March 26, 2012 by jason.gibb
This is a very special recipe traditionally whipped out at Easter, but one which works for any big family gathering. The milk-fed lamb has a more succulent tender meat and a pearly white to pink colour. Leg of kid is another meat you could use – though do be aware that ordering it can earn you funny looks from fellow customers in the butcher’s shop (especially timid children).
Ingredients
Leg of lamb – 1kg/2½lb
Rosemary – 1 sprig
Sage – 4 leaves
Garlic – 1 clove
Potatoes – 800g/1 ¼ lb
Olive oil with garlic – 5 tb.spoons
Carrots – 500g/1lb 2 oz
Shallots – 400g/14oz
Flat leaf parsley – 1 spring
Salt and pepper
Process
Preheat the oven to 180oC/350oC/GM4. Finely chop the rosemary, sage and garlic. Lay the leg in a large roasting tin, season with salt and pepper and rub in the herbs and garlic. Next pour over the garlic oil. Pop this into the oven and roast for an hour, basting from time to time.
Peel the potatoes, carrots and shallots. Parboil them all in separate pots then drain and pop them in with the lamb with about 30 minutes to go. When the meat is cooked through, cut it off the bone and serve.
If you’re going for the full traditional Easter feast you should also knock up a Torta Pasqualina.
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Posted in Secondo piatto recipes | Tagged carrots, Easter, italian, Jason Gibb, lamb, leg of lamb, potatoes, recipe, roast, shallots, traditional | 2 Comments »
March 26, 2012 by jason.gibb
This spinach pie is at the heart of most easter Sunday meals. Traditionally you make the pastry yourself, painstakingly rolling it out as thinly as possible – the aim would be to make 33 layers representing the age of Christ when he was crucified. If you don’t quite manage that many, it’s a good one for confession next week. The generous use of eggs shows how this was an extravagant treat in times of hardship.
The success of this recipe depends on finding good quality spinach and fresh ricotta from your deli-counter
Ingredients for 8
Spinach – 500g
Eggs – 6
Ricotta – 200g
Parmesan cheese – 2 tbsp
Artichoke hearts in olive oil – 100g
Breadcrumbs – 1 tablespoon
Double cream – 120ml
Marjoram – 1 tbsp freshly chopped
Puff pastry – 320g
Plain flour
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 200oC/400oF/GM4. Cook the spinach in boiling salted water until tender then drain out the water really well (we’ve broken many a wooden spoon) and chop it up.
In a separate bowl, mix together 2 of the eggs, beaten, the ricotta, parmesan, breadcrumbs and cream and season with salt and pepper. Drain and chop the artichoke hearts and then add them, along with the marjoram and spinach to the ricotta mix. Mix well.
Butter a large pie dish. Roll out a quarter of the pastry and lay it in the dish so the edges hang over the side. Roll another quarter out and lay that on top of the first. Now spoon out half of the ricotta/spinach mixture onto the pasty. Make 4 hollows in the mixture and crack an egg into each one. Season each egg and then carefully spoon over the rest of the mixture. Roll out the other two quarters and place the first one on top of the mixture. Brush it with oil then add the last layer. Seal the edge with your fingers and prick the surface. Bake for about 60 minutes.
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Posted in Primo piatto recipes | Tagged Easter, egg tart, eggs, Jason Gibb, Nudo, Pasqualina, pastry, puff, recipe, ricotta, spinach, tart, Torta, traditional | 2 Comments »
March 16, 2012 by jason.gibb
I love reading other people’s recipes – I’ll browse for hours through books on Italian antipasti and spend evenings on blogs about cupcakes – and I don’t even bake! Although I love it, there is one thing guaranteed to get my goat: the sometimes wild inaccuracies I read about olive oil – and from people who really should know better. I’ve been collecting these mistruths, and here, to set the record straight, are some important things to know about olive oil. These are all 100% extra virgin true:
1. When you crush olives, you use the whole fruit – the stone included. It is possible to find olive oils made with just the flesh, but these are for babies (or crazies).
2. Black olives are just more mature green ones. All olives start life green.
3. There is no olive oil that improves with age. Old olive oil is bad olive oil.
4. You can’t tell the quality of olive oil by how green it is. Colour gives you clues – if it’s brown and lumpy, stay clear, greenish gold is a much better bet. But green oil can be produced simply by adding olive leaves to the press – and those leaves aren’t doing anything to help the flavour.
5. There IS a point using good olive oil in cooking. While it’s true that some of the more volatile flavour compounds are destroyed by heat, they don’t go without filling your kitchen with blissful aromas.
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Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged black, difference, extra virgin, facts, five, good olive oil, green, Jason Gibb, list, Nudo, olive oil, olives, truth | 4 Comments »
March 12, 2012 by cathy.rogers
One of Nudo’s first forays into non-olive oil production was with soap. We had been given some slightly out of date, lower grade olive oil which we thought could have a lovely second life in our bathroom. Little did we know what pleasures await the better the quality of the olive oil in your soap.
For nearly a millennium, Mediterranean countries have been making soap using olive oil – the first soaps being traced back to 11th century crusaders. I suspect our first efforts, which seemed to involve an inappropriate quantity of scary chemicals boiling at dangerously high temperatures, weren’t a patch on theirs.
We soon turned to the professionals and have since uncovered a wonderful and buoyant underworld of artisanal soap makers, strewn across the Mediterranean countries. We’ve sampled and lathered up with hundreds of different ones and are delighted to have chosen Luigi and Lucia at La Saponeria in Le Marche as our Nudo soap producers of choice.
As well as having a rigid philosophy of sustainability, no chemicals, organic ingredients and all that jazz, they just make soap that makes you want to wash! The Nudo blend is subtly scented with honey and lavender and if we didn’t know better we might suggest it is good enough to eat.
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Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged best, cathy rogers, honey, italian, Italy, lavender, Mediterranean, olive, olive oil, organic, philosophy, soap | 4 Comments »
March 7, 2012 by jason.gibb
Several years ago when Cathy and I decided to ‘return to the land’ so to speak, it was a toss up between becoming wine makers or olive oil producers. After a bit of research wine seemed complicated – lots of ageing, blending and general tinkering. The tipsiness was appealing, but there were two key facts about olive oil that intrigued us.
Firstly, olive oil is the oldest unadulterated food in the world. So many things are chemically manipulated, heat treated or somehow processed. Even pure things like wine, which has admittedly been around for millennia like olive oil, has sulphites added to it. Extra virgin olive oil is the oil from the olive fruit. No more, no less.
Secondly, olive oil is the only oil that is extracted from a fruit. All the other oils we use are from seeds. The trouble with seeds is that their oil has to be chemically extracted using an industrial solvent. Then oil and solvent need to be separated in a refinery. All a bit yuck. With the olive, the fruit is crushed, then the oil simply separated from the water using only centrifugal (spinning) force. No chemicals and no funny business. Totally transparent.
And so we ended up making olive oil. I do still harbour a little fantasy about a bottle of wine with my name on it though…
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March 2, 2012 by cathy.rogers
I love Easter eggs. Actually, to be specific, I love the most garishly packaged, Reese’s Pieces-filled tooth-tingling Easter eggs that are marketed at 5 year olds. But there is a problem: when you are in your forties, no-one gives you those. For some inexplicable reason they give you a demure, ‘tasteful’ egg made of posh chocolate and with no sweets inside! What’s to like?!
So frankly I would rather follow Italian Easter tradition and be given colomba cake. If you haven’t heard of it, it is essentially panettone for those who are too upset to wait 12 months for next Christmas. Baked in the form of a dove (ah) it is a symbol of peace and renewal. Have a piece and be instantly reborn ready for the next one.
It differs from panettone in that the flavor of amaretto takes the place of sultanas – and the cake is so rich in flavor, it stands very happily on its own without creams or other embellishments. It is a lovely traditional Easter gift, which no Italian Easter table should be seen without. And nor should yours – unless someone comes up trumps on the Reese’s front.
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Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged amaretto, cake, cathy rogers, colomba, Easter, italian, pasqua, Pieces, Reese's, tradition | Leave a Comment »
February 24, 2012 by cathy.rogers
I’ve always loved the idea of living near water – the sea, a river, a lake, a stream, it doesn’t really matter – there is just something so soothing and reflective about a trickle or a gloop or a slosh. It’s one of those things hard to replicate in a flat in the city, short of leaving the kitchen tap running, which strangely doesn’t have the same effect.
Judging by the reactions we got when we said we were off to Italy to live on an olive grove, a lot of people entertain similar fantasies about living amongst the silvery grey, quietly effective leaves of an olive grove. But like the babbling brook, it is hard to imitate.
Until now!
In response to popular yearning for the olive and the joy of cultivation, we have come up with this teensy little olive tree that you can grow yourself – in a tin. No windowsill is too small, no kitchen ledge unworthy of the task of seeing seedling turn to sapling. It might even bear fruit. We hope it will bring the joy of the olive into your home, however modest.
Oh sorry, excuse me, I just need to go and turn a tap off.
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Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged cathy rogers, grove, grow, grow your own, home, Italy, Nudo, olive oil, olive tree, own, tin, tree | 1 Comment »
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