March 2014 - Dominique Rizzo | Bespoke Food Tours

Bruschetta with Parsley & Caper Salad

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Bruschetta with Parsley & Caper Salad
Makes 1 cup

This is a tasty filling that can be used as a dip, pate or stuffed under the skin of chicken before roasting for a bit of a twist. This also makes a great accompaniment to fish, lamb or beef when baking or barbecuing. Why not make up a batch and keep it in the fridge. The tomato and mint salsa is perfect for a bruschetta topping teamed with diced bocconcini or fresh mozzarella, feta or ricotta. The salsa is also perfect served on cooked pasta with shaved parmesan for a simple pasta sauce.

1 cup parsley leaves, chopped finely
8 tablespoon capers in brine, drained and chopped
½ tablespoon fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
1 large hard-boiled egg, chopped finely
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoon virgin olive oil
2 large ripe tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
Small handful of mint leaves
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Crusty bread sliced and toasted

Combine the chopped parsley, capers and the boiled egg season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil, set aside this aside. You can keep is in the fridge for up to three days.

Combine the diced tomatoes with the mint and olive oil and salt and pepper. (you could also place the tomato and the mint in a food processor and pulse it until just chopped, then drizzle over the oil) Toast the breads and then top with the parsley and caper salad and then the tomato mix and serve.

Covaccine

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Covaccine
These are small thin style pizza breads that the Tuscan farmers use to make to test whether their wood fired ovens were hot enough to bake the bread. Unlike most other focaccias or pizze, no oil or salt is added to the bread until after baking. Covaccine is the Tuscan vernacular for Schiacciata a term used throughout Italy.

The Florentine schiacciata all’olio, known in Italian as focaccia, comes from the Latin focàcia, meaning cooked over the hearth. Composed of water, flour, rising agent and salt, many varieties around Italy exist. The Florentine one uses a godly amount of olive oil and large grain salt, and the best is cooked in a wood burning oven. It should be crispy but not hard, oily but not greasy. Clearly an art that can be perfected, or done badly.

Note: this salty treat is not to be confused with the carnival cake called Schiacciata alla fiorentina which is a sponge cake, usually filled with cream and topped with icing sugar.

500g fine semolina flour
3 cups plain flour
28g dry yeast
2 cups luke warm water
2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 220c.

Mix flours together and make a well in the centre, dissolve the yeast in 1 cup of the water and the salt in the remaining cup. Pour the dissolved yeast in into the well and start mixing with a wooden spoon, incorporating some of the flour from the outside. When you have achieved a thick batter, add in the salted water and continue to mix, incorporating more flour keeping ¼ of flour aside.

Start kneading the dough bringing it together then break the dough up into 16 pieces and knead each piece for about 30 seconds giving it the shape of a ball. Cover the balls with a damp cloth and allow to rise for about 1 hour in a warm place.

When ready, roll out the bread to nothing less than ¼ of an inch thick, again cover and allow to rest for about another hour.

Lay the cavaccine on trays and bake for about 4-5 minutes on each side. Serve hot drizzled with oil and seasoned with salt.

Baked Asparagus with Parmesan & Balsamic

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Mixed Melon Salad with Prosciutto, Mint & Verjuice Dressing

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Mixed Melon Salad with Prosciutto, Mint & Verjuice Dressing
Serves 4

A little twist on the traditional slices of melon wrapped with prosciutto. This is a perfect salad for barbecues, summer nights and when juicy sweet melons are ins season, you can use a selection of different melons for flavour, colour and texture.

½ rockmelon, deseeded and peeled
½ honey dew melon, deseeded and peeled
10 slices of prosciutto – get this sliced fresh and thinly from the deli
Good handful of mint
1 tsp of fresh thyme, leaves picked
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoon of Verjuice
Salt and pepper

Dice up the melons and toss with the picked mint leaves, thyme and torn prosciutto.

Combine the olive oil with the verjuice and season with salt and pepper. Pour this over the salad just before serving.

Serve with grilled or barbecued fish or chicken or with torn buffalo mozzarella.

Cold Roast Chicken with Fennel & Lemon

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Cold Roast Chicken with Fennel & Lemon
Serves 4

Hot or cold this is a delicious recipe. The marinade works well with fish, chicken, pork and vegetables and can be made up ahead of time.

4 x 200g chicken breasts
2 tsp fennel seeds
Zest of 2 lemon and flesh of ½ lemon
2 clove garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt and pepper
Good handful of parsley leaves

Place the chicken breasts into a bowl. Dry roast the fennel seeds and roughly crush them in a mortar and pestle, add this to the chicken. In a food processor blend together the garlic, olive oil, lemon flesh and the parsley leaves until paste like, season well with salt and pepper. Pour this onto the chicken and allow to marinate over night.

Preheat the oven to 190c, place the chicken into a baking dish or lined tray and cover with the marinade. Roast for 18 minutes, remove the chicken and cover with foil for 8 -10 minutes. This will keep the chicken nice and moist. Allow to cool in the fridge then slice and serve hot or place the wrapped chicken in the fridge and serve cold.

Zucchini Tart

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Spinach & Parmesan

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Spinach & Parmesan Pie
Serves 4-6

This is a recipe from my cookbook “My Taste of Sicily” and although it is here in the pages of Tuscan cooking you can find variations of this all over Italy and even in Spain for that matter. I love the béchamel through the pie as it helps give it more body and substance. If you don’t want to make your own dough you can always just use store-bought shortcrust.

For the dough:
2 ¾ cups plain flour
½ tsp salt
¼ cup plus 1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
Zest of 1 lemon
¼ – ½ cup of warm water

For the mixture:
70 g of butter
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp chopped parsley
500 g of fresh whole milk
100 g of white flour
1 kg of well washed and blanched fresh spinach (I use silverbeet)
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
6 eggs
2 tbsp pine nuts
150 g of grated Parmesan cheese
A good pinch of salt to taste
1 pinch of nutmeg

Preheat the oven 200c.

Sift the flour and place it into a food processor with the salt , butter and oil and lemon zest and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Drizzle in enough warm water until the dough just comes together. Take the dough out and knead for a few minutes to achieve a smooth dough. Allow resting while preparing the filling.

Blanch the spinach and when cool enough, squeeze out the excess liquid. Cut the spinach horizontally and vertically, in order to prevent the stems from remaining whole and fraying. Melt the butter into a saucepan, add in the garlic and parsley and fry for a few minutes, add in the flour and whisk in the cold milk to prevent lumps from forming. Cook on low heat and continue stirring the mixture. When the mixture is sufficiently creamy and thick, take it off the heat. Make sure it does not boil.

Mix and blend well the spinach, eggs, cheese, nutmeg, salt, and sauce. Roll out 2/3 of the dough into a thin sheet and brush with melted butter a baking dish or tray about 23cm. Lay the pastry down and pour in the filling, brush the edges of the pie with water and top with the rolled out pastry. Press the edges of the pie together and prick the center of the dough with a fork, brush the top with melted butter and bake in a hot oven for 40 – 50 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

Cannelloni Piacenza Style

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Cannelloni Piacenza Style
Serves 4

Crispelle are “crepes” in a word and are delicious in this lighter style cannelloni. The ricotta cooks almost like a soufflé and is light fluffy and delicious. If you want to cut out some of the fat content, you can halve the butter and leave out the mascarpone. Add other herbs if you like and you can also make this a dessert by adding a little icing sugar to the ricotta to taste and instead of sprinkling it with parmesan cheese you can use cream, chopped chocolate and nuts or berries. This makes a fabulous alternative to a pasta base dish and for those of you gluten free, simply make the crepes with gluten free flour.

For the crispelle:
1 ¾ all-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 egg yolks
¼ cup butter, melted
1 ¼ cups milk, approximately
Good pinch salt
Pinch nutmeg

Filling:
1kg firm fresh ricotta
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 cup Parmigianino cheese
¼ cup mascarpone cheese
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
Salt and pepper
4 tblsp butter, softened
Freshly grated nutmeg
Extra butter for greasing and garnish and extra grated parmesan

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Combine the flour with the salt, eggs, milk, nutmeg and melted butter, whisk for 20 minutes until a smooth batter, this needs to reasonably thin, just so it coats the back of a spoon. So if you leave it and it thickens up just add in a little more milk. Heat 1 tablespoon of the butter in a non-stick pan and fry off the crispelle, keep warm covered while you finish the rest of the mixture. Trim the fritters to a rectangle shape and set aside.

For the filling combine the ricotta with the parsley, egg yolks, whole egg, butter, nutmeg, mascarpone and seasoning. Place spoonful’s of the filling onto a crepe and roll up. Cut the crepe in half and place with the ricotta facing up into a well-buttered baking dish. Continue with all the mixture, until the crispelle are finished. Garnish with a little more melted butter and sprinkled with Parmesan. Bake in a preheated oven of 200c for 20 minutes.

Panzanella Salad

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Panzanella Salad

Panzanella or panmolle is a Tuscan salad of bread and tomatoes popular in the summer, although the Panzanella was based on onions, not tomatoes, until the 20th century. Now the modern panzanella is generally made of stale bread soaked in water and squeezed dry, it is traditionally accompanied with tomatoes, sometimes also onions and basil and dressed with olive oil and vinegar.

Other ingredients added can include lettuce, olives, mozarella, white wine, capers, anchovies, celery, carrots, red wine, red onion, cucumber, tuna, parsley, boiled eggs, mint, bell peppers, lemon juice, and garlic although the purists of Tuscany and Florence often disapprove. The 16th-century artist and poet Bronzino sings the praises of onions with oil and vinegar served with toast and, a page later, speaks of a salad of onions, purslane, and cucumbers, this is often interpreted as one of the original description of panzanella.

650 g mixed tomatoes (cherry, kumato, heirloom, roma, oxheart), sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed with the back of a knife
3 large slices stale ciabatta or Panini tossed with olive oil , seasoned and baked in a hot oven until golden
60 ml (¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil
55 g (⅓ cup) caper berries
¼ cup basil leaves, larger leaves torn, plus extra, to serve
Salt and pepper

Toss tomatoes, garlic and ½ tsp salt in a bowl. Add oil, caper berries and basil, and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with extra basil leaves. Add in the crusty bread and allow the juices to soak in for about 20 minutes before serving.

Florentine Apple and Almond Tart

0 Comments/in Recipes/by Dominique Rizzo

Florentine Apple and Almond Tart
Serves 6-8

There is nothing better than this simple delicious tart absolutely bursting with apples. The delicious combination of almonds and the use of lemon zest is iconic of the types of simple desserts you will find over Florence and Tuscany in cake shops and well known pasticceria.

2 large delicious apples
1 large lemon
Zest of 1 orange
115g almonds, blanched
4 tblsp sugar
2 tblsp plain flour
½ cup milk
4 extra large eggs
Extra 2 tblsp of sugar
1 tblsp butter

Peel and core the apples, cutting them into quarters and then into very thin slices across the apple. Place the apples into a large bowl and squeeze over the juice of 1 lemon.

Place the blanched almonds, sugar, flour and orange zest into a food processor and blend until the almonds are very fine. Add in the milk and the eggs and blend again until a smooth batter.

Preheat the oven to 170c.

Transfer the batter into the apples and stir to combine. Heavily butter a 34 x 22cm tin or baking dish and sprinkle on the extra sugar. Pour in the batter spreading it evenly over the dish. Bake for 35 minutes until golden.

Allow the tart to cool for a few minutes before sprinkling it with icing sugar and serving it warm.