Getting ahead of the holiday panic

 Thanksgiving and Christmas are stealthily creeping up on us, and are about to jump from behind a door and scream, “BOO!!!!”. I thought I’d head them off at the pass and get you thinking about an idea to make for the holidays already, so you won’t be so scared when they do try to tap you on the shoulder in a dark alley. This beef pot-roast makes a delicious main dish to serve at your festive feast!

Wine to use with a traditional Italian pot-roast

My Italian mother-in law serves this pot-roast up for our Christmas meal every year. The meat is simmered for hours in a heady mixture of vegetables and aged Barolo wine from the Piedmont region in the North-West of Italy. If you cannot find Barolo, you can use any heavy-bodied red wine, and the results will be excellent.  Barolo wine comes from around the tiny, but beautiful village of Barolo in the wine area below Turin, called The Langhe.  Barolo also has a fantastic wine museum.  I know it’s sounds boring, but it’s not at all!  It’s very artistically done (in a good way!) and interactive (though doesn’t include wine samples, more’s the pity!).

What can you pair with the main dish?

You can pair the pot-roast with pretty much any side you like. I particularly like it with roast potatoes and braised onions. Usually in the Piedmont region of Italy, you would have a table full of antipasti, then a pasta or risotto as a starter, then the pot-roast with some vegetable sides. By the time we get to the roast, our stomach’s are complaining, so we only eat a little bit of it. That’s alright though as it keeps very well for days afterwards.

What wines to pair with  Brasato al Barolo?

To get a suggestion for good Italian wines from the Piedmont region of Italy to drink with this Northern Italian recipe, look no further than the Independant Wine Company, based in the UK.  They have an interesting blog attached to their site with all sorts of good advice on which wines to drink with various dishes, and tell you the difference between the wines that come from the Langhe region.

If you have an electric knife, it makes cutting the meat very easy.  It’s perfect if it is cut into thin slices. If you don’t have an electric knife, use the sharpest knife that you can find.

By Lisa Watson

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Italian Red Wine pot roast (Arrosto al Barolo)

Italian pot roast in Barolo sauce. The meat is simmered for hours in a heady mixture of vegetables and aged Barolo wine from the Piedmont region of Italy.

Course entree, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 3 hours hours

Resting time 1 day day

Total Time 1 day day 3 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg Boneless Beef Roast 3.5 lb
• 1 clove Garlic
• 1 Carrot medium-sized
• 1 Onion
• 1 stick Celery
• 2 sprigs Rosemary
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 bottle Red Wine 750 ml

Instructions

• Dice the onion and peel and dice the carrots. Peel the garlic and slice it. Slice the celery stick.
• Place the beef in a Dutch Oven, or heavy-based pot with a well-fitting lid.
• Add all the other ingredients, including the wine to the pot.
• Bring to a simmer on the stove-top, then put the lid on the pot.  Leave it to simmer on a medium-law heat for 2 1/2 hours. Turn the meat over two or three times during the cooking process.
• Remove the lid and continue to let the roast simmer for another 30 minutes to allow the liquid to decrease in volume.
• Remove the roast and let it cool.  When it is cool, cut it into thin slices, about 0.5 cm (1/4 inch thick).  This is easier to do with an electric knife, but if you don't have one, use a very sharp meat knife, or cut them more thickly.
• You can leave the wine sauce chunky, or if you prefer it to be smooth, blend it using a food processor.
• Layer the meat in a stain-proof container with a lid, and pour the sauce over the top of it.  make sure all the slices are covered.
• Close the container and place it in the fridge overnight, and up to three days.  This allows the flavours of the sauce to sink into the roast.
• To serve, heat in the microwave, or gently in a pot of the stove-top.

The importance of pears

I was at the greengrocer (does anyone still actually use that word?) the other day and found some pears that I’ve only ever seen in Italian restaurants: small brownish-green pears called the Martin Sec, which are a very old variety of pear. Apparently the pears were first mentioned in an old French text from the 1500s, which is pretty impressive given that back then, it was very laborious to get anything written down, which means that this pear is on the same level of importance as taxes and religion. 🙂

The history behind Martin Sec pears

Martin Sec pears aren’t that good to eat raw as they’re not very juicy, but when they’re cooked, they become fabulous to eat! In Italy, you can find these on all the dessert carts trundling through traditional restaurants; at least in the Piedmont region in the North. The story is that long ago, this pear dessert was typically served at the end of festive meals eaten by farming families in the North-west of Italy as everyone had a pear tree (or could steal some from the neighbour’s tree!) and some old wine lying around the house. I’m not sure who has leftover wine in their houses, but I could believe the bit about them having a pear tree with almost inedible pears that needed something doing to them before they tasted good.

What kind of wine to use

For the red wine, use something relatively “heavy” like a merlot or a syrah.  In Piedmont they use their own wines of course: nebbiolo, barbera or dolcetto, but these may not be easy to get outside of Europe. Even if they are, you may not want to waste them on cooking some pears, when they could have a much more satisfying use of being drunk by you, so use a full-bodied red wine that doesn’t come out of a cardboard box, and the recipe should work well.

Travel Photo of the Week

Since the recipe for pears in red wine comes from Piedmont, I thought that this week the photo should also come from there.  This is one of the largest squares in Turin called Piazza San Carlo. Hidden under the arcades lie two of the most venerable cafés in Turin, where you can sip coffee and eat out-of-this-world pastries under a frescoed ceiling while being served by white-coated, bow-tied waiters.  Just remember that table service in these places will maybe blow your travel budget for the week.  If you order from the bar and drink standing up, the coffee is at a low price set by the government.  After all, good coffee is an inalienable right, like the air you breathe and the water you drink (at least in Italy)!

By Lisa Watson

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Pears in red wine syrup

Pears In Red Wine Syrup: an easy to make, deliciously more-ish dessert from Northern Italy

Course Dessert

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 2 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 10 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Author Lisa

Ingredients

• 8 Small pears preferable Martin Sec
• 400 ml Red wine 1 2/3 cups
• 180 g White Sugar 3/4 cup
• 6 Cloves
• 1/2 Cinnamon stick

Instructions

• Wash and dry the pears.
• Place them, standing up, in an oven-proof heavy-bottomed pot/casserole dish.
• Add all the other ingredients.
• Simmer uncovered on a medium heat for 35 minutes.
• While the pears are simmering, heat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
• Place the uncovered pot in the oven and leave to bake for 30 - 40 minutes, until the pears look soft and slightly shriveled.
• Using a slotted spoon, remove the pears from the liquid and set aside.
• Pour the wine mixture through a fine sieve, then boil the liquid until it becomes syrupy in consistency.  the volume will decrease by about half and will become thicker.
• Pour the wine syrup over the pears.
• The pears can be made a day in advance.  They can be eaten warm or at room temperature. They go wonderfully with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Enjoying the food in Munich, Germany

Recently, we were lucky to be able to visit the beautiful city of Munich, Germany and took in a visit to Legoland. The Munich part was for the adults in the family and the Legoland part was to convince the younger members of the family to wander around a city for a couple of days. Nothing like a good old-fashioned bribe of a near-future visit to a fun place to get the kids to not whine about their tired legs and about how we’ve already seen two churches and why do we have to see another one! Aside from the architecture, one of the great things to do in Munich is eat (you thought I was going to say “Go to the Oktoberfest and drink like a fish, didn’t you!). Well, the Oktoberfest wasn’t on, and with a couple of kids in tow, fish-drinking is not the done thing, so we went to eat.  One of the delicious sides that you can get everywhere is red cabbage stewed with apples; a dish that brought back many good memories from when I used to live in Heidelberg many years ago. To make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything, I also made myself eat large helpings of fabulous cakes and pastries.  Of course, it was only in the name of research and something I would never normally do…..

Red cabbage everywhere!

While wiping pretzel crumbs off our faces, before moving onto a beer hall to eat large amounts of meat with sides of red cabbage, potatoes and sauerkraut, we stopped to watch the show of the Glockenspiel in the tower of the town-hall on Marianplatz.  At certain times of the day a whole procession of figures cavort around to the tune of the chiming bells: knights, dancers and wedding guests all take a turn to spin in and out of sight of the crowds watching below. The different scenes show events that marked Munich’s history.  It’s worth reading about before you see it (um, which I didn’t do) so that you can really appreciate the show.

Must-buys when you go to Munich

After stuffing ourselves, we went window-shopping and decided that maybe the traditional dirndls and lederhosen weren’t quite for us.  Though it would certainly make us into talking-points if we wore them back in the French village where we live.  It maybe better just to stick to recreating the red cabbage and apple side dish and leave the dirndl wearing to the Bavarian experts.

Just a note for slicing the red cabbage: if you have a mandoline slicer, it’s actually very quick to shred.  Chopping it by hand will take quite a long time, unless you are an expert knife-wielder.

This cabbage goes exceptional well with brined turkey!

By Lisa Watson

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Stewed red cabbage with apple

Stewed red cabbage and apple is a typical South German side dish. It's good enough to eat by itself!

Course Side Dish

Cuisine German

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 1 Red Cabbage
• 50 g Butter 2 Tbsp
• 1 Onion
• 2 Apples
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 150 ml Red Wine 1 cup
• 150 ml Vegetable Broth 1 cup
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 2 Bay leaves
• 4 Cloves
• 3 Juniper Berries
• 1 Tbsp Flour
• 1 Tbsp Redcurrant Jam optional
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Slice the cabbage into thin strips. I used a mandoline slicer for this.
• Chop the onion finely. Peel, core and chop the apples.
• Melt the butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Sauté and onions and apple until the onion becomes translucent.
• Add the cabbage and lemon juice. Stir.
• Sprinkle with 1 - 2 tsp salt, then add the vinegar, wine, broth, bay leaves, cloves, juniper berries and sugar.
• Cover and simmer on a low heat for 1 1/2 - 2 hours, stirring every 10 -15 minutes.
• Mix the flour with a little water in a cup to make a runny paste. Add this mixture to the cabbage and stir in to thicken the sauce.
• Add the redcurrant jam, if using.
• Taste and season with more salt if needed.
• The cabbage can be made a few days in advance and kept refrigerated until needed.

This recipe for polpette con piselli (meatballs with peas) is another great classic from my mother-in-law, Bianca.  Friends of my husband who grew up eating these often at his parents’ place in Turin  have been bugging me to put up this recipe for a while, so here it is!  Polpette con piselli a wonderful “make in advance” dish that also freezes well, and so far, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it (vegetarians excluded of course….please don’t make it for vegetarian friends).

The recipe I’ve given you makes quite a few polpette, but as it takes a little effort to make them, it’s better to make more than you think you will need and then freeze the leftovers (if there are any!).  They make a wonderful near-instant meal on one of those days that you don’t know what to make/can’t be bothered cooking and are too lazy even to get take-out.  You can just pull the polpette out of the freezer and heat them up!  I like eating them with mashed potato…I think that’s the Kiwi part of me coming through: “potato with everything!” should be some kind of slogan.  Maybe I should change the name of my blog…hmmmm……

In Italy, I’ve always had these as a second course after a first course of pasta……now pay attention to the bit that said “after a first course of pasta“.  Let it go on the record that I didn’t say “with” pasta (like, on the same plate).  They’d take my Italian passport away for that one! So, you do whatever you want with that, but just don’t tell me so that I can’t confess anything and get you into trouble with the Italian Food Police.

And, just a tip before I leave you with the recipe: I just discovered recently that the best way to chop herbs into small bits is to stick the leaves in a cup (as you can see in the photo above), and cut them in the cup with scissors.  It works amazingly well, and I can’t believe that I never thought of doing this.  Instead for years I’ve been laboriously mincing herbs on a chopping board with a knife, which takes me forever since I’m terribly impatient at doing that sort of thing.  Incredibly, I haven’t lost any fingers yet, but I have sometimes added extra protein to the meal that wasn’t supposed to be there.  😉

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 40 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 500 g 1lb Beef mince (ground beef)
• 1/2 Chopped onion optional
• 50 g 2oz Ham (chopped)
• 20 g 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 Egg
• 5 - 10 g 1/4 cup: to your taste, really Parsley
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• to taste Pepper
• 1 sprig Rosemary
• 1 whole clove Garlic
• 400 ml 1 3/4 cups Tomato passata
• 1 Beef boullion cube
• 250 ml 1 cup Red wine
• 500 g 2 cups Peas

Instructions

• Mix the mince, finely chopped onion (if using), parmesan, parsley, ham, salt, pepper and egg together in a bowl. If the mixture is too "wet" and doesn't stick together, add some breadcrumbs: 2 Tbsp at a time until it becomes more firm.
• If you have time, place the mixture in the fridge for 30 minutes.  This step is not strictly necessary, but it helps the balls stay together while they are being browned.
• Make balls about the size of a walnut with your hands.
• Heat olive oil in a frying pan (with high sides if possible) with a large sprig of rosemary and a whole clove of garlic.
• Brown the meatballs.  Do not crowd them together.  If the pan is too small, put them in a few at a time. Gently turn them until they are browned on all sides.
• Add the red wine and let it boil off.
• If you do not have a pan with high sides, transfer the meatballs to a larger pot.  Add the tomato passata, the boullion cube and the peas. Top up with a little water if the sauce is too thick.  Add salt to taste.
• Simmer gently for 15 -20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• If the sauce is too runny, turn the heat up briefly to let the sauce thicken.
• These are great to freeze!  Just make sure the sauce is quite runny and covers the meatballs entirely before putting them in the freezer.

Every now and then when I’m feeling especially energetic, I make a big batch of ragù and then freeze it in portions so that I have a impressive tasting, good-for-you pasta sauce to pull out of the freezer at the last minute if we have unexpected guests, or if I just don’t know what to cook that night.  I use my beloved pressure cooker to cook it (yes, I’m talking about that again……!), but you can easily make it without.  It just takes a little longer to cook.  So, while I’m finished and off having a swim, or drinking a Spritz (more on those later!!), you poor non-pressure cooker people will be sitting in the kitchen waiting for the ragù to finish cooking. Don’t worry, as it’s still worth it in the end! 🙂

There are nearly as many recipes for ragù as there are Italians in Italy.  Everyone has their own variations, and of course, insist that their version is the best. Some words of advice if you go to Italy: If you’re in a restaurant, NEVER ask for pasta with “bolognaise/bolognese” sauce.  That is an American invention, and doesn’t exist in Italy. It enters into the category with spaghetti with meatballs, deep-dish pizzas and garlic bread: these things are like Tex-Mex is to real Mexican food.  The dishes may taste good, but they’re an on-steroids reincarnation of the real deal that have never graced a table-top in their life back in the home country.

My husband’s 95 year old grandmother makes and bottles ragù from scratch. She goes to the market, buys 25kg of tomatoes andthen bottles huge amounts of ragû.  I hardly have the motivation to make one batch that I freeze! I really should be ashamed of myself….. 🙂  I have to admit that this is not her recipe as she holds her cards very tight to her chest about the actual ingredients and method she uses.  I think she’d make a very good spy – no matter what torture she underwent, she would never give up her secrets to anyone. The government doesn’t know what they’re missing out on!  Anyway, the recipe below is very tasty, though, according to my family, nothing….. but nothing (!), is as good as Nonna P’s sauce.

You can use pretty much any pasta with ragu, but shorter pasta (i.e. not spaghetti) is better.  I personally like to use fusilli or penne riagate. The pasta shown in the photo at the beginning of the post is a speciality one called Armoniche Giganti Tricolori, which means giant coloured harmonicas…….sounds more edible in Italian really……..

Travel Photo of the Week

This one comes from the home of ragù sauce: Bologna.  This may give you an idea of why pasta with a meat and tomato sauce has become to be known as “bolognaise” sauce, since it comes from here originally. We were here for a weekend in the middle of Winter, so unfortunately, this is the best photo I can show you.  It’s a beautiful town and the food (just like everywhere in Italy!) is to die for!

To find out how to cook pasta like an Italian does, check out my handy guide.

By Lisa Watson

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Ragù

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 1 Onion
• 1 Carrot
• 1 Garlic clove
• 500 g 1.1lb Beef mince
• 1 Bay-leaf
• Rosemary oregano
• 150 ml 1/2 cup Red wine
• 1 L 4 cups Tomato puree
• to cover Water
• Salt and pepper
• 1 Bouillion cube

Instructions

• Chop the onion and carrot finely and saute them with the clove of garlic on a medium heat in olive oil. You can also add 1 stalk of chopped celery if you like.
• Add the mince and herbs and saute them until the mince is browned.
• Add the wine and let it boil off.
• Add the tomato puree and enough water to cover the minced meat. Add the bouillion cube and salt and pepper.
• If using a pressure cooker, put on the lid and let it cook for 30 minutes from the first whistle. Take the lid off and let it simmer until it thickens a little in consistency.
• If you are being more traditional, let the mixture simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Make sure the ragu doesn't get too dry, adding water if necessary.
• Now you can decide what pasta you want with it. Maybe you will be able to impress a 95 year old grandma with your sauce!

How to make risotto two ways

As promised, here’s risotto made the traditional way….be eternally grateful to me now, as I only did it this way for you instead of using my pressure cooker. 🙂 This recipe comes from my wonderful mother-in-law who makes this dish far better than I can!  It’s a derivative of a risotto dish called Panissa vercellese, which means that it comes from the province of Vercelli in the Piemonte region in the North-Western part of Italy where they grow Canaroli and Arborio rice.  The original risotto has a special kind of salami in it called salame della duja and lardo in it, but no Parmesan.  Sounds yummy, but it would be MUCH heavier than this version with sausages. Lardo is not exactly a diet food (but, oh man, it’s good on bruschetta!)

My mother-in-law told me that when she was young, they almost never had pasta, but always rice dishes.  Pasta was made fresh and only for special occasions.  My husband’s grandmother used to stand up to her knees in water day in and day out when she was younger, working in the rice fields.  She’s now 95 years old and recently bought 25kg of tomatoes from the market so that she could make and bottle pasta sauce for all the rest of us lazy members of the family…..maybe spending years bent in half and always wet is the secret to a long, healthy life!  If anyone wants to go and ahead and try it, let me know how it goes…..I’m more the drinking-wine-in-the-sun-on-the-terrace kind of person.

It’s all about the quality of the ingredients

The quality of the sausages is very important for this risotto.  If you get flavourless ones, then your risotto will be exactly that. If you can, try to get some from a butcher rather than the supermarket (where we all know that the sausages are made with any leftovers they pick up off the ground…….is that a good way to start a vicious urban legend or what!). If you’re feeling super-cheffy (yes, the spell-check pulled me up on that word, but you know what I mean!), you can soak the beans the night before and boil them in unsalted water for an hour before actually getting on to making the risotto.  Now, if you’re like me, you’ll never remember to do the soaking step, so just buy a can of beans from the supermarket and don’t even pretend that you’re making everything from scratch (actually, that’s directed at me from me….I think I may be going mad! Writing notes to myself in my own blog? HELP!)

What are Borlotti beans and can they be substituted?

This recipe calls for borlotti beans, which I thought that I couldn’t find outside of Italy until I realized that they have a screed of names, but are actually pretty much all the same thing.  This bean has as many aliases as an undercover CIA spy: cranberry beans, and coco rose beans are just two of them. Before cooking, the beans are a beautiful striped pink or red and white, which fades to an ugly uniform mud-brown colour when they’re cooked….shame about that, but they do taste good.  Just don’t get your hopes up that they’re going to make your dish look colourful! If you cannot find borlotti beans, any kind of dried beans will work at a pinch.

This time around, I actually used cannelini beans, which are similar, as that’s what I had on hand.  They work well too.  They are white beans, that stay whitish during cooking, so there are no surprises there! Just don’t use kidney beans….been there, done that, didn’t even want to touch the t-shirt.  Save them for Tex-Mex cooking!

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with sausage, red wine, and dried beans

Risotto with sausage and borlotti beans is a traditional risotto from the Piedmont region in North-western Italy.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 5 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 Onion
• 2-3 Sausages
• 350 g Caneroli or aborio rice 2 cups
• 250 ml Red wine 1 cup
• 1 Beef bouillion cube or beef broth
• 1 tsp Salt or to taste
• 400 g 1 can Borlotti or cannelini beans
• 30 g grated Parmesan cheese 3 Tbsp
• 1 large pot Simmering water or broth

Instructions

• Put the pot of water with the bouillon cube in it to simmer on the stove top.  Chop the onion finely and saute it in olive oil in a second pot. When the onion becomes translucent, crumble the sausage and add it.  Stir the mixture until the sausage is browned.
• Add the rice and saute until it browns slightly.
• Add the wine and let it boil off.
• Pour in enough water/broth from your simmering pot to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.  Now, STAY THERE AND DON'T MOVE!!  As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add water from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• At this point, you can drain the beans and add them.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times, so I'm being conservative here. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more water and let the water in the rice boil off....and don't forget to stir it.....
• Add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.

Why you should stay in an agriturismo in Italy.  It’s not just for the chocolate cake!

Before I tell you all about this luscious Sicilian chocolate cake (Torta al Cioccolato di San’Elia), I want to tell you all about a type of holiday in Italy that is a recent newcomer, but has become the very best way to see the country (as far as I’m concerned!). Whenever we go traveling in Italy (as opposed to going to Turin to see my husband’s family), we try to stay in agriturismi.  These places are kind of like a Bed and Breakfast, and kind of like an independent apartment rental, but not quite either of those.  They’re generally set in the middle of working farms (hence the “agri” part of the name) Depending on how the owner has developed them, they can have breakfast included, or have a restaurant on the premises for dinner.  We stayed at one in Tuscany a few years ago which was in an olive grove.  The owner gave us samples of his olive oil, and tastings of wine that his brother just up the road was making (YUM! Never turn down a wine tasting!!). Another place near Genova had a restaurant right next door to our apartment and a big playground for the kids……you can imagine how many hours we spent at the restaurant!

Two great agriturismi in Sicily

We stayed at two different ones while we were in Sicily: one called Il Limoneto, near Acireali, in the middle of a fragrant lemon grove.  The kids had great delight in walking outside the door each morning to pick lemons to make juice.  Sweetest I’ve ever tasted!  The second one we stayed in: Sant’Elia near Siracusa won us over completely.  Cristina, the owner, helped by her mother, Maria made us feel as though we were family (in a good way….not that kind of way where you turn up for Christmas lunch and get into a big fight with everyone there). Oh, and now they have a pool too!  I would go back here in a second!

What is the secret ingredient that makes this cake so luscious?

Cristina served a wonderful breakfast every morning with homemade cakes and jam, fresh bread,  and strawberries from the neighbouring farm.  As soon as I took a (gigantic) mouthful of her chocolate cake I immediately….well, as soon as I’d downed my second slice….asked her for the recipe.  She very kindly shared it with my older son in Italian, and he duly wrote it down in French for me, so now, I’ll give it to you in English.  Hope nothing’s lost in the translation! The secret ingredient of this melt-in-the-mouth chocolate cake is red wine!

By Lisa Watson

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Sicilian red wine chocolate cake

How to make luscious Sicilian Red Wine Chocolate Cake

Course cake, Dessert, sweet

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 5 minutes minutes

Servings 1 cake

Ingredients

• 300 g 1 1/3 cups Sugar
• 200 g 7oz, 1 2/3 sticks at room temperature Butter
• 100 ml 1/2 cup - chose a light red, under 13% alc vol. Red wine
• 4 at room temperature Eggs
• 60 g 1/2 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder
• 180 g 1 1/2 cups Flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking powder

Instructions

• Heat oven to 180 degrees C (350F).
• Cream butter and sugar until white and fluffy.
• After creaming the butter and sugar together well, add wine slowly while beating. (Tip 1: the first time I tried this, I put the wine in with the butter and sugar before mixing, and got a lumpy mess.)
• Before going any further, take about 1/2 a cup of the mixture out and set it to the side.  You will be using this for the glaze once the cake is cooked.
• Add the eggs one by one, beating after each addition. (Tip 2: the second time around, my 5 year old was cracking the eggs and managed to drop all the white of one of the eggs on the floor, while amazingly saving the yolk in the shell. The cake still turned out perfectly!).
• Add the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder and mix together.
• Put in a well-greased cake ring tin.  I use a 10-cup Bundt pan that my lovely husband lugged back from the States for me on one of his work visits (he even had to buy another carry-on because of the weight issue....).
• Bake for about 25 minutes until a tester comes out clean.
• Take the cake out of the oven and after 5 minutes, tip it out of the pan onto a plate.  Decide which side you want to be the "up-side" and flip it that way.  Make a few incisions in the top with a knife and smear the 1/2 cup of reserved mixture on the cake.  Don't wait to do this otherwise it won't glaze properly unless the cake is still hot.

What to do when you have too many sausages

On Easter Monday we had hoards of friends descending on our garden for an annual Easter Egg Hunt (with chocolate eggs, of course!  None of those namby-pamby decorated boiled eggs that have been sitting in the sun for an hour!) and pot-luck lunch.  As always, I was terrified that we wouldn’t have enough food so I bought enough sausages to throw on the bbq for about 100 people.  Our friends brought such delicious offerings, that we ended up grilling only half of the sausages.  Now, what to do with all the rest?  We had leek and sausage pasta sauce the next day, then sausage and borlotti bean risotto the day after.  At that point, the rest of the family mutinied and threatened to set me loose in a dinghy (is that a kiwi word?? It’s a tiny boat that gets pulled behind a bigger one) and cast me adrift to float to North Africa if I dared to serve them up sausages one more time. But, I knew how to win them over!  My mother-in-law’s irresistible recipe for sausages in tomato sauce or “salsicce con pomodoro”.  Frankly, the title sounds much better in Italian than in English, but it tastes fab in any language!

Every culture has food they cannot resist eating

I did manage to get my kids to eat sausages one more time using this trick, though my husband, who’s a bit more onto it than them, declined…..at least until tomorrow when I make polenta and serve them together….hehehe! You just can’t turn that down…..not if you’re really from Piemonte in Italy like he is.  That’d be like dissing marmite if you come from NZ, and we all know that that’s part of the Kiwi code of ethics drummed into you from birth……”I solemnly swear that I will never make a disparaging remark about marmite, or I will have my nationality stripped unceremoniously from me”.

This dish is wonderful with polenta or mashed potatoes: anything that will soak up all the more-ish gravy so that you don’t have to throw caution, and manners, to the wind and pick up your plate to lick it.

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Braised sausages in tomato puree

A delicious recipe for cooking sausages in a tomato sauce.  

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 35 minutes minutes

Servings 4 -6 people

Ingredients

• 3 - thickly sliced Onions
• 1 whole clove Garlic
• 12 good quality Sausages
• 250 ml 1 cup Red wine
• 400 g 1 1/2 cups Tomato puree
• 1 cube Beef bouillon
• Salt and pepper

Instructions

•  
• Heat olive oil in a medium-size pot.
• Saute the onions and whole clove of garlic (it will be taken out at the end), stirring occasionally, until the onions become translucent but not brown.
• Put in the whole sausages and brown them.  If you would like to reduce the amount of fat in the dish you can fry the sausages in a separate pan and add them to the onions once they are browned.
• Pour in the wine and let most of it boil off.
• Add the tomato, bouillon cube and salt and pepper.
• Top up with water so that the sausages are covered. Turn down the heat to medium-low and let the sausages simmer uncovered for 25 - 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Add a little water if they are getting dry.  At the end, turn up the heat to reduce the liquid until it reduces and becomes thicker.

Notes

This dish freezes well.