Lemon, semolina and pistachio syrup cake

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I have a medium sized terrace in my apartment in inner Melbourne. Although the terrace gets very hot in summer, I have selected plants that are well suited to the heat. In addition to succulents, there are a few olive trees and a lemon tree. These hardy trees and plants remind me of the parts of Italy where the hot sun beats on the earth and ripens gorgeous citrus fruit.

My lemon tree on the terrace went through a terrible winter last year – its bark was severely damaged, probably by a possum. I went to the local nursery to find out what to do and was told that the tree would die. So every night, Mark brought the lemon tree into the apartment until we were sure that the possums had gone. When I started leaving the tree out at night, I wrapped the trunk in a thick layer of plastic, which I removed every morning. However by that time it was very sad looking and had hardly any leaves. After about 6 weeks, I started to leave the plastic off at night. I pruned the tree back and slowly the bark started repairing itself. Leaves grew and tiny white flowers bloomed and turned into lemons. Today I picked the first of six lemons that it produced. I was terribly excited – my tree had survived and I was eating its fruit.

In celebration of the lemon tree I made a lemon, semolina and pistachio cake drenched in lemon syrup. The cake has a sweet citrus tang and is dense and moist. It is lovely served with creme fraiche or Greek yoghurt. It lasts for days in the fridge. You could make it gluten free by substituting the semolina for super fine polenta and the small amount of flour with gluten free. It is lovely with a coffee on a cold afternoon.

Lemon, semolina and pistachio syrup cake
For the syrup:
1 cup water
240g caster sugar
50ml lemon juice
2 teaspoons lemon rind, finely grated
For the cake:
170g pistachios, shelled, unsalted and finely ground
140g self raising flour
100g fine semolina
150g butter at room temperature
150g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup of Greek yoghurt
extra pistachios for serving
extra Greek yoghurt for serving

Heat oven to 175 degrees. Line and grease a 23 cm cake tin with a removable base. To make the syrup place all the ingredients in a small saucepan on medium heat, Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Simmer about 10 minutes until the liquid thickens into a syrup. Remove from the heat and set aside.

To make the cake, place the dry ingredients (flour, semolina and nuts) in a large mixing bowl and stir until well combined. Set aside. Beat the sugar and butter until thick and pale (I used a KitchenAide but a hand held beater will do). Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. The next part you need to do by hand. Gradually incorporate the wet ingredients by thirds to the bowl of dry ingredients and mix well after each addition. Then add the Greek yoghurt and fold through until well incorporated. Place in the prepared tin and cook for an hour.

In the meantime, strain the syrup to remove any thick lemon zest. After 55 minutes, start checking the cake – it is cooked when a skewer comes out clean. Once it is cooked, remove form the oven and place on a wire cooling rack. With the skewer, place lots of little holes in the top of the cake. Pour on the syrup so that it runs into the cake through the holes. Let it cool in the tin. Serve with Greek yoghurt and scatter on some roughly chopped pistachios.

Eggplant and potato gnocchi

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Growing up I often ate potato gnocchi. My mamma made the best potato gnocchi and they were better than the ones that anyone else made. They melted in your mouth. It was always a special occasion when she made them as it was so much work – my sister and I would help by rolling them and curling them on a fork so that they would pick up more sugo when you were eating them. Lately I have been making gnocchi with different ingredients, such as with ricotta and last night I tried to make them with eggplant.

I love the taste of eggplants (also known as aubergine and called melanzane in italian). There are so many different shapes, sizes and colours – purple, black or stripy. They are very wet vegetables – in fact most recipes require that they are salted and drained prior to cooking (to allow the liquid to drain off). In last month’s Gourmet Traveller magazine (the Italian issue), there was a recipe for eggplant and potato gnocchi. It sounded delicious so I had to try – and I was intrigued by the taste and the concept.

I tried to followed the recipe in the magazine but I had to change it to get the consistency right – everything stuck to the bench when I was trying to incorporate the flour. The eggplant was so wet that I needed almost double flour to what the recipe called for. It ended up being a rather messy affair but it was absolutely worth the effort! The gnocchi were deliciously tender with a subtle taste of eggplant that made them a bit more complex than the regular potato ones. Mark and I ate them with a shredded pork ragu’ and scattered shavings of parmiggiano cheese and extra virgin olive oil. But they would also be perfect with a simpler sauce, such as burnt butter with crispy sage leaves and shavings of parmiggiano. The recipe below has my modifications and is with burnt sage butter – the pork ragu’ took four hours to make so I don’t think it will make it into this blog post! Serve this dish with a good pinot nero (otherwise called Pinot Noir). Buon appetito!

Eggplant and potato gnocchi
serves 4
500g Dutch cream potatoes (2 large)
450g eggplant (1 large)
1 egg
225 – 250g plain flour
50g parmiggiano, grated
salt
100g butter, unsalted
sage leaves, handful
Extra parmiggiano, shaved, to serve

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. Cut your eggplant in half lengthways and score the cut surface in a criss-cross pattern. Place on a baking tray with the eggplant cut side up and cook for 40-50 minutes until the flesh is soft and can be scooped away from the skin with a spoon.

Wash the skin of the potatoes and place them in a pot of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer with the lid on until the potato is cooked (about 40 minutes – test it with a fork). Pass the cooked potatoes through a potato ricer (remove the skin if it is not removed by the ricer) so they are finely mashed. Set the potato aside in a large mixing bowl. When the eggplant is cooked, remove it from the oven and spoon out the soft flesh and place it into a strainer. Press the eggplant to remove as much water as you can. There will be some harder bits left from where the top of the eggplant has cooked in the oven – I left this to add a bit of texture. Add the eggplant to the bowl with the potatoes. Wait for the vegetables to cool before proceeding.

Add an egg, the parmiggiano and a good pinch of salt to the bowl of mashed cooked vegetables. Add about 100g of the flour to the mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until it is mixed in. Place half of the remaining flour on your work board (I have a stone kitchen bench so I worked directly on that) and place the vegetable mixture on top of this. Incorporate the flour on the bench into the mixture folding it onto itself. It will still be fairly wet.

Keep adding the flour bit by bit until it is in a large rough ball. Place the ball back into the same bowl. Taste the mixture and adjust for salt. Now you are ready to roll your gnocchi.

Take out a handful of the mixture and place it onto a floured surface. Make long thin rolls about 1 cm wide. Cut the rolls into 1 cm pieces with a sharp knife and place on a floured surface. Repeat with remaining mixture until you have made dozens of tiny gnocchi. Dust with a bit more flour if needed.

Gnocchi with pork ragu’ – burnt butter would be just as good

To cook, bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add the gnocchi one at a time to the boiling water and cook until they rise to the surface (2 or 3 minutes). You will need to cook the quantity of gnocchi in this recipe in two batches or use two pots of water. Remove the cooked gnocchi from the water with a slotted spoon and place on serving plates.

For the burnt sage butter, place the butter in a small frying pan on medium heat. When the butter has melted add the sage leaves. Keep swirling the ingredients of the pan around and remove from the heat after the butter starts bubbling and turning slightly brown (4 to 5 minutes). The sage leaves should be crispy by then. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spoon the burnt butter onto the gnocchi making sure the sage leaves are evenly distributed between the plates. Scatter shaved parmiggiano.

The gnocchi are all gone

Pasta making – a family affair

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I love making pasta. There is something about rolling the pasta through that Imperia pasta making machine that does it for me every time.

A few weekends ago I went to my sister’s house to show a friend of hers how to make pasta. My big sister is a wonderful cook. She has been cooking for a lot longer than me. However she does not make pasta. Not that she hasn’t – she has a terrific pasta making machine that is sitting in her pantry gathering dust. It just isn’t her thing. So I went over a few Sundays ago armed with an apron and my Imperia pasta making machine.

We didn’t just make pasta, we made agnolotti (a type of stuffed pasta). In fact we made them for 9 people. That is a LOT of agnolotti. We used 1 kg of flour (a combination of 00 and semolina flour) and 10 farm laid organic eggs. As we had two pasta machines, it made it easier to teach another person. It was a lot quicker as well.

The eggs were very fresh – collected a few days before – and the egg yolks were very yellow, so we made beautiful glossy yellow pasta.

At one stage there were seven of us helping out – cutting the circles of pasta with a cookie cutter and stuffing the agnolotti. It was reminiscent of those italian family celebrations where everyone is involved in making the lunch. The filling had pork sausage, two types of mushrooms, dried porcini mushrooms, eggs and thyme. It was quite a pasta production line!

We cooked the agnolotti in plenty of salted boiling water and served them with extra virgin olive oil, shaved parmiggiano and truffle oil. We scattered some thyme, baby parsley and a bit of left over stuffing on top of the agnolotti. They looked beautiful and tasted even better. The truffle oil enhanced the flavours of the pork and mushrooms in the stuffing and the pasta was soft and rich.

Of course there was flour and egg shells everywhere but it was well worth it. It was a fabulous pasta-making affair!

Zuccotto – panettone and ricotta pudding – those two greedy italians have done it again

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I just can’t get them out of my head – those two Greedy Italians have won me over. I tried to stop thinking about their passionate love of food and shouts of “fantastic” but I just couldn’t. So I gave in completely to it. I had written about these fellows before but this time it was their zuccotto (which they called a layered ricotta and panettone pudding). I couldn’t stop thinking about it. On the tv show, Gennaro Contaldo starts dancing around when he eats it with cries of “ooooh mmmmm” while Antonio Carluccio looks to the heavens and tucks into it.

The zuccotto originally hails from Firenze (Florence) apparently because it is shaped like the dome of the Duomo (cathedral). It is actually a bit like an English trifle – but without the jelly – and of course it has a hefty dose of alcohol laden panettone. The word panettone comes from the word pane meaning bread. A panettone is a traditional Easter or Christmas cake in Italy and is a bit like a sweet bread. It can be made with or without sultanas and other candied fruit. I remember taking a slice to primary school for play lunch and the Australian children laughing at me. “Ooh it is so dry, why is there no icing?” they would ask. They remarked similar things when I took Italian cheese (like Piave) to school in my sandwiches. I even went through a stage of insisting my father buy Kraft cheese in a box in the mid 1970s so I could be like all the other little Australians. But I digress….back to panettone. Last week I went to the local supermarket Piedimonte and bought the last 3 panettoni they had in the red box (my favourite) so I could make zuccotti for the next few months.

Like Gennaro, I too danced around when I ate it. It is soft, creamy, festive and best of all it is terribly easy to make. It takes a bit of time to assemble but it is almost impossible to go wrong. I improvised with what I had in the pantry – no candied fruit? So I used dried figs. No almonds? So I used hazelnuts. No vinsanto (sweet dessert style wine)? So I used marsala. It still tasted amazing. The only problem is – it takes 6 hours to rest, in the fridge, weighted down, before you can eat it. So you need to plan ahead. It is glorious to eat for a festive occasion with a sweet wine or with a coffee. I ate it for breakfast today. Well it has ricotta in it so surely it is ok as breakfast food?!

Zuccotto*
750 g panettone, cut into slices (1.5 to 2cm thick) – you will have a bit left over
750g firm ricotta
120g icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (and some extra for dusting)
50g dark chocolate, grated
50g hazelnuts, chopped
3 large dried figs, chopped
150 ml Marsala
1.5 litre capacity bowl to use as a mould (mine was 16cm diameter)

Line the mould with several layers of overlapping plastic wrap. Make sure a lot hangs over the rim as you will need to fold it over the top the zuccotto and use it to help you lift it out when it is ready.

Divide your ricotta between 2 bowls and mix half the sugar into each. Use one spoon in each.

The top of the panettone is sliced and placed in the mould

Add the cocoa powder and chopped figs to one bowl of ricotta and add the nuts and grated chocolate to the other. Stir the contents into both so that you have two homogenous but quite different ricotta fillings. Set them aside.

Cut the top off your panettone in a slice. Place it at the bottom of the plastic wrap lined mould so that it covers the base.

Placing the ricotta in the panettone shell

Drizzle some of the Marsala onto the panettone in the mould so that it is reasonably soggy. Now you will need to construct the sides of your zuccotto. Cut more slices of panettone (I cut the panettone in vertical slices for the rest of the recipe).

Drizzle Marsala onto them and place them in the bowl, cutting them if necessary so they fit snugly against each other along the walls of the mould. Now add one of the ricotta mixtures to the prepared mould. Pat it down flat with the back of a spoon.

Unwrapping the zuccotto before removing from mould

Place a round slice of panettone over this so it covers all of the ricotta mixture and drizzle Marsala over it. Spoon on the second ricotta mixture and pat it down. Place the final slice of panettone so that it forms the lid of the zuccotto (this should be just above the level of the rim of the bowl) and drizzle the rest of the Marsala on it. Fold the plastic wrap over the zuccotto. Place a plate over the plastic wrap and weight it down (I used a 1 kg jar of anchovies on top of the plate).

Chill it in the fridge for at least six hours or even overnight. When it is ready, unwrap the top of the zuccotto and try to lift it up with the plastic wrap. Once you are sure that it lifts up, invert it onto a plate. Remove all the wrap and sift some cocoa powder over the top. Now you are ready to present it to family and friends at your celebration – just wait for the cries of “wow” from them!

* adapted from the Two Greedy Italians