Hello from London! Today I’m sitting in a cosy kitchen in London, the sky as you can easily imagine is leaden gray and it is also fairly cold. What am I doing here? let’s step back a few months…

As soon as I knew that my contract wouldn’t have been renewed I bought a ticket (a return ticket, don’t worry Mum) to London, to turn at least one of my many projects into reality: I wanted to work on my blog for a while from here with my friend Sarka, because every time we meet with her and the other friends from the Foodblogger Connect network interesting ideas are developed and I feel recharged, filled with life blood.

The plan is simple: I will keep on living the usual life that I would have had at home, but from a different point of view for two weeks, plus there will be some interesting meetings for my future work, fun, friends and so much food!

So here I am, trying to look at things from the outside, because thinking out of the box helps to streamline the projects, put them in order but even sometime make them more risky, or hopefully to see tiny back lanes you wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

When English people want to relax and find inspiration, they come to Tuscany, they visit the Chiantishire and live a gratifying experience under the Tuscan Sun, getting willingly lost in our rolling hills. On the contrary, I bought a ticket to spend some time under the British rain, to immerse myself into the buzzing city life of London, but also in the peaceful English countryside… My focus remains the same, my country, but sometimes it is useful to abstract yourself and look at your life with different eyes, or simply see what’s out of your kitchen garden, to come back home crammed with popping energy.

Thus, being focused on genuine country cooking dishes, I cannot offer you nothing better than this hearty and cosy winter soup, made with a fruity extra virgin olive oil from Umbria and roveja. The Roveja wild pea was grown for centuries on high altitude terrain in the Sibillini mountains in Umbria where it was part of the staple diet of the local population. It almost disappeared from tables completely until it was recovered by a Slow Food Presidium. Roveja is a small wild pea with a dark brown, reddish or dark green colour (you can find more info here).

Add a sprig of thyme for a touch of pungent green and a generous handful of sourdough bread croutons for a crispy crunchiness.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Cosy winter soup: spelt and roveja with thyme

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One of the elements of the Tuscan cuisine that most fascinates me and makes me proud is that there are just a few rules, but they are to be regarded as a dogma. These rules describe concisely – through the pairing of ingredients, herbs and spices – our culinary culture and Nature’s seasons. These rules are interpreted by every family, according to their personal tastes and likes.

At home my mother is the strictest judge in the enforcement of these rules, which apply equally to stuffed vegetables and legumes – herb matches.

If the rosemary – intense and camphorated with a distant incense smell – traditionally marries beautifully with roast meat, baked potatoes and grilled meats, for us its flavour calls for chickpeas and a hearty sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

The cooking of chickpeas is apparently long, but actually it does not require any kind of assistance. If you organize yourself the night before to soak the legumes overnight, you can cook them the day after without too much trouble. No bans, however, to use pre-cooked chickpeas, provided they are of excellent quality… I recently converted to the legumes cooked in strict accordance to the rules, though, and I have to admit that there is no comparison, especially in simple preparations, where the flavour and the texture of the chickpeas are the protagonists.

The chickpeas purée is one of the dishes that most remind me of autumn, one of the first dishes that, with its warmth and creaminess, sign the passage to the season during which coming back home and finding a hot soup is synonymous of family.

Do you have leftover chickpeas? There is nothing better than hummus to use them!

Everyone has his own recipe, this is mine! Blend the chickpeas in a liquidizer or with an immersion blender along with a few tablespoons of their cooking water, a clove of garlic, a quarter of a red onion, a heaping tablespoon of tahini, a pinch of salt, freshly ground black pepper, a generous deal of extra virgin olive oil and some lemon juice. It is ready to spread or dip in in two minutes, creamy and inviting. You can serve it with a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds, a sprinkle of paprika or a finely sliced fresh chili pepper, to add a spicy and fruity note.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Chickpeas puree with cod

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1. Chickpeas and cumin paté
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Every time I tell myself I need to do things slowly, one after another. You just need a bit of organization, don’t you? I bought a black Moleskine on purpose, to scribble down projects, deadlines and ideas (yes, this is the official excuse, the truth is that I like to show it out at every opportunity, I’d love to be called the girl with the black Moleskine*!). Yet every time I find myself flooded with things to do, overlapping deadlines, four windows open on my desktop with a half written post, pictures in post production (what a resounding word, it seems that we are here working on a Vogue photocall!), e-mails to far-away friends and another brilliant blog post that I’d want to comment on.

It happens the same when I’m in the kitchen: I often have only the weekend to try the dozens of recipes going on through my mind during the week, so usually on Saturday mornings I put fire to the kitchen, there’s a pot boiling on the stove, the oven timer rings , the blender is on and there’s a knife dangerously poised on the cutting board. I desperately want to try everything and I invariably find myself in a battlefield.

* Yeah, I’ve read I love shopping, and you?

Grandma is different. Last Saturday we made together these fish-balls and while we were cooking she kept on tidying up the kitchen, methodically, taking off the dirty pots, putting away the sugar on the shelf (yes, sugar, belonging to the previously baked dessert… no sugar in the fish-balls!) and so on, step by step.

This is something that I still have to learn, both from grandma and mum: the order – first of all a mental one – when I am working in the kitchen. But when I teach my cooking classes for children during the local farmer’s market I become a control freak, and before going ahead with the next recipe they have to tidy up the table. I clearly do not practise what I preach!

Is it possible to make Summer Solstice’s resolution? Am I on time? There will be more order in my kitchen. Let’s try!

And since we are in the week completely dedicated to the health issue, let’s put order in our diet, once again following the advice of Marco Bianchi, the young chef and researcher who elaborated these recipes in cooperation with the Umberto Veronesi Foundation.

OMEGA 3 FISHBALLS  (WITH SWORDFISH, COD, ANCHOVIES AND CHICKPEAS)

Marco Bianchi’s recipe

Ingredients:

• 150 g of swordfish, diced
• 150 g of cod, diced
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic
• 4 anchovies
• chilli
• salt
• pepper
• 250 g cooked chickpeas
• 6 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
• parsley

Directions:

1. Sauté the diced swordfish with the cod, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the chopped garlic (I’ve put the whole clove of garlic in the pan and removed it after a few minutes, so that it could just infuse the flavour, because Dad does not like garlic!).
2. As soon as the fish is cooked, add the chickpeas and cook them with the fish for about 10 minutes.
3. Chop the anchovies and stir them into pan with the other ingredients.
4. Season the fish with chilli and pepper but taste it before adding the salt, because the anchovies are very tasty.
5. Put the fish in the glass of the mixer and blend until everything is homogeneous. Stir in the breadcrumbs (just 3 tablespoons) and the chopped fresh parsley.
6. Shape the fish mixture with your hands into small balls and coat them with the remaining breadcrumbs.
7. Lay the fishballs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 30 minutes at 200°C.
8. Serve them warm or cold with spicy tomato sauce flavoured with wasabi and ginger or with a vegan mayonnaise with parsley. I’ve served the fishballs with the following milk mayonnaise.

While I was shaping the fishballs with my hands and I was passing them on grandma to have them coated in breadcrumbs, we were happily commenting on how easy and fun to make they are. They’ll be delicious for sure, I said. And grandma, with her usual down-to-earth tone: we’ll see when they are ready, the ingredients are good for sure… and of course the fishballs were really tasty and light, appetizing both for children and grown-ups scared by the fish bones! Grandma’s comment is worth a thousand words: write down the recipe, we should make them again!

Reading the previous recipe I was hooked by the wasabi and ginger tomato sauce, I will definitely try it sooner or later. Last week I was run out of ginger and wasabi, though, so I decided to serve the fishballs with a new to me mayonnaise, made without egg. Is it a Harry Potter’s spell or is it just a chemistry mystery? The fact is, following Marco Bianchi’s advice I got a light and creamy mayonnaise, a silky sauce to dress the fishballs.

MILK MAYONNAISE

Marco Bianchi’s recipe

Ingredients:

• 150 ml skimmed milk
• 150 ml extra virgin olive oil
• 150 ml of corn oil
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• salt
• pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• chives to serve

Directions

1. Gather all the ingredients into the immersion blender glass and blend to the maximum speed for about 7 minutes.
2. If the mayonnaise is not  ”smooth” enough, add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and continue to blend.
3. Serve it cold from the fridge to bring out the flavour. It can be enriched with a pinch of garlic powder or finely chopped chives.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Fishballs with milk mayonnaise

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Here we are with our second recipe dedicated to leftover beans. After a light and rapid bean soup, it’s time to try a strong and flavorful dish that you can use either as a side dish and as a second course to all intents and purposes. Maybe you won’t wait for leftover beans but you will cook beans just to make this dish, once tried. Have you ever heard of beans uccelletto style?

The name is due to Pellegrino Artusi, who named those beans after the kind of cooking they require, since they need the same ingredients (sage leaves, garlic and olive oil) as little game birds (uccelletto in Italian). We add sausages to make them really tasty, as they were always at disposal in farmers houses.

Ingredients:

• Beans
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sage leaves
• Pork sausages
• Tomato sauce
• Garlic
• Salt and Pepper

As you can easily see, these are the same ingredients we used last week to make bean soup but the sausages. As last week, I won’t give you quantities, it all depends on how many leftover boiled beans you have.

Heat in a large saucepan a few tablespoons of olive oil with a clove of garlic (don’t peel it) and some leaves of sage. When the garlic has flavored the olive oil and sage leaves are crispy, remove the garlic and pour in beans with some spoonfuls of their cooking water, add a few tablespoons of tomato sauce to redden beans. Season with salt and pepper.

Bring to a simmer and let cook for half an hour or so, then add sausages without the external skin and keep on cooking until sausages are completely cooked through.

Serve hot with some toasted slices of Tuscan bread to dip into the sauce and eat sausages!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: beans ‘all’uccelletto’

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In my family there are few strict rules that should be respected as law:

1. don’t oversleep in the morning;
2. during dinner, no cartoons! News channel or chat among us;
3. cook beans with sage, chickpeas with rosemary.

If you ask mum why beans & sage and chickpeas & rosemary, she will tell you it’s always been so! Granddad Remigio used to make this coupling, Grandma Menna still does so.

Tuscan people really love beans: in every restaurant, from posh ones to cheap ones, from genuine taverns to touristic places, you’ll find beans as side dish. Beans and pulses in general are easy to recycle in other dishes, so today I’ll show you a good way to use leftover beans. Next week, another solution!

::::: BEAN SOUP :::::

Ingredients:

• Beans
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sage
• Tomato sauce
• Garlic
• Salt and pepper

I won’t give you quantities, as you can make this recipe by sight.

Puree boiled beans. You can use an electric blender or a classic vegetable mill: if you are making a soup for a child, it’s better if you use a vegetable mill as, doing so, you won’t incorporate air into the soup and you will avoid the risk to cause colics to this poor child. You can help yourself pureeing beans with some cooking water, according to the density you prefer.

Heat a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan with some sage leaves and a clove of garlic. When the garlic is golden and has given its flavor to the olive oil, pour in pureed beans into the pan and add 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce: your beans will be pretty pink!

Season with salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Let cook until beans will be flavored by olive oil and garlic and tomato will loose its raw taste. You can eat bean soup as it is, or you can boil short pasta in it, rice or spelt (I prefer spelt!).

If you have leftover bean soup, fill up plastic bottles (not to their maximum capacity, otherwise they will explode into the freezer) and freeze them. When you’ll feel like bean soup, thaw it and it will be ready to warm you during next autumnal evenings.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: bean soup

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This is a quick appetizer I made yesterday to celebrate Grandma’s birthday (she was born on the 16th, but are taking it easy!). It’s a fusion finger food: on one hand, you have a tuscan background, due to chickpeas flavoured with garlic and rosmary, on the other hand you have an oriental hint, thanks to cumin and tahine, which reminds you of Indian side dishes.

I used an home made bread to serve, flavoured with cumin, sesame seeds, poppy seeds and pine seeds.

Ingredients:

• precooked canned chickpeas, 250 gr drained
• rosmary, 1 spring
• garlic, 1 clove
• cumin, 1 teaspoon
• tahina, 2 teaspoons
• extra-virgin olive oil
• salt & pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in a small sausepan with a garlic clove and a rosmary spring. When the garlic is well coloured and golden, drain chickpeas and pour them in with a few tablespoons of their water. Season with salt, pepper and cumin. Let cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid them to stick to the pan.

Remove from the heat and remove garlic and rosmary. Add 2 teaspoons of tahine and blend thoroughly. The paté is ready to be spread on bread croutons or to be served with bread sticks.

My bread was made with a bread machine – yay! finally we get it! – so here you have all the ingredients for a big loaf of spiced bread:

Ingrediens for a cumin and seeds bread:

• plain flour “0”, 275 gr
• wholemeal flour, 225 gr
• warm water, 325 ml
• extra-virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon
• ornage honey, 10 gr
• fresh yeast, 15 gr
• poppy seeds, 10 gr
• sesame seeds, 50 gr
• pine seeds, 15 gr
• ground cumin, 1 teaspoon
• salt, 5 gr

Quick baking (2h e 20). Dark crust.

Cumin smell is very strong. I had 2 slices of this bread for breakfast with plum jam… I know, it is a very unusual coupling, but – believe me – it was delicious!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Chickpeas and cumin paté

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