Parsnip-Madeira Ravioli with Beetroot Sauce

Although the temperatures at the moment look more like spring than winter, fresh veggies are still mainly of the root kind. We had some rare visitors the other day so I did do a little more in the kitchen; in other words this recipe requires a bit of extra work, mainly because of the homemade ravioli, but it does combine a variety of complementary tastes. It represents a meal in itself, but can be accompanied by a root vegetable bake (see below “remarks”).

What you need

• 2 shallots, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 300 ml fresh cream (or 200 ml and 100 ml crème fraiche)
• veggie broth
• sunflower or rapeseed oil for frying
• 2 medium parsnips cubed (the smaller, the quicker)
• ca 2 dl madeira
• berbere (Ethiopian spice mix)
• 1 medium beetroot cubed (the smaller, the quicker)
• 1 dl dry white wine
• ca 500 g fresh pasta dough (see below)

What you do

In two sauteuses (high walled frying pan) basically do the same for each of the root vegetables:

1. Heat the oil and sweat the shallot and garlic mix without letting it brown.
2. Add the cubed vegetables and sauté to bring out their flavour
3. Season the parsnips with berbere, the beetroot with cumin, stirring while this goes on to enhance the flavour of the spices.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Deglaze both sauteuses, the parsnips with madeira, the beetroot with the white wine.
5. Top up with veggie broth to make sure the vegetables don’t burn but they must also not “swim” in liquid.
6. Add the cream to the parsnips (you can do the same with the beetroot, but it makes more sense to wait with this until just before serving; see below).
7. When they are soft, purée both and season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook the parsnip mix a little longer to thicken if it is too liquid (it should be formable with a spoon).
8. Leave the parsnip mix to cool.
   
   
9. Roll out the dough for the ravioli and cut into shapes (I use a rather large mezzalune – halfmoon – shapes, which saves a lot of messing about).
10. Fill the ravioli making sure the outside is well flowered to prevent sticking and the inside is moist to ensure that the dough sticks together where it needs to.
11. Heat up the beetroot mix, add the cream (to contrast the sweetness of the ravioli you may want to use crème fraiche) and season to taste.
12. Before serving, bring salted water to the boil and lower the ravioli in gently in small amounts to prevent sticking. After roughly two to three minutes lift them out and serve them on a warm plate with the beetroot sauce.

Fresh pasta dough

It is of course possible to buy pasta dough. If you make it yourself, a good rule of thumb is 3 eggs, 300 g flour, 3 pinches of salt and optionally 1 tablespoon of olive oil to keep the dough supple, kneaded until it forms a smooth, quite dry (add more flour if needs be) solid ball.  

If you are not in a hurry, leave it to sit for at least 30 minutes under a damp cloth to give the flour time to react with the moisture of the eggs.

To roll out a special gadget for pasta helps, but a rolling pin works very well too. Thin is good for flavour but potentially tears more easily while the ravioli are being handled.

Remarks

Caroline made a root vegetable bake to go with this, consisting of finely sliced sweet potatoes, yellow beetroot and all kinds of carrots mixed with leek, done in an oven dish with a bit of white wine and veggie broth at a relatively low temperature (150° for about 50 minutes).

Although a fair amount of work, the dish can be prepared in advance: the ravioli can be done in a couple of minutes in boiling salt water just before serving, raw ravioli are very easily frozen and will then need a little more time in the boiling water but finishing them à la minute is equally easy. The beetroot sauce could be completed with cream and a bit of seasoning if needed while the ravioli are being done.

Bedouin Bean Stew: Gallayat Fooel

This entry is rather untypical as at the present time (February) the tomatoes that make this dish so tasty are simply not to be got. But last week Caroline and I spent three days walking in the Jordanian desert of Wadi Rum with a Bedouin guide Ra’ed and two of his camels. Ra’ed was not only unbelievably knowledgeable about camels (his family breed them and in his camp we saw a two-week old calf and three pregnant camels about to give birth), but he is also a very dab hand at whipping up a simple and simply delicious meal over an open fire. This traditional Bedouin and unusually vegetarian dish is what we did together on the second day of our trek.

 

 

What you need

(apart from the stunning scenery)

• 1 medium sized onion roughly chopped
• 2 very ripe tomatoes, cubed
• 400 g fava beans in their cooking liquid (Ra’ed used a tin), lightly mashed
• salt (you can use other seasoning too, that's just what we had.)
• optionally: garlic (which we did not have), herbs and chillies

Variation: use three three tomatoes and no beans (what we had the first day)

What you do

1. Allow the onions to sautée but not to take colour.
2. When they are glassy, add the tomatoes and stir. Allow to simmer until the mixture looks like jam, slightly thickened.
3. Add the fava beans, which should be slightly mashed (tastes much better than it looks!)
4. Season to taste.
5. Eat with pita bread that has been warmed and slightly browned over the hot coals.

With it you drink sweet, hot Bedouin tea (Put water and sugar in a pot, sit it in the glowing embers; when the water boils add the tea leaves.)

Tastes wonderful with hummus and any of the tasty Middle Eastern dishes and dips like baba ganoush, moutabel, muhammara, fathoush, etc. 

Celery and Mascarpone Soup with Noilly Prat Mushrooms on Toast

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This was cobbled together for a latish Sunday lunch, when Caroline and I were alone at home. It is an ideal winter dish, rich (perhaps too rich from a weight-watchers point of view) and warming -- and quick to make. 

What you need

• 1 celery cut into small cubes (save some of the central leaves for garnish)
• 1 medium sized potato, in small cubes
• vegetable broth
• 150-200 ml Mascarpone or fresh cream
• 1 punnet of button mushrooms, cleaned and cut into thin slices
• 1 medium to large onion, finely chopped
• 2 or more cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 roughly thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
• salt, pepper, nutmeg, paprika and fresh herbs (thyme, rosmary, sage, flat-leaved parsley)
• 80 – 100 ml Noilly Prat (or dryish Wermuth, not quite the same though)
• one slice of toast (Caroline’s whole meal nut bread loaves are best!) per person

What you do

1. Sauté half the onions in a nob of butter, then add the celery and some garlic, stirring to prevent browning.
2. When the celery leaves start looking  wilted, add the potatoes and the broth and simmer until all the ingredients are soft.
3. In the meantime sauté the remaining onions, garlic and the ginger, then add the mushrooms and fry them until they are brown, stirring pretty constantly.
4. Add the Noilly Prat and reduce, then season to taste with salt, pepper and the rest of the spices.
5. Add the Mascarpone (or cream) to the celery soup and put in the blender. At this stage you can add a couple of table spoons of the fried mushrooms to the soup as well. (It’s a matter of personal taste how you like the soup. If you want the soup really smooth, strain it after blending; I normally don’t bother, though), season to taste.
6. Add the herbs to the mushrooms, some celery leaves if you have kept any, and warm again briefly. The mushroom mix should be reasonably dry.   
7. In each plate, place a slice of toast, heap the mushroom mix on top, garnish with herbs, then ladle the soup around the mushrooms and toast and serve immediately (otherwise the toast will be soggy).

Chestnut and Buckwheat Pizokel with Veggies

I had these pizokels, a kind of pasta looking a little like crude noodles, in a restaurant near my office, which specialises in the cuisine of the Grison part of Switzerland. Massimo, who runs the place, has connections to the Italian Valtellino, but also to the Valley of Poschiavo in the Grisons. In December I ate at the restaurant with a friend and the speciality of the day was this dish. I loved the slightly sweet taste of the pizokel, and Massimo was so generous as to give me his recipe. 
So here is my take (actually, the topping) on his dish. We had it on Christmas eve and the kids seemed to like it too.

One last thing: the recipe as suggested in the picture makes enough for two very good sized meals for a family of four.

What you need

• 150 g wheat or spelt flour
• 150 g buckwheat flour
• 150 g chestnut flower (or purée , but then you need to adjust the liquid)
• 300 – 400 ml milk
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 10 g salt
• a bunch of parsley, chopped
• 1nob of butter for frying
• one good-sized onion chopped
• for carnivores, thin slices of streaky bacon, cut into mouth-sized pieces
• 1 – 2 largish leeks, cut into 1cm slices
• ½ cabbage (any kind, perhaps except red cabbage), cut into 1cm strips
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (not in the picture) in thin slices
• 3-4 carrots, sliced
• 80 ml of white wine
• salt and pepper
• 200-300 g mature cheese, an Alp cheese preferably, grated

What you do

1. Mix the flours, milk, eggs and salt into a fairly thick batter (I made it a bit too thin) and beat with a wooden spoon until bubbles rise to the top if you stop beating it.
2. Add the parsley and leave to sit for about 20 minutes.
3. Bring a large pot of salt water to the boil.
4. On a wet chopping board spread some of the batter, which you then cut with a large knife into noodle width and wipe into the boiling water. Traditionally the batter is run over a wet board into boiling water (you can see how this is done very briefly, 1:20 – 1:28 in this video. I was lazy and used a special contraption for making “Spätzli”, which are small dumplings instead of the flat, thickish noodley things)
5. When the pizokels, come to the top they are done. They are skimmed off and cooled in a sieve with ice-cold water running over them (to keep them firm and allow the excess to be frozen).
6. Place them in an ovenproof dish, about 3 cm deep. (Add butter flakes if you like and don’t mind the calories…)
   
   
7. In a large frying pan melt the butter, add the onion, the garlic (the bacon now if you are using any) and the vegetables. Stir vigorously as if stir-frying.
8. Add the wine and a little veggie broth if it looks too dry.
9. When the vegetables are done to the level of bite you like, distribute them over the pizokels and cover with the grated cheese.
10. Bake in the oven or under the grill, making sure the pizokels are hot and the cheese is melted.