Orecchiette 2: beef or broccoli (turnip tops) & Don Quijote?

Sometimes an ingredient attracts your attention because of its shape. Orechiette always fascinated me for this reason. It is like a vessel you can load with different sorts of flavours. Sometimes those that look as impossible preparations come out to be the easiest ones, and while the water boils you are able to achieve amazing results. Sometimes, simply the fact that a dish is your girlfriend's preferred one, encourages you to indulge on its unrhymed poetry. Moreover, orecchiette remind me of Don Quijote, because of the resemblance between their shape and his typical element:

Murillo Benich Hugo, The dream of Don Quijote, 1980.
Benich Hugo is able to capture all the elements of the dream
in one painting: this ability is similar to that of the dish of pasta,
where all the cooking processes have to homogenize
according to a specific manner.

This time I wish to tickle your interest on two opposite dressings: the Aberdeen beef ragout I prepared two posts ago and the sautées broccoli. Broccoli substitute here turnip tops, which would actually be the most indicate vegetable for the orecchiette.

What to do with turnip greens? Good question: "I know vegetables"

offers several answers, although sometimes

his selection of recipes is using too conventional ideas

(this sounds dreadfully hipster, but it didn't meant to):

http://www.iknowvegetables.com/turnip-greens.html

Here is the meaty suggestion:

Measure around 80 gr of orechiette (Tesco finest* 1,65£),

let them boil in salted water

for 11 minutes.

Aren't they just beautiful like this?

Shall we call it entertaining pasta?

Drain the orecchiette and dress them with the 

Aberdeen angus beef ragout, lightly warmed up:

the mild ragout and the hot pasta 

will reach the right temperature not

to burn your tongue at the first bite.

Sprinkle with some Pecorino

or another hard cheese.

Here is, instead the vegetarian answer: this condiment is so tasty and rich that everyone will appreciate it, because it recreates a sort of Southern atmosphere, and brings the broccoli to a higher level, without begin excessive. Moreover, this recipe allows you to avoid using the broccoli as a side dish, and cooking the pasta in his water possibly helps to save even more nutrients.

Select your broccoli (there are Tesco Organic, 1,40£ each)

Boil them in salted water,

KEEP THE WATER TO COOK THE PASTA

Drain the broccoli with a skimmer and 

fry them gently in 2 tbs of extra-virgin olive oil

with some chili, a clove of garlic.

Add 30 ml of tomato sauce, only to give colour,

correct the sapidity. 

Drain the orecchiette, but keeping them wet

(or just add a ladle of cooking water before draining):

stir until the liquid and the sauce will be 

well absorbed.

Add also some Pecorino during the stirring process.

Take a quick picture and eat them,

in their decadent light.

Some people would add some bread crumbs, and I am positively favorable to this extra topping, especially if you brown for 30 seconds the breadcrumbs in a pan.

Orecchiette (1) : pasta with love inside

During Summer days (I am not reporting Scotland this time) lovers swarm together and enjoy reciprocal company in several activities: I remember that when my parents once went for three days to Saragozza (where Charlemagne imposed the strength of his empire, at least in the Chanson de Roland), whereas my sister was in Southern France, I had the house on my own and I was able to invite over the girl that would have become my girlfriend. Sometimes coincidences are so fruitful!
At that time, I did not fully realized how much we both loved cooking and staying in the kitchen together. So, the first culinary date spotted me as the only attendant and I made it out well with the different dishes.
Afterwords, we shared our common passion that concurred to make our bonds tighter, because it is emotional, intense and particularly charming. We keep cooking often together and once she taught me how to prepare home made orecchiette, a typical pasta format of her region, Puglia again. Orecchiette literally means little ears.

Mix up 300 ml of water, a pinch of salt (10ish gr)

and 600 gr of durum wheat semolina: knead a loaf

and then cut it into pieces. Manipulate them as snakes.

Cut the snakes into little pillows and produce the gesture

you are looking in this picture that I found in

http://www.semplicementepeperosa.com/

the correct verb should be to flip them over, and 

expert chefs use also a knife to obtain this result.

Four arguments from the weakest to the strongest

that shall convince you to produce yourself in

hand made orecchiette:

it is beautiful to do the orecchiette

 with the person you love,

because it take less time (1), you laugh a lot 

for all the wrong orecchiette that come out (2),

it is time spent making food love (3),

and finally because cooking-eating-sharing

puts you on an equal level of enjoyment (4).

From 4 to 6 people should be able to 

enjoy this amount of orecchiette.

What if you are very lazy and you prefer to buy them directly in a shop or a supermarket? First of all shame on you, but secondly I can provide some useful commercial suggestions:

Known in the rest of the world:

in my opinion their quality is acceptable

but not excellent.

For an industrial product these are very good orecchiette.

Garofalo

Saclà is another major Italian brand,

famous especially for antipasti,

yet this pack price is a bit to high

for my personal taste (2,10£)

Caroli and Fioccata: two pasta factory

that produce orecchiette employing methods that

appear to be more traditional.

Fiorillo

Tesco finest* 1,65£

During the next post, I shall try to prepare two different toppings: both of them will bring out the shape of the orechiette. And this effort will remind me how sweet will again be cooking with my favourite co-chef.

Aberdeen angus beef & ragout from Puglia

Giuseppe does not appear in the above picture. Giuseppe is a dear friend of mine: he comes from Puglia (the heel of Italy), he is a brilliant researcher and recently Oxford hired him away from Scotland. A great loss for his closest friends, even if only and luckily in geographical terms.

Giuseppe made me realize I had never tried to prepare a proper Southern ragout, which is very different form the bolognese one, and Scotland does offer one of the best varieties of beef - along with Chianina and Maremmana in Tuscany and Kobe in Japan.

Scotland is widely famous for this Highland breed 

as well. 

I have to thank Elena Rossi®, for this lovely shot.

The Aberdeen Angus beef is an hornless native variety of the cattle family. Hugh Watson, a Scottish farmer, in the mid-nineteen century improved his herd, founding and shaping the breed we are now able to consume. My vision of this food farming process equalizes the Angus beef to pedigree of race horses. Nowadays, what have been the enterprise of a single farmer, became a Society:

http://aberdeen-angus.co.uk/

Following in the footsteps of his grandmother the Queen Mother, HRH Prince Charles is the patron of the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society. The Prince of Wales has a successful Aberdeen-Angus herd at Highgrove and takes an active interest in the Castle of Mey herd in Caithness which is now run by The Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbK6-6Qtfo

(unfortunately the video is a bit disturbed,

yet worth listening)

The best cuts for this preparation

are those thought for stew or for the casserole.

What do I like of Aberdeen Angus Scotch beef? And how can I reconcile a post for vegetarians with a post devoted to best Angus beef cuts? 

In my opinion, the Angus beef is a premium cattle: it is important to preserve this native breed, secondly these animals are treated respectfully, ideally suiting to the organic approach, thirdly the local economy benefits of a high quality resource, lastly it is senseless to import expensive meat from abroad when your own one is excellent and severely controlled. My idea then stays in between carnivorous positions and vegetarian instances. Animals should be treated with respect - not as objects or industrial products: they are living beings, whose life time is not meaningless. They are part of our alimentary cycle since millennia, but this does not bring along the fact we can allow ourselves to be cruel and uncaring. I am then favorable to an ethic of dignity:

A visual concept of Dignity, thanks to Colin Firth.

Too many times indeed, it is evident how much waste-of-all-kind-of-aliments we soil our consciences with. I am only hoping to a gradual return to a naturalistic vision of what breeding and farming: quality food, care of the environment and above all regard toward the fact that these animals, though remaining animals, have a moral right to live decently in a free range condition, not as enslaved machines for meat and milk. 

Enslaved animals are sad creatures.

Let's go back to Giuseppe's ragout. Once I spotted a picture of his ragout and I decided to replicate it with a higher level of consciousness.

Chop half an onion, 1 celery rib. 

150 gr of Aberdeen angus beef.

700 ml of plum tomatoes.

Season the beef with black pepper

Brown the onion and the celery 

in some extra-virgin olive oil,

then add the meat and brown it as well.

Add a glass of white whine and one of water

Add the tomato sauce, two leaves of basil,

a garlic clove, and a drizzle of honey,

to make the meat softer and to cut down

the tomato acidity.

Let it go at a low flame for 1 hour and 1 half:

then smash with a fork the tomatoes

that did not yet melt.

Pull out the meat from the sauce and...

...wear out the dices following the meat fibers.

Put them back into the sauce,

adjust salt, black pepper, nutmeg.

Dress with the ragout of Puglia some Bronze

die Fusilli (Napolina) or some orecchiette: what the hell are orecchiette?

The next two posts will reveal this peculiar pasta format. 

Lasagne and vegetarians (cream of mushrooms)

In these summer days the PhD absorbs so many hours of my life that I gradually lose the sense of reality, becoming part of the Middle-ages texts I am reading. I feel an excruciating nostalgia due the distance from Italy, not because of the Sun that strangely enough I do not appreciate much, yet because my girlfriend is there. When all the couples have the chance to spend more time together for their holidays, it is even more difficult to live your own self-inflicted exile with dignity: nonetheless I told to myself there was a way in which beyond the mails, the letters, the phone calls, valets and pigeons I could have been closer to her, while waiting for my imminent going back. The solution I found is basically warming up my cooking engines, preparing recipes she might then fancy, dreaming the moment in which we shall cook together...

A pic from You me and Dupree (2006), with Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson,

here a clip from the movie:

Food, in my view, is a privileged channel through which one is able to vehicle his most tender feelings: nourishing the beloved person is like bringing her to life again every time. My girlfriend is not just adorable for herself, ça va sans dire the French would say, she is also smart, clever and vegetarian and I find particularly challenging to combine ingredients that match her vision of the world: it means being closer to her throughout the selection of the food, the experimentation of dishes. Together we cross new frontiers of taste, finding solutions to re-interpret traditional dishes.

Revitalize the porcini mushrooms*, 

wash the organic champignon mushrooms,

keep their stem, AND BIG CHALLENGE

prepare béchamel and fight with its lamps! 

How? Stir continuously:

Béchamel:

• a knob of butter (30 gr), a table spoon of white flour
• a pinch of salt (10 gr), white pepper (so to keep the colour clear)
• and a sprinkle of nutmeg
• then pour gradually the whole organic milk (500 ml)
• 50 gr of grated Parmigiano (or a reasonable alternative)
• prevent yourself from eating it all while adjusting the seasoning!!!

The chromatics given by the extra-virgin olive oil

and the thyme are absolutely beautiful:

this thyme has an aftertaste of lemon, which

is exalted brilliantly by the combination

with mushrooms.

Chop the mushrooms,

let them go for 5 mins

Let them grow again for 10 mins in warm water,

which you should keep because of its flavor:

if you have fresh ones is even better.

The mushrooms will start wither, add the Porcini

mushrooms and a glass of white wine will suit well

(a Pinot Grigio or a Chardonanny),

correct salt, black pepper, and parsley

When the whine is gone, add the Porcini mushrooms water,

avoiding to add the little deposit of sand

you will spot at the bottom of the bowl.

Let it go until the liquid is reduced in volume, 

but not completely gone

Mix béchamel and the mushrooms with a hand blender,

keep some béchamel and some mushrooms apart

for the final garnishment

Start alternating the cream you obtained with the layers 

of lasagne (I used some Trattoria Verdi one because it is not bad

at all, and it is more practical, but it should be highly preferable 

to prepare your own pastry).

Lasange shouldn't be in stripes,

but this was the easier way to explain the process.

The top layer can be covered in béchamel and mushrooms

and then generously sprinkled with the cheese

(you may had a knob of butter here and there)

After 25 mins in the oven at gas mark 8 (210ish °C) 

this is the result, but never trust blindly your oven.

This little portion of heaven lasted not too long,

but if the balance of tastes has been respected,

each chewing will produce an explosion of 

uncontrollable happiness,

a closer happiness to the one 

my heart experiments next to my girlfriend.

BUON APPETITO

You can actually use asparagus, artichokes or Savoy cabbage instead of the mushrooms, or combinations of these ingredients. These lasange will impress your palate and eventually your guests!

*This recipe costed me only 4,50£: 50 pennies for the milk, 20 pennies for the lasagne pastry (it was a reduced to clear), 1£ for the mushrooms, 2,80£ for the Porcini [http://www.waitrose.com/shop/ProductView-10317-10001-5532-Waitrose+Cooks%27+ingredients+dried+porcini+mushrooms].