ricotta gnocchi with peas, fava beans and mint

What a joy it is to find fresh peas and fava/broad beans at the market! It heralds the start of Spring when trees start to bud and the air is lighter and happier. I love podding beans. It is so relaxing. I put on jazz or a podcast and sip on herbal tea as I pod away, a few sweet green jewels finding their way into my mouth. I especially love the “pop” the peas. Fresh peas and fava beans so lovely on their own but I love to marry them with pasta or gnocchi, fresh herbs and cheese. They sing out Spring and the warmth in the air even more.

I love this combination with ricotta gnocchi. I first made them following the recipe by Fabrizia Lanza in her cookbook “Coming home to Sicily”. Fabrizia is a beautiful soul. I had the privilege of running a couple of 5-day workshops at her famed cooking school in central Sicily in 2016 and 2017. What a joyful and memorable time that was….sigh, I miss Sicily. If you have never heard of Fabrizia or been to the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School (where everything you make and eat is grown locally and made from scratch), you can find out more here. It should seriously be on every foodie’s bucket list.

In the meantime, the recipe below is based on Fabrizia’s recipe. It serves 3-4 people and is lovely and light. And very pretty as well.

ricotta gnocchi with peas, fava beans and mint

450g ricotta, well drained
1 large egg
3 - 4 tablespoons plain flour
2 - 3 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated (plus extra to serve)
1 egg, lightly whisked and mixed with
fine semolina, for dusting
100g butter, unsalted
a couple of handfuls each fresh podded peas & fava/broad beans handful baby mint leaves 1 small lemon, zest only (optional)

To make the gnocchi place the ricotta and egg in a bowl and mash with a fork until creamy. Add flour and parmesan and stir; the mixture will be quite soft but should stay together. Place a handful of the mixture on a working surface that has been well dusted with the semolina and roll into a long rope. Cut into pieces 2-3 cm and roll in more semolina. Repeat with remaining ricotta mix and set aside, spaced out and covered in a clean tea towel.

Double pod the older/larger fava beans by plunging individual beans in boiling salted water for a minute; then drain and remove the outer pod. Blanch the peas and smaller/younger fava beans in salted boiling water for a minute, then drain.

Place a large frying pan on the stove on low to medium heat and melt the butter.

Bring a large wide pot of salted water to the boil and cook the gnocchi in batches, draining them with a slotted spoon as the rise to the surface and placing them in the large pan with the melted butter.

Gently toss the cooked gnocchi in the butter and scatter on the peas and fava beans until warmed through. Serve topped with mint leaves, extra grated parmesan and lemon zest.

pear and blue cheese ravioli

It felt like autumn today. It was wet, windy, people at the market were wearing their jackets again after a long hot summer and somehow it felt just the way it should. I have really been looking forward to autumn this year. It has been incredibly humid and mosquitoes have found me particularly attractive, especially at night when I hear them buzzing around me, waiting to attack.

The market today did not disappoint my wintery outlook - it was full of autumnal fruits and vegetables: parsnips, cauliflowers and pears. As much as I love summer stone fruit, beautifully ripe Williams pears called me today and I bought a big bag, thinking I might make a pear and chocolate cake. But once I had got home, the cold weather made me crave pasta. I have been so busy since the start of the year taking photos for my cookbook (which is all about street food with no pasta dish in sight), I suddenly realised that the last time I had made pasta at home was November last year.

Once I had made up my mind to make a pasta dish, the rest was easy. Pears and blue cheese are a match made in heaven and as long as you can make pasta, this dish is easier than you think. The filling is literally just blue cheese, a bit of cream and pears cooked in butter for 5 minutes. The sauce is simple - just a bit of melted butter. You could also top the whole dish with some roughly chopped toasted walnuts or drop a couple of sage leaves in the buttery sauce.

This one is a lovely warming dish for an autumn evening, with a glass of buttery Chardonnay and some bitter greens, pan fried with garlic and  drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice on the side.

PEAR AND BLUE CHEESE RAVIOLI

serves 4 as an entree (makes 18 ravioli, at 8cm diameter)

for the pasta:

200g 00 durum wheat flour
2 large eggs

for the filling:

2 ripe Williams or Packham pears (230g peeled and cored)
10g unsalted butter
125g creamy blue cheese (sweet Gorgonzola or Blue Castello)
2 tablespoons thickened cream
salt and pepper to taste

semolina flour for dusting
100g unsalted butter (for the sauce)
extra freshly ground pepper

To make the pasta, put the flour in a mound on your work surface and make a well in the centre. Break open the two eggs into it and either using your finger tips or a fork, gradually incorporate the flour until it is all mixed in to the eggs. Knead until smooth (around 5 minutes). Form a ball with the dough, wrap in cling film and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes (a couple of hours is fine).

In the meantime, make the filling. Peel and core the pears, chopping them into small dice. Place them with 10g butter in a small pan and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes until soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Place the blue cheese and cream in a mini-processor and process until smooth. Place in a bowl and add the cooled pears, fold through until homogeneous and add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Divide the dough in two, keeping one piece wrapped in cling film while you work on the other one. Make the pasta by running it through your pasta machine until it is the desired thickness (I ran it through to the fourth thinnest setting “6” on an Atlas pasta machine).

I used an 8 cm diameter ravioli cutter to make my ravioli. Place heaped teaspoons of filling on your pasta sheet. Wet your finger with water and run it around the filling before folding the pasta onto itself so that the little mounds of filling are completely covered by pasta. Push down around the filling so that the pasta is well sealed, taking care not to trap air into the raviolo. Use your ravioli cutter to make circle around the filling where you have sealed the pasta. Lightly dust the ravioli  with semolina flour. Repeat, keeping the prepared ravioli covered by a clean teatowel as you make others so they do not dry out.

Place a large pot of well-salted water on the stove and bring to the boil. Drop in the ravioli when the water boils and cook until al dente (mine took 6-7 minutes).

Whilst the ravioli are cooking, put 100g of unsalted butter in the pan (I use 25g per person) and heat until melted. Drop the well drained, cooked ravioli in the melted butter and toss for a minute or two so they are well covered in melted butter. Serve immediately with a bit of freshly ground pepper on top and sea salt flakes to taste.

Spaghetti al limone – spaghetti with lemon

We landed back in Australia a week ago today, after three glorious months in Italy and an epic road trip along the Adriatic coast. As the trip was essentially a research trip for my next book Adriatico, days were spent talking to the locals, shopping in markets, taking photos of locations, and lots of eating and tasting the traditional local foods.

My original plan had included cooking along the way, so I could start testing recipes as we travelled. I had rented predominantly Air BnB apartments with kitchens, though their definition of a kitchen differs somewhat from mine, as some had little more than a place to heat up food in pans that were slightly suspect and blunt knives. Other kitchens, such as in the apartments I stayed in Otranto (Puglia), Trieste and Ravenna were very good, so I managed to do more cooking. And it wasn’t just cooking for the book; it was also cooking just to eat - regular food when we were tired of restaurants or when we had spent more than the budget I had put away for the trip on that day.

There was one recipe I returned to again and again during our travels - spaghetti al limone (spaghetti with lemon). And before you start thinking “oh, lemons and cream” - there is no cream in this, and it is simple enough to make in the most ill-equipped kitchen with a bare minimum of ingredients.

I have my Instagram friend Frank Prisinzano to thank for this one. He talks through recipes on Instagram and I was in Trieste in March when he posted about this dish. He is passionate about Italian food and cooking, with a focus on understanding the ingredients, thinking about what you are doing and why you are doing it. For Frank’s version (and my adopted version) of spaghetti al limone for two people, all you need is spaghetti, one lemon (preferably unsprayed), butter and finely grated parmesan cheese, and to follow a couple of rules:

- make sure the pasta cooking water is well salted

- taste it to check

- rather than adding salt later

- have all your ingredients ready before you start cooking the spaghetti; timing is key and the sauce needs to be made as soon as the spaghetti is on the harder side of “al dente”

- have a second pot on the stove warmed up for stirring the lemon and butter and the cooked pasta. If you stir it in a cold bowl/pot, the pasta will stop cooking immediately, the butter will not melt and the dish will not be as creamy

- make sure the parmesan cheese (Grana or Parmigiano Reggiano) is finely grated so that it melts completely and adds to the creaminess of the dish

So here is the recipe that got me through cooking in apartments with little equipment and even fewer ingredients sometimes in remote places all through Italy.

spaghetti al limone - lemon spaghetti

Serves 4

320-400g dried spaghetti (portions are 80-100g per person)
2 organic small/medium lemons
160g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
80g finely grated parmesan cheese
freshly cracked pepper
extra-virgin olive oil (optional)

Bring a large salted pot of water to the boil. While it is boiling prepare your other ingredients; squeeze the lemons and keep the lemon halves to one side; finely grate the cheese and set aside; chop the butter.

When the water is boiling, drop in the spaghetti, pushing it down using tongs when it starts to soften to make sure it is immersed in the water and cooks evenly. Give it a cook stir when it is all immersed to ensure it does not stick together. Taste the cooking water to make sure it is salty enough.

Place your serving plates in a low oven to keep them warm. Have a second pot ready and warm on the stove to make the sauce, turning off the heat just before you add the cooked spaghetti.

Taste the spaghetti to check that is is cooked just slightly short of the point at which is it cooked to your liking. Lift up the pasta using tongs into the second warmed pot. It is ok if some of the cooking water drops in. Now add the chopped butter and lemon juice and stir using a wooden spoon until it becomes creamy, adding more cooking water if needed. Drop in the reserved lemon halves as well. It may take a minute of stirring until it is really creamy.

Then stir in the grated cheese until it melts and pile onto warmed serving plates. Scatter on some freshly cracked pepper, drizzle a bit of extra virgin olive oil (optional) and add a bit more cheese if you like (this is my preference, I like to see the cheese on top). Garnish with a lemon half and serve immediately.

Cavatelli with sausages, peas and cinnamon

Today I will be sharing one of my favourite non-vegetarian pasta sauce dishes. I eat very little meat (and fish) for environmental and ethical reasons, usually once a week, and a bit more so in winter.

My local butcher Matt from the Butcher’s Block in Clifton Hill makes the best sausages at the back of his shop. I love the pork and fennel sausages he makes as well as the Mediterranean lamb. I love to break the sausages into chunks and turn them into a pasta sauce. Apart from the sausages, this is a pantry ingredient dish with peas and tomatoes. It is nothing fancy but thoroughly delicious, especially when you add chilli flakes and a hint of powdered cinnamon.

Frozen peas are the only frozen vegetable I use; they are so convenient and the baby ones are really very good. I always have a bag or two in the freezer. They are great with ricotta (replace the usual spinach with peas to make a filling for a savoury pie); in a braise with some ham or pancetta (this was one of my mamma’s signature dishes); cooked with garlic, olive oil and a splash of white wine until they are soft and mushy (then eaten with potato mash); and with tinned tomatoes. I mean, how good are frozen baby peas?!

I made my own cavatelli for this dish, using semolina flour and water. Cavatelli are a traditional Sicilian pasta shape and they look very even because I have a hand cranked cavatelli rolling machine (the brand is Miss Peppa, made in Italy) that spits out cavatelli quickly and evenly. They can also easily be made by hand using a gnocchi board to make the ribbed contour which catches sauce, but the machine is a bit quicker.

Cavatelli with sausages, peas and cinnamon

Serves 4

400g dried or fresh cavatelli pasta
3 pork and fennel sausages
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine
1 tin (440g) good quality peeled tomatoes (eg Mutti)
1/2 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
good pinch of dried chilli flakes
2/3 cup frozen peas
grated parmesan cheese to serve  

fresh parsley or mint leaves, chopped, to serve  

Remove the casings from the sausages and break up the meat into chunks. Add a glug of olive oil to a medium-sized frypan on medium-high and add the sausage pieces. Cook for about 8 minutes until the meat has cooked through, stirring every minute or so, then add the wine.

Let that cook off for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle on the cinnamon, the chilli flakes and the tin of tomatoes. Turn the heat down to medium low and allow to simmer before adding the peas. Stir them through then cook for another ten or so minutes. If the sauce starts to look a bit thick, dilute it with a bit of pasta cooking water (see below). 

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook until just before it is done to your liking. Set aside half a cup of cooking water before draining the pasta in a colander. Add the drained pasta to the frypan with the sauce, and allow it to cook on medium heat for another minute, stirring the contents of the pan so that the sauce covers the pasta, and adding a bit of the cooking water that you have set aside if needed. Taste and adjust the salt if needed.  

Serve sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese and some fresh parsley or mint leaves.