Making Me Pay
In response to my scurrilous insinuation that slow food is for old people with time on their hands, and therefore just not fast enough for us fast moving modern types, Judith Greenwood sent me one of her very quick to rustle up recipes to try.
Alas, this week has been a wee bit chaotic what with the little one being in hospital after his operation, so I have not had time to cook up Judith’s fast slow food based creation. So I thought maybe someone else may like to have a go. What follows certainly is a delicious sounding recipe. Read more
Interesting Gorgonzola
UPDATE 2
I have spoken to Lorenzo of La Via lattea, the award winning slow food company behind this this delightful cheese, and a whole host of other interesting cheese products as well, as I have discovered. Full contact details have now been added to my original The Gorgonzola of the Gods post, and they do speak English too. The company can export pretty well anywhere, if requested. However remember that La Via lattea’s products are natural, and will suffer if travel times are excessive. Read more
Celanto a settembre, Milan - a great little restaurant
We went out this evening with some friends, and they took us to an interesting restaurant which, it has to be said, is a little out on a limb. This is something of a shame because the place has a nice relaxed atmosphere, and more importantly, great food and wine. Our friends had already been there a couple of times, and on both previous occasions, the restaurant had been virtually empty. What a great shame.
This restaurant, which is modern in style and attractively decorated in white, as you will see from the photos on the site, is called ‘Celanto a settembre‘ and is located about 10 minutes by car from Piazza Loretto in Via Teodosio, 102, Milan. There is a map here - click on ‘Dove Siamo’. For some reason, I cannot see the photos when I access the site via Firefox, whereas by using IE7, I can see them in all their glory…
Although the food served in the Celanto a settembre is based on Italian cuisine, it is not traditional Italian cooking, but it is this touch of originality which made it so fascinating for me, plus the fact that the food was excellent, and the standard of presentation of the dishes being very high indeed. The service was good too, but seeing as we were almost the only people in the place, this was to be expected.
Now to the good part. After starting off with a couple of glasses of a very nice Portuguese white, I ordered a ‘Gelato di parmigiano con pere e uva’, which was parmesan ice cream (really!) with pear and grapes, and it was very good. My other half, Cristina, and friend, Sergio, had ‘Timballo di spada con crema di melanzane’ - a sort of mini-flan made with swordfish and served with cream of aubergine, again very tasty. Giorgia, our other friend, opted for the ‘Timballo di carciofi pecorino e bottarga’, which again was a type of flan, only this time with artichoke, pecorino cheese, and ‘bottarga’, which was thin slices of what I think is smoked tuna fish. It too tasted as good as it looked.
The starter was followed by a first course of Spaghetti with prawns, squid, and clams, served with dwarf tomatoes and spinach shoots, which Giorgia went for. My other half ordered Gnocchi stuffed with baccala, again with dwarf tomatoes and clams. The presentation was lovely and the taste did not disappoint either.
The guys, Sergio and myself, instead chose a main course of the intriguing squid stuffed with sea bass and artichoke, all on a bed of stir fried artichoke and served with scampi. Wonderful. The first and main courses where served together, so no waiting around while someone finishes the first course before the main course is served.
For pudding my other half went for the ‘Crema Catalana’, which is an oven cooked cream dish, whereas Giorgia got the hot chocolate tart which came with a pineapple and rosemary sauce. Instead I chose a more traditional chocolate mousse with strawberry sauce. The desserts where superb too.
Wine? Oddly enough we went for a red with all the fish, and the owner recommended a bottle of wine from the Alto Adige (Trento) area, and it was an excellent, quite light, red, a 2002 Sass Roà, Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact one of the other attractions of this restaurant is the very extensive selection of wines on offer. Over 400 of them in fact!
The price of all this goodness? Just over 200 Euros (about £30 a head) for the four of us, however we did have a bottle and a half of wine and the red we went for was not the cheapest the house had to offer.
The Celanto a settembre is open at lunchtimes and stays open until midnight during the week, although it is closed on Saturday lunchtimes and all day Sunday. They do, however, accept orders for private parties on Saturday lunchtimes and on Sundays at lunch and dinner time, if requested. I don’t know if English or other languages are spoken, but I’m going to ask them for some photos, so I’ll update this post when I find out.
Would I recommend this place? 100% yes. The food is fabulous and the menu is highly original. Everything is prepared by the owner, Carlo. It’s just a slight shame it is a little off the beaten track, although a tram does pass right in front of it. But, I think it is well worth, as is often the case, moving off the beaten track to check it out.
Good food, good wine and good company, which all added up to a lovely evening. What more can you ask?
Waste not, want not
Yesterday I cooked up an improvised cacuicco, which, if you do not know, is an Italian fish soup. I’d had this soup several times, so I though I’d have a go at making it, in order to use up some seafood that had been left over from our New Year’s festivities.
I did not follow any particular recipe, although I had a quick look at one such recipe on the Internet, more or less to confirm how this soup is made. All I did was to pour a bottle of tomato pulp into a pan, add a little salt and pepper, a dash of garlic, a little chilli powder and then a glass of white wine. Then I just let the mix simmer for half an hour or so. Result? Very tasty, and even my Italian other half said it was ‘excellent’. Not bad for some improvisation.
Today, again in order to use up some of the left overs, my other half, following a recipe, created some salmon stuffed with cheese. It cooked in a jiffy, looked great, but, as I realised as soon as I put a piece into my mouth, the salmon had gone off. Just as well I managed to prevent other half from feeding our little one a nice chunk of rancid salmon.
Oh well, you win some, and you lose some. At least we tried to use up this goodies, without throwing them away.
And, this evening, I ran up some vin bruleè, which is the Italian version of mulled wine. I found an ‘Alpini’ vin bruleè recipe on the Internet (great source of genuine Italian recipes - especially if you can read Italian) , and had a go. Result? Highly drinkable, if a little sweet. Less demerara sugar would have made it more tangy, as would have a little more lemon. Still, it’s going down very well, and is just the thing to sort out my annoying little cold, I can tell you. At least that is what I’m telling myself….
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