Wild Asparagus and Greens Pasta (Wild, Natural foods take 2)

Springtime is a great time for foraging in Malta.  There are plenty of delicious and healthy options to find just on your weekend walk in the countryside (and sometimes, even just walking around residential areas!)

Happy Spaghetti sauce :)

Platters - low carb style :)

Inspired by Mona and her Food book , a few weeks ago, i embarked on a low carb diet.  The main aim of course was to lose weight, but also, it seems to be a diet that really suited me, and didn't go against my philosophy as most diets do.  Essentially i don't like eating artificial stuff, nothing that's come out of a lab.  This includes things like the over processed margarines, stuff like high fructose corn syrup (and the myriad of corn derivatives), basically anything with an ingredient list full of numbers and complicated names, rather than simple things that I could technically buy individually at a shop.  This diet, once I was reading into it, didn't sound like too much of a sacrifice at all!  Sure, i'd be giving up the almighty hobz biz- zejt and my favourite dish, PASTA!  but at least I could "console" myself with cheese, olive oil, nuts, ensuring that i wouldn't go hungry and just have to nibble on a peach which would essentially leave me hungrier than before!

One of the easiest and quickest ways to satisfy both the carb and non-carb eaters of this world together, is to have a massive platter full of delicious goodies.  I find I have no issue at all not replacing carbohydrates, as long as i have some kind of vegetable. Most of the time, at this time of year, it's tomatoes.  they feature very heavily, being my substitute fruit between meals, as well as being a great implement to throw some olive dip on, or eat with a piece of meat or cheese :)  I also like to add some kind of leaf.  This time it was Maltese rocket (aka insalata)For the carb eaters, I normally provide a small loaf of bread, or some galletti.

Here are some pictures of a couple of platters I've made in the past few weeks :)

Platter one: 

Aubergine/Eggplant Parmigiana

This is one of the dishes that has a confusing origin, people (including myself) thought that the name suggested that it's from Parma, but in fact wiki suggests it's Sicily and Campania that lay claims to it, which makes sense considering the ingredients! :)

layering the ingredients

I have no idea if my version is traditional, in fact I'm sure it's not, but the point is that it tastes good no?  And is made with healthy, fresh ingredients?  AND as a special bonus - this dish is VERY low carb! :D  here we go! :)

Salsa Cruda - a.k.a bloody simple pasta sauce!

Salsa Cruda literally means "raw sauce", as this sauce requires no cooking at all.  There are so many variations of this, but essentially there are a few things in common with all of them: fresh tomatoes, olive oil, a summery herb, all at room temperature.  The pasta is added steaming hot, making a lovely contrast with the cool sauce. Drizzle with some extra Extra Virgin Olive oil just before serving :)

Everything about this sauce screams summer - invokes the feelings of al fresco dining, relaxation, possibly with a frosty glass of white wine :)

The most important thing in this sauce is that you buy the right quality ingredients.   I adore tomatoes for example, but I will not buy them unless they are EXACTLY the quality I want.  Same goes with everything else in this sauce.  Except the basil, because that's growing in pots all over our coutyard in an attempt to finally have enough basil to see us through summer (I swear we're all basil addicts here, I even use it on toast with a tiny drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of seasoning in the morning, it's not my fault, I walk past 2 basil plants on the way to the kitchen, I can't help but pick a leaf or 2!) 

simple, quick, easy, fresh.  :D

Romanesco Broccoli: the best looking vegetable of them all

I love this vegetable.  This is the first time i've found it in Malta, and definitely not something you see in the shops everyday, although i honestly have no idea why because to me,  the flavour is of a superior cauliflower, and its looks... OMG!  :D

The delicious, fractally goodness that is this vegetable made me almost upset when chopping it up.  The whole of it is one beautiful fractal  starting from the tiny little budlets, that form into larger buds, that form into the vegetable itself.  The way the little florets are placed on the stalk are in a fractal pattern also.  Just found out this pattern is called a Logarithmic Spiral.

The colouring of it is great.  The photo doesn't do it justice - the green is much more intense - lighter and more buttery in colour than a broccoli though. 

Couldn't stop staring at it.  simply beautiful!

baked potato gnocchi with mixed mushrooms

Jamie and I went to Amsterdam a few weeks ago, and rented a little apartment to stay in.  Great idea, as we could use ingredients we don't find so often in cooking :D

Headed off to the stoopermarket and found a variety of mushrooms, so thought we'd make something with them.  I really felt like potato something, and gnocchi sprung to mind <3

And so was the birth of the baked gnocchi mushroom dish :)

The finished product. melty, golden mushroomy potato goodness.

Lala's lasagne

This recipe is pretty much my mum's recipe.. although we always manage to make it taste completely different.  To be honest mine tastes different every time. but i must say, I do like my own (and my family's) lasagne.  There are a few other people's lasagne dishes I've enjoyed, I can literally count them on 1 hand (my Uncle Kiki's, and my Aunt Isabel's, and my best friend's mum Pat).  I'm sure there are plenty of delicious lasagnas out there but i haven't had the pleasure, and frankly, I don't even really want to try cos there's not much I abhor tasting more than a bad lasagne. 

anyway here goes:

Spinach and Ricotta Canneloni

Canneloni is a baked pasta dish that i love doing, now that i've found how easy it is piping the filling into the pasta tubes, rather than trying to spoon it in :P  Love my practical mate and old housemate Becky, who walked past the kitchen once when I was making them and just said "why don't you use a bag to pipe it in?".... :D

Mushroom risotto

I've totally got the risotto bug again... happens as soon as I make one, then i make one at least once a week, then summer rolls around, and i stop making it again...until the weather cools down slightly, then it's back to risotto time :D 

Fresh tomato sauce take 2

A slight adaptation from the 10 minute tomato pasta sauce is to take a little more time (lol, d'oh) and allow the sauce to simmer longer, resulting in a rich tasting (yet liquidier!) sauce.

First of all, when I have more time, I make an effort to peel the tomatoes. It takes only a few minutes, and it is really worth the slight effort of boiling a kettle and using 2 bowls :)

This sauce has much less Kunserva in it, and it ends up being a much paler (but still so flavoursome) sauce.

First, to peel the tomatoes. Ok it's important to use the "Roma" or "egg" or "zenguli" tomatoes for this recipe - other tomatoes are simply not good enough. The riper, the redder, the more "bits" you have to cut out cos they are not perfect, the better. These tomatoes are very fleshy, with relatively less pulp and seeds to other tomatoes. Makes them ideal for a tasty tomato sauce!

Choose your tomatoes and make a thinly slit cross with a sharp knife at the opposite end to the stalk end. This will help with peeling once you have loosened the skin.

Place them in a large pyrex or metal bowl. Boil a kettle and pour the water directly over the tomatoes and leave for a couple of minutes.

the blanching tomatoes

Aubergines, sicilian style

Mmmm... am love love LOVING aubergines/eggplants/brungiel at the moment. They are lovely, and I've discovered (thanks to mum) a way that one can cook them without them absorbing huge amounts of oil.

Very easy, once you slice them, place them in water with heaps of salt,and soak them for at least minutes, or even a couple of hours. You might need some kind of weight to keep them from floating... i put empty glass bottles on top to weigh them down into the water.

Really felt like a "parmiggiana", i.e. layers of eggplant, mozzarella and tomato sauce baked to golden, bubbly, melty, tomato-ey, gooey, perfection. But at the same time, I felt like something a little different.

baby balls of meat

Today and yesterday I took on the task of sorting through everything we had in the fridge and freezer, throwing out expired stuff, and arranging the rest so that it's easily accessible and ready to be used in time for it to still be good.

Sorting out the freezer was interesting, have found lovely packets of fresh artichoke hearts that my dad lovingly prepared when it was artichoke season, some delicious looking pumpkin ravioli, amongst so much other stuff like desserts, meat, veggies and a heap of ready chopped garlic and ginger :D very handy to know :D

I took out 500 grams of pork mince, as i had an idea brewing when I'd cleaned the fridge yesterday and found some pork stock (leftover from a roast this weekend - recipe to follow!) and leftover 10 minute pasta sauce (well, my dad's version of). Plenty of the other ingredients are also leftover, or bits that were found in the freezer that i thought would be nice to add.

Papardelle with Mixed Forest Mushrooms

Wow... Sister's wedding is over, and life has started to resemble normality once again. Yesterday decided to have some of the ladies over, to relieve them from cooking duties on a Monday after work. I know I'd love it if people did that to me on Mondays :)

After agonising at what to feed them, I decided that our freezer (yet again!) is really full, so wanted to use something out of there. I found 2 packets of mushrooms - one was only porcini, the other was mixed forest mushrooms. We also have some truffle oil that we never get to use so I thought this would go smashingly with it! Opened the cupboard, and Voila! Papardelle Al Ouvo! (egg pasta!) even better! And so a dish was made:

A bolognese/ragu based sauce for spaghetti (and baked rice the next day!)

Just like many people, bolognese sauce reminds me of being a kid, it's still the ultimate comfort food dinner for me. It instantly sends me back to being little, with my sister and 3 or 4 cousins, and mum and/or one of my aunts serving up steaming spaghetti loaded with sauce and cheese. Learning how to eat spaghetti with just a fork was like graduating, I remember the pride I felt when mum stopped cutting up the spaghetti because I'd learnt to twirl it deftly around my fork without dropping the pasta everywhere :)

Bolognese is also what started my cooking adventures apparently. At the age of 3, I was at my Aunt's house, and she was making bolognese. I looked at her in shock at one point, and started telling her that "my mummy makes it like this" and went on to explain what she was doing "wrong" and how she should make it. Needless to say she was very amused, and reminds me of this often hehehe...

The recipe I'm about to give is by no means a traditional bolognese. Apparently the original bolognese doesn't even have tomatoes or garlic in it, and uses heaps of milk and even funghi porcini! So I suppose a "ragu" or "meat based pasta sauce" is the better term.

Fettucini with Bottarga, artichoke hearts and grouper

I went to Rome at the start of June this year, and apart from friends and sightseeing, of course food was a huge part of it! :)

Went out one night to Via del Portico d'Ottavia, to a Kosher restaurant in the old Jewish Ghetto. Their speciality is fried things, and our starters were amazing!

Had zucchini flowers filled with fish, in batter, as well as other random and delicious fried veggies... nom!

My main course was fish (grouper) and zucchini flower pasta, however someone else had egg pasta with artichoke hearts and bottarga.. and it sounded amazing! Inspired by this, I thought i'd make egg pasta with grouper, bottarga and artichoke hearts (The artichoke hearts were lovingly collected by my parents when they were in season, then frozen in batches to make awesome pasta and risotto - respek!)

Found some nice fresh grouper steaks - 2 were plenty for a pasta dish for 4 - they are a little pricey and really you can use any nice white fish, but Grouper (or Cerna in Maltese) is awesome. so milky and delicious! :D

must say, it did look better before i stirred it in.  but the taste was sublime!

Where oh where can good coffee be?

Been thinking heaps about Melbourne today, and mostly because about 90% of the coffees i've bought in Malta are so damned shit! Milk boiling hot, coffee not strong enough, they have no idea how to steam it without obliterating it, they just add cold milk to hot and re-heat it, again and again, etc... etc..

Anyway I had a few places in Melbourne that I loved going to, but I think my favourite was Ray's Cafe on Victoria St in Brunswick. It's pretty much always full, serves delicious breakfast/brunch style food with a middle eastern/mediterranean twist, their poached eggs are always runny in the middle.. and their coffee is awesome :)

If you're ever on Sydney rd, there are plenty of places to have a great coffee, but Ray's is awesome.  Located off Sydney road :) 

Here is a pic of the last coffee I had from there, in mid May. Went out with Anji (my mate and ex-assistant/bitch) for a leisurely brunch. it was awesome, almost as awesome as she is :)


Anyway there are a couple of places that have decent coffee in Malta - I can think of a handful only: Actually before i start i should say that you can pretty much consistently get a decent espresso here. Don't bother asking for a double cos half the places give you a lungo (GHEY!) But yeah... decent caffe lattes are very hard to come by. Decent coffee (generally) at  "Mint" near the Gelateria in Sliema - run by a Kiwi and his Maltese partner. Cafe Ole (near muddy waters in St Julians) used to make a great one, I wonder if it's still that good. Had a decent one at Coffee garden on republic st in valletta. aaaaaaand there's the end of the list for me.

If anyone knows of places that make a GOOD coffee in Malta, please please do tell!

It needs to be the perfect temperature, very warm, but not hot, creamy on top, not foamy, strong, and nicely presented :) Ideally not served in those ridiculous glass things with handles, but either in an old fashioned tumbler (at least for a caffe latte), or in a proper cup (as above).

10 minute fresh tomato pasta sauce

Got home from the beach the other day and was starving, so whipped up this sauce. It was just me so i guess this is enough sauce for one (if you like heaps of sauce and not as much pasta as I did) however you could just adjust the quantities easily. You can go to the trouble of blanching and peeling the tomatoes, and deseeding them, but like I said i was bloody hungry and on a mission to prepare the sauce and have it done by the time the water boiled and pasta was cooked.

Spaghetti Vongole e Langoustini

On the way home from the beach the other day, we stopped at the fish shop. They had clams (Vongole) and I thought I'd love to try cooking them. I'd never cooked with them before, but spaghetti vongole is one of my favourite dishes, and i figured “how hard can it be”? The answer is “bloody easyl” by the way :D they also had langoustine (like baby lobsters), so we bought 2 per person, however as tasty as they were, I don't think they were needed. Next time I will either make a “frutto di mare” or just use some clams alone.

Pasta with Zucchini, Porcini and Shrimps

Pasta with Zucchini, Porcini mushrooms and shrimps.

This idea came to me when my dad and I were deciding what to have for dinner. Had Zucchini, plenty of them to use, and wanted to empty out the freezer also, and had Prawns. I'd also spied a jar of porcini mushrooms in the cupboard teeheehee... and so it was born!