Pork with Vinegar and Bay Leaves and Tuscan Soup

Another simple Hazan recipe. People speak highly of it. Now that I have discovered pork loin, I am keen to try a few of her pork recipes.

I bought pork this time that didn't have an obnoxious amount of crackling fat on it, although it did have some fat (which I partially chopped off). It is not a cut of meat that butchers usually sell, as such. I think here anyway they make pork chops out of it or pork steaks. I'm not sure what they are called but they are cut up from the loin and sold separately.

Anyway, I asked for it and managed to get it.

There isn't much to do with this one. I browned the meat as requested, feeling faintly guilty at planning a meal of pork cooked in butter when I am trying to decrease in size rather than increase.

A teaspoon of peppercorns were bashed, not with a hammer as suggested, but with a rolling pin. I don't find I roll anything with that pin, just bash.

In they went with the dried bay leaves. I had bought fresh but they disappeared somewhere between the vege shop and home. I really need to buy myself another bay tree.

The vinegar was next. If Marcella Hazan has done one thing, it is to make me appreciate vinegar. Just last night I had a salad dressed with it. My favourite Hazan dish is now braised lamb with vinegar and beans.

The recipe calls for the vinegar to not be boiled away while the sides and bottom of the pan are scraped. I dutifully complied, but my urgent scraping resulted in hot fat and vinegar jumping from the pan and onto my arm. I was more worried about the lost vinegar than the burn, as so I poured a little more in the pan, and put the lid on tightly.

Prior to putting the pork on I had started off a batch of Giuliano Hazan's Tuscan Soup from his Every Night Italian. This soup is a miracle really, as there is no stock or broth to speak of, and it is still delicious. Having said that, if I have broth to burn it is even tastier if you use it instead of water. Unfortunately I did not, but I did sneak in a parmesan cheese rind which Marcella suggests is a good idea. I think it is.

It is a good feeling having pots simmering on the stove, filling the house with comforting cooking smells, and knowing that all the work has been done hours before any guests arrive.

On the question of timing, Marcella is a little vague, suggesting that I cook until the pork is tender. The efforts of others documented on the internet had timeframes from 40 minutes to an hour and a half. I could have asked her but I really didn't want to agitate on something so trivial.

On a whim I took a look at her Classic Italian Cookbook, published before I was born in 1973. This is of course the book that started it all and which was combined with More Classic Italian Cooking in the early 90s to form Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Here Marcella helpfully suggests that the pork be cooked for at least 2 hours. Pleasingly she also says that a minestrone would be a good first course.

The planets aligned for this meal. The Tuscan Soup was absolutely sublime (thanks Giuliano) and the pork was a fabulous followup. The pork tasted of itself but was in a beautiful vinegar and pepper sauce. It was subtle, divine, delectable and delicious.

We really enjoyed it.

This recipe is a keeper.

Thanks Marcella.

Swiss Chard, Cannellini Bean and Barley Soup

I was determined to make another soup after the success of the Giuliano Hazan minestrone last week, which I might say was used for no less than 3 meals during the week. Every skerrick was eaten.

Plus we have the weather for it at the moment.

This soup is unusual in that uses two pots. It is also unusual, for me, in that one of the pots contains barley. I've drunk some beer in my time, but I've never cooked with barley.

The third reason this soup is unusual is that it is not cooked in water, or broth. Water that is used to cook the barley is added in the end, but the main vegetables just cook by themselves for almost an hour (I added a little water following the barley water - I think next time I will add more as it is quite delicious and you do look for it each spoonful).

You can see the first base of onion, carrot and celery on the bottom left. The barley is cooking on the top right (broth and stew are also cooking).

The barley broth was really intriguing. I'd never tasted anything like it. That is what this soup is about, to me. That barley broth.

I don't have any scales, so I used a big bunch of chard. When the soup was done there was fear that it would be "fat camp food". But it didn't taste like fat camp food. It was intriguing. That barley water saw to that.

To me it wasn't as obviously delicious as the minestrone, but we enjoyed it, and were intrigued by it. It was immensely filling. I gave each of us 2 ladles of it, but I think we could have done with less.

I'm going to cook this one again, to make up my mind whether or not it is a keeper. I like the fact it is different. And you don't need broth to make it, if you have run out.

This is from Marcella Cucina.

Giuliano Hazan Minestrone

I have probably written about this before but it is worth writing about it again.

The recipes that get me excited are those that are simple and delicious. Both Marcella's and Giuliano's recipes aim for this. I suspect that this is the approach of Italian cooking in general, but I have noticed that the Hazans take it a step further than other, respected Italian cookbooks, which sometimes have one or two or even more ingredients than the equivalent Hazan recipe.

I'm over complicated. I cooked Thai for 5 years. That's bloody complicated. Simple honest flavours that emphasise or make delicious the ingredients I'm cooking is what I am after.

Anyway, back to the meal I just had. It is winter where I live. Soup weather. The soup I make the most often is the french style vegetable puree soup, with just 1 or 2 veges. Usually with homemade stock but sometimes just water.

I haven't really cracked the equivalent technique in Italian cooking. You develop the base I guess, onions, and possibly carrot and celery, and then add the ingredients in the order in which they need to be added in order to cook. Meat broth tends to be added instead of chicken stock.

I haven't really gotten into a routine of cooking meat broth.

Then the other difference seems to be that the ingredients aren't pureed once they are soft. For clarity, Marcella said in Cucina. It is for clarity that they keep their shapes.

Clarity or not, as I said I haven't really worked out a generic technique for Italian soups in the same way I have for french. Although perhaps it is similar and just as I described above. I need to get more into a routine of the broth. I just find it hard to order a kilo of meat from the butcher and put it in a stock pot.

But back to dinner. I've made it before but I've forgotten how good it is. Giuliano Hazan's minestrone soup from Every Night Italian. It only has vegetables in it, and salt and pepper and olive oil. Just vegetables! Topped with a little parmesan, and eaten with bread. It is so delicious.

No meat broth. Just vegetable goodness and water.

It certainly hit the spot tonight in the cold. Warming and comforting. Full of goodness, but that is neither here nor there. It's so delightful and satisfying. You can imagine generations of cooks, around the world really, preparing a similar soup in the hearth using local and seasonal vegetables for dinner.

And I can whack it in the fridge and munch on it for days.

Lamb stew and minestrone

I cooked the Lamb Stew with Rosemary, Olives and Tomatoes from Hazan (Son) How to Cook Italian, and served it with the Hazan Minestrone from Essentials. I love this simple stew. I used red wine rather than white because that's what I had on hand and I don't think it suffered from it at all.

I added silverbeet (Swiss Chard) to the minestrone because I love the idea of eating it. It's used in Guilanos Every Night Italian (which doesn't use beef broth but is not perhaps as rich - he does use bread at the bottom and olive oil on the top though).

It was all very nice. I've got a lot left over for the week. The good thing is the flavour improves in each.

I need to make some more beef broth. I like my minestrone with it, and I'm yet to make risotto.

Potato soup with smothered onions

After my barbie which included, of course, onions, and the Alice Waters potato gratin I had potatoes and onions I had to deal with.

Hazan had a potato and onion soup that looked just the trick. Not normally something for the hottest day of summer, but with the benefit of air-con it might as well have been the middle of winter.

I'm really beginning to love Marcella's simplicity. True to form, this soup doesn't have much in it other than potato and onions, as well as my hard earned beef both and a little parsley and parmesan.

Heaps of onions really, but they nicely reduced as they did in the smothered onions pasta last night. I'm still learning the colours of onions - gold, dark gold, brown, pale brown for example. But I think I got there in the end.

I was a little worried after the simmering that it was going to be a little bland, but some extra salt and the requested parmesan and parsley sorted it out. A great little winter warmer, even if it is the middle of summer.

Minestrone all Romagnola

I'm now convinced that the key to these long lived peoples of the world is making vegetables taste so so good.

I already cook a minestrone just from vegetables from a recipe from Marcella's son, so I wasn't too enthused to make this one. His is good! Further, Marcella's required the lion's share of my precious meat broth, which cost me many hours and a few dollars earlier in the week.

But I persisted, and started off, although not well. In the Marcella fashion she said the fat should be put in cold with the onion. Not french (or thai) at all and a knob of butter floating around onion looks really weird. Things deteriorated from there when I tried to put in the potatoes - I'd eaten them with the Veal Scaloppine and lemon earlier in the week.

Ah, at least I had the beans I thought, as I greedily grabbed the bag I had bought from the markets on Saturday. None of that supermarket crap for me.

Unfortunately they were full of spiders, or some other web creating, bean enjoying creature.

So they were no good. I checked my emergency vegetable stash. It consisted of an eggplant, which I didn't think would suit, and a few carrots that, to be frank, looked more like doorstops than the fresh ingredients Italian cuisine is so famous for.

But something had to go in. Along with extra cabbage. So the carrots were cut into chunks.

The broth was pretty well last. It was in ice cube form by this stage as instructed. I had melted them on the stove while cutting the veges.

I was still skeptical, but things were just getting started. Minestrone does, after all, take a long time although it is largely unattended.

Two hours or so later and I was a believer. In the meat broth. That stuff is great. Forget vegetable goodness, Brodo really adds a depth of flavour that you just can't get from water. I was excited about the soup, and only had to wait another hour or so to eat it.

The parmesan was the last to be added. Marcella theorises in a subsequent book that it has a special favour yet to be discovered that excites the eater in whatever food it is added to.

Anyway, after 1 day making meat broth and 1 day making soup two steaming bowls were finally put on the table. The aircon was turned down to simulate winter, and we were away.

Extremely pleased with the result. The broth was exceptional. A certain someone stole a cup of it after just to sip as an after dinner drink. The veges were delicious. Why wouldn't you eat them?

Can't wait to make it again with the potatoes and the beans.