If you’re after a vegetarian version of our polpette (meatballs), these are so tasty you’ll be delighted to have renounced the flesh. Italians wouldn’t traditionally have polpette with pasta, and they do also work well with some vegetables and a salad on the side. Or just in a tomato sauce with potatoes for a bit of extra substance.

Ingredients for 4 to 6

Dried Lentils – 200g

Ricotta – 125g

Breadcrumbs – 30g

Ragusano/parmesan – 50g

Egg – 1 large beaten

Chill flakes – teaspoon

Garlic – flakes or 3 cloves thinly sliced

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil – for frying

First cook the lentils according to the instructions on the package. Drain them and whiz then in the blender for a couple of minutes until smooth. Then mix in all the other ingredients, except for the olive oil, really well. Really well, like get stuck in with your hands, it’s the best way.

You can leave this mix overnight or use straightaway. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and roll the mixture into 4cm width balls. Fry over a medium heat, turning frequently to get them brown all over.

They are best served with a simple, spicy tomato sauce, and with or without pasta.

Valentine’s day falls on a Tuesday this year. Tuesday is not a day associated with lavish celebratory dinners and romantic indulgence. It’s a cursed school night! So here is a recipe which is a delicious and authentic piatto Italiano, but which you can knock up in minutes. Leaving you plenty of time for that romcom boxset and a bit of canoodling.

Ingredients for 2

spaghetti – 200g/7oz

Garlic – 2 large cloves, minced

Chilli pepper flakes – 1½  tsp

Extra virgin olive oil – 60ml/1/4 cup

Salt flakes – ¾ tsp

Freshly ground pepper – ½ tsp

Parmesan cheese – as much as you like

Bring a big pot of salted water to the boil, and I mean real salty, like the Mediterranean. Cook the spaghetti according to the directions on the package, until it is al dente. Now strain it and place in a large serving dish. Then add the minced garlic, chilli flakes, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and mix it together real well.

Serve immediately with a healthy grating of parmesan and a leaf salad.

Need ideas for dessert? Why not try our delightfully silky olive oil chocolate mousse.

I make olive oil. I know every single step of the process inside out, from sapling to mature tree, from the plucking of the fruit to the winding of the press. I also know how much all this labour of love costs. That’s part of my job too – watching every penny and dime we spend, but making sure we never cut corners. So when I go into a supermarket and see a half litre/17 fl oz bottle of ‘Italian extra virgin olive oil’ for £3 ($6), I know that it can’t be true. Extremely unlikely that it is extra virgin, highly unfeasible that it is Italian and totally conceivable that it isn’t even olive oil!

Let’s look at the maths. Each of our olive trees produces about two litres of olive oil a year. One year, one tree, one harvest, two litres. Each tree costs about €5 to prune. We cut the grass twice a year (sounds easy, but across 21 acres it becomes a little trickier) which works out as €2 per tree . Then the other major expenses are the harvesting by hand, costing about €4 a tree, organic fertiliser at €1 a tree and using the communal press to squash the beauties, coming out at $1.5 for every litre. So we are already up to around €7.50 a litre without including any of the farm overheads, taxes, marketing, organic certification, or big pasta lunches. We are however including the fact that we are paying decent living wages, we are not working people into the ground nor are we employing children.

But just considering the basic cost of product and we still need to add at least another €2.50 a litre for bottling, packaging and transport.  So we’re now up to €10 a litre. With no profit taken by us a shop would typically want to sell this for €20 a litre. This is a long way from our cheap, supermarket extra virgin olive oil. Sure there are economy of scales, and no doubt I could get the harvesters (who include myself incidentally), to work that bit faster, but it’s not going to reduce the costs by an order of magnitude is it?

So it comes as no surprise to me that 4 out of 5 bottles of Italian extra virgin olive oil sold in the UK, USA and China don’t have inside what they say they have on the bottle. Which begs the question, what do they have inside? Well in his brilliant new book ‘Extra Virginity: the sublime and scandalous world of olive oil’, Thomas Mueller offers numerous shocking examples where this ‘italian extra virgin olive oil’ turns out to be mixes of chemically extracted olive oils, cut with nut or sunflower oil or both and it’s likely provenance is Spain, North Africa or Turkey. And I repeat, we are talking about 4 out of every 5 bottles here folks.

I’ve never personally seen evidence of any such shenanigans, but I have visited olive groves around Liguria where nets are left under the trees for the olives to fall into them. The windfall is collected every few weeks for processing – to be extra virgin the olives need to be pressed within 24 hours (not three weeks). Locals openly told me the subsequent oil was refined (to remove the rancid taste) and mixed with fruity foreign oil in a specific ratio so the resulting bottle of oil can still be called “Ligurian”.

So the moral of the story is that you get what you pay for. Don’t take your olive oil for granted. Ask questions about its origins. And heck, you can even go crazy and adopt your very own 100% Italian 100% olive 100% tree.

In the olden days, recycling meant re-using – like actual reusing – by us. Shoeboxes would become document storage systems, shoelaces would have a second life in beaded necklaces and so on. Today it’s much more indirect, involving special bags and weekly schedules and, on a more personal level, no more than a vague pride that your tin of baked beans might once have been the tail fin ofConcord. And it seems so much less efficient. With this in mind, we have been fretting over the fate of our olive oil tins. Apart from anything, they’re just too pretty to be chucked in the recycling bin with last week’s copy of the Radio Times. So we have come up with some easy ways of breathing second life into your Nudo tin, once the oil’s gone of course.

1. Pen holder/desk tidy
Get a can opener. Carefully cut the top off (don’t start near the seam, you need a run up to this), being really careful not to cut yourself as the blood will really spoil the craft look. Carefully dry the inside of the tin. Cover the sharp edge with something you fancy – we used PVC trimming from a car parts shop, but there’s no reason not to go a bit gaga and add fur trim or tinsel.

2. Plant pot.

Do exactly the same as above, but before you pot your plant make a small hole at the bottom of the tin at the back. This will prevent you being woken in the middle of the night to the sound of your plant screaming ‘Help! Help! I’m drowning!’

Have fun, play safe and do send us pics of your creations.

Cathy and I, along with half the food-loving population, sometimes fantasise about opening a restaurant.

Cathy’s dream is the ‘starters and puddings’ restaurant, which cuts out the bossy middle man of the main course and allows for variety and experiment in the multitude of courses which replace it. It even has a name – which will only be appreciated by fans of the BBC brains show Mastermind (and quite possibly not even by them) – ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’.

My mischievous suggestion is a vegetarian restaurant that has just one token meaty main course on offer – to give meat-eaters a taste of how I have suffered for the last three decades in restaurants where the only veggie option involves bland, overcooked pasta  or the dreaded 70s staple goat cheese.

In reality, opening a restaurant business is a bit of a pipe-dream, because everyone who has done it says it is a daunting 24/7 job that leeches the entirety of both your energy and your bank balance. And we would have to agree on the kind of restaurant it would be. The closest real-life example of something we’d have loved to have created ourselves is the Salt Yard in London. Its Italian-Spanish tapas – zucchini flowers stuffed with rich ricotta and drizzled with honey or velvety slices of tuna carpaccio in salsa verde with teeny little broad beans – are just our cup of tea. We’re by no means its only superfans: the success of Salt Yard has led to its brainchilds opening new restaurants Dehesa in Soho and Opera Tavern in Covent Garden (each one an assured and characterful sibling of the firstborn).

The same owners also opened a butchers/charcuterie deli nextdoor to one of their restaurants. Having the impeccable taste they do, they of course stocked Nudo olive oil – and through this connection we discovered that Ben Tish, the Executive Chef across the restaurants, was something of a Nudo fan. For a few months now I’ve been pestering him for a couple of his favourite recipes – and I’m very happy to present the first one. It’s well worth the wait.

Marinated San Marzano tomatoes with borlotti beans and buffalo mozzarella

This really is an assembly of ingredients in their prime with a simple vinaigrette to bring all the flavours together. The beautiful, sweet San Marzano tomatoes are worth trying to get; they are available from specialist food markets. And take the time to buy and cook fresh borlotti beans from the pod. They have a sweet, nutty flavour and absorb the other flavours of this beautiful salad. The Nudo chilli oil adds a really nice kick to the salad with a pleasant fruity undertone.

Serves 4 as a tapa

San Marzano tomatoes – 2, eyes removed and skin pricked

Nudo extra virgin olive oil with chilli – 100ml/3.5 fl oz

Moscatel vinegar – 100ml/3.5 fl oz

Thyme – 1 sprig

Garlic – 1 clove, peeled and sliced

Fresh borlotti beans – 40g/1.4oz podded weight

Small onion – 1

Bay leaf – 1

Carrot – half small peeled

Buffalomozzarella – 1x125g/4.4oz ball

Rocket/rucola – 1 bunch, picked and washed

Sea salt and black pepper

Blanche the tomatoes in boiling water for 10 seconds and then refresh in iced water. Peel off the skins and cut the tomatoes in half length wise. Scoop out the seeds and them place the flesh in a bowl. Pour over the oil, vinegar and add the garlic and thyme. Season well and marinate for at least 2 hours.

Place the beans in a pan and cover with cold water. Add the onion, carrot and bay. Bring to the boil, skim and then simmer until the beans are tender. About 1 hour. Drain off the liquid and reserve the beans.

To serve add the beans to the tomatoes and then tear in the mozzarella. Add the rocket and mix everything very well, season again to taste. Divide the salad evenly between two plates.

At this time of year no bona fide Italian would turn up to a dinner party without an elegantly packaged panettone, pandoro or torrone. If you people-watch at passeggiata time (that lovely post-day, pre-evening interlude), you’ll see all sorts strolling about, carrying their tasteful confections. In deference to this simple and lovely tradition, we started to make our own olive oil panettone. We were very proud when it recently came a close second in a Guardian taste test, and were the first panettone to be mentioned in the New York times for 9 years. Trouble is that this meant we ran out of stock in just three days. So in case you get given a panettone made by someone else, we’ve got a little recipe to turn it into something special.

Ingredients

Panettone – 750g/26oz

Butter – 75g/2.6oz

Milk – 400ml/13.5fl oz

Cream – 150ml/5fl oz single or double

Eggs – 2 free range

Sugar – 125g/1oz

Ground cinnamon – sprinkling

Ground nutmeg – sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 180^oC/350^oF/GM4. Cut your panettone into slices about 1.5cm/½ inch  thick. Butter one side of each slice and then cut it into triangles.

Lay the pieces on an oven proof baking dish. Continue until you fill the dish, nice and cosy.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and gently whisk them with the sugar. Heat the milk and cream in a saucepan (you can add vanilla too if you like) until it just below boiling. Slowly pour the milk/cream mixture into the mixing bowl with the eggs, stirring continuously. Pour the mixture evenly over the panettone soaking each bready peak, and then put it in the oven for about 25 mins, or until the exposed panettone starts to brown. Eat straight away with cold single cream. (You can also cool it, take to a friend’s house, receive adulation, reheat and eat there).

See some more photos in our Panettone bread & butter pudding album here.

To stop any squabbling about what to do with your turkey this winter, here’s a Nudo twist on turkey tradition. The recipe comes from our favourite Italian chef, and far and away best neighbour, Guida Stacchietti.

Ingredients for 4 people

Slice of turkey breast – 500g

Sausage meat – 1 small sausage equivalent

Chestnuts – 8 cooked, roasted and cleaned

Minced chicken meat – 300g

Bacon – 50g cut into small cubes

Carrot – 1 cut into small cubes cooked for one minute in boiling water

Egg whites – 3

Salt and Pepper

Parmesan – 2 tablespoons

For the gravy

Carrot – 1, thinly diced

Celery – 1 stick, thinly diced

Onion – 1 small one, cut into small chunks

White wine – 1 glass

Tenderise the turkey by laying the breast between two sheets of clingfilm and beating it with a meat tenderiser – or any other heavy object you have to hand. You are aiming for a couple of millimetres in thickness so give it a good hammering. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

Mix the minced chicken with the egg whites and all other ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper. Spread the filling evenly on the slice of turkey, and place the whole chestnuts in the centre (prunes are an alternative delicious wintery option for anyone who’s not into nuts). Carefully roll the turkey up, using the clingfilm to help you get a good tight roll.

Transfer the whole roll (minus the clingfilm!) to ovenproof paper and tie with string. Before you put in the oven, scatter over the gravy ingredients – carrot, celery, onion and wine. Then bake at 170°C for about 40 minutes.

When cooked, pour off the sauce and bind it with small pieces of “beurre maniers” (butter rubbed in flour). Strain the gravy for a smooth sauce. Slice the turkey into 1cm slices and pour a little sauce on each slice. Serve with sautéed seasonal vegetables drizzled with a little olive oil with thyme, or for something more unusual, serve with slices of pear cooked in red wine and cinnamon.

Ingredients for 4

Mixed wild mushrooms – 200g/7oz

Garlic – 2 cloves

Shallots – 6

Butter – 100g/4oz

Salt and pepper

Rosemary – 1 sprig

Risotto rice – 350g/12oz

Dry white wine – 125ml/4½ fl oz

Vegetable stock – 1 litre/1¾ pints

Parsley – handful

Parmesan cheese – 85g/3oz

Olive oil with basil – drizzle

Wipe clean and slice the mushrooms. Finely chop the garlic and shallots and fry them in half the butter until they start to colour. Add the mushrooms, a grind of pepper and the finely chopped rosemary. After another minute, add the rice to the frying pan and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the wine, and stir it in until its all absorbed. Follow this with a ladleful of hot stock at a time, until you’ve used all the stock. Then add a good pinch of salt, the chopped parsley, the remaining butter and the grated parmesan. Serve up, adding a drizzle of basil olive oil over the top of each portion.

Our friend Hamideh cooks the most amazing Iranian feasts. But last weekend it was our turn. We’d promised to have a pasta-making masterclass with the assembled crowd of five children and four enthusiastic adults. The real wonder of pasta lies in the transformation of boring old flour and boring old eggs into something utterly, divinely, tear-wellingly sublime. The only thing you need to add is effort – in our case readily found in the guise of ten small pummelling hands.

You mix flour and eggs and you work them. You work them so hard you should almost have a Jane Fonda tape on encouraging you in the background. (In our case it was Andy Williams singing Solitaire which worked, in a different way). Then you roll it and roll it and the machine rolls it some more, and then the lovely magic machine slices it into long elegant strips which you hang, so very satisfyingly, on a clothes drying horse.

We made pesto – another joy of few ingredients, and a rich tomato sauce – just three! – and the whole meal was as simple as that. I say simple. The whole thing took about five hours. Which might have been one explanation for the nine speedily emptied plates. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Have a look at more photos here and follow the instructions for making your own homemade pasta here.

Ever tried lemon juice or lemon olive oil with pork chops? We’re hooked. Lamb chops work well here too, so do experiment – and if you’re lucky enough to have an open fire grill, well, that’s flaming brilliant.

Ingredients for 4

Pork chops – 1 per person

Salt and pepper

Orange and lemon – 1 of each

Garlic – 3 cloves

Rosemary – sprig

Whole cloves – 3

Olive oil with lemons – ¼ cup

Lightly season the chops with salt and pepper. Grate the zest of the citrus fruits into a bowl, and add the crushed garlic, chopped rosemary, whole cloves and lemon olive oil.

Add the chops and mix in the marinade with your hands. Squeeze over the juice from the orange. Cover the bowl and leave in the fridge overnight (or as long as you can manage).

Remove the chops and pat them dry. Preheat a cast-iron grill pan and cook each chop on a medium heat for 4 mins on each side. Serve with some roasted carrots.

While we were preparing the autumn packages this year it dawned on us what an amazing network of people around the world are part of the programme. So this year we chose a typical olive grove ‘street’ (one row of trees in the Rosalio grove) and asked the adopters if they’d mind ‘coming out’ to their neighbours. They were all happy to do so – thank you Rosalio row! Here are some of their comments.

RO295 - Chris, Delaware USA
‘We have used the olive oil several times and it is fantastic. We love olive oil and this is one of the best by far  that I have tasted. We are taking some with us on vacation this week for other family and friends to try!!’

RO285 - Greg, New Mexico USA
‘Great gift.’

RO279 - Larry, Massachusetts USA
‘The olive adoption was given to me as a birthday gift and yes I was very surprised, my wife has a hard time finding gifts that I really use. This is a great gift that I have already used, even on Cape Cod I can sit outside with wine, baguette and my own olive oil for dipping add a little herb from the garden. It does not get any better than that.’

RO300 - Helenmarie, Pennsylvania USA
‘This past Christmas my daughter, her husband and my son planned my present on everything Italian. I received pasta and biscotti and sauce all imported from Italy. I was thrilled when I opened the part of the present that told me they had adopted an olive tree in my name. I began to cry (hey I’m a tough northern girl this rarely happens) and I kept crying. I was so moved by this idea that I had this little part of a country I have only dreamed about visiting for years! What a tender idea! Just writing to you now fills me up again (eegads, I could be getting soft).

Before this goes any further let me blame it on Rosey! I know her formal name is Rosa 300 but she’ll always be Rosey to me and I’m sure her delightful olive oil has warmed my northern heart. The day her oil arrived we tore into some crusty bread and did some comparison dipping and tasting. You know Rosey won! Bravo! Bravo! Bella Rosa!

Our summers are wonderful here warm days and cool mountain nights. My neighbor brought me fresh lettuce and green beans from her garden last night. I drizzled them with Rosey oil, poured a glass of red wine and Wow! Closed my eyes…Italy!’

RO304 - Dominic, London UK
‘It was my gorgeous sister, Philippa who gave this to me as a an amazing gift (she has an amazing nose for hunting out new, interesting, unusual and trend setting things). Firstly it’s a delight and real occasion when the oil is delivered, the oil is bloody lovely and the best I’ve tasted and I love ‘owning an olive oil grove in Italy’ (maybe a little exaggeration there). I’ve loved it so much that its the first present that I’ve asked for again and again. So thank-you and thank-you Philippa for that.’

Over the seasons, we’ve ruminated about rosemary, pondered porcini and waxed lyrical over lime. But the two new flavours in our laboratory this harvest time are….drum roll…. truffle oil and mint oil. Truffle olive oil is already a classic, but we’ve discovered that none of it is made naturally. Apparently the flavour compounds in the truffle are so delicate and volatile, that if you crush them above 6oC they all evaporate – so all existing truffle oils add a chemical version of the truffle flavour instead. That perfectly positioned slice of black truffle at the bottom of your rather costly truffle oil? It does nothing except make you feel it was worth the ticket price! So we are going to go where others have feared to tread and make our truffle oil the pure way – just crushing the truffle together with the olives. If it works, you’ll be the first to hear about it.

As for the olive oil with mint, well I have to say we were sceptical at first. And we also have to give due credit to another excellent olive oil producer O&Co, whose mint olive oil turned us around. We are now converts; it pairs so well  with so many things – from couscous to lamb to crunchy salads. It’ll mean we have a bit less mint for our mojitos but we hope it’ll be a price worth paying.

Ingredients for 4 starters

Garlic cloves – 4 peeled

Olive oil with chilli – 2 glugs

Red chilli – 1

Aubergine/eggplant – 1 large

Ciabatta – ½ loaf

Mozzarella di bufala – 125g/4.5oz

Parsley – handful

Squash three of the garlic cloves and mix with the olive oil and finely chopped chilli. Slice the eggplant into ¼ inch thick pieces and mix in with the oil. Cook the slices in a griddle pan for 5mins on each side until tender.

Cut the bread into 1inch thick slices, brush each side with chilli olive oil and then grill until golden on each side. Rub the last piece of garlic onto the bread. Thinly assemble the ciabatta with a slice of aubergine, then a slice of mozzarella and top off with a sprig of parsley.

Tagliata: sliced steak on a bed of rocket and tomatoes

If you’re out in the sun, barbecueing with friends, this simple delicious recipe is a must-try.

Ingredients for 4 people

Sweet vine cherry tomatoes – 500g/18oz

Arugula/Rocket – 100g/3.5oz

Balsamic vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

Sirloin steak – 4 x 250g/9oz 2cm thick.

Salt and pepper

Parmesan cheese – 150g/5oz shaved.

Roughly chop the tomatoes and washed rocket. Mix in a bowl with a good dose of olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper.

Brush the steaks with a teaspoon of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook them on a hot  barbeque for 2 minutes on each side (or according to how you like your meat done – 4 mins for medium). Remove the meat, rest for 5 minutes then cut at a slight angle so you get strips about ½ cm by 1cm.

Lay out a plate for each person. Pile some salad on and arrange the cut meat on top. Sprinkle the meat with salt and olive oil. Add more of the salad on top of the meat then the shaved parmesan. Serve to your friends and see their eyes light up. It’s a lot better than a crusty drumstick.

People often ask us if it’s hard work making olive oil. The truth, at least at this time of year, is that it really isn’t. We just leave it to the heat of the sun to turn our olives from green to black (all olives start green and then turn black – a surprisingly rewarding dinner party info-nugget). The last major effort in the grove was in the spring – when the trees got their annual haircut, the trimmings were chipped and the grass was cut. And really that’s it for about three months.

So while Mother Nature is taking care of the grove, we can turn our hands to other things like stealing a march on packing up the autumn/fall packages. We’ve also been putting together a nice little recipe book with lots of pictures and ideas, which all current adopters will receive along with their flavoured oils. Please let us know what you think.

Next on the olive grove ‘to do’ list is another trim of the grass, before we start the harvest in mid October. But that’s a long way off. Far more pressing now is applying the most important lesson of the many we have learned from our Italian friends: taking a nice long break in the summer. Happy holidays!

This is a great pasta salad to serve at a barbecue. You can prepare the sauce in advance and then just cook the pasta, mix in and serve. The zesty lemon and perfumey basil flavours are all summer.

Ingredients for 4

Ricotta cheese – 200g/7oz
Lemon – the grated zest of 1
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Basil leaves – 15g roughly torn
Parmesan cheese – 50g/2oz

Penne – 400g/14oz

Extra Virgin olive oil with basil for drizzling

In a bowl add the ricotta, lemon zest, salt and pepper and beat together briefly with a whisk. Then mix in the torn basil and grated parmesan. At this point you can press pause and pick it up later. Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water according to the instructions. Add a ladle or so of the pasta water to the ricotta mixture and mix it in. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and mix with the ricotta. Add a drizzle of olive oil with basil.

When Italians cook fish their gold rule is ‘don’t mess’. A carefully chosen, beautifully fresh fish and a couple of judiciously selected simple ingredients are all you need.

Ingredients per person

Sea bream/Porgie – a 400g/14oz gutted fish

Garlic – a peeled clove

Parsley – small handful

Lemon – the juice of one lemon

Olive oil with lemons – 1 tbsp

Salt and pepper.

Scale, wash and pat your fish dry. Put it in a shallow dish and sneak inside a garlic clove and a couple of sprigs of parsley. Mix together the other ingredients and rub them all over the fish with your hands. If you have time leave the fish in the marinade for a couple of hours.

Heat a griddle pan, add the fish and cook for 15 minutes on one side and 10 minutes on the other over medium-low grill heat. This is also a delicious recipe to try on the barbecue, where cooking times should be about the same.

Ingredients for 12-15 cupcakes

Courgette (Zucchini) – 1 medium/150g/5.3oz

Sugar – 100g/3.5oz

Honey – 5 tbsp

Olive oil with lemons – 5 tbsp

Eggs – 2

Flour – 250g/8.8oz

Bicarbonate of soda – 1 tsp

Baking powder – ¼ tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Lemon, zest of 1 and 3 tbsp juice

Almond – handful of flakes

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350^oF/GM4. Grate the courgette (zucchini) and then mix all the ingredients together. (Yes it really is that simple. Cathy, who has spent her lifetime beating and folding and blending, was also agog.) Divide between cupcake cups, filling them up two thirds of the way. Sprinkle a few flaked almonds over the top. Then bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Sorelle

Gabriella and Elisabetta say, “This year’s harvest is lightly fruity and sweet, with a peppery finish. There are hints of almond, apple, and grass. The oil is green, with golden highlights.”

Tasting notes: Fruity with a lightly spicy finish.

Acidity: Less than 0.2%

Fiorano

Paolo says, “This year, we’ve been busy planting an acre of three different varities of new olive trees. The golden green oil from this harvest is intense and fruity, with a lightly spicy finish.”

Tasting notes: Fruity with hints of almond, green tomato, and fresh cut grass.

Acidity: Less than 0.11%

La Morla

Caterina says, “This year’s harvest is fruity and lightly sweet, with hints of artichoke and dried fruit. It has a delicate flavour that won’t overwhelm even your most subtle dishes. The colour is greeny golden.”

Tasting notes:  Sweet and mild, with subtle tones of fruit and artichoke.

Acidity: Less than 0.2%

Fonte Carella

Gugliemo says, “Our harvest this year is intensely fruity, with a peppery, almost spicy finish. This delicious olive variety, Piantone di Mogliano, is only found here in our small region of Italy. The oil is an emerald sparkling green.”

Tasting notes: Prominent fruity flavour, with a spicy finish.

Acidity: Less than 0.2%

Ammuri

Bruno says, “This year’s harvest is lightly sweet, but with a spicy finish. There are even hints of almond, green tomato, fresh cut grass, and artichoke. The oil is liquid gold with a green hue.”

Tasting notes: This oil starts sweet and mild, but finishes with a peppery spice.

Acidity: Less than 0.27%

Serena

Massimo says, “This year’s harvest is light and fruity, with scents of freshly cut grass. You might taste a slighty nuttiness like almond and fresh green tomato. The colour is a rich golden green.”

Tasting notes: Mild and fruity, with hints of green tomato and almond.

Acidity: Less than 0.11%

Tre Donne

Elena says, “This year’s harvest is moderately fruity, with hints of artichoke. The oil is green, with golden highlights, and there’s a taste of fresh cut grass.”

Tasting notes: Fresh and fruity, with artichoke tones.

Acidity: Less than 0.2%

Il Professore

Alduino says, “This year’s harvest is fruity and sweet, but with a peppery, spicy finish. The oil is a rich dark gold colour and has a subtle almond scent.”

Tasting notes: Fruity and peppery

Acidity: Less than 0.09%

Il Taccolito

Rita says, “This year’s harvest has a light, buttery taste, with a peppery finish. The oil is green, with golden highlights.”

Tasting notes:  Buttery and peppery.

Acidity: 0.2%

Aleandri

Tiziano says, “This year’s harvest is bright and peppery, with flavours of grass and herbs. The oil is a rich golden green.”

Tasting notes: Grass and herbs, with a peppery finish

Acidity: 0.2%

Lina

Lina says, “This year’s harvest is buttery, with sweet tones of almond. This delicious olive variety, Piantone di Mogliano, is only found here in our small region of Italy. The oil is green, with golden highlights.”

Tasting notes: Buttery and lightly sweet

Acidity: 0.2%

Rosalio

Jason says, “This year’s harvest is peppery, with flavours of grass and citrus fruits. The oil is dark gold with a hint of green.”

Tasting notes: Peppery and grassy

Acidity: 0.2%

Dell’Orso

Cesare & Paola say, “This year’s harvest has the distinct aroma of freshly cut grass. The golden green oil is intense and fruity, with a lightly spicy finish.”

Tasting notes: Fruity with hints of almond and freshly cut grass.

Acidity: Less than 0.11% (0.8% typical)

Ardelio

Ardelio says, “This year’s harvest is buttery, with sweet tones of almond. This delicious olive variety, Piantone di Mogliano, is only found here in our small region of Italy. The oil is green, with golden highlights.”

Tasting notes: Peppery and grassy

Acidity: 0.2%

Do let us know what you think – we love your tasting notes best of all.

Ingredients for 4

Olive oil with lemons – 6 tablespoons

DijonMustard – 2 tablespoons

Lemon juice – 2 tablespoons

Garlic clove – 2 finely chopped

Salt – a couple of large pinches

Pepper – freshly ground.

Boneless chicken breasts – one per person, organic

Put all the marinade ingredients into a bowl and mix them well. Add the chicken breasts and leave for at least 30 minutes. Preheat a grill pan, add a splash of olive oil and grill on each side for 8-10 minutes making sure that any juices run clear.

First of all he is a ‘man’s man’ – football coach, handy with a wrench and even handier with a 20 tonne cement mixer. On the other hand he still lives with his Mum whom he adores, he tends chickens, he happily puts his arm round me, he makes 5 different types of cheese, and most recently he’s added making his own beer to his skillset. I guess the beer thing has a foot in both camps. And whilst I mention it there are two types, a scuro and a bionda – a dark and a blond. So really quite macho actually. Anyway, they are both great, fizzy, sharp and as well balanced as my mate Giancarlo. (Oh and he looks a bit like Jesus Christ.)

In Italy, the preparation of carne alla brace (flame-grilled meat) is a ritual almost as vital to the national identity as the Sunday mass which typically precedes it. And a sight even more uplifting than the chalice of the holy sacrament, is that of a ruddy-faced chef preparing to get medieval on an open wood-fired grill. A pile of fresh, succulent meat lies to his right, a bowl of salt and pepper and a few herbs to his left. And in front of him a restaurant full of hungry souls awaiting salvation.

Enjoy this blissfully simple recipe for the grilling season ahead.

Ingredients for 4

Olive oil with garlic – 6 tablespoons

Rosemary – chopped sprig

Sweet chilli jam – 3 tablespoons

Salt and pepper

Lamp chops – 2 per person, organic

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the chops and massage the flavours in with your hands. Leave for at least half an hour. Preheat a grill pan, add a splash of olive oil and grill the chops on a medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes on each side, depending on the thickness and your taste for blood.

Here we’ve used it with sustainably sourced shrimps. These can be eaten on their own, as in Sardinia, or mixed with spaghetti or, better still, in a risotto.

Ingredients for 4

Jumbo shrimp – 500g/1lb

Chilli salsa – 1 tbsp

Extra virgin olive oil with garlic – 4 tbsp

Salt

Parsley – 2 tblsp chopped

Grappa – 4 tbsp

Wash the shrimp and removed the heads and legs. Mix the salsa with the olive oil in a small bowl, pour the mix into a pan and quickly cook the shrimp a couple of minutes on each side, until they turn pink. Just before serving pour in the grappa and set it alight. Serve with a certain flourish and a sprinkling of parsley.

Ingredients for 4

Garlic – one or two heads

Peas – 200g frozen

Butter – 1 tbsp

Extra virgin olive oil – 2 tsp

Salt – a good pinch

Parmesan cheese – 80g

Tagliatelle – 320g

Pepper – freshly ground

Preheat the oven to 200^oC/GM6/390^oF. Cut the tops off the garlic so you can see the flesh peeking out. Place them on a square of tin foil, drizzle over the olive oil and loosely wrap the garlic so it’s sides aren’t touching the foil. Put it in the oven for about 50 minutes, until the garlic is soft.

Cook the peas in salty water, then add them into a food processor. Squeeze out the garlic in there too, and blend along with the butter, olive oil and a pinch of salt. Blend into a smooth paste then mix in the grated parmesan..

Cook the tagliatelle according to the instructions on the package. Once it’s cooked drain and mix in the pesto. Serve immediately.

Our Le Marche olive oil is quite mild compared to its Tuscan cousins – which makes it the perfect basis for flavoured oils. The range is great fun to experiment with in the kitchen – a splash of basil oil or garlic oil really does transform a salad and you can create amazingly mouth-watering smells by roasting with thyme or chilli oil. Let the flavours be your friends. Here are a couple of our current favourites…

Avocado with lemon oil

Avocado – half a ripe one per person

Extra virgin olive oil with lemon – a splash

Balsamico di Modena – a slightly smaller splash

Salt and pepper

Cut a ripe avocado in half, unplug the stone and fill the resulting bowl with a third balsamic and two thirds lemon olive oil. Sprinkle a big pinch of Maldon sea salt and several grinds of pepper over the top and eat with impunity.

Patata pobre, with chorizo and cheat aoili

Ingredients for 4

Potatoes – 1 kg/35oz

Red peppers – 1 ½

Garlic cloves – 2

Extra virgin olive oil - 300ml/10 fl oz

Extra virgin olive oil with chillies – 100ml/3.4 fl oz

Mayonnaise – 4 tbls

Extra virgin olive oil with garlic – 8 tsp

Chorizo – 2 sausages

Wash potatoes, then chop them into 1cm thick edges. Heat all of the oil in a deep frying pan on a medium high heat. When it’s hot add the potatoes and cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are just-not-quite-done. Now drain the potatoes, catching the oil below.

Chop up the garlic and slice the pepper into strips. Add the pepper slices to the thick bottomed pan and soften for a couple of minutes before adding the garlic. When the smell is just too delicious to endure (a minute or so) add the potatoes and let all the vegetables cook a bit more until things start to caramelise and go deliciously sticky and chewy, sticking to the bottom of the pan. Season with salt and pepper.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking prepare the aioli – I do enjoy making it from scratch, but let’s be honest it’s a fair amount of work. So since I tried out this shortcut with the garlic oil I’ve not looked back – scoop 4 tablespoons of pre-made mayonnaise into a bowl and simply mix in the olive oil, two teaspoons at a time.

Slice the chorizo into thick chunks and serve all together on a platter.

Watercress, pistachio and mandarin olive oil salad

Ingredients for 4

Watercress – 90g/3.2 oz with the stalks removed

Basil leaves – 20g/0.7 oz

Coriander leaves – 20g/0.7 oz

Dill – 10g/0.35 oz with the stalks removed

Pistachios – 40g/1.4 oz unsalted

Olive oil with mandarins – 4 tbsp

Salt and black pepper

Lightly toast your pistachios and then roughly crush them with a rolling pin. Mix the washed watercress together with your herbs into your salad bowl. Sprinkle over the nuts and then the mandarin olive oil. Add a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Now serve.

There’s a scene in Walt Disney’s Lady and the tramp where the two newly acquainted hounds share a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs. They suck on the same piece of pasta and end up lip to lip, or snout to snout, in a romantic bind. Though I didn’t know at the time, it was my first image of Italian food and has had a strong impact ever since. Even subsequent brushes with grown men wearing bibs spraying a mist of meatball sauce haven’t sullied this vision of the ultimate romantic dish. So in tribute to those courting canines, here’s a recipe from our friend Stefania for the perfect romantic dinner for two, best enjoyed some time in mid February.

Ingredients for 4 or 5

Slice of bread – 1 whole wheat

Milk  – 60ml/2 fl oz

Garlic – 1 clove

Parsley – the leaves from 5g/0.2oz.

Egg – 1 free range

Parmesan cheese – 20g/0.7oz

Mince lamb – 250g/8.8oz

Mince pork – 250g/8.8oz (or use an extra 250g/8.8oz of minced lamb)

Fine breadcrumbs – 20g/0.7g

Sunflower oil – depending on size of pan

Extra virgin olive oil – several glugs

Onion – half

Passata – 200g/7oz

Tinned chopped tomatoes – 250g/8.8oz

Dried oregano – 2 pinches

Spaghetti  – 320g/11oz

Salt and pepper

Cut the crust off your slice of bread and tear the rest of it up into a small bowl. Cover the bread with your milk and mix it together with your hands.

Next, if you have a blender, add the roughly chopped garlic, parsley, raw egg and the milk/bread mix. Grate in the parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Give the ingredients several good pulses unto nicely blended.

If you don’t have a blender finely chop the garlic and parsley and mix together the ingredients by hand.

Put the minced meat in a mixing bowl, add the prepared mix and the dry breadcrumbs (the quality of these really does make a difference). Mix it all together really well with your hands. Cover and pop in the fridge for 15 minutes (the bowl, not you).

Now time to get you hands dirty for the third or maybe forth time – take the mixture out of the fridge and mould the meat into ping-pong ball-sized polpette. They should be about 25g each and you really need to press them firmly into a ball so that they won’t break up later.

When you have your 20-odd pieces on a plate you can then prepare a small frying pan with half a centimetre (1/8^th inch) of sunflower oil on a medium/high heat. Also prepare a thick bottomed saucepan, with a few glugs of olive oil on a medium heat. Add the roughly chopped onion to this saucepan.

Once the sunflower oil is sizzling hot add 4 polpette at a time, and using a couple of forks, brown evenly. Then transfer the meatballs to the saucepan with the onions and add more raw ones to the frying pan. When all the polpette are in the saucepan add the passata and chopped tomatoes along with half a cup of water (so the polpette are more or less covered). Turn the heat down to low and season it with salt a pepper and the dried oregano. Then cover and let it cook away for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring gently with a wooden spoon every now and then. This give you time to tidy up and set the table.

As the sauce starts to thicken cook the spaghetti according to the instructions on the package. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and, in the saucepan that you just cooked it in, add most of the sauce from the meatballs. Mix the sauce and the pasta together well and then scoop a portion onto a plate. Add 4 meatballs and a spoonful of the remaining sauce on top. Serve straightaway

Ingredients for 4 starters

Fennel seeds – ½ tsp

Basil leaves – 15

Mint – 15 leaves

Garlic – one clove

Olive oil with garlic – 4 tbs

Lemon – 1

Salt and pepper

Mozzarella di bufala – 250g

Vine tomatoes – 2

Dry fry the fennel seeds until they start to pop. Bash them up and put in a bowl. Chop the mint, basil and finely chop the garlic. Add them to the bowl along with the oil, the grated zest of the lemon, ½ tsp of salt and some pepper. Pull apart the mozzarella with your hands and mix into the bowl of marinade.  Leave for half and hour and then serve with the chopped tomatoes and a few chunks of lightly toasted ciabatta.

Cathy’s friend from choir, Nicoletta, is from Milan. She promised to cook us a Milanese speciality to show us how different it is from Marchigiani food. She chose osso buco, which uses braised veal shanks. The name comes from the Italian for ‘hole in the bone’ and the bone marrow itself is one of the real treats of the dish. It is invariably served with saffron risotto (p 300 in The Dolce Vita Diaries), one of the pillars of Milanese cooking.

Ingredients for 4 people

Butter – 80g

Onion – 1/2

Veal shank – four 3cm thick slices of shank cut across the bone

Plain flour – for dusting

Salt and pepper

Red wine – 1/2 a glass

Meat stock – 175ml

Carrot – 1

Celery – 1 stalk

Lemon – rind of 1

Parsley – small bunch

Melt the butter in a deep-sided frying pan and cook the diced onion over a low heat for 5 minutes.

Lightly roll the shank in flour and add to the frying pan with the heat turned up until browned all over. Season with salt and pepper and add the red wine. Let the wine evaporate.

Add the stock, diced carrot and diced celery, turn down the heat and cover. Carry on cooking for up to an hour or more. If it starts to go too dry add more meat stock. If it’s too runny add butter and flour to thicken it. When it’s about ready mix in the grated lemon rind and finely chopped parsley, and cook for at least a couple of minutes more. When ready, place a slice of the meat on top of the risotto and drizzle some of the remaining juice from the frying pan over the top.

{Book Extract from The Dolce Vita Diaries (HarperCollins 2009) by Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb}

After a long day at the office or harvesting in the grove this is an easy, no-fuss recipe for a deliciously creamy soup. Perfect for the colder Autumn evenings.

Ingredients for 4 people

Olive oil – for frying

Onion – 1

Potatoes – 6 peeled and sliced

Vegetable stock – 1.5 litres/52 fl.oz

Guanciale/pancetta/unsmoked bacon – 200g/7oz

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the sliced onion, cook for 5 minutes, then add the potatoes and cook for another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and pour in the stock. Lower the heat and cook for 1 hour, when the potatoes will have broken up and thickened. Blend to a velvety, fine texture with a hand blender and check for seasoning.

Cut the meat into thin slices and fry in olive oil for 5 minutes until slightly crispy. Serve the soup with a small mound of crispy meat on top, drizzle on some extra virgin olive oil and garnish with a sprig of marjoram.

{Book Extract from The Dolce Vita Diaries (HarperCollins 2009) by Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb}

Whether it’s cycling to work, going for a long Sunday stroll or spending a day harvesting olives in the grove, one of the best things about a bit of fresh air and exercise is what it does for the appetite. At the end of a big day in the grove, this dish is just what the harvester ordered.

Ingredients for 6 people

For the béchamel

Milk – 450ml/¾ pint

Butter – 50g/2oz

Plain flour – 50g/1¾ oz

Salt – 1 teaspoon

For everything else

Nudo almond or Ligurian pesto – 200g/7 oz

Lasagna sheets – 350g/12.3 oz

Parmesan – 90g/3.2 oz grated

Pine nuts – 30g/1 oz

Butter – a knob

Salt and pepper to taste

Make the béchamel by heating the milk in a saucepan just to before the point of boiling. In a heavy bottomed saucepan melt 50g of butter and add the flour. Cook for a couple of minutes, then take it off the heat and slowly add the warm milk, continuously stirring so it stays smooth. When all the milk is in you can put the sauce over a low heat to thicken and salt to taste.

Toast the pine nuts. Preheat the oven to 200oC/400oF/gas mark 6. Bring a big pan of salted water to boil. Cook the pasta sheets a few at a time, for a couple of minutes each, as you build your lasagna.

Start off by greasing your lasagna dish with a decent bit if butter and spread a small spoonful of béchamel. As the pasta sheets are ready, cut them to fit the dish, and do alternate layers of pasta, then béchamel, a spoonful of pesto, a sprinkling of parmesan and a sprinkling of pine nuts. The Italians tend to have lots of layers of pasta and I’d aim for at least 8. On the final top layer spread the béchamel, sprinkle some cheese and pine nuts then dab on some butter.

Whack it into the oven for 20 minutes or until it’s beginning to brown on top. Let it sit for 5 minutes before serving.

An integral part of Movie Night is homemade popcorn. In fact the miracle of taking those little yellow nuggets and seeing them bursting Incredible Hulk like out of their skins and into new white light bright delights is sometimes better entertainment than the movie. Recently we’ve been getting creative with the flavouring – cook the popcorn in lemon oil or mandarin oil for a delicious zesty flavour. Or go for chilli if you’re feeling cheeky.

If you want even more of a helping hand with your perfect staying in evening, here are some ideas for flavour/film pairings.

Lemon oil popcorn: perfect for bright summer films. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bednobs and Broomsticks and Annie are our current favourites.

Mandarin oil popcorn: slightly more eccentric. Partner up with something a bit more unusual like Ponyo or the collected works of Maurice Sendak.

Chilli oil popcorn: a bit spicy so one for the grown ups. Try with Glengarry Glenross or Midnight Cowboy.

Ingredients for 2 kids
Popcorn/dried mais – 50g
Citrus olive oil – 2 teaspoons
Caster sugar – 1 tablespoon

Heat the oil in a thick bottomed saucepan over a medium to high flame. Add the corn, pop the lid on a shake. As soon as the popping has  stopped take the lid off, sprinkle over the sugar and transfer to a  big bowl.

This is a great simple but indulgent dinner, ideal for this time of year. It’s rich and creamy but the citrus kick keeps things in check and it makes a lovely romantic dinner for two. Finish it off with a box of Nudo’s handmade olive oil chocolates.

Ingredients
Nudo tagliatelle – 150g/5.3oz
Butter – 20g/0.7oz
Grated rind and juice of 1 organic lemon
Parsley – 1 tbsp chopped
Sage – 1 tbsp chopped
Rosemary – 1 tbsp chopped
Chives – 1 tbsp chopped
Double cream – 80ml/2.8fl.oz
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan – 20g/0.7oz

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Chop the herbs, add to the melted butter along with the cream, salt and pepper. Then grate in the lemon rind. Slowly simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice to the pan and bring back to the boil, then take the pan off the heat and keep warm. Cook the tagliatelle in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain and mix into the sauce along with half the grated parmesan. Stir well and serve with the remaining cheese sprinkled on top.

Put the clams in a bowl of cold, salted water for half an hour. Then rinse them under some running water and throw away any that are open (i.e. dead). Heat the wine in a pan and add the clams. Cover and cook at a high heat for five minutes until they have opened. Take the pan off the heat and scoop out the clams.  Sieve the nice liquid that is left in the pan and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large pan, add the chopped chilli and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the liquid from the calms and simmer uncovered. Salt to taste.

Meanwhile prepare the spaghetti as directed on the pack. When the sauce has thickened up, add the clams and the parsley and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Mix and serve with a garnish of parsley.

Bring a saucepan of salted water to boil. Trim the very ends of the broccoli and discard, then chop up the rest of the stalk up to about a few centimetres from the head (or until the stalk is nice and tender).

Peel and finely slice the garlic and add this to another saucepan with a good drizzle of olive oil.  Add in the chopped stalk (not the tender heads), the crushed chillies and the anchovy fillets. Cover with a lid and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the penne to the boiling water. Make sure you stir at the beginning so the pasta doesn’t stick to the  bottom. 5 minutes before the pasta is ready add the tender broccoli heads to the pasta.

Finely grate the pecorino cheese. When the pasta is cooked, scoop out a cupful of pasta water for use later and drain the pasta and broccoli. Mix this into the saucepan with the chilli and stalks and add the cheese. Add a few teaspoons of your pasta water to give the sauce the right consistency and mix thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Cath said ‘Try it before you judge it. And please don’t call me dude.’

She was right. Thanks to the ciabatta, this dish is yummy AND filling. The crunchy slightly burnt bread which sops up the juices and oil of the salad is a highlight.

Thinly slice your onion and put it in a bowl drizzling over the red wine vinegar and a good pinch of salt. Cut the crust off the bread, tear the white part into thumb sized chucks and dry-toast them in a frying pan.

Now prep the dressing by grating the zest off your lemon into a small bowl and squeezing in the juice from one half. Now add the lemon oil and oregano, a pinch of salt and ground black pepper.

Now get the body of the salad together in a big bowl  – roughly cut up the tomatoes, leaving out the stalky bit, then wash, dry, chop and add the lettuce, and stone, half and add the black olives (I do this by squashing them with the palm of my hand.

Give your dressing a quick stir then add it to the bowl along with the onions and toasted ciabatta chunks. Mix well and then tear the mozzarella into chucks and place on top of the beautiful mound of salad. Serve in a pretty bowl.

Prepare a bundt (ring) tin with greaseproof paper on the bottom and a small amount of olive oil up the sides, making sure also to coat the central spout.

Sift the sugar, flour, baking powder, ground almonds and a pinch of salt together in a large bowl. Add the zest of all the citrus fruits.

Make a well in the centre and into it pour the milk, orange juice (squeezed straight from the oranges), the mandarin oil, a few drops of almond essence and the eggs. Mix well – using a hand or electric beater – for a few minutes until you have a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the bundt tin and put into a preheated oven at 180^oC/360^oF. It’ll take about 45 minutes with a fan-assisted oven, a little more in a normal oven. You can tell it’s cooked when you start to smell delicious orangey aromas in the kitchen and when a skewer comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool then sprinkle with icing sugar.

The cake can be eaten warm as a pudding served with fresh summer fruit and cream – but is also delicious the next morning as a breakfast cake. The cake keeps really well, retaining its moistness and zest.

Grate the cheese into a bowl (big enough to fit the cooked pasta too) and mix with a very generous quantity of freshly ground pepper. Don’t stint – the piquant pepper is the counterpart to the cheesy richness.

Cook the spaghetti in abundant salted water according to the instructions. When you drain it, keep back half a cup of the starchy pasta water.

Pour the drained spaghetti over the cheese and mix with a couple of forks (sometimes the waiter does performs this ceremonial act before your very eyes). Add a teaspoon or so of the cooking water and toss thoroughly. Serve at once – this needs to be eaten hot, so the flavour of the pepper comes through, and moist.

Cook the spaghetti in abundant salted water according to the instructions. Meanwhile fry the onion in the oil for 5 minutes, then add the anchovies for another 5 minutes, until they break up. Add the drained pasta to the onion anchovy sauce and mix in the grated cheese. If it’s too dry add a spoonful or two of the pasta water (which by now, being a pro, you’ll have kept aside as a matter of course).

Lightly fry a whole, peeled clove of garlic in a good drizzle of olive oil. Once it’s started to brown, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for a minute. Add the lemon juice and remove the garlic.

Add the pasta to a pan of boiling, salted water and cook until it’s al dente.

As soon as it’s ready drain and mix in with the olive oil and lemon juice. Before serving mix in the lemon rind, chopped parsley a pinch of salt and grated parmesan to taste. Now stop the clock (about 8 minutes right?).

Put your drained and washed chickpeas into a food processor with the chopped up garlic, tahini, lemon juice, cumin seeds and a big pinch of salt. Process it till it’s a smooth paste then add the oil 1 tablespoon at a time, with the machine running if possible. If not whizz it between adding the spoonfuls. Check for seasoning, add some ground pepper and it’s ready.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, making sure there are no lumps. Add the flour, the salt, the yeasty water and oil to a mixing bowl. Mix it all together with a plastic dough scraper and then turn onto a floury surface. Knead it for 10 minutes till it bounces back to the touch and feels elastic. Make it into a big dough ball and put it in an oiled bowl, drizzle all over with olive oil, then leave in a warm place covered with a tea towel. It should take about 1 hour to double in size. Now grease a baking tray with some oil and ease out the dough onto it. Next flatten it out in the tray with your fingers until it’s about 2cm thick. Pull off clumps of rosemary leaves and push them into the dough. The better they’re inserted the less likely they are to burn. Cover again with a tea-towel and leave for half an hour to rise some more.

Preheat the oven to 220^oC/425^oC/GM7. When the dough has again risen to about twice the thickness make more indentations with your fingertips, drizzle all over with olive oil and sprinkle on a good dose of rock salt. Now whack it in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Turn out onto a wire rack so it doesn’t sweat underneath.

Last time we went round there for a cup of tea (a habit Guida has taken to with gusto since we moved in next door), there were a couple of tins of our lemon oil knocking around, so Guida whipped up a quick lemon olive oil cake for the kids. It has no fat in it apart from the oil so is a great cake for anyone preparing for the bikini / speedo days of summer.

Preheat the oven to 160^oC/320^oF. Whisk the eggs for a minute (in a mixer), then add the sugar and whisk for 5 minutes more. Now gently, but thoroughly, mix in the flour and baking powder. Now mix in the oil and then the milk till you have a uniform batter. Pour 2 thirds of this into a greased baking tin. With the final third, mix on the cocoa powder before pouring it into the white batter. Don’t mix it again,. but bake it for  30 minutes, keeping your nose alert for ‘done’ smells. Test it with a sharp knife or skewer – which shouldn’t come out with any gunk on it. Take out and turn onto a rack to cool.

Linguine with red duck sauce.

First thing to emphasise is that it’s the sauce that’s red rather than the duck – so spare your blushes. Something about the recipe here. Brown one duck leg or thigh per 1.5 people in olive oil. Remove the duck, pour off the fat and sauté a sliced onion, carrot, celery stick and a couple of garlic cloves. Once they’re softened return the duck pieces and add a glass of red wine a can of chopped tomatoes, a cup of stock and a handful of rosemary.  Simmer on a low heat for a hour or so until you can pull the meat off the bone. Then reduce to a nice thick sauce for another half hour or so. Season with salt and pepper. Cook about 80g of dried linguine per person. And mix in the sauce.

Chicken with black olives and bell peppers

Marinate two chicken breasts or legs per person, add half a cupful of olive oil, two cup fulls of black olives (pitted or not), two sliced red peppers and two sliced green peppers, chopped rosemary, oregano, bay leaves and sage, and 5 cloves of chopped garlic.

Heat up a large saucepan over a medium flame, pick out the chicken pieces and sauté on both sides until golden brown. Then add the rest of the marinade and sauté for several minutes more. Once the peppers are tender season with salt and pepper and you are ready.

Roasted potatoes

Clean your potatoes. The quantity depends (obviously) on how many people and how hungry they are, but always always do more than you think as they’ll always get eaten. Slice into wedges. Cook over a medium heat for 30 minutes in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan with lots of olive oil and chopped rosemary.

Spinach

Italian spinach doesn’t seem to wilt and disappear as much as the stuff I’ve had in the UK. Anyway, roughly chop whatever spinach you can and steam it in a thick saucepan with a spoonful of butter and a grating of nutmeg.

For July, when the tournament starts, we’re going to do a series of 10 minute meal recipes so the footie fanatics amongst us don’t go undernourished. At Nudo we’re also thinking of doing a special World Cup gift box with yum foods that can be turned into an instant, delicious and healthy dish. Whaddya reckon? Here’s one to get you going.

Finely chop the shallots and garlic. Fry in a good drizzle of olive oil and after a minute add the pancetta. Once the pancetta starts to colour, add the chilli, season with salt and pepper and cook for a couple more minutes.

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water. Once it’s ready, drain and add to the pancetta. Mix in the chopped parsley and serve with a generous grating of parmesan cheese.

For all our adoptive tree parents, this time of year is one of great anticipation, as the due date for the precious new arrival approaches. Any day now, a stork will arrive carrying your bespoke bonnie bundle – a package of divine extra virgin olive oil from your very own Italian olive tree.

There are a few things you should know about the new addition to your family. Just as with grapes, there are hundreds of varieties of olives, each producing a different tasting oil. In addition, the olive oil from a leccino olive grove in Umbria will taste quite different from leccino oil from a Le Marche grove. Even adjacent groves can produce very different tasting oils, depending on the terrain, the care of the trees and how quickly after picking the olives are pressed. The differences are so great, in fact, that even within our Nudo family of producers, there is more than a generous drizzle of competitiveness. Naturally, every grove owner believes their olive oil is the best. But who is right? Along with your olive oil you will find a tasting card, which you can send back to us, or fill in the online tasting card at http://bit.ly/96KRa0 and we will announce which grove wins the popular vote.

To help get you going, we’ve compiled some tasting notes of our own.

Aleandri

This year the oil taste profile was affected by the dry summer. The oil is medium fruity, with a herbaceous leaning and the smell of almonds and artichoke. Overall it’s very well balanced with a leaning towards the sweet end of the scale. The taste profile diagram is shown above. Around the edges, clockwise from the top are the different internationally recognised type of flavours you find in olive oils – fruity, green, bitter, peppery, sweet, almonds and artichoke

Ardelio

This oil has a delicate golden yellow colour. It has a light flavouring and sometimes a peppery after-kick, which is indicative of a high concentration of polyphenolic antioxidants and freshness. It has an acidity level of less than 0.5% (it needs to be under 0.8% to be classed as extra virgin).

Dell’Orso

This is a very high quality oil (though not quite as good as the exceptional 2008 pressing) from an organic grove. All the groves in the region were affected by ‘mosca’, an olive fly this year; what this means, is that the olives have to be picked as early as possible which has the effect of producing an oil that is slightly more peppery. This year, the oil is green with a golden hue. The smell is fruity with a hint of cut grass and the flavour is fruity with a slight bitterness and a spicy tip. The acidity is 0.5 (it needs to be under 0.8% to be classed as extra virgin) and it hits 6.8 on the peroxide scale.

Fiorano

This year the oil is light to medium on the fruity scale. Although the colour isn’t a reflection of quality the oil this year is yellow with a hint of green. The ‘nose’ is strong with hints of almonds, leaves and artichokes. The acidity 0.16 (it needs to be under 0.8% to be classed as extra virgin, so this is really low). Overall the quality is high and this years oil is sweeter and less peppery than from the previous harvest.

Fonte Carella

The colour of the oil is straw-like with a tendency towards green. The aroma is intense and fruity with hints of freshly cut grass. The taste is peppery and spicy due to the early harvesting of the olives by hand (the longer you leave the olive on the tree the milder the oil is, but the higher the oil content is – so it a balance of quality versus quantity and we go for quality). It is one of the best years for oil from Fonte Carella because the trees didn’t produce great quantities, and so a tonne of quality was pumped into each and every fruit.

Il Professore

Again, a great year, though not as great as last years. The acidity is pretty low 0.34  (it needs to be under 0.8% to be classed as extra virgin) and the peroxide level is 7, which means that the olives were in a good condition when they were pressed. It is a medium fruity oil with a green nature and almond flavour. The oil is overall sweet, with a peppery note and a medium intensity of bitterness. There is also an aftertaste of almonds. It has a beautiful yellow colour. The polyphenol level is around 500 (these are the cardioprotective compounds in the oil, so the more the better).

Il Taccolito

As Rita says, this delicate oil should be treated gently, like you should treat a women. It is well balance, medium fruity, with a very low acidity (i.e. very high quality) of 0.02% (it needs to be under 0.8% to be classed as extra virgin). It has a grassy nose (i.e. smell) with hints of grass and tomatoes. And it has a almond flavour with slight peppery aftertaste. At pressing the oil was rather green, but we have noticed it is becoming more yellow.

La Morla

This oil is very well balanced. Its colour is yellow with a green hue. Its nose is medium fruity with hints of almonds and artichokes, whilst its taste is again well balanced with a hint of bitterness and a medium intensity of pepperyness. All topped off with an aftertaste of almonds. Yum. It’s polyphenol count hits the highs at 445 (these are the cardioprotective compounds in the oil, so the more the better).

Lina

This is a light subtle oil with a fresh fragrance of artichoke, tomatoes and green apple. There is a peppery after-kick which you should watch out for, which is a sign of the healthy antioxidants in the oil. The acidity level is less than 0.3% and the colour is a lovely golden yellow.

Rosalio

The oil has a beautiful golden green glow. The smell of this oil is evocative of freshly cut grass and a hint of artichoke. In taste oil is well balanced but milder and more delicate than in previous years. It has a buttery textures followed by a herbaceous, cut-grass flavour. This oil is at it’s prime now, so drizzle with impunity.

DO you want to adopt your own olive tree in Italy? Click here to become an adoptive parent today.

Grab a thick bottomed pan and add the olive oil and butter.  Once the butter is melted over a low heat add your finely chopped onion, garlic and celery. Cook nice and slowly for around 15 minutes. Now add your rice and fry it over a moderate heat. Don’t get distracted (like I always do), keep stirring and warm up your stock. When the rice starts looking translucent it means that the creamy starch is ready to be released, so add the wine in one go. Keep stirring till the wine is absorbed. Turn down the risotto a bit and add the stock a ladle at a time, each time allowing most of it to be absorbed before adding the next.

After 15 or 20 minutes you should have a creamy, rich risotto still with a bit of bite. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Stir in the butter and grated parmesan. Then take it to another level with a twirly drizzle of basil olive oil.

Ingredients for 6

For the raspberry sauce

For the posset

Double cream – 600ml/1 pint 1fl oz 100ml
Caster sugar – 150g/5oz  25g
Lemons – 2 large ones, zest and juice

Start with the raspberry sauce. Put your raspberries, bar six, into a large saucepan.   Add the sugar and squeeze of lemon and stir well. Cook for a couple of minutes until the mixture thickens. Divide the raspberry sauce evenly between six large serving glasses. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill for 10 minutes.

You can then start on the posset. Pour the double cream into a large bowl and add the sugar. Over a medium heat bring to the boil slowly. Boil for three minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to cool. Add the lemon juice and zest and mix in well.

Pour the lemon cream mixture over the slightly hardened raspberry mixture and, add a raspberry on top and refrigerate for two to three hours.

Anyway, this recipe is a brilliant combination of crab and orange oil and if you can’t be bothered to shell the crab yourself your fishmonger will happily do it for you I’m sure. But make sure you buy the crab already cooked as the fishmonger will be better at killing it swiftly (i.e. humanely) than you.

Crab – 550g/20oz gives about 200g/7oz of flesh

Gather together a sharp knife and a hammer (Rosie enjoyed this bit, eagerly hunting down the toolbox). Turn the crab belly-side up. Pull off the triangular-shaped belly flap, which is actually its abdomen. Then turn it over and pull off the shell by inserting your thumb between the body and shell at the back of the crab and pulling the shell up, or use a knife with a similar manoeuvre.

Scoop what you can out of the shell and then crack it in half, if necessary, to get the rest out. Now twist off the legs and work your way carefully through the body compartments, cutting it up where necessary to get to the good bits. Make sure to pull off the spongy gills and any bits of gristle and membrane and discard. Use the hammer to crack open the leg shells, and scoop out the nice bits.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, feed in the spaghetti and cook for the time it says on the pack, stirring a couple of times to stop it sticking.

Finely chop the garlic, halve and finely chop the chilli and roughly chop up your parsley.

Heat the orange olive oil in a large frying pan, add the garlic and chilli and fry for 1 minute. Add the crab meat to the pan with the wine, season with salt and pepper and cook off some of the wine, but not all of it.

Drain the pasta and tip it in the crab mixture. Toss in the parsley and serve.

Get ready your three clean mixing bowls and a metal or glass bowl to melt the Chocolate. Use your biggest bowl for the egg yolks as you’ll add all everything into this at the end.Slowly melt the broken up chocolate in a bain-marie. Separate the egg whites and yolks into separate spotlessly clean bowls. Beat the yolks and half of the sugar until the mix turns pale and thick. Then beat the egg whites and the rest of the sugar until the mixture just stiffens.

By now the chocolate should be melted, so mix in the mandarin olive oil and put aside to let it cool. Now, in another bowl, whip the whipping/heavy cream until it’s stiff – it should be ‘sticky’ and not ‘cloggy’.

Take the bowl with the chocolate/olive oil mix and carefully fold in the contents of the other bowls using a metal spoon: start with the creamy egg yolks, then the stiff egg whites (you want to keep the bubbles intact, so use a figure of eight movement to mix) and lastly the whipped cream. Carefully spoon the mixture into some nice serving bowls or glasses, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

This same microclimate is also perfectly suited to growing the lentils for which this valley has become world famous (at least amongst the world’s lentil cognoscenti, who are wise and legion).

The Castelluccio lentil is brown and very small and has a wonderful, nutty, earthy flavour. When you’ve seen the rainbow parade that is its heritage, the hidden subtleties of flavour in this unprepossessing legume all make sense. The lentils don’t need presoaking; instead they’ll gulp down the perfumes of herbs and spices, or aromatics such as garlic or celery leaves, to create dishes of great comfort and effortless depth.

Ingredients for 4

Fry the pancetta until the fat melts, then add the onion, garlic and celery, and fry until soft and slightly coloured. Add the lentils, cover with water and simmer for 30 minutes, or until tender, adding water if necessary. Season with salt and pepper and let the lentils gently simmer. In the meantime fry the sausages. Once the lentils are ready, serve into a bowl, add the sausages on top and drizzle over some fruity olive oil.

Anyway, I mention this because last week I went one better and was thinking ‘Chrimbo’ even before my old buddy. Why? Well we’ve got a wicked range of gift sets planned for this festive season and I’m seeking out the best artisans, growers and bakers to work with. Last week I was off talking to balsamic vinegar producer Bruno and his colleague Franco. They produce a beautiful balsamic which they age for up to 50 years! That’s what I call taking the long view. Fresh and inspired from the visit, I thought I’d give you some insights about  the different types of balsamic vinegar instead of my usual recipe.

Four Fast Balsamic Vinegar Facts:

#1 Like in wines the names of balsamics are strictly controlled and will tell you a load about it’s quality.

#2 ‘Traditional balsamic vinegar’ or Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale is the pukka stuff. It’s the juice from grapes (called ‘must’) boiled down till it’s thick and sweet and then aged for at least 12 years in a specific mix of wooden casks. It’s pricey and flavoursome so use sparingly.

#3 ‘Balsamic Vinegar of Modena’ was invented in the latter half of last century to supply the more money conscious amongst us. The producer can use red wine vinegar mixed with colouring and sweeteners to make this. Check the ingredients and use for dressing and marinades.

#4 ‘Balsamic condiment’ or Condimento Balsamico is a mix of the two vinegars above and so is somewhere in between in quality. Not too pricey, not too cheap. And that’s the one I’d go for.

First separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks and in a large mixing bowl add all the ingredients (except for the oil) to the bowl and mix well. Beat the egg whites till they’re stiff and fold them into the mixture. Now place the resulting dough on a floury surface and knead together. Leave it to rest for about half an hour. After your cup of tea, take the dough and cut small slices of about half an inch thick. Roll this through a pasta machine – it’s best to get it down to the 2nd smallest option. Now cut the flat dough into slices and then fry til golden brown. When placing the frittelle in the oil make sure to drunk them completely so that they puff up. Then just cover them in icing sugar and you’re done.

Here are a couple of stuzzichini I’ve come up with which are guaranteed to prod your party guests into demanding the recipe from you.

Olive tapenade wheel

On a floury surface roll out your pastry into a rectangle till it’s 2-3mm thick and roughly 30cm by 20 wide. Spoon out the tapenade evenly over the pastry leaving the top edge clear. Now roll up the pastry like a jam roll and use some egg on the clear upper edge to seal it. With dainty fingers carefully cut the roll into 1cm wide pieces and place in a baking tray lined with bake-o-glide. Cook at 220^oC for about 14 minutes.

Sun-dried tomato and parmesan stuzzichino

Preheat the oven to 220^oC. Roll out the pastry on a floury surface till it’s about 3mm thick. Cut it into 6cm squares. Fold a square in half to make a triangle. Then from the folded edge make a cut along each side towards the tip, but leave the apex attached. Unfold the square and place a piece of parmesan cheese lengthways from the uncut corner to the uncut corner. Fold the cut edges over each other, seal with a dab of egg, and place a sun dried cherry tomato on the top. Repeat until you’ve finished the pastry or just had enough. Place them all on a baking tray lined with bake-o-glide or something similar. Cook for 10 minutes and serve immediately.

A big hit with all the family is this focaccia. It’s pretty simple but there’s a bit of waiting for the yeast to do its business. It’s a nice thing to make at the weekend when it’s just too parky to play outside. Get the family to join in with a bit of kneading and this is the perfect indoor plaything.

You can top focaccia with pretty much whatever you want – typically it’d be rock salt, oil and rosemary – but onions, artichokes and even sugar and nutella are options (Rosie would spy enviously at her friends arriving at school gobbling down the last of their sugary focaccia, a popular Italian breakfast on the run). This recipe uses our organic sun-dried cherry tomatoes. They’re really yummy pachino tomatoes, grown only in Sicily, and a little burst of summer for these wintery days.

Ingredients for serving for 4

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, making sure there are no lumps. Add the flour, the salt, the yeasty water and oil to a mixing bowl. Mix it all together with a plastic dough scraper and then turn onto a floury surface. Knead it for 10 minutes till it bounces back to the touch and feels elastic. Make it into a big dough ball and put it in an oiled bowl, drizzle all over with olive oil, then leave in a warm place covered with a tea towel. It should take about 1 hour to double in size. Now grease a baking tray with some oil and ease out the dough onto it, keeping the smooth, top of the ball facing up. Now flatten it out in the tray with your fingers until it’s about 2cm thick. Pull off clumps of rosemary leaves and push them into the dough. The better they are inserted the less likely they are to burn. Do the same with the cherry tomatoes and then cover again with a teatowel and leave for half an hour to rise some more.

Preheat the oven to 220^oC/425^oC/GM7. When the dough has risen to about twice the thickness make more indentations with your fingertips, drizzle all over with olive oil and sprinkle good dose of rock salt. Now whack it in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Turn out onto a wire rack so it doesn’t sweat underneath, and eat within a day.

Preheat the oven to 170^oC/325^oF/GM3. Chop up the cherry tomatoes into quarters, roughly chop the garlic and put them on a baking tray. Drizzle a good glug of good quality olive oil over the top, the same of the balsamic and then sprinkle over a good pinch of brown sugar. Roast these for 30 minutes.

Chop up the artichoke hearts and remember to keep the oily/herby contents of the jar. Cook the spaghetti according to the instruction. Drain and place in a bowl. Mix in the oven-roasted tomatoes and garlic and then the artichokes and the contents of the artichoke jars. Mix through well, season with salt and pepper and serve with a healthy dose of parmesan cheese.

What better way to brighten up a bowl of lentils that with a big fat herby pork sausage from Modena. If you cook it right (and we’re talking a couple hours of loving simmering here) it’s exquisitely tender and creamy. You should be able to find one at your local Italian deli.

So spend the day cooking, eat and feast, then put your feet up and work out what to do with all that wodge that is coming your way.

Cook the cotechino according to your butcher’s advice or the instructions on the package. This usually involves boiling in ample water for anything from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.

Finely chop the onions and sauté them in some olive oil until they are going golden. Add the chopped carrot and chopped celery for a couple of minutes and then empty in the lentil contents of the tins. Mix in the some chopped up sage and simmer away for half an hour, making sure that it doesn’t go dry.

When the sausage is ready (don’t check by piercing the skin, as you don’t want to let the juices escape), let it rest for 10 minutes and then slice into 2cm/0.8inch slices. Fill a bowl with the lentils and add a few slices of cotechino on top. Serve straight away.

The game we created involved the ‘volunteer’ doing a blind tasting of the drinks. If they correctly guessed the type of liquor and country of origin they were spared the following drink. The seaweed aperitivo was invariably everyone’s undoing, as no-one believed that a country of such refined taste as Japan could produce anything so utterly disgusting.

I still enjoy experimenting with different alcohols, and New Year’s Eve festivities offer the perfect annual opportunity. Here are a couple of my recent experiments. The martini is my favourite. You can swap the sapa for any good, aged-balsamic or saba if necessary (though if you use balsamic you may need to add more sugar or some simple syrup).

Sapa and strawberry martini

Put a couple of martini glasses in the freezer. Trim and cut the strawberries into quarters. Using a pestle, mash them up with the sapa and lime juice. Add the vodka and ice and shake together vigorously. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with half a strawberry, a slightly raised eyebrow and a half-smile.

Strawberry, sapa and basil mojito

Ingredients for 2

Brown sugar – 4 teaspoons

Lime – a fresh one cut into 8.

Strawberrys – 2 biggies cut into quarters

Sapa – 20ml/0.7fl.oz

Basil – 8 to 10 leaves

White rum – 4 shots/6fl.oz/180ml

Mash up the sugar, lime quarters, strawberries and sapa in a robust tall tumbler (a highball glass to anyone who saw Tom Cruise in Cocktail) – use a pestle or the end of a rolling pin so you can give it some proper welly to squeeze out the juice and start dissolving the sugar. Add the basil leaves and mash some more. Fill the glass with crushed ice and add the rum. Stir well in, and top up with some more ice to garnish.

Roast the almonds and the chop them into little bits. Melt the honey on a medium heat, add the sugar and slowly bring to the boil. Then mix in the sesame seeds and nuts. Pour the mixture into a loaf tin lined with parchment paper or bake-o-glide. Use something flat (eg your hand) to smooth out and flatten the mixture and leave it to cool before turning out.

Finally her reply came, ‘But Daddy, Marmite on spaghetti sounds disgusting!’

I did eventually persuade Rosie to try this brilliant simple dish which comes from Anna del Conte via Nigella Lawson. And she loved it, so did Sorrel, the little one. It’s now a firm favourite on the ‘nothing in the fridge’ recipe list.

Our north American friends can find Marmite (or Vegemite) at World Market, Amazon and in some Safeways.

Serves 4 kids

Nudo Spaghetti – 350g
Unsalted butter – 50 g
Marmite – 1 tsp
Parmesan cheese – freshly grated, for serving

Cook the spaghetti in a pot of boiling, salted water. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the Marmite and 1 tablespoon of the pasta water. Mix it through and then pour over the drained spaghetti. Serve with a generous sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese.

Ingredients for 4 people

Fresh porcini mushrooms – 150g (or 30g dried porcini)

Potatoes – 550g of a waxy variety

Butter – 3 tablespoons

Onion – one

Olive oil – for frying

Chestnut mushrooms – 150g

Garlic – 1 clove

Double cream – 4 tablespoons

Parsley – bunch

If you’re using dried porcini, re-hydrate them in a cupful of boiling water.

Then put the unpeeled potatoes in a saucepan of salted water and bring to the boil. Parboil for about 10-15 mins, depending on their size. Then drain, run under cold water and peel and grate the spuds.

Finely slice the onion and fry it till golden in 2/3rds of the butter. Add the cooked onions to the potatoes and mix in with a good dose of salt and pepper.

Now over to the sauce. Slice the chestnut mushrooms (including the porcini if you are using fresh ones) and sauté with the finely chopped garlic, in the rest of the butter, for 5 minutes. If you are using dried porcini, now add them and sauté the mix for another 5 minutes. Add the cream and chopped parsley.

Heat the olive oil in the frying pan, take a handful of the potato mix and gently mould it into a palm sized pattie. Fry it on a medium heat until golden brown on both sides, gently turning it over.

Place a pattie on a plate and spoon over the mushroom mixture. Serve with a lamb chop or some good Italian sausages.

Ingredients

Egg Yolks – 2 large free range

Sunflower oil – 150ml

Nudo chili olive oil – 150ml

Lemon – a teaspoon of juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the egg yolks into a big, round bottom bowl. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the yolk as you whisk them gently. Now start the serious part by adding a drop of the sunflower oil at a time, whilst constantly whisking. When it seems the yolks have taken the first few drops pour a steady stream of the oil whilst you whisk.  When the sunflower oil has run out swap over to the chilli olive oil.  Again pour in a continuous stream of this and look to have added both oils in within a few minutes. Toward the end the mayonnaise should thicken as you’d imagine. If it hasn’t taken and goes runny and ‘splits’ you can start again by pouring the mix into a new bowl with a fresh egg yolk, a bit at a time, all the while whisking.

Anyway, assuming it hasn’t got wrong then whisk in a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice and a good does of salt and pepper to taste.

This is lovely used on sausages, polpette, other meats and in sarnies.

Homemade gnocchi is well worth the effort. These tiny, fluffy pillows are a country mile from their supermarket cousins. They do take some time to get ready though, but make an event of it – get other people involved, rolling out the gnocchi. The first few that come out of the conveyor belt may have to be consigned to the trash (or better recycled) but you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Ingredients
Serves 4, ready in 40 mins

Potatoes – 500g/1lb 2oz of a floury variety
Nudo sun-dried tomatoes – 90g/3½ oz
Plain flour – 120g/4½ oz
Egg yolks – 2
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan – grated for sprinkling

Fill a big pan with cold water, add the whole, unpeeled potatoes and bring to the boil. Cook until they are tender. Meanwhile place the tomatoes on a kitchen towel to take off excess oil, then blitz in a blender to make a smooth paste.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain, and peel off the skin. Now mash the potatoes until they’re really smooth, or even better use a potato ricer. Now, in a large bowl, mix together the potato, the flour, eggs yolks, salt and pepper. Add the tomato paste and mix the whole lot really well – hands are best – until you have a soft consistent dough.

Now roll out the dough onto a clean floured surface. You want to make long sausage shapes about 2cm/¾in thick. Cut these into 2cm/¾in pieces. Roll each one over the back of a fork to give it ridges and put aside onto a floury surface.

When the gnocchi are all made, bring to boil a big pan of salted water, and add as much gnocchi as will fit comfortably. When the gnocchi float to the surface they are cooked, so scoop them out with a slotted spoon. Serve with a decent sprinkling of parmesan cheese and olive oil. They’re also delicious mixed with a jar of Nudo black olive tapenade.

The pesto we tend to find outside of Italy is what the Italians call Pesto alla Genovese. In Italy there are actually a plethora of pesto recipes; Sicilian pesto uses tomatoes and almonds, Calabrian pesto has red peppers and Tuscan pesto adds kale to the mix.

So in short you can have a good play with your pesto ingredients without offending anyone, we hope.  Here I used Nudo sundried tomatoes and the result is delicioso!

Ingredients

Sundried tomatoes – 80g of tomatoes without the oil

Basil – 20g/¼ cup of leaves

Pine nuts – 2 tablespoons

Garlic – 2 cloves

Olive oil – 130ml

Parmesan cheese – 40g grated

Dry fry the pine nuts until they are slightly brown. Then combine together the sundried tomatoes, basil, pine nuts and garlic in food processor. Process to a paste, then with the processor running, gradually add the olive oil. Once it is a smooth paste add the grated parmesan and mix in.

You can keep this in the fridge for a couple of weeks if you cover the top with olive oil.

Ideal mixed in with pasta such as tagliatelle.

The good news is that this year there are olives aplenty. The only scary story was from Rita, of the Il Taccolito grove, who told me that she would have lost her crop of Piantone di Mogliano if it hadn’t rained in the last week of August – a long dry summer had stressed the trees so much. Anyway, it rained and the harvest survived.

Once I’ve eyeballed the trees we usually get onto the topic of when to harvest, which usually starts around the end of October in Marche. Knowing precisely when to start picking is a bit of an art.  As time passes the quantity of oil within in fruit goes up, but at a certain point the quality of the oil starts to drop. So to get an oil that is top quality, and abundant, you need to catch the olive at just the right time. Plus there are a ton of other things to consider. For example the olive groves near the coast, like Fiorano and Dell’Orso, will be ready to harvest sooner than those nearer the cooler mountains, such as Il Professore. In our grove, Rosalio, the trees at the bottom of the grove will be ready to harvest a good 5 days before those at the top.

The next time I’ll do the whistle-stop tour will be in January when I go to pick up the containers, this time full of beautiful, extra-virgin olive oil.

One of the many bonuses of my job is that people give me lots of yummy pots of Italian food, hoping that one day it may become a Nudo product. One of our most passionate producers is Silvano. I go and visit him often to test-run his latest concoction. On my most recent visit he gave me fresh pot of white fig jam. He made me promise I’d have it at home with some buffalo mozzarella and a drizzle of lemon olive oil. I did.

Ingredients

Mozzarella di Bufala – 200g

White fig jam

Nudo olive oil crushed with lemons – a drizzle

Salt – a pinch

Slice the mozzarella and alternate the slices with a spoonful of the jam. Sprinkle some salt over the top and drizzle the lemon olive oil before serving.

What better way to celebrate your first ever pot of  ‘homemade’ honey than to use it in a delicious, decadent cake?

Pinenut, pear and honey cake

Ingredients

Pears – 200g/7oz. or two small ones.

Honey – 250g/9 oz.  

Butter 210g/7.4oz              

Brown sugar – 100g/3.5 oz.

Pine nuts – 45g/1.6 oz.

Self raising flour – 175g/6.2 oz.

Ground Almonds – 100g/3.5 oz.

Baking powder – 1 tsp.

Eggs – 3 beaten

Preheat oven to 180oC/Gas 4/360oF. Grease a round cake or bundt tin and line with baking paper. Peel and cut the pear up into small pieces. Melt together the honey, butter and sugar. Boil for one minute, then remove from the heat. Cool until just warm.

Dry fry the pine nuts till they have a bit of colour. Sift the flour, ground almonds and baking powder into a bowl, mix a bit and then add the honey mixture, the pear and the eggs. Mix this well and then pour into the cake tin, pop in the oven and bake for 35 minutes, until the top springs back when pressed. Leave for 10 minutes and then turn out.

Ingredients for 2 people (Prep time 25mins; Cooking time 20mins)

Artichoke hearts – 120g/4.25oz jar
Butter – 45g/1.6oz, plus a bit for greasing the dish
Milk – 300ml/10 fl.oz
Plain flour – 30g/1oz
Parmesan cheese – 25g/1oz grated
Salt and pepper to taste
Cannelloni – 6 tubes, about 60g/2oz

Preheat the oven to 200 °C/390 F. Roughly chop the artichoke hearts. Heat the butter on a low heat and add the hearts. While they are gently softening, make a béchamel sauce. I do it by first melting 2/3 of the butter in a saucepan and then adding the flour. Mix the flour in with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes. Heat the milk in another saucepan till it nearly boils (or you can do it in a jug in the microwave). Off the heat, add the milk very slowly to the flour/butter mixture. Add it slowly at first then the second half all together. Put the pan back on a low heat to thicken up, but make sure you carry on stirring. Once it’s the right consistency season it to taste.

Put about a fifth of the sauce aside and add the softened artichoke hearts to the remainder. Fill the cannelloni tubes with this mixture. To avoid making a right mess I just prop them up on one end in the saucepan and spoon the mix in. It’s still a bit messy, but worth it.

Get an ovenproof dish that fits the pasta well and grease with a bit of butter. Snuggle in the filled cannelloni tubes and cover with the béchamel that you set aside. Grate over the parmesan and whack in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. Eat with impunity. And, if you like, a green salad or vegetables.

I get a kick out of coming up with new recipes and testing them out on Cathy. Those that pass the discerning Cathy taste test are then, sometimes, released to the wider public – friends, blogs and even the odd book. It’s great to hear feedback from people who’ve tried these recipes themselves. (I’ve yet to hear horrible things. Don’t see that as a challenge!).

For the first time this week I experienced a new, more direct form of feedback: we went round to Mike and Gavanndra’s for lunch and found they’d cooked one of my risotto recipes. I was flattered and a bit nervous. It was a bit like hearing your own voice on an answer machine for the first time. The less self conscious younger members (Rosie and Sorrel) yomped down the lot without looking back. That’s proper feedback.

Pear, parmesan and rocket risotto

Ingredients for 4 people

Risotto rice – 350g

Onion – 1

Olive oil – 2 tablespoons

Butter – 25g

White wine – ¾ of a cup of white wine

Vegetable stock – 1.5l

Parmesan – 50g

Rocket – 100g

Pears – 2 ripe ones, cut into small cubes with the skin on.

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil and butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the rice and the chopped onion and coat in the mixture and stir for a couple of minutes over a lower heat until the rice becomes translucent. Add the wine and continue cooking until most of the wine has reduced and been absorbed. Add a ladle full of stock at a time, adding more as it’s absorbed. Cook until the rice is tender, but still has some bite, then add a couple of pinches of salt and lots of pepper, stir in the parmesan, then the rocket and then at the last minute the pear. Serve immediately.

**Jason’s Recipe was featured by Anne-Laure Ropars on http://www.TastyDiaries.com

Every now and then we come across a new olive oil evangelist with enough know-how to join the Nudo family and adoption scheme. Caterina Costantini is one of those people who have an infective enthusiasm for what they’re doing. A few years ago Caterina married her lawyer husband, and so now has the backing to follow her obsession and make organic olive oil. Not only that but she has her husband’s beautiful family farm to play with. So for the last few years Caterina together with her fellow olive obsessive, father-in-law Claudio, they’ve been busily experimenting with growng different olive varieties (known as cultivars) to blend them for the perfect flavour. These experiments aren’t for the impatient: each one is up to 10 years in the making.

In the meantime they are winning accolades with their monovarietal oils, which have the oil from just one olive cultivar. So should they want to rest on a teensy bit of their laurels, their Leccino oil has been quietly snaffling every olive oil prize up for grabs. Caterina’s grove is called La Morla. She is also making a balsamic vinegar from the family’s grapes, but that won’t be ready for a mere 8 years.

You can now Adopt an olive tree in Caterina’s La Morla grove by clicking here.

Ingredients for 4 people
Pancetta – 150g cubed
Olive oil – 2 tablespoons
Garlic – one clove
Eggs – one whole, plus 2 yolks
Pepper – to taste
Parmesan – 80g grated

Heat the oil in a big pan. Add the pancetta cubes and whole garlic clove. Cook the meat until the garlic clove starts to brown, at which point you remove and chuck the garlic. Meanwhile cook your pasta until its al dente in unsalted water (there should be enough saltiness in the pancetta and cheese, unless you’re an old seadog).

In a mixing bowl lightly beat the egg and yolks, and add a bit of pepper. Drain the pasta and add it to the pancetta in the pan off the heat. Add the egg mixture on top and mix in well so the pasta is all nice and coated. Then add the grated cheese and mix in again. Serve immediately with a bit more parmesan sprinkled on top if you like.

A lot of ‘modern’ recipes add cream to Carbonara sauce, but the good old traditional recipes use parmesan or pecorino to give you the rich creaminess with your pasta instead. But, of course, this recipe is made by using top quality pasta, like you can get from Nudo.

Ingredients for antipasti for 4
Unsalted butter – 50g
Free-range eggs – 3
Double cream – 1 tablespoon
Parsley – small bunch finely chopped
Black Truffle – half if you can afford it.
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add you eggs and season. Stir frequently and the trick here is to cook the eggs as slowly as possible to stop them going rubbery. Before the eggs start to set stir in the cream. Then mix in the chopped parsley and cook until it’s to your likening (but never overcook).

Sprinkle the truffle shavings over the top.

Just to fill you in, there are two types of mozzarella – those made from cows’ milk, called fior di latte, or those from buffalos’ milk, called mozzarella di bufala. The first I’d use for pizza and lasagne, the latter, higher quality stuff, I’d use for eating raw – and it’s perfect with Nadia’s tomatoes.

Ingredients
Mozzarella di Bufala – 200g
Sundried tomatoes – 50g
Basil leaves – several
Olive oil – a good glug
Salt

Cut the cheese into thick wedges. If it’s a good cheese it should leak milky water everywhere and be soft and creamy inside. Intersperse the slices with the sun-dried tomatoes and basil leaves. Drizzle some good olive oil over the top and a sprinkling of salt. Serve immediately.

Ingredients for about 16 biscuits

Preheat the oven to 220oC /gas mark 7. Beat the egg whites until they are stiff. In another bowl, sieve the flour and baking powder together then fold into the egg whites. Fold in the icing sugar, the ground almonds and the almond extract to make a sticky paste.

Dust a clean dry surface with a bit of extra icing sugar. Dollop a teaspoon of paste onto the surface and roll it in the sugar to make an oblong shape. It helps if you put some extra icing sugar in your hand to stop the mixture sticking to you. Repeat this for every biscuit.

Put the biscuits on a very well greased baking tray (or the marvellous Bake-O-Glide which nothing sticks to) and bake for 10–12 minutes or until they are just going golden and are slightly cracked. They still want to be soft inside so take care not to overcook them. Take them out and when they’ve cooled a bit, sprinkle some more icing sugar over the top.

Trouble is I don’t eat fish and I usually settle for a pretty bland pasta pomodoro. More recently, though, things have turned around with a new restaurant which opened in Porto San Giorgio. They made me a gem of a pasta pomodoro. The secret according to the friendly waiter is the ricotta cheese in the sauce.

Ingredients for 4 people
Mixed seafood – 1kg of sardines, anchovies,
whiting, baby sole, small crabs, scampi, baby
octopus, cuttlefish
(or what your fishmonger recommends)
Plain flour – 2 cups
Vegetable oil – 500ml
Sage leaves – several
Lemon – 1 large
Salt and white pepper

The seafood should be quite small, so it’s probably not worth gutting. Anyway they say that the intestines give a slightly sharp taste, and the fried heads are pleasantly crunchy. Sometimes Cathy takes out small bones as Rosie tucks in.

Wash, clean and pat dry the seafood. If you do have big squid and cuttlefish cut away the mouth parts and the bone of the cuttlefish. Cut into rings if necessary.

Spread the flour out on a shallow dish. Dip the fish in the flour and shake off any excess. Heat the oil in a large pan with the sage. Once hot enough (test with a piece of old bread, which should brown in about 30 seconds) remove the sage leaves and fry the seafood, starting with the larger pieces. Once golden brown remove and drain on kitchen paper. Serve on a warm plate with lemon wedges and season with salt and pepper.

Recipe Extract from: The Dolce Vita Diaries – Stories and recipes from the olive grove.