Choke on it, or, Not being perfect, as demonstrated by the artichoke

There are people – they know who they are, and, in all honesty, I know who they are too – who are very, very good at food. They know it all. It’s old hat. No surprises. Who’ve forgotten how to be intimidated.

I am not one of those cooks. I forget to sharpen my knives and I don’t measure things. I can’t pronounce half the fancy French things I like to eat. I once dropped a roast leg of lamb on the kitchen floor in front of guests before serving it. I have set fire to my own saucepans making soup. I tried to make stock from the carcass of a shop-bought barbequed chicken and ended up with a pot full of mushy artificial stuffing.

Artichokes scare me.

It is unfamiliar, strange, unique. A thistle (a thistle flower bud, I think), for goodness sake. Kind of stringy and tough-ish. With a reputation for fussiness of preparation and eating. (Wipe it immediately with lemon to stop it browning. Remove the ‘hairy choke’ – whatever that is! Dip each petal in butter then scrape with the teeth). Expensive. The first time I ever even touched, let alone cooked, a live, real, fresh one (as opposed to the delicious deli-bought variety) involved potential public humiliation. The kind with internet video footage (which sounds way worse than it actually is, I garuntee).

Artichokes scare me.

But in this fear is what food is for me: constant wonder, constant interrogation of the edible world, never quite being assured or certain as the eater, the preparer, the sharer, the host. I will never master the artichoke. I will never become a chef or kitchen wiz. But I will cook it, and eat it, and serve it – differently each time. Sometimes better, and sometimes undercooked or too mushy or oily or salty.

And the fear will be something a little bit like love: the bottom dropping out of my stomach when I realise that the possibility of everything going wrong is also the possibility of everything going right.

This spring has been the spring of the artichoke. Guided in these first heady weeks by Maggie Beer’s homey and casual advice, artichokes braised in verjuice and olive oil*. With more confidence, cooked in lemon juice and stock. Set aside and eaten cold. Minced and used as the stuffing for ravioli. Or omelettes.

Little by little a familiarity has crept in. A cautious letting down of my guard. Not enough for complacency, but definitely a budding romance.



* I am in love with Maggie Beer, AOM, in much the same way as I am obsessed with the J Cheese building. The J Cheese building is a private residence in an inner city suburb, remarkable for no other reason than that the words ‘J Cheese’ appear, moulded into it’s high, art-deco facade.

And I desire the J Cheese building for no other reason than the appearance of these words. To own a thing – be it a building or a name – that immediate evokes the presence of some desirable, edible, substance (Cheese, Beer) – is a concept of great attraction to me. And salivation. It’s Pavlovian. Which also makes me think of pavlova. Which also makes me salivate.



Artichokes with leeks and pasta

Serves 4

2 lemons, juiced
1 tbsp olive oil
¼ cup verjuice
1.5 litre (ish) water or vegetable stock
4 large artichokes (pick big ones with very tight petals and long stems).
2 garlic cloves
1 leek, cut into ½ cm wide, 10 cm long strips
400 gram very good quality dried pasta (I like filei calabresi for this. I am pretty fussy about pasta, and only dried, very, very dense duram wheat semolina pasta will work for this)
1 cup freshly podded peas

Parmesan cheese, to serve

In a large saucepan or deep pan heat the olive oil stock, verjuice and juice of one lemon.

Half fill a large bowl with water and add the juice of the remaining lemon.

Now – prepare the artichokes. First, start pulling off the outer most petals – peel and snap in a downward motion. Keep doing this until you are left with petals that are mostly a creamy yellow colour (about a third of the petals will be discarded). Then, with a very sharp knife or peeler, trim the stalk and broken petal stubs until the softer inner part of the stem is revealed. Rub any cut surface with the inner surface of the lemon peel (to stop it browning). Cut the top part of the petals off, at least a third of the way down. Cut in half lengthways, and with a teaspoon, remove the ‘hairy choke’ – that is, you’ll notice that at the base of the artichoke, before the petals start to become petal-y, a kind of fluffy soft looking crescent. Slip the curve of the spoon in under this, press back toward to top of the petals and then slip out. If you cut the petal off the top back enough, you can also scoop this out from the top, leaving the artichoke whole to cook.

Cut in half length ways again, and place in the bowl of lemon water, while you repeat with the remaining artichokes.

Add all artichoke quarters to the pan of stock and bring to a simmer. Cover with a lid and cook for about half an hour. The artichokes turn kind of grey-ish, which seems unappetising, except I’m pretty sure they are supposed to be this colour ...

After half an hour, remove the lid and add leek strips and pasta. The idea is to cook the pasta in this stock by reduction, a little like making risotto. If the liquid looks like running dry before the pasta is cooked, add a little more water. The pasta will take around half an hour to cook.

Meanwhile, cook the peas in a pan of simmering water until just cooked. Strain and set aside.

When the pasta is cook, taste and add salt as required (I find that this befits from a generous amount of sea salt) – stir through peas, and serve, topped with a little grated parmesan cheese.

Gnocchi: like it or lump it

The first time I made gnocchi was a disaster. Wanting desperately to impress a potato-mad paramour, I was left with a disintegrating collection of potato flavoured lumps. To be fair, this is what also happened the first time someone tried to make me gnocchi – a chef, and admittedly a very good one, that I happened to date, sought to impress me with the delicate Italian potato dumpling, and proceeded to produce a glue-textured and glue-flavoured bite-seized failure. (The idea behind that, however, was genius: cooked, and then pan-seared with pan-sweated baby spring-vegetables and French butter – it would have been delicious). Turned out as badly as the romance.

I have attempted gnocchi with and without eggs, flour, ricotta, all to varying degrees of failure.

Until recently I was taught, under pressure conditions, by a master*. And managed to produce something that was both flavourful and beautifully chewy with a light consistency. Turns out you have to fail a few times to get a real feel for the dough. So I tried again, with a recipe from a magazine** (which, as usual, I neglected to read correctly, and omitted the egg) – and succeeded in producing light, fluffy and sticky gnocchi that held their shape and absorbed the surrounding flavours.

And then again, mid week, capitalising on my success, I just whipped up gnocchi with caramelised bitter radicchio and peas and vanilla-and-rose-tea-smoked smoked duck. If I sound a wee bit cocky it’s because of the series of failures (romantic and otherwise) that preceded the triumph.

Moisture is the enemy: all the times I have succeeded, the potatoes have been individually wrapped in foil and oven roasted in their skins. I have pressed the potato through a sieve, without mashing (I do not have a ricer). I have kneaded lightly whilst still warm. I have not used eggs, I have not added liquid. I have been serious about avoiding overworking the potato so as to not stretch the starches too much. I have cooked in boiling water, at first one, tested and tasted, and then the remainder, whilst will slightly warm and soft. I have drizzled with olive oil and cooled, and then pan seared in olive oil and butter until slightly caramelised and hot again. I have snuck mouthfuls of just-cooked gnocchi, spinkled with sea salt, as a pre-dinner snack (quality control!).

Apparently, in Italian, the word gnocchi means ‘lumps’, which at once both accurately describes and deflates this incredibly fickle dumpling. I love their rustic lumpiness, their unevenness and general lack of elegance. And yet, when well-made, there is a velvetness, a simplicity that speaks to the richness of clay and the superiority of learned technique. So sublime a goal, I know I have many more years of romance and practice ahead to master the lump.

* Thank you, Matt Moran. You are a bald genius.
** Australian Gourmet Traveller, Annual Cookbook 2010

Gnocchi

Serves 4

2 medium sized potatoes, approximately 300 g total
150 gm full fat ricotta cheese
50 g finely grated parmesan cheese
120 g plain flour
Sea salt, optional, to taste.

Pre heat oven to 180ºc. Wrap each potato separately in foil, bake in oven for approximately 45 minutes, or until cooked through. Remove from oven and set aside until just cool enough to handle.

Peel potato and press through a metal sieve. Press ricotta through the sieve, add flour and parmesan, (and salt if using) and mix together with hands until just combined.

Cut into four pieces. Working with one piece at a time, roll into a long sausage shape until approximately ½ inch diameter. Cut into 1 inch lengths, pinch slightly. Repeat with remaining peices.

To cook – add batches of gnocchi to rapidly boiling water. The gnocchi will sink to the bottom. As the pieces rise to the surface, remove with a slotted spoon and set aside on a lightly oiled tray.


You can eat then like this – just add sea salt, cracked pepper and little grated parmesan. Or ...

Sauté one finely sliced onion, two crushed cloves of garlic and one finely minced chilli in a little olive over a medium heat until caramelised. Turn heat to high, add 1 small head of torn raddichio and 1 cup of steamed peas and cook for about 5 minutes until soft. Add 50 g butter, melt until foaming. Add cooked gnocchi and cook, tossing pan occasionally, for 3 ish minutes, until caramelised and warm. Serve, with or without smoked duck.

Myths about pasta

Myth 1: Marco Polo invented pasta / bought it back from China. Not true, according to Oretta Zanini De Vita, who cites records indicating that Italian pasta was adapted from wheat and semolina dumplings introduced to Italy by the Arabs in the ninth century*. Way before Signore Polo.

Myth 2: Fresh is always better than dried pasta. It depends. I have a beautiful recipe for drunken pasta, which is dried spaghettini, cooked by reduction method in a bottle of red wine flavoured with garlic and thyme. As the dried pasta cooks, it absorbs the red wine, turning purple and acquiring a rich tannin flavour. Fresh pasta would fall apart. Dried orrechette with crumbled pork and fennel sausages and fresh peas and grated parmesan. Homemade fresh gnocchi? Brilliant. Fresh paparadelle with olive oil and goats curd? Lovely. Fresh lasagne sheets any day (although that is pure personal preference). It depends.

Myth 3: pasta makes you fat. Nonsense.*

Myths 4, 5 and 6: Carbonara sauce has cream in it, marinara sauce has seafood in it, and pasta spaghetti alla puttenesca means ‘spaghetti in the manner of whores’. False, false and ok, kind of true.

Spaghetti carbonara, as eaten in Italy, is parmesan, pepper, egg yolks and guanciale (cured pig’s cheek). Was is named for the appearance of charcoal that pepper gives? From a black colour given by squid ink or soot? Because coal miners made it? In honour of the Carbonari, a Dan Brown-esque secret society? Who can say? Cream is a delicious American-Italian addition.

Apparently, marinara is Italian for mariner – and marinara describes your basic-est of basic sugo – tomatoes, garlic, onion. Italian seafarers bought tomatoes back from the new world, and the resulting sauce is hence named ‘sailor’s sauce’. And puttenesca was probably known to a few saucy sailors - its name is indeed derived from a derogatory Italian word for sex worker, puttana, which can also be used to describe un-valued or left-over things – like the tomatoes, black olives, anchovies and capers that make up the sauce. Plus quick for a working girl to throw together. I add chilli, for a bit of extra spice. Think of it as cheap and easy.

* Encyclopedia of Pasta, 2009, University of California Press

** Eating more energy than you expend makes you “fat”. And I put this in inverted commas because I think we make too much of “does this make me fat” and not enough of “am I healthy, happy, fulfilled, loved and excited by life”. A standard serve (about 150g) of dried plain pasta has about 225 calories. Which, with vegetables and fruit and protein and conscientious home-cooking and informed choices about food and fun and walking the dog, is part of a healthy life. Pasta does not make you fat.

Spaghetti al nero de seppia del Mare

AKA spaghetti pescatore AKA squid ink pasta with seafood sauce NOT AKA spaghetti marinara

For 2

300g good quality squid ink pasta (ie, spaghetti al nero de seppia)
Basic sauce from the chilli mussels recipe (ie, onion, fennel, tomatoes, capsicum, fennel seed chillies, white wine).
500 g mussels
200 g firm fleshed white fish fillets, cut into bite sized chunks
1 calamari hood, cleaned and cut into rings
Olive oil
Sea salt

Basil

Cook the pasta sauce (onions, garlic and fennel first until soft, then tomatoes, chillies, fennel seeds until softening, then wine). Set aside until ready to eat.

In a large pot, boil lots of water (I use a 5 litre pot), add a generous about of salt (about 1 tbsp) and bring to the boil. Add the pasta, bring back to the boil, stir and cook for about 10 minutes (most pasta packages indicate cooking times – just keep an eye on it, and take out a strand to check – I check by taking a bite). When cooked, strain and return to the pot and douse with olive oil – this stops it from sticking together, and buys you time to concentrate on the seafood.

Bring the sauce to a simmer. Add the mussels and cover. As the first ones start to peek open, throw in the fish. As the fish start to turn white at the edges, thrown in the calamari rings, cover and turn off the heat. (You could add scallops, prawns, clams or any seafood you like really – just note the difference cooking times and be careful to add in relative order, so that everything is nicely cooked, but not over cooked).

Place a spiral of black pasta into a shallow bowl, and top with spoonfuls of sauce and seafood. Scatter with torn basil leaves and fresh cracked pepper.