those that are hard to find.

Last but not least the dish is usually finished off with toasted breadcrumbs; either a substitute for or an alternative to the ubiquitous grated Parmesan. It was Sicilians' use of breadcrumbs to add texture to cooked pasta that inspired Nicoise and Toscanino in Gustosecco's Garni range.

Next time: Pasta sauce with almonds, pizza with breadcrumbs, dried tuna roe, arancini, delicious antipasti in an unlikely setting.

Spellings: having been a copy editor for many years I know the difference between a typo(graphical error) and a mistake. Apologies: the Ceres Stone at Enna mentioned in my last blog is of course the Rocca di Cerere. If I've made any mistakes with my Italian in this blog - let me know!

Springtime in Sicily

2011-02-22T02:28:00.000-08:00

Picture: Almonds in blossom on the last day of the Almond Blossom Festival, Valle dei Templi, Agrigento

For us sunshine-starved North Europeans a trip to Sicily in the month of February is like time-travel to the month of May. The island light and warmth have already started to make Spring flowers bloom and while Sicilians are still wrapped up for Winter we could so easily scandalise them by stripping off, running and jumping into the clear inviting sea for a swim.

For the classical world Sicily was the land where Spring was reborn every year. When Dis compelled Persephone to come down to his kingdom it was the lake of Pergusa at the island's centre that opened to let her in. Maddened by grief and pain her mother Ceres looked for her daughter everywhere until she reappeared at Winter's end then and every year bringing the Spring with her. The lake of Pergusa is there still; a large pond fringed by reeds, an incongruous motor-racing track, hotels and Summer houses. But if you're of a mythical frame of mind you can make your way up to the Rocca di Cecere ('Ceres' Stone'), a rocky outcrop near the town of Enna that looms above the lake, to look down on the water and feel a sense of the mystery of the changing seasons.

Picture: Wild fennel, market stall, Siracusa

In the markets of Sicily stalls are laden with fresh green-leaved vegetables from spinach to cardoons, from the familiar bulb fennel to 'baby' fennel and its mountain-growing cousin the wild fennel (finocchio selvatico) which the Sicilians love so much. Fields covered with polytunnels on the island's Southern coast yield fresh tomatoes and aubergines but market stalls are laden with the dried produce from last year's scorching Summer: Cherry tomatoes, 'date' tomatoes, red peppers, tiny raisins ('uve passolini') and all kinds of dried herbs sold loose from large jars or in knotted plastic bags for one or two euros.

Picture: Dried goods shop, market, Siracusa

Whole shops and market stalls are devoted to selling dried and preserved produce: Tins of tuna, jars of tomatoes, beans, rice, tuna and mullet bottarga, wind-dried sardines, salted anchovies, salted capers, branches of oregano and bay, spices, candied peel, pesto made with tomatoes and almonds (Trapenese) or alla Siciliana (with pistachio). And then there are the pistachios themselves from Bronte on the slopes of Etna; emerald green, soft and sweet. Sweet also means torrone, jams to be eaten by the teaspoon for breakfast, Modica chocolate and clear island honey.

Picture: market stall, Capo, Palermo

Each market from Siracusa to the Capo in Palermo is the perfect antidote to supermarket shopping. Everything fresh is to be cooked and eaten on the same day and almost everything else can be stored without refrigeration. It's this simplicity which inspired Gustosecco in the first place and coming back here to these busy warrens of tiny streets crammed with the ingredients that inspire me is to dive headfirst into warm Spring after a long, cold Winter.

Picture: 'Date' tomatoes from a named grower, market stall, Siracusa

Picture: Dried sardines on sale, market stall, Capo, Palermo

Please come back soon for a second helping of Sicily...

2011-01-25T01:39:00.001-08:00

2011-01-18T06:15:00.001-08:00

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