Cavolo nero bruschetta

As I’m writing this, I’m in pain. I had one of my wisdom teeth removed yesterday and it hurts like hell. I had never been to the dentist for anything other than a teeth cleaning and I have always been bragging about my healthy and good teeth. Not even one filling.

A month ago though, when I visited my dentist for a routine cleaning, she announced that my two lower wisdom teeth needed to be removed. I was terrified.

I have been through major operations and have endured a great deal of physical pain but never in any parts of my head. Not on my face, not in my mouth, not involving teeth!

I tried to be calm about it at first, but as the day of the extraction drew closer, I became agitated. S kept telling me it was nothing, my mom the same, but I knew it was going to be painful, if not during the actual removal of the tooth, but the anesthetic injection and afterwards.

Now, it is afterwards, and I’m in pain. I don’t like it. So to take my mind off the pain, I’m writing instead about these bruschette that I had when I could still chew without my jaw hurting. (It will pass, I know, bear with me, I’m in pain).

When I saw the last bunch of cavolo nero (Italian kale) at the super market the other day, I jumped on it before anyone else could snatch it. I love cavolo nero and its slightly bitter flavor reminds me a lot of the Greek wild greens zohos.

So what I did was simply boil it until its leaves became tender, removed the middle white vein and tossed the chopped leaves with good Greek olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. I sliced a baguette and toasted it in the oven, I rubbed some garlic on one side of each slice, drizzled with some olive oil and arranged the kale on top. I topped the bruschette off with shaved Grana Padano and a final drizzling of olive oil, and it was the best lunch eaten on a sunny day. Simplicity in all its glory, and we needed nothing more.

PS. I’m removing the second wisdom tooth next month. Wish me luck!

Cavolo Nero and Grana Padano Bruschetta

If you can’t find cavolo nero, substitute with another type of kale.

Grana Padano is a delicious Italian cheese, similar to Parmesan but with fewer “crystals” and a milder and less salty flavor.

Yield: 14 small bruschette for 4-5 people

Ingredients
300 g cavolo nero (or other type of kale)
Juice of 1 lemon, freshly squeezed
1 baguette (14 slices)
1 large garlic clove, peeled
Grana Padano, shaved
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Special equipment: colander, vegetable or cheese peeler


Preparation
Preheat your oven to 220ºC.

Fill a large pot with water and add some salt. Bring to the boil over high heat.
Rinse cavolo nero well under cold running water and trim the bottom very hard stems.
Add it to the pot and boil for about 6 minutes until the leaves are tender. Drain it in a colander and immediately run it under cold running water to stop it from cooking further.

Using a knife, cut off and discard the central hard white vein of each cavolo nero leaf (don’t remove it all the way up, it’s not that tough towards the tip of the leaf). Place leaves on paper towels to absorb the moisture and then chop them roughly (it’s easy to lay the leaves on the paper as the keep their shape when boiled). Add them to a bowl, drizzle with a little olive oil and half of the lemon juice, add salt and pepper and mix with your hands. Give it a taste and adjust seasoning, olive oil and lemon.

In the meantime, place the baguette slices on a baking sheet and place on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Toast until they are crispy and crunchy and have taken on a golden brown color. Remove them from the oven and let them cool a bit, enough to handle. Take the garlic clove and rub it on one side of each slice of bread and drizzle with a little olive oil. Top with some of the dressed cavolo nero and add a piece of shaved Grana Padano on top. Drizzle a little olive oil over the bruschette and serve immediately.
Enjoy!

Baci di Dama

My family’s relationship with Italy is a close and strong one. I have two uncles that both went there to study and apart from getting a University degree, they also ended up meeting the love of their lives, two wonderful Italian women who became their wives and mother of their children.

I have cousins and second cousins living in Florence and Sicily and even though they don’t speak Greek, which is a shame, I speak Italian so thankfully communication has never been a problem between us.

The first time I went to Italy, it was for one of my cousins’ wedding. I was about thirteen, she was twenty-four and the happiest bride I have ever seen. As she is Catholic and I’m Orthodox, her wedding ceremony was very intriguing and completely different than anything I have ever experienced before. Everything was extraordinary; the church, the priest, the rituals. The only thing that was familiar to me was the abundance of food at the wedding reception. In that respect, I felt like I was home.

And the deliciousness didn’t stop there. The days leading to the wedding as well as those after, were filled with feasts as well. My aunt’s side of the family, the Italians, were feeding us pasta, pizze, meat stews, sfogliatelle and crostate, and my uncle’s side of the family, the Greeks, were making mousaka, giouvetsi, roast lamb and galaktoboureko.

I will never forget that first time in Italy nor my cousin’s wedding and I most certainly will never forget the food. My aunt always had some sweet nibbles around the house and apart from the confetti, which are candy-covered almonds traditionally given at Italian (and Greek) weddings, there were all sorts of cookies. Baci di dama is the one kind of cookie I remember vividly.

Baci di dama, meaning lady’s kisses, consist of two small hazelnut cookies sandwiched together with a dollop of dark chocolate. They are given that name because they resemble a woman’s lips preparing to give or receive a kiss and they originate from the town of Tortona in the northwestern Italian region of Piedmont.

These two-bite cookies are eaten all over Italy and in some areas the hazelnuts are substituted for almonds or a mix of almonds and hazelnuts. I have opted for a mix of both nuts because I love how they complement each other.

The cookies are buttery, slightly crispy from the nuts, almost shortbread-like, and the chocolate filling is really what makes them unique. S and I enjoyed them so much we couldn’t bear to share them with anyone else. Yes, they are that good, especially with a cup of espresso.

Happy baking!

Baci di Dama (Lady’s Kisses) – Italian Hazelnut and Almond Cookies with Chocolate Filling
Heavily adapted from here

If you only have hazelnuts at hand or only almonds, then by no means use just that but I find that the mix of both nuts make the cookies more interesting.

I used blanched hazelnuts but you can also use hazelnuts with skin. You’ll need to roast them on a baking sheet for about 10 minutes in a 175 degrees Celsius / 350 Fahrenheit preheated oven, checking them regularly and being careful not to burn them. Remove them from the oven and place them on a clean kitchen towel. Once cool, rub them while still inside the towel to remove their skins and use according to the recipe below. (No need to further toast them).

I used blanched almonds but in case you only have almonds with skin it’s very easy to blanch them yourself. Put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let them stand for 1 minute (not more as they'll lose their crunchiness), drain them, rinse them under cold running water so that they're cool enough to handle, and drain them again. Place them on a clean kitchen towel and squeeze the skin off with your fingers. Pat them dry and they're ready to use.

Yield: 36 cookies

Ingredients
70 g blanched hazelnuts
70 g blanched almonds
100 g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut in pieces
140 g all-purpose flour
Pinch of sea salt
100 g caster sugar

80 g good quality dark chocolate 55-60% cocoa solids, for the filling

Special equipment: small food processor, sieve, plastic wrap, 1-2 baking sheets, baking paper


Preparation
In a skillet or sauté pan, add the blanched hazelnuts and almonds and place over a medium heat. Toast the nuts, stirring often so they don’t get burned, until they become fragrant and brown lightly. Transfer them to a plate and let them cool completely.

Add the toasted nuts to a food processor and finely grind them, being careful not to grind them too much or they’ll start releasing their natural oils and become pasty. You don’t want that.

In a large bowl, add the butter and salt and sieve the flour over. Mix with your hands, rubbing the butter into the flour until almost pea-sized lumps form. Add the sugar and ground nuts and continue mixing with your hands.

When the mixture comes together into a rough dough, empty it onto a clean work surface. It will be crumbly and coarse, and may appear like it will not come together into a smooth dough but it will. Start kneading the mixture with your hands. This will soften the butter and it will be incorporated and dispersed throughout the dough. After 3-4 minutes you should have a smooth dough that holds together.
Shape the dough into a log, wrap it with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Line your baking sheets with baking paper.

Unwrap the dough, and cut and shape into small balls (a little larger than a hazelnut). Place them onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them 2-3 cm apart because they will spread a little while baking. Place them in the fridge for 10-15 minutes and preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius / 325 Fahrenheit.

Place the baking sheet on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake cookies for 14-16 minutes, until set to the touch and lightly golden. Be careful not to burn them. Check them after 12 minutes and if you see that they’re starting to catch at the bottom, transfer the baking sheet to a higher rack.
The cookies should be dome-y, not flat when baked.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and place the second one in.
Transfer cookies on a wire rack to cool.

While the cookies are cooling, melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring often and making sure the chocolate doesn't burn. The bottom of the bowl must not come in contact with the simmering water. Once chocolate has melted and is smooth, remove the bowl from the top of the pan, and allow chocolate to cool slightly before using it to fill the cookies. It will be easier to fill them when the melted chocolate has set a bit, as it will not run out from the sides of the cookies.

Line pairs of cookies on a wire rack and add small dollops of melted chocolate in the middle of one of the two cookies of each pair, using the smallest teaspoon you have. Sandwich the two cookies together and place them upright on a rack until the chocolate sets.

You can store the cookies in a cookie tin for up to 1 week.

Spaghetti alle vongole

I think I’ve had enough of my little expat kitchen. I don’t mean this one here of course, but my actual little expat kitchen, the room in my apartment that is small, bursting at the seams with things I have accumulated over the years, the kitchen that drives me crazy because I need.more.space. If anyone but me dares to take even a single plate out of one of my cupboards, they’ll most certainly end up with a dozen other plates on their heads. You need to be dexterous and somewhat of a magician to handle the overcrowded chaos that is my kitchen.

Also, we rent our apartment, and in most cases here in the Netherlands, big city apartments have small, nay, tiny kitchens that most of the time come with the electrical appliances, which is not a good thing. No one who rents buys the major appliances, which means that you get stuck with some that may be old, dysfunctional and, well, impractical. Such is the case with mine.

The oven is too small, too old and heats in patches. The refrigerator is small, with a rickety shelf (that’s kind of my fault) and a tiny freezer. The gas stove is, you guessed it, small, and for the last couple of weeks the bigger gas ring is not working (that’s not my fault). I may have some fancy pots and pans but I can’t use them.

This situation has taken away my will to cook. For this and various other reasons, we have been thinking of moving for a long time now, but it’s not that easy because I can’t find an apartment with a kitchen that I like. Yes, it’s come to this, the kitchen is the only room in a house that matters to me.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this for a looong time, so let’s get down to what’s important here. The food. I only needed the two gas rings in my kitchen that work for this, so I put them to good use and made a fantastic spaghetti alle vongole, that classic Italian, or Neapolitan to be exact, dish that truly is breathtakingly delicious in its simplicity.

The most important ingredient is of course the vongole (clams), and you need to buy them fresh, don’t use canned or bottled ones, unless you want to ruin the dish. The sweet, supple vongole, with that fresh, intense aroma of the sea is what this dish is all about. As for the rest of the ingredients, you most probably already have them in your kitchen; spaghetti, garlic, olive oil, white wine, dried red chilli flakes, fresh parsley.

As soon as we sat on the table, I couldn’t stop devouring the plump, briny flesh of the bivalves, swiftly twirling the spaghetti around my fork, slurping on any stray strand that had the audacity to resist getting into my mouth, dunking my bread into the aromatic sauce with the light acidity from the white wine, with the chili that tingled my palate and the garlic, present but not overpowering.

This ultimate taste of summer, just before its unofficial end, was exactly what I needed and it made me realize that I may not have the kitchen of my dreams, but what I create in it can be, at times, dreamy.

Spaghetti alle Vongole in bianco (Spaghetti with Clams in a white sauce)

The Italians prepare this dish in two ways: a) in rosso, meaning in a red (tomato) sauce and b) in bianco, meaning in a white sauce without tomato. I prefer the second version of the dish as in my opinion, tomatoes overpower the flavor of the little mollusks.
By the way, the broth-like juices are essential in the dish, so make sure to have some bread to soak them all up.

This dish is easy but also a bit tricky. The spaghetti need to be cooked al dente, the vongole should be just cooked and not overcooked otherwise they’ll become rubbery, and the bringing together of the two needs good timing. Also, the correct cleaning of the vongole is important (in the recipe I explain in detail how to do it).

Oh and something else, spaghetti alle vongole is never topped off with cheese. If you insist on adding cheese, I will turn a blind eye, but don't let any Italians see you.

Yield: 4 main-course servings

Ingredients
1 kg fresh, live vongole (palourdes / small clams)
400 g spaghetti (I used De Cecco no12)
4 plus 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for finishing the dish
2 garlic cloves, minced
¼ tsp dried chilli flakes
250 ml dry white wine (I used Pinot Grigio)
A handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Special equipment: large bowl, large and deep frying pan with lid


Preparation

Cleaning the vongole
Vongole should be alive when you buy them. You can store them in the fridge for 1 day before you use them. Place them inside a bowl while they’re still inside the net (they’re usually sold wrapped in small nets) and you can loosely cover them with a plastic bag. Just make sure you make holes in the bag for the air to circulate.

When you want to prepare them for cooking, you need to clean them. The vongole have sand inside and if not purged, the dish will be sandy and grainy. For the vongole to purge the sand, they need to be put in salted water for a few hours. The vongole will open up, take in the clean water from one side and purge the sand from the other.

Remove them from the net (or any other packaging), rinse them well under cold running water, checking if their shells are clean. If not, rub them with your hands or a soft brush to remove any dirt. Transfer them to a large bowl, add enough water to cover them and add 3-4 Tbsp salt. Stir them around with your hands and cover the bowl with a dark-colored tea towel (the vongole open when it’s dark) and leave the bowl in your kitchen, somewhere shady, not in direct sunlight. Leave them like that to purge the sand for 3 to 5 hours, depending how much time you have, and then remove each vongole from the bowl. You’ll notice that the water is now dirty. Discard any vongola that has a broken shell and keep the ones that are tightly closed. If you find any that are open, tap them gently and if they close after a few seconds, keep them, otherwise discard them because they’re dead. Place the vongole in a clean bowl until ready to use, which should be soon.

Cook the spaghetti
Boil the spaghetti in salted boiling water until cooked al dente (to the tooth) or to your liking, stirring often so they don’t stick to one another.

Cook the vongole
While the spaghetti is cooking, in a large frying pan add 4 Tbsp of olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add the garlic and the chilli flakes and sauté for 1 minute, being careful not to burn the garlic. It will become very bitter if you do. Add the wine, turn heat on to high and once the wine begins to bubble, add the vongole, stir well and put on the lid. Boil/steam the vongole for about 3 minutes until their shells have just opened, shaking the pan from time to time. Do not overcook them as they’ll become rubbery and lose their flavor. Remove pan from the heat and ideally at this point the spaghetti should be ready. Strain them and add them to your vongole, add some black pepper and 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and mix well. Give it a taste to see if it needs any salt. The vongole have that natural salty quality from the sea, so most probably you won't have to add any salt.

Serve immediately into bowls, sprinkle with some extra black pepper, parsley and a little olive oil to finish.
In case you find any vongole that haven’t opened, discard them.

Enjoy with some bread and white wine. Pinot Grigio is an excellent choice.

The Pizza, Part One: The Dough

The times when I'm most proud of my achievements in the kitchen, are when I make successful bread and dough of every kind. That's when I feel that I have really accomplished something spectacular.

Sourdough bread, puff pastry, phyllo dough, kourou dough, pie and pizza dough. I get the most satisfaction when I achieve to make a delicious, crusty bread and a buttery, flaky puff. Nothing compares to how they smell, feel, taste. No, they don't and cannot compare to a salad, however detailed and extravagant it may be, or even a chocolate creation, and we all know how I feel about chocolate.

Upside down dough after proofing. Doesn't it remind you of the moon?

There's nothing more satisfying than feeding your family and friends homemade pizza and having them crave for more. And even though I love to cook for my friends and family, I think the time has come for them to learn how to make it for themselves. It is like that old Chinese proverb, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". The same thing applies here. Learn how to make your own pizza and you'll never be hungry again. You'll never have to eat ready-made, super market freezer isle pizza or those awful ones your neighborhood pizzeria makes,—unless you live in Naples, then you can go ahead and skip this post,—and surely, you don't have to nag your friends to make pizza for you.

As it is obvious by the title, this is part one of the pizza posts, the dough, which will be followed by the tomato sauce and then by a post about a couple of different topping selections which comprise two of my favorite pizzas.

Reshaped dough after proofing

I have been meaning to share with you my recipe for pizza dough for a long time. I've tried a lot of different recipes over the years before I ended up with this one and it is everything I want my pizza dough to be. Puffy, bubbly and crunchy yet soft in the middle and crusty around the edges.

Cut into four pieces

What I absolutely hate, is when pizza dough turns out like bread. It's not supposed to be bread, but pizza. If I wanted bread, I would have made bread. You need those big and smaller holes, the crusty outside and the soft inside, you need the bottom to be crisp and the top to be charred. And here's how to do it.

Four round dough balls

There are certain tips and tricks for making a good pizza dough and one of them is the type of flour you use. The best flour for pizza is the Italian type 00 (zero-zero) flour which is the one I use. Thankfully I can find it easily in Holland. There are some misunderstandings about 00 flour though. So let's get things straight. Type 00 means that the flour has been milled to a fine consistency and it has nothing to do with the strength of the flour. You can find 00 strong flour with high gluten content (12%) to 00 pastry flour with very low gluten content (5%). For making pizza, you need a finely milled flour, Type 00, but with a high amount of gluten, and all Italian brands usually indicate on the package for what purpose the flour is to be used. If you can't find Italian flour, that doesn't' mean you can't make an amazing dough. Choose good quality strong bread flour and you're set.

One of the things that make pizza really a pizza, is a baking stone; a preheated, flaming hot baking stone. If you're thinking, "oh they're too expensive" or, "I don't need it", let me tell you this, if you like baking and eating bread and pizza regularly, then you need it. I bought mine for about 16 euros (cheap!) and I bake on it weekly, either bread or pizza, and the result is spectacular. You can certainly bake your pizza on the back of a well preheated baking pan but it'll not be the same.

As I told you earlier, I like my pizza with a crunchy crust and a rich texture. Surely, that can be achieved with the use of the proper flour and the correct kneading technique but there's also another little something that, for me, is the secret to my scrumptious pizza. The addition of a small amount of milk in the dough. It makes it a little softer and fluffier yet still retaining those all important crusty edges a pizza must have.

So, get ready, and let's make some mean pizza dough.

Homemade Pizza Dough

Some more tips:

On kneading: I usually let the kneading part to my trusty KitchenAid mixer. It does all the hard stuff, but I have made this dough by hand multiple times. You just need to be a bit more patient until you achieve a pliable, soft and stretchy dough that's not sticking to your hands but is slightly moist. It shouldn't by any means be dry.

On proofing: If you want to test whether your dough has proofed correctly or not, do the finger-poking test, which I learned from a wonderful bread baking site, Weekend Bakery. Gently poke the dough with your finger and a) if the dough springs back immediately, it is under-proofed, b) if the dough springs back halfway, it's perfectly proofed and c) if the dent remains in the dough, then it is over-proofed.

On rolling out: The thinner you roll out your dough, the crustier it will get. When I want something lighter, I go for a super thin crust and when I want something fluffier with lots of holes, I roll the dough out a little thicker. This dough is perfect for both kinds of crusts.

Yield: enough dough for 4 large-ish pizzas

Ingredients
350 ml plus 30 ml (2 Tbsp) lukewarm water
11 g (3 tsp) dried instant yeast
15 g (1 ½ tsp) caster sugar
700 g "00" flour for pizza or strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
12 g (1 ½ tsp) sea salt
60 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for oiling the bowl
50 ml fresh, whole milk, at room temperature

Special equipment: mixer with dough hook attachment (optional), rolling pin (optional)


Preparation
In the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large bowl if you're kneading by hand), add the yeast and the 2 Tbsp (30 ml) of lukewarm water. Massage the yeast with your fingertips into a paste and then add the sugar, the rest of the water, the flour and the salt, in that order.
Note: Be careful not to add the salt on top of the yeast but on top of the flour. If the salt comes in direct contact with the yeast, it will kill it and your dough will not rise.

Turn your mixer on and knead for about 2 minutes on low speed, until it comes together into a rough dough. If you're kneading by hand, it will take about 4 minutes. Then, add the olive oil and the milk and continue kneading either by hand (turning the dough out of the bowl and onto a clean surface) or in the mixer, on low speed, until the dough is smooth, elastic, is not sticking to your hands but is slightly moist.
Note: Not all flours are the same so if your dough is very wet, don't be afraid to add more flour. Add a little at a time though, testing the consistency of the dough. You don't want to end up with a stodgy, stiff dough.

If you're using a mixer for kneading the dough, turn out the dough onto a clean and lightly floured surface and shape it into a ball.
Lightly grease the bowl of your stand mixer (or your large bowl), with olive oil and place the ball of dough inside. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place, allowing the dough to proof and double in size. (See also notes above for proofing). It will take about 45 minutes to proof, depending on how warm the room you leave it in is.

Once the dough has proofed, take it out of the bowl and knead it for a couple of seconds just to deflate it a bit. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and shape them into 4 balls. Place them on a floured surface such as a baking tray or wooden chopping board, spacing them apart, and cover them with plastic wrap. Leave them to proof for about 20 minutes, until they almost double in size.

At this point, you can continue with rolling out each ball and shaping it into a pizza but if you're in a hurry, you can skip the second proofing and roll out the dough balls into a pizza immediately after you shape them.

To roll out the dough, you can either do it by using a rolling pin, your hands or a combination of both.
Take a ball of dough and place it on a lightly floured surface. Knead it for a couple of seconds just to deflate it a bit and then flatten it with your hands into a disk. Using a rolling pin or your hands, roll it out. In my opinion, it's better to use your hands, starting from the center of the pizza and working towards the edges, using your fingertips to stretch it out, until it's almost the size you want it. Then, allow it to rest for a couple of minutes, because if worked too much, the dough becomes springy and it refuses to stretch more. Then, continue working it until it is as thin or as thick as you want it. I always allow a rim around the edge of the dough to create that puffy, crusty edge.

At this point, you're ready to add your sauce and toppings to your pizza.

Update 25.09.2012 on how to freeze and refrigerate the dough:
If you wish to freeze all or part of the dough, you should do it straight after the first rise. Divide the dough into four equal pieces, shape them into four balls, rub them with a little olive oil, cover them well with plastic wrap, put them in a Ziploc bag and in the freezer. Before you use them, defrost them in your refrigerator and then, allow them to come to room temperature and rest for a bit before you roll them out into pizzas.
You can keep the dough in the freezer no longer than a month.

If you want to keep the dough for a couple of days after making it, you can keep it in the refrigerator. You should refrigerate it immediately after the first rise. Put the whole piece of dough in a large bowl that fits in your fridge and cover it well with plastic wrap. You'll notice that the dough will rise while in the refrigerator. When you want to use it, take it out of the fridge, knead it for a bit, divide it into pieces and shape into balls. Leave them out of the fridge to come to room temperature and proof a bit. Then, roll them out into pizzas.

Keep in mind that, in both cases, the result will not be the same as when you use the dough immediately after making it, and I seldom keep dough in the freezer or fridge.

Next up: The best fresh tomato sauce for pizza. Stay tuned!