Nonna Gemma's Veal Scallopine

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 Multicultural Inspiration from... Italy

It's common knowledge in my family that mum's mum, Nonna Gemma (Nonna is Italian for grandmother) is bloody fantastic in the kitchen. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve following Nonna around the Preston Market to gather all of our ingredients, then going back to her house, putting on an over-sized apron, and helping her make a big fat pot of risotto, or crostoli (traditional Northern Italian biscuits), with Nonno (grandfather) watching on and telling us we weren't doing it properly. Unfortunately for me though, Nonna rarely records any of her culinary genius on paper - she just knows what to do. So, you can imagine my excitement when one of Nonna's recipes was bestowed upon me at my Kitchen Tea party a month before our wedding last year! And not just any recipe - one of my favourites; Nonna's veal scalopine!


Luckily for me, I'm getting much better at cooking by instinct, because Nonna's recipes have absolutely no quantities or measurements. They're also written completely in Italian. Poor Sous-Jeff hasn't the foggiest idea what he was looking at when I got ready to cook this up. Thankfully, I understood every word!

My very treasured recipe is for veal scalopine - veal pieces coated in flour, and grilled in a fry pan with garlic, olive oil, mushrooms and white wine. I also like to serve it with polenta, because polenta brings back some of my most comforting and loving childhood memories :) And I threw some roast veggies in for the healthiness factor! Given that this recipe isn't technically a recipe, I haven't listen everything I did and used... but here's how it turned out...

And to my utter and complete joy, it tasted just like Nonna's!! I guess I must have been paying more attention than I thought when I used to watch her make it! If only I'd recorded how much of everything I'd used... must make it again!


And while I took a break in typing this up to grab some lunch, Kitchen Bug decided he'd keep my seat warm and try to contribute a bit too...

Over to you guys... do you have a famous family recipe that you've been able to successfully recreate? Or a pet who likes to help you blog?!

Mum's Dessert Masterclass: Tiramisu & Brutti Ma Buoni

This blog has moved to http://multiculturalmelbourne.com/


Multicultural Inspiration from... Italy

It is a rare day that my mother and I share a kitchen. We are polar opposites, but both very strong, typically stubborn, Italian women. We also both love cooking, but often have very different ideas on what works well in the kitchen. I learnt almost all I know about cooking from my mum, her mum, and my dad's mum. The women of my family are all incredibly talented cooks, and I feel blessed to have been able to learn from the best! Where we differ, however, is that mum is very traditional in her approach to cooking, especially proper Italian dishes, whereas I like to experiment a little and try lots of different things in the kitchen. So, when I randomly decided it was time for me to learn to make some traditional Italian desserts, mum was the first person I called to help me out and teach me a few tricks (because she knows them all!). 

The first thing we made are Brutti Ma Buoni biscuits. These are favourites of mine that mum usually makes at Christmas time, and for other big family gatherings. Brutti ma buoni translates to English as "ugly but good," which they are. They're not the prettiest sweet, but they are certainly delicious! They are a crunchy, meringue type of biscuit, and mum's version is chocked full of hazelnuts and chocolate (yum yum yum!). Here's how we made them...

First up, turn the oven on to about 180°C and line a cookie tray with baking paper. Next, get out the food processor and throw in 80g of toasted hazelnuts and 100g of roughly chopped dark chocolate. Process them in quick 2 second pulses until they're roughly chopped up and well combined, and set them aside.

Next, put 2 egg whites and half a cup of caster sugar into the bowl of your Kitchen Aid, Mix Master, or just a bowl that you can use an electric hand mixer with. Whisk the whites until they are white, stiff, thick and fluffy.

Throw in the nuts and chocolate mix, and gently fold in.

Using one tablespoon, take a spoon full of mixture out of the bowl. With a second tablespoon, push the mixture off, and gently onto the baking tray:

Now, here's the easiest part - into the oven they go, let them bake for 5 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave them in there! If you can leave them in overnight, that's the best case way to go, otherwise leave them in for a good 5 hours or so. If you're like me, you might also enjoy them soft and gooey and fresh out of the oven after the 5 minutes and another 10 minutes rest. Damn good.

They come out like little meringue biscuits, crunchy shelled, and with lots of chocolate and hazelnuts packed in. LOVE them!


Next up, mum decides it's about time I learnt to make tiramisu (meaning, "pick me up"). I have a confession to make; I'm a terrible Italian. I don't really like tiramisu. Because I hate coffee. Yup. Worst Italian ever... sorry mum and dad!!! But, just because I'm not such a fan of it doesn't mean I shouldn't know how to put this iconic Italian dessert together - and hey, I might eventually grow to love it! My favourite part of cooking with mum is going through her dozens, possibly hundreds (no joke) of cook books. A lot of which are hand written. Somehow, mum quickly locates the exact book and page where we can find her tiramisu recipe. This is a very traditional Italian dessert and makes an appearance at almost every single one of our family celebrations.

We grab out the ingredients - all very Italian: mascarpone, coffee, and UNIBIC sponge finger biscuits! What you'll actually need is:

• 250g mascarpone cheese
• 200ml thickened cream
• 3 eggs, seperated
• 3 tbsp caster sugar
• 3/4 cup Marsala
• 1/3 cup of strong black coffee
• 1 x 250g pack of sponge finger biscuits

First, beat the mascarpone and sugar in Kitchen Aid (or other device) (and yes, mum is very, very much in love with the Kitchen Aid!).

Then, add in the egg yolks, and beat them in.

In another bowl, beat the cream for a few minutes, until thick...

In yet another bowl, put in the egg whites and 1 tbsp of sugar, beating until thick and fluffy. I'd just like to point out that at this point, the kitchen has turned into a screaming arena, as I need to remind mum constantly (read: every 45 seconds) to slow down, as I'm writing everything down and taking photos. Unfortunately, she works at 10000 miles an hour, and somehow keeps forgetting about me. Anyway, once the egg whites and sugar are all fluffy and thick, put them into the mascarpone mixture, and fold them in gently.

Now, add the cream into the mixture, and again, fold it in very gently.

Ok, leave that mixture for a moment, and grab out your coffee, Marsala and biscuits next. Marsala is an Italian wine, produced in Sicily.

Combine the coffee and Marsala in a bowl, and grab out a big (sorry, not sure of the exact measurements!) dish. Dip the biscuits 2 or 3 at a time in the mixture, and let them soak it all up.

Very gently squeeze out the excess liquid from the biscuits...

... and lay them down in the dish, side by side and tightly packed.

Spread a layer of the creamy mixture over the biscuits, completely covering them.

Add on the next layer of biscuits...

... and another creamy layer.

Half way through making the tiramisu, mum decides that I'm doing such a good job in between taking photos that she's going to take it with her to the dinner party she's going to that night. She passes me a little dessert glass dish for me to make a miniature version. Thanks, mum. 

Her final touch is dusting some very good quality Dutch cocoa on top...

... and here you have it! A favourite in my family, and many other Italian families too, I'm sure. From all accounts, it was a hit at the dinner party, so I guess I'll count that as a win for my first attempt!

With a bit of a headache from the constant "MUM! Just slow down!!!!", a handful of brutti ma buoni, two new cook books that mum wasn't using any more (because she has a billion), and a big hug, I head back up the driveway to my car, and have a giggle. I was so determined not to be like my mum when I was younger. I was sure I'd be different. We fought a lot in my younger years, because I was a stubborn, introverted, frustrated and confused teenager, and she was a tough, strict, Italian mum trying to deal with her eldest of three daughters growing up. But, here I was, cooking alongside mum in the same kitchen, and ready to embark on a new career as a travel consultant. The same career my mum started out in. And I couldn't be prouder to be like my mum now :)

IronChef Butternut: Soup, Pasta & Pie!

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"And now, for the theme ingredient on which our chefs will offer their succulent variations... BUTTERNUT!!!!!!!!!!"

And thus began my very own "battle" in "kitchen stadium," AKA, cooking dinner on an otherwise uneventful Friday night.

Allow me to backtrack a little... 20 months ago, I had surgery to repair and remove some torn cartilage from my hip, which I damaged while training for taekwondo. I was stuck on the couch for the first week post-surgery, having been told to just sit still and heal. Easier said than done for a girl with the attention span of a gold fish. So, I began my couch-bound first week of recovery, and started channel surfing my way through Foxtel, to land upon a show entitled "Iron Chef." I like cooking, this sounds ok. I watched battle... actually, I can't for the life of me remember, it was some type of fish... anyway, I watched it, I loved it, and from then on, no one was allowed to speak to me from 12 - 1pm while it was on for the rest of the week. Fast forward 20 months, and not only am I still hooked, I also have Sous-Jeff sucked into the show's theatrics and deliciousness too! That's also where his nickname, Sous-Jeff, originated from. He loves nothing more than the watch the orange Croc-clad Mario Batali battle it out beneath the chairman's watchful eyes and amusing comments. And so, after a trip to the Queen Vic market, it was decided that our humble little kitchen would transform into Kitchen Stadium for a night, and I would be given as much time as I wanted to create three dishes (luckily Chairman Sous-Jeff decided that without an actual sous chef, five dishes and a time limit may be a little extreme), and butternut pumpkin would be my secret ingredient. Fortunately, this was revealed while we were still at the market, enabling me to pick up some more special ingredients as we went. And with that, my three dishes were produced, as follows...


ENTREE: Butternut Pumpkin Soup

For the soup, I quickly read a recipe that I had in a Donna Hay cookbook, then mostly made it up as I went...

I cut the butternut in half and scooped out the seeds, put the halves cut side up with a few small onions on an oven tray and drizzled with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled a bit of sea salt. Into the oven until they were soft - this was around an hour on about 180°C.

Out of the oven they came, and I scooped most of the flesh out of the pumpkin, leaving enough in there to create a "bowl" - I needed a bit of "wow" factor to score points for plating and creativity, after all!

Into the blender went the roasted butternut and the onions (I just squeezed the flesh out of the skins)...

... and I just blended them until they were well combined and thick and smooth.

Here's where the Donna Hay "Fast, Fresh and Simple" inspiration came in... I added about a cup of pouring cream and about a quarter cup of honey to the mixture, and put it all in a pot over medium/low heat, stirring it continuously as it all combined and warmed up.

And here was the result of my first Iron Chef course!

Aaaaand here's what was left of Sous-Jeff's "bowl" after he decided to start eating it, too! I certainly achieved the shock factor I was after, with my adoring husband hailing me as his favourite chef ever! I was chuffed, and steamed back into the kitchen, head held high, ready to plate up the entree!

 

Taste: 9 /10
Plating: 4/5
Originality: 4/5



MAIN: Butternut Pumpkin Stuffed Pasta
For my main, I couldn't go past a pasta, stuffed with pumpkin, sage, ricotta and some sort of meat. It's not tooooo heavy, but just filling enough to be an actual main dish. And although I'd never made proper, filled pasta from scratch on my own, I was ready and willing to give it a try!

First up, I diced the butternut into tiny, little, 1cm cubes, and roasted them in the oven drizzled with olive oil, salt and sage.

Next, I heated some oil in a fry pan, added some garlic and some sausage mince. I thought sausage mince would be a good option as it's not too chunky, so it wouldn't take away from the butternut, which was meant to be the star of the dish.

Then, in with the pumpkin...

... out of the pan, and in with the ricotta, mixing it all together.

Pasta dough next - just a super basic (but effective) flour-and-egg dough, made and left to sit in plastic wrap for an hour or so.

I rolled it out in my little pasta machine, into long strips (with a bit of help from Sous-Jeff!)...

And made tablespoon sized balls of mixture to place in intervals along the pasta strip.

I "painted" around the edges with some egg wash, and placed the other strip on top, pressing down firmly. Unfortunately, there was still a bit of air bubble action going on, but hey, live and learn!

They went into a pot of boiling water for around 3 minutes...

... then went onto a hot pan with some butter and sage leaves, to crisp up a little around the edges.

And here's what ended up on the plate!

The pumpking and sage really stood out and complemented each other perfectly, with the ricotta and sausage working in beautifully. The pasta, while it didn't look amazing or was put together perfectly, did taste great and soft. The recipe itself is (for me,) perfect as is, I just need to work on stuffing the pasta a bit better!

Sous-Jeff's absolutely favourite meal that I make is pan fried butter and sage gnocchi, so I thought I'd be on a winner here, and I was. He really loved the extra little bit of crispness that was added, and the soft pasta dough beneath that crisp shell.

Taste: 7/10
Plating: 3.5/5
Originality: 3.5/5



DESSERT: Butternut Pumpkin Pie

You just can't go wrong with pie, really. I've never made it before, never had any inclination to either, to be honest. But as soon as Sous-Jeff revealed my secret ingredient, I straight away thought of pumpkin pie as my dessert. I couldn't really find a recipe I liked, so as usual, I kind of just made it up as I went along.

First, my easy pie pastry - around about a cup and a half of plain flour, plus around 80g of butter (rub together to make little crumbs), then 2 tablespoons of ice cold water. Mix it together, wrap it up in plastic wrap, and let it sit in the fridge for at least half an hour.

For the filling, I roasted some more pumpkin (no oil or salt, just plain), and scooped out the flesh and put it in the blender, with about half a cup of cream, a quarter cup of brown sugar, an egg, and I blended it till it looked like this:

I also decided caramelised pecans were in order to really make this desserty, so I put about 50g of pecans and 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar in a pot, with a splash of water, and cooked them (stirring continuously) on medium heat for 5 minutes or so.

The pie shells were blind baked for about 10 minutes, then the filling went in...

... and they were baked for another 30 minutes or so, until the top of the pie was firm to touch.

We were getting pretty full by this point, so we decided to share one little pie for dessert instead of eating one each, as we a) wouldn't be sick, and b) we'd have another one for the next night.

It was creamy and smooth, with perfectly buttery, browned pastry, and the fantastic sweetness and crunch of the caramelised pecans. I was pretty impressed with myself actually, can't believe I actually made a pie from a vegetable with success! As for Sous-Jeff's verdict? You remember that other pie we were saving for tomorrow? Yeah, that got eaten less than 30 minutes later...

Taste: 7/10
Plating: 3/5
Originality: 3/5




With a total score of 44 of a possible 60, I was pretty happy with my efforts, especially considering they were all dishes I'd never attempted before! Can't wait for my next Iron Chef challenge :)


Over to you lovely people: ever tried your own version of something you've seen on TV?! How'd it go?!