Pork chops with sage and tomatoes

 

I can't believe I've not posted about this dish before. 

Pork, sage, tomatoes - that's pretty well it. 

It's so delicious. We skip the flour, but it browns nicely without. The trick, as is usually the case, is the get the best of everything: free range pork, best tomatoes, sage from your garden, the best salt and fats. If you use a crappy bit of pork it will be like an old boot. 

Cook until it's done. This doesn't mean stopping after the suggested hour, or god help us, 20 minutes as I read in someone's blog post. You cook the pork till it's tender when prodded with a fork. That might take 40 minutes. Or it might take 2 hours. 

Fried Calamari

 

We used almond flour and olive oil, and it worked a treat. I fried for longer than you might think - minutes, till it really went golden. We bought the preprepared squid tubes and it was much easier. 

Pan Roased Chicken with Garlic, Rosemary and White Wine

When Marcella first sat down in the early 1970s to write her first Italian cookbook, I understand the first recipe she documented was this one. Possibly 55 years later, we cooked it for dinner. It is lovely! It's so different from dishes that look similar - like the Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Garlic, or the Fricasseed Chicken with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic, Rosemary and Olives. I think perhaps it's the butter which changes things. 

Anyway, it was delicious. 

We cooked it with green beans with butter and parmeson (also from Essentials), and roast potatoes with rosemary (Giuliano has this in his How to Cook Italian, as I recall). 

Give it a go. 

Pork Loin Braised with Savoy Cabbage

 

Here is a recipe from Giuliano Hazan's Every Night Italian. A lovely man, and a fantastic book, which I understand from Giuliano is still in print. 

As with Marcella's recipes, there are very few ingredients here. But they work magic, and provide a comforting winter dish. 

I used normal cabbage, and it worked great. 

Smothered cabbage

 

Marcella has this "smothered cabbage" recipe, that has garlic, olive oil, onion and vinegar in it. 

You have to (well, I had to) watch it catching. 

It was just OK for me, which usually means I've not worked something out. 

I will keep braising cabbage till I do as I like the idea of it. 

Chicken Fricassee with red cabbage

I have posted about this before - 16 years ago or thereabouts. 

It's such a delicious dish. I think some of the smells attracted a four legged stranger into the house. 

Marcella commented on my cooking when she heard I struggled getting the garlic bright gold before I burned the onion. In September 2010 (15 years ago) she said: 

David's cooking, as always, can be mystifying

I miss her.

Caprese Salad

Marcella's most beautiful book is Marcella Cucina. I find it her most personal as well. This salad is one mentioned, although as she points out, it is so simple it requires only a brief description of how to assemble rather than a recipe. 

As usual, it depends heavily on the quality of the ingredients on offer. Thankfully I am in a place I can get beautiful buffalo mozzarella and ripe tomatoes (along with everything else). 

What a delight.