marcella hazan's potato soup with split green peas.

marcella hazan's potato soup with split green peas.

15 Jun 2015

Last week was one of those weeks. I spent the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend in Brisbane and flew back to Sydney with a cold and no energy to cook or go shopping. The cupboard was pretty bare. I knew I wanted soup and I'd planned to make some lentil soup when I spied this recipe for potato soup with split green peas in 'The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' by Marcella Hazan. I checked the cupboard and the fridge and found I had all the ingredients I needed, so set to work making the soup.

When you read the recipe, the soup has hardly any ingredients and very few processes. 

You know how I love to change things up, well I didn't with this recipe at all. I just added a garnish of fresh oregano and some green peas.



Here's the recipe for you.

Potato Soup with Split Green Peas - from Marcella Hazan's The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes

250 g (8 oz) dried split green peas

1.25 litres (5 cups) homemade meat broth or 1 cup canned beef broth and 4 cups water

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, chopped

freshly grated parmesan cheese

salt and pepper

Peel the potatoes and cut them up into chunks. Rinse them under cold water and drain. Rinse the split peas under cold water and drain.

Put the potatoes and peas in a soup pot with 750 mls of broth, then cover and cook over medium heat, at a gentle boil, until the potatoes and peas are both tender (about 30 - 45 minutes). Turn off the heat. Purée the potatoes and peas with a stick blender or put through a food mill.

Warm the butter and oil in a small skillet, then cook the onions and until the onions are golden. Pour the contents of the skillet into the pot with the potatoes and peas, add the remaining broth, cover, and turn on the heat to medium. Adjust the heat so that the soup boils at a steady but slow boil. Cook until all of the butter and oil has become evenly distributed into the broth.

Before turning off the heat, swirl in the grated parmesan, then taste and correct for salt.

A steaming bowl of hot soup, served with bread and lashings of butter. Just what the doctor ordered!

See you all again next week,

Jillian

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osso buco

osso buco

4 Jul 2012

I love osso buco but I don't make it frequently. Veal shin doesn't appear in the supermarket all that often but when it did last week I snapped up a few packets.




I always use Marcella's Hazan recipe for osso buco from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This version must be from a US cookbook because it uses cup measures, whilst the recipe in my book uses grams and ounces. 

OSSOBUCO MILANESE
(from Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking)
6 – 8 veal shanks
Salt and pepper
Flour
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 Tbsp butter
1 cup diced onion
2/3 cup diced carrot
2/3 cup diced celery
1 cup dry white wine
2 strips lemon zest
1 cup  chicken stock (I used beef stock, homemade)
1 + 1/2 cups diced tomatoes
1 tsp fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
3 – 4 parsley sprigs

Gremolata
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp finely minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced Italian parsley

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Tie each shank tightly with a piece of twine to prevent them from falling apart during cooking.  Lightly season the shanks with salt and pepper, then flour both sides of the meat and brown them in a skillet with very hot olive oil. Set the meat aside, discard most of the oil, deglaze the pan with 1 cup of white wine, and set it aside.

Add butter to an oven-proof pan with a tight-fitting lid large enough to hold the meat in a single layer, and saute the onion, carrot, and celery mixture for about 6 minutes, until translucent.  Add the lemon peel and cook for a couple more minutes, then add the meat to the sauteed veggies,  pour the wine from deglazing the skillet over it and add the stock, the tomatoes, bay leaves, and thyme.  Season with salt and pepper.

Bring the contents to a simmer, cover and transfer the pan to the oven. Let it cook for 2 – 3 hours (depending on the thickness of your shanks),  until the meat is fork tender.  If the pot gets too dry, add a few tablespoons of water.

Add the gremolata on top of the meat and sauce a few minutes before serving, and don’t allow it to cook for a long time.   Cut the twine around the meat, and serve.



I served it for lunch with the classic accompaniment of risotto milanese and it was so yummy, I licked the plate clean.


I have another packet of veal shin in the freezer so I know what I'll be having for my dinner this coming weekend. 

Counting the days until the weekend. I'll see you all again next week,

Jillian

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pronto - chicken with red cabbage

pronto - chicken with red cabbage

29 Jul 2011

I thought you might be a bit over all my travel photos, so here's a food post for you. It was a bit of a shock returning to Sydney after a few weeks of summer weather. When I woke in Sydney on Sunday morning, it was a chilly 7°C. Instead of the light summery Vietnamese dishes I'd been eating in Berlin, it was time to think about casseroles and stews.

Here is another of my favourite Marcella Hazan recipes - chicken with red cabbage. It's a perfect winter recipe. The recipe only calls for a few ingredients and the longer you store it, the better it tastes.

I'm planning to cook this during the weekend, so the photos you see here are of one I prepared a little earlier.

It might not be the prettiest of dishes but it's very tasty.

On the home front, I've survived my first week back at work, but only just. I've just been to the lab to collect the film I shot whilst away. I need to edit those images, I'm going to see Belong by Bangarra and I really need to start thinking about doing my tax return so there'll be no time for baking this weekend. Perhaps next weekend?

See you all again next week,

Jillian

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Pronto - Marcella Hazan's Minestrone alla Romagnola

Pronto - Marcella Hazan's Minestrone alla Romagnola

14 May 2011

It's suddenly become very cold in Sydney and as the temperature drops the need for warm and hearty food rises. What could be more warming than a steaming bowl of soup?

Cavolo nero started appearing in my fruit shop a few weeks ago so I bought a bunch to use in a minestrone. I turned to an old favourite cookbook, the Australian Women's Weekly Italian Cooking Class cookbook for my minestrone recipe, which on closer inspection appears to be much the same as Marcella Hazan's recipe for Minestrone alla Romagnola without the parmesan rind. I bought a slab of parmesan on Saturday so I cut off the rind and put it into the soup.

I enjoyed the soup so much, I made another batch the other night, this time using barley instead of the white beans. It was equally delicious.

I also spent part of the weekend working on some new blog lay-outs with bigger images. What do you think?

Sorry for the delay in posting but blogger has been a bit ornery all this week. Happy weekend to you all,

Jillian

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pronto - pasta with peas and ricotta

pronto - pasta with peas and ricotta

8 Apr 2011

I was wondering what I should write about tonight and decided upon this quick and easy pasta sauce recipe. I've been making this Marcella Hazan ricotta with spinach pasta sauce for years. I was looking through the freezer and didn't have any frozen spinach left but found some peas. I found this recipe on the next page in the book, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, one that I'd overlooked for years.

Once again the recipe has just a few key ingredients and takes almost no time to put together, so it's a perfect end of the week meal. I don't eat bacon so I used a few pieces of beef pastrami in the recipe in its place and it was absolutely delicious. You'll need to hold back a few tablespoons of the cooking water to loosen the sauce. 

I'm glad the weekend has finally arrived as it's been another busy week here with work and a trip to see the Sydney Dance Company's performance of Shared Frequencies. The highlight of which was LANDforms starring the voice of Katie Noonan. I've also been struggling a bit with the end of daylight saving. My body clock just refuses to budge and there's nothing like waking up 1 hour and 30 minutes earlier than one needs to. My gym attendance has suffered so I'll have to do a few catch up classes during the weekend. 

I hope you all had great weeks and I'll see you again on Monday,

Jillian

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