Gazpacho Andaluz

Isabel Gonzales in his book Round ricos de Comida, Comida pobre writes:  

Sòlo decis que hay tantos gazpachos como pueblos incluso come familia, pues cada una le da su toque, su punto especial, quie es, desde luego, el mejor. Los gaszpachos veraniegos, ya sean majados o no, pues tutavia hay quien sigue majando y no por ello ha de ser octogenario, se hacen, cuando menos, a base de tomate, pimiento, pan, ajo, sal aceite y vinagre. Segùn los casos, les pueden anadir otros ingredientes. 
(There are many gazpacho many villages or families, everyone gives his special touch, which of course is the best. Gaszpachos the summer, which may or may not be purées without necessarily intended to be an octogenarian, prepare at least with tomato, pepper, bread, garlic, salt, oil and vinegar.Depending on the circumstances, you can add other ingredients.)

This is the queen of cold soups, a salvation for appetite in hot summer days

Ingredients: 1kg of Ripe red tomatoes, 2 green peppers, a cucumber average, a clove of garlic (optional), Mollica Bread or Crackers Corn, Olive oil, a tablespoon of vinegar, 3/4 of a liter of water and salt.

Spinach Flan

When well done this Spinachs Flan is a real delight.
A delicate and refined dish.

In my home, it has been for a long time the undisputed specialty of Rita, our maid and excellent cook who worked many years for my family and in now also a good friend.

According to my concept, a Flan has a special feature: the first part of the cooking needs to be conducted in the oven in a bain marie and only at the last 20 minutes is finishes directly in the oven . However, there are some dishes that despite being called Flan do not respect this rule.

Ingredients: 1/2kg of fresh spinach
,
 2 eggs, grated Parmesan cheese to taste
. For the bechamel sauce : 25g butter, 50g flour
,
 quarter of a liter of milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Boil spinachs and squeeze them very well and then chop them finely.
To cook spinach I 'm used to wash them well and to put them in a large pot, without water sprinkled with a little salt and then to cover the pot with a lid. The cooking will be fast and spinachs will lose most of their volume.

Marinated Eel called “la Bissetta”

A traditional dish of the Milan area, often offered among starters of the Christmas celebration dinner

Image from the "Cucchiaio D'Argento"

Ingredients: 1 large eel ( but not too much large… ), some flour, olive oil for frying
For the marinade: good wine vinegar, 2 stalks of celery, 1 carrot, 4 spring onions, 3 leaves of sage, 1 garlic cloves, pepper, salt.


Even if you buy it alive, ask to your fishmonger to kill it just to avoid tragi-comic situations.
Clean and cut it into pieces long less than 10cm and dry them with paper towels.
Flour each piece and fry them in abundant oil. Set aside in a container or in a bowl.

Prepare the marinade: Cut garlic clove in half and fry it gently in a little oil and butter until browning.
Boil 2 cups of vinegar adding the vegetables finely chopped and the fried garlic and the crushed pepper corns. When the marinade is reduced to about a half, pour it on the fried eel.
Let marinate for at least 24 hours.

Fresh Appetizer of Prawns and Langoustines

It 's a fine appetizer particularly suitable for the Christmas table. If necessary, it can also be enriched with other crustaceans.

Ingredients for 6 people: 1 lettuce, 1 medium tomato, 6 grapefruits not bitter, 1 can of crab, 100gr peeled prawns, 1 cup mayonnaise, ½ cup yogurt, 18 blanched langoustines, salt and pepper

Peel, wash and drain the lettuce. Remove the seeds and cut tomatoes into small cubes.
Peel one grapefruit and remove the skin from each slice. Put aside for decoration as well as the best crab pieces, chop the rest of crab removing cartilage.

Cut the other grapefruits in small pieces and mix them in a bowl with tomato cubes, half of the prawns, the chopped crab, yoghurt and mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to make the taste intense.

Share into individual bowls lined with lettuce leaves, garnish with grapefruit slices, prawns and langoustines. Serve well chilled

You can do without langoustines.
If you use blanched fresh crab instead of canned, this appetizer will be even better.

Blinis Demidoff

We have an example,  though incomplete, of this excellent dish in the film Babette's feast

from "Babette's feast"

For 10 persons: 20 blinis, caviar, smoked sturgeon or salmon thinly sliced, Salsa Smetana.

On a service dish, arrange the blinis (1 or 2 for each person), very hot, and put on each a tsp of caviar, a slice of smoked fish and 1 Tsp of Smetana Sauce.

Serve immediately.

This recipes requires several ingredients and the preparation of both, Blinis and Smetana Sauce.

I like very much salmon caviar, which is less expensive than dark sturgeon caviar, so I use indistinctly both types. I also like the delicious smoked sturgeon and, if I can find it at a convenient price, I buy it.

If you use these blinis as entrée you would not need a large quantity of each ingredient.

It will be different, instead, if you will make them the main course of the dinner. In this case, blinis as well as salmon and caviar will be abundant.

I am testig Meat Pies

I am testing meat pies. In fact, it is a long time I am doing this, but considering that we are near  Christmas, these tests have taken a certain acceleration.

Pâté of my experiment are made by meat and poultry and especially liver which, in recent months I've cooked quite often.

It is not something new. I've always loved these meat pies because they are gorgeous when they are good, and finally not particularly difficult if we are well organized .

The final result is every time better and better and superior to the effort and cost.

It is convenient  to clear some misunderstanding thet you can find on the net, many of which are created by a certain linguistic ignorance, to give precise information

One of the best sources of information is Wikipedia, which is not always completely reliable when talking about foods and recipes.

First, the name: Pâté is a dish prepared by combining different ingredients mixed together.

Today they are a specialty of French cuisine but we find various Pâté in different European national cuisines .

Until less than a century ago, they were part of the few systems available to our ancestors to preserve food.

French have the best references about them because their ancestors, Celts and Gauls, were known to be excellent in preservation of meat, as mentioned by many ancient authors such as Polybius, Cato and Pliny. Strabo in the first century BC wrote that Gaul was a country where people were able to preserve meat. It is not strange that over there we find excellent confits and terrines.

Today that storage and transport are no longer a problem, these preparations belong only to the domain of gluttony .

Generally the mixture of a meat pies is rather coarse, even it is not a rule.
In the past, they were often wrapped in dough and dipped in jelly. Sometimes inside there was even whole portions of meat.

Terrines and mousses are always pâtés. Terrines are prepared, as the name implies, in their own container and mousses are generally very refined and spreadable. Making a mousse, was in the part very challenging because the mixture was sifted by hand, but todayeverything it is more easy because we have blenders, food processors and mixers. Mousse contains always also a large amount of butter .

Dolmades by JeanPierre Coffe

In one of the 2009 editions of  Michel Drucker program on French Antenne2 TV-network, Jean- Pierre Coffe, the famous French gourmet (and also chef, actor and writer),  prepared a dish to make a tribute to Charles Aznavour after an idea of Drucker himself.
After an enthusiastic talk about winemaking traditions of the South Caucasus territories and in particular of Armenia, the original country of Aznavour, and about the simplicity and the friendliness of its people and its food, he offered to the company a dish of cabbage dolmades.  
(Coffe says among other things that even the wooden barrel was conceived in Armenia , an assertion which may not coincide with reality) 

Dolmas is the term used in Turkey for stuffed vegetables and their particular preparation.  In Greece, the same word indicates only stuffed grape leaves and all other kind of stuffed vegetables are generically called Yemista.     

The recipe whose origins span across all Near South-East could be created in Armenia and South Caucasus, although in Greece it is said that the idea of wrapping food in vine leaves dates back to the time of Demosthenes, during the first defeat of Chaeronea, 338 BC, at the time of the siege of Thebes by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. 
Such an argument that dates back to 400 BC, does centainly silence everybody!   
However, considering that territories around Mount Ararat, Armenian territories now partly independent republic and partly annexed to Turkey, in ancient times were called Lands of Wine and also that History, Bible and legends reference this country for excellent wine production, I guess I can say that these rolls could be born over there.    

The stuffing in the best-known version includes aways rice and minced meat or rice and herbs in a common home edition. In Armenia, however, it can also consists of burghul, the dried & chopped sprouted grain prevalent in Middle Eastern cuisine and certainly more ancient than rice.    

This is the simplest recipe. If you want to make it much richer, follow what Coffe says in the video for his cabbage leaves version. 
One note: Coffe does not bend very well cabbage leaves so rolls could be damaged during cooking.   

Read below how to do. 

Ingredients for 6 servings: about 40 grape leaves fresh or frozen, 250g of rice , 2 or 3 scallions or onions , 2 tablespoons pine nuts , olive oil , chopped parsley  end herbs(chives , fennel or dill, mint) and coriander ground and heated in a dry pan to release its aroma, the juice of 2 lemons , salt and black pepper     

Pine nuts are almost never lacking and even chopped herbs such as mint, parsley and fresh coriander.  This simple stuffing can be enriched with other tasting ingredients like ground beef or lamb, raisins of Corinth that in many Mediterranean recipes replaces minced meat.   

Pittule from Apulia

Today I want to recommend the Facebook page ricette di Nina because it is full of gorgeous recipes, most quite traditional, other more imaginative but all tasty and innovative.

Among them there’s the recipe of Pettole from Apulia, which are pretty much the same of the zeppole from Naples.

In Apulia this is a traditional preparation of holidays periods of Autumn, when the new wine is ready.
Ingredients are simple: flour, salt, yeast and water and sometimes even boiled potatoes. That’s all. Simple to make and even easier to eat.

In Naples they’re generally a street food that you can eat while walking .

Frying pettole at the Pettole Festival in the town of Noci

In Apulia, however, the preparation is almost a ritual occasion to gather the whole family around the kitchen, where the family mama frys these simple but delicious pancakes.

In few seconds they go from the pan into the mouth of some of the presents, immediately, without any seasoning or just sweetened or salted, depending on people taste, or dipped in honey, must or figs wine.
It’s said that ... pettole attract the new wine.
What do you think, might be true?

LEBNEH

A soft cream, not sour nor sweet, ideal as a dip.

It is a Lebanese recipe easy to prepare at home.
My old book about Lebanese cooking , “L'art culinaire libanais”, written by George N.Rayes in 1950, a gift of a friend of my father, describes a method to prepare it from milk that is so laborious that I would never be able to prepare without the help of my friend Christina who learned it from the Lebanese cook working for her family when they were living in Kenya.

Ingredients: 250gr of plain full fat yogurt of good quality, extra virgin olive oil, salt, rose pepper and other spices you like (Curcuma, Turmeric , Saffron, Garam Masala, Cinnamon et)

Place a large colander over a bowl.
Wrap it with one or two layers of paper towels or with a paper filter used to make coffee (such as Melitta filters).

Pour yoghurt into he colander.
Cover with kitchen cellophane and place in the fridge overnight.
The day after, the liquid (a kind of buttermilk ) will be inside the bowl and, in the filter, there will be a white cream, the lebneh, that you will place into a serving dish.

Remove paper and gently, spread lebneh making dimples in it with a spoon.
Season with a little olive oil, salt and and sprinkle red Aleppo pepper or sweet paprika and curcuma.

Serve this dip with other Mezedes, as appetizer or quick snack, accompanied by unsalted crackers.

You can also use it as a base for other cream as tzatzik. It 's also very good if you season it simply with good olive oil and chopped fresh herbs.

Note 
If you think that your freshly prepared lebneh tantes too acid, pour over it fresh water ad let it drain again. The water will wash the lebneh, removing  all the acidity.
(From " Cucina mediterranea – La Storia nel Piatto" )  

Kolòkitho keftédes

Polpettine greche di zucchine e Feta  (Κολοκυθοκεφτέδες με φέτα)

Queste polpette sono uno dei miei piatti preferiti. Spesso sono anche servite tra i mezédes

Image from nostimada.gr

Ingredients for 4 people: 700gr small and temder zucchini, 2 medium and white onions, bunch of parsley, a bunch of mint, 3 o 4 bread slices, 1 garlic ( il you like it), 300gr of Feta cheese, 2 eggs, grated lemon peel, some spoon of white flour, a pinch of instant baking powder, salt and pepper,olive oil for frying.

Grate the zucchini on a coarse grater and leave in colander after the brining to strain. Finely chop the onions, mint and parsley. Finely chop Feta cheese that you can substitute with another kind of cheese you have at home.
Put in a bowl zucchini and chopped herbs. Mix the flour with the baking powder and add to the mixture with also eggs and mix everything together. Stirring constantly, add a pinch of baking powder, salt an pepper.
Please note that usually the feta cheese is already a little salty If you want to give to your croquettes a fine round shape, it's better to add also the bread, soaked first in water and then crushed. Otherwise don't use it but in this case, shape them with the help of 2 spoons just when you throw them in the frying pan.

Fry in a pan with not too hot olive oil is and turn them when they are cooked on one side. Garnish with a few slices of lemon. They are delicious served with the Lebneh or other Greek salad like Tzatzik, aside.

Terrines, mon amour

Until about a century ago, terrines and pâtés, specialties of the south west of France, were one of the few systems available to store food.

As often happened in the food history, making a virtue of necessity, these recipes have been improved becoming often masterpieces of gastronomy.

Today refrigerators and freezers prolong considerably food freshness and modern shipping methods easyly allow to have fresh food on our tables so terrines are only pure gluttony.

It is not strange anyway that these preparations are popular in France, though certainly due to many contributions from different sources. Since ancient times, in fact, ancient Gauls were particularly skilled in the preservation of meat, as says Strabo. There was many methods used, as I will tell in future posts.

Making a terrine is neither difficult nor challenging but certainly requires time, especially for cooking. The base is a filling where meat is cut more or less thick and there's quite a lot of fat meat and animal fat. This filling will sink undamaged parts of flesh and entrails. The whole, well disposed in a bowl covered and sealed, should be cooked to medium-low temperature for at least 3 hours. The fat meat is essential and typically the animal fat that melts during cooking will cover the meat, sealing te filling that can, this way, will last longer.

The terrine described here today is based on wild rabbit, that in France they call Lapin de Garenne.

This recipe comes from Périgord, a region north of Toulouse and Montauban, famous for truffles and good food

Terrine of rabbit

Ingredients:

• A rabbit, chopped, or ½ rabbit and the corresponding weight of turkey breast.
• One or two slices of fresh bacon.
• 1 or 2 chicken livers, or one or two slices of calf liver.
• Few shallots
• 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons of flour
• Brandy
• 2 bay leaves
• Quatre épices
• Slices of bacon, or rather sweet pork lard not smoked

Clean the rabbit, keeping aside the innards (liver, heart and kidneys) that you will put together to the chicken giblets. Take completelycand carefully off the bones. Put asideto the best parts of the meat. Coarsely chop the rest of the meat. If you use also the meat of turkey, mix the minced rabbit.

Let giblets in cold water for about 15 minutes, changing several times the water so that all the blood in it comes out.

I use generally to massage chicken livers with a mixture of table salt and sugar and after I let it rest for at least ½ hour or longer. This treatment will greatly softens the flavor by removing a large part of their strong taste. At the end rinse them again with cold water.

Choise the better portions of chicken liver and add them to the rabbit meat that you had set aside and mince the resto of them with the bacon. Stir fry quickly in a pan the minced meat with some goose fat or eventually with a little butter .

Stir fry with some finely sliced shallot the chopped bacon and crushed chicken livers. Then add the minced meat of rabbit, mix well and season with ginger powder or with cinnamon, nutmeg , cloves and pepper (the so-called quatre épices ) as I do quite often. Moisten with a glass of brandy, thicken with 1 or 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 egg yolk and salt.

Before assembling, stir fry quickly the meat and liver that had put aside, fiammeggiandole with white wine or brandy. Set aside . Saltate velocemente in tegame anche le parti di carne e di fegato che avevate messo da parte, blazing with white wine or brandy and set aside.

Now, finally, take a oval mold suitable for pâtés or a Pyrex mold for plum-cake.

Arrange on bottom 2 bay leaves and then coated the bottom and edges with the slices of sweet bacon. Make a first layer of minced meat and place orderly on it the meat and the livers you have set aside, cut into rectangular sticks. Garnish here and there with some pistachio and also with a few slices of truffle, if you have any.

Cover with another layer of minced meat. Depending on the size of the pieces of meat you can do one or two layers. Finish with the stuffing that you will cover with the last slices of bacon.

Above all moisten with 2 tablespoons of brandy.

Tightly close the mold for pâtés welding the lid with a glue made by mixing thoroughly flour and water or close the plum cake mold with an aluminum foil in which you will make a small hole to allow steam to escape (the terrine for pâtés have a small breather in their lid).

Cook bain marie in the oven at 150°C for about 3 hours.

After cooking let cool. Then, remove the lid and pour some goose fat or some good pork fat melted, to fill the gaps sealing everything.

Close again with its lid and seal the edges with aluminum foil.

This bowl, in a cool place, will keep well for 2 or 3 weeks and even more.

Perfect accompaniment may be small pickles, a salad of mixed lettuce or some good sauce as wine sauce, sauce Chasseur or, better, a Périgueux sauce flavored with truffles. I'll talk of these sauce in some future post.

This terrine is a good appetizer in a formal dining but it's gorgeous for a quick breakfast, in all intimacy with friends.

Taramosalata to lumpfish roe

Quite often, outside Greece, it's difficult to find the main ingredient in this recipe, the Taramas. This is specially hard in Italy.
Taramas are preserved fish eggs, generally cod eggs but also carp eggs, one of the most precious quality. It's a kind of mullet very fresh and not too salty.
These eggs have not treated have a natural off-white color and the pink to orange candy color we know is only due to food coloring that is added from 1950 to make it more attractive and palatable, as told by the author of the blog  greAT MANGIARE GRECO.

Taramosalata is very good and beloved by Greeks. Me too, I like it a lot and cause it always reminds me of summer and Greece, one of my places of the heart. It is so good that it is a pity it is little known in Italy and almost impossible to prepare for the difficulty to find the main ingredient, Taramas.

But, behind a suggestion of my daughter Annalaura now I can prepare a version made ​​from lumpfish roe that, despite being an imitation, approaches it enough to make me remember it without regret.


Ingredients: 1 small jar of lumpfish roe, red onion and garlic (or shallots), olive oil, ½ lemon, crumb of stale bread.

In a large and deep bowl combine with lumpfish roe the same volume of chopped shallot or onion and garlic ( if you ike it). Cover with olive oil and whisk everything as for a mayonnaise adding oil little by little. You can also use the blender. (Just like mayonnaise, this sauce would go crazy. In this case filter the oil and start again).

When the sauce becomes thick, add bread crumbs soaked in water and finely chopped and whisk it with the rest and then, with caution, add the juice of ½ lemon. The crumb will adjust the consistency of the sauce making it more soft and smooth and will help to get rid of the feeling of fat.
The oil should be as tasteless as possible, so not to overpower the scent of Taramas. For this reason choose a lite oliv oil or a seed oil.

Serve garnished with olives, capers and lemon slices and accompanied by crackers or pitas in the absence of Arab bread or toasted bread Carasau

Frittelle di Salvia

Oggi avrei voglia di coccole, anzi di una coccola particolare.

Vorrei che qualcuno cucinasse per me della Salvia fritta, fatta bene e curata in modo speciale.

Spesso questi bocconcini me li preparo da me e mi diverto pure nel prepararli, ma oggi no, non ho per niente voglia di darmi da fare in cucina.

E poi non ho delle belle foglie fresche di Salvia, carnose ed abbastanza grandi per questo piatto. Infatti  ho acquistato per ben due volte già una piantina di questa meravigliosa erba aromatica ma entrambe le volte non ha attecchito e si è tutta rinsecchita. 

Allora, credo proprio che mi dovrò accontentare di raccontarvi una ricetta antica un po' particolare per le spezie che contiene e che a me pare buonissima. Ci è arrivata  dal Maestro Martino di Como che ha scritto nel XV secolo.

Frictelle de Salvia

Piglia un poco di fiore di farina, e distemperala con ova et zuccaro, et un poca di canella et zafrano perchè sia gialla; et habi de le foglie de salvia integre, et ad una ad una l'integnirai o involterai in questa tale compositione, frigendole nel strutto o in bono olio.

E le dosi? ... sono inutili, sono un optional!

Quale scalco, quale massaia del 1400 non è in grado di regolarsi da sé?

Marmellata di Albicocche

L’estate è la stagione dei frutti.  Naturalmente sarebbe bello avere un giardino con qualche albero da cui coglierla direttamente, ma anche se questo non è il caso e viviamo in città,  ne troviamo tanta sui mercati.

Una buona idea è preparare delle marmellate.

Le marmellate sono facilissime da fare ed anche veloci. Quelle casalinghe sono decisamente migliori di quelle industriali prima di tutto perché la frutta “ l’abbiamo conosciuta di persona” come dice De Crescenzo a proposito dei pomodori e della salsa fatta in casa nel libro ( ad anche nel film) Così parlò Bellavista e quindi siamo certi sia della qualità che della sua quantità, ma anche perché non contengono additivi particolari né prodotti chimici di sorta e, quel che è davvero importante, sono sempre molto meno dolci di tutte le marmellate commerciali.

Perciò non sentitevi intimidite nell’intraprendere questa ricetta da nonne che gli strumenti di oggi rendono davvero semplice.

Oggi vi parlo della marmellata di albicocche perché l’ho appena preparata, percé al mercato ho trovato delle belle, piccoline ma molto buone. Un acquisto non premeditato, ma occasionale.

È stato venerdì, il mercato era in chiusura, faceva molto caldo e le bancarelle di frutta e verdura che avevano quasi esaurito la merce esposta stavano abbassando drasticamente i prezzi.

Il bello delle marmellate fatte in casa è che le potete aromatizzare come volete e quindi, senza esagerare, datevi anche agli esperimenti.

Vi servono:

Albicocche mature, morbide ma sode

Zucchero semolato.

Tempo necessario per la cottura: circa un'oretta

METODO

Non indico le dosi perché sono sempre variabili a seconda della dimensione della frutta e dal loro tenore in zucchero.
Una scuola di pensiero generale vuole che frutta e zucchero siano presi nella stessa quantità ma non è mai così e le variazioni possono essere tante.
Io mi attengo ad una diversa proporzione che dice che lo zucchero deve essere al massimo ¾ del peso della frutta pulita, cioè senza noccioli. Al massimo, perché quasi sempre ne uso meno, ma anche questa è una regola indicativa. Imparate sempre a basarvi sul vostro gusto e vedrete che imparerete a fare la scelta giusta.

Un chilo di frutta fresca e di buona qualità, cioè non sciupata i cui frutti sono tutti in buone condizioni, una volta eliminati i noccioli e ripulita ulteriormente da eventuali imperfezioni, si ridurrà a circa 800 gr.
In questo caso io aggiungo non più di 400 gr. di zucchero.

Vedete quindi che sono decisamente lontana i consigli generali di massima”.

Prendete le albicocche, lavatele, asciugatele e lasciatele all’aria per almeno un’oretta in modo che si asciughino del tutto. Snocciolatele spaccandole a metà con le mani ma non gettate via i noccioli che sono ottime mandorle amare e e che, in parte serviranno nella marmellata.

Se proprio volete, con un coltellino tagliate ancora a metà ogni mezza albicocca mettendo la frutta in un tegame smaltato o di acciaio inox che abbia i bordi abbastanza alti.

Tutta la frutta è sempre un po’ acida e quindi è meglio non cuocerla in pentole di alluminio o di metallo che potrebbero ossidarsi anche se in modo impercettibile e quindi far passare un po’ di questo ossido nella marmellata. Preferisco essere prudente ed anche se spesso si è consigliato di cuocere le composte di frutta in tegami di rame non lo faccio più da tanto tempo.

Versate sulla frutta lo zucchero, coprite il tegame e lasciate riposare il tutto per alcune ore.

Vedrete che lo zucchero comincerà ad agire sulla frutta e ne farà uscire l’acqua che contiene, dando inizio anche ad una lenta e brevissima fermentazione che è positiva e produce essa stessa degli zuccheri.Quando il liquido sarà arrivato quasi al livello della frutta e lo zucchero sarà completamente sciolto, rimestate bene  e mettete al fuoco a  bassissima temperatura sopra uno spargi fiamma per evitare che la frutta attacchi al fondo.

Attenzione perché, mentre si scaldano, la frutta ed il suo liquido dolce formano una schiumetta che, al momento della bollitura, farà scappare lo sciroppo dolce fuori dalla pentola.

Questo si può evitare sia schiumando il contenuto del tegame, cioè togliendo la schiuma con un cucchiaio o meglio con una schiumarola, sia rimestando di tanto in tanto. Insomma, non potete lasciare la marmellata da sola sul fuoco mentre voi vi occupate d’altro!

Se succede non preoccupatevi troppo. E’ capitato a tutte qualche volta nonostante l’esperienza della cuoca.

Dopo il momento critico, continuate la cottura sempre a fuoco lentissimo in modo che lo zucchero non caramelli e la marmellata possa mantenere il suo colore chiaro, che per le albicocche è un bellissimo arancione brillante.

Intanto rompete i noccioli di albicocca, affettate o spezzettate 4 o 5 semini ed aggiungeteli alla frutta.

Questa volta, seguendo il consiglio di una blogger, ho aggiunto in cottura anche un rametto piccolo di rosmarino e devo ammettere che il suo aroma mescolandosi con il delizioso sapore delle albicocche ha dato un risultato eccellente.

Mano a mano che il liquido diminuisce dovrete fare più attenzione che la frutta non attacchi sul fondo. Quindi rimestate con frequenza aiutando le albicocche a spappolarsi.

Ora, potete lasciare la frutta a pezzettini morbidissimi, ma in tal caso sarà opportuno aver previsto una quantità maggiore di zucchero, oppure, come faccio io, tolto il tegame dal fuoco, con l’aiuto di un frullatore ad immersione potete ridurre tutto ad una crema omogenea che sarà più facile da spalmare. Rimettete al fuoco per non più di 5 minuti e la marmellata è pronta.

Io credo comunque che lo avrete già scoperto da sole perché il profumo delicato che avrà invaso la cucina e vi avrà spinto forse anche a più di un assaggio compulsivo… Ma trattenetevi! state preparando una marmellata cioè qualche cosa da usare in piccole quantità e nel tempo sul pane o nelle torte e sul gelato.

Questa marmellata è magnifica sulla Sachertorte, la famosa e buonissima torta austriaca al cioccolato.

Ora viene il momento di mettere la marmellata nei vasetti.

Io ho l’abitudine di conservare sempre i vasetti dei prodotti che acquisto, ma dato che faccio in casa molte cose, mi trovo spesso a non averne abbastanza. Mi capita però di riceverne in regalo da qualche amica o di comprarne quando ne trovo di carini e convenienti. Sempre vasetti di vetro, naturalmente, che devono essere pulitissimi e prima dell’uso vanno sterilizzati (potete farlo nel forno a microonde). Anche i tappi devono essere in ottime condizioni, senza traccia di ruggine o di deformazioni ed anche loro ben puliti ed asciugati.

Versate la marmellata ancora calda nei vasetti aiutandovi con un mestolino. 

Per chiudere i vasetti di marmellata troverete una infinità di tecniche, tutte ottime. Spesso ci si regola secondo il modo che potremmo aver visto usare da nostra mamma o nostra nonna, se avevano l'abitudine di fare marmellate.

Come fanno alcuni potete, una volta ben chiuso il vasetto capovolgerlo e lasciare che la marmellata si raffreddi così, oppure potete sterilizzarli come si fa con la salsa di pomodoro ed altre conserve nell’acqua o a vapore; potete anche sigillare la superficie della marmellata versandoci sopra uno strato di paraffina.

Io uso un altro sistema. Taglio nella carta forno dei dischetti della stessa dimensione dell’interno del vasetto, là dove arriva la marmellata.
Imbevo questo dischetto di alcool alimentare puro o, più spesso, di qualche liquore che a seconda dei casi sarà vodka, brandy, anice forte o altro. Lo appoggio sulla marmellata quando è ancora calda ma non bollente, facendolo ben aderire ed eliminando le bolle d’aria che possano essere rimaste intrappolate sotto la carta e verso sopra il tutto un cucchiaio circa dello stesso liquore in modo che copra tutto per bene. Infine chiudo il vasetto con più forza che posso.
Molte persone, per essere più sicuri che la marmellata si conservi aggiungono alcuni grammi di Acido Salicilico o di Acido Ascorbico prima di invasare.
Non è una aggiunta dannosa, l'uno è la base dell'aspirina e l'altro è vitamina C ma è comunque una precauzione del tutto inutile. Invece dell'acido ascorbico potete aggiungere alla frutta, prima di metterla al fuoco, del succo di limone ma sappiate che il sapore sarà leggermente aspro.  Con qualche frutto secondo me muta un pochino il sapore della frutta che, in realtà ha tutta già da sola e senza aggiunte un buon contenuto di Acido Ascorbico perché è ricchissima di vitamina C. Comunque è buona cosa sapere che, essendo la vitamina C termolabile, in cottura scomparirà completamente.