Just four hours until Italian stew heaven

Transcendent  

Melt-in-your-mouth tender beef, with rich flavours and perhaps the easiest recipe I’ve ever made, makes this a must-do during winter

Just four hours until Italian stew heaven

I’ve found, since moving from Australia at the beginning of the year, that’s there’s very little I’ve missed. I miss the usual things of course – family, friends, familiarity – but there’s something to be said for unfamiliar thrills. However, it’s food that I’ve found my biggest challenge in adjusting to life in Switzerland, strange as that may seem. I’ve complained about platinum-plated meat prices and the utter lack of some ingredients that I consider staples – liquid stock the foremost one – but otherwise I make do and carry on. But I’m glad of the small chances I get to experience food familiarity every now and again – like the May issue of delicious.

Peposo, mash and rocket

I’ve been buying delicious on and off for a couple of years, but the annual Italian issue in May is a must-buy. So, with the approach of May this year, I asked my mum to buy and send over the May issue. Once it arrived, I had a quick flick through and pretty much left it forgotten on my coffee table for the next six months. With the approach of winter, I recently started to look for wintery, comfort-food ideas.

Picking up May’s delicious, I came across contributor Jill Dupleix’s peposo, or Tuscan beef stew. It looked ridiculously simple and hearty, so one cool, cloudy Saturday I decided to give it a go, impulsively inviting some friends over to share. First, the ingredients; they’re pretty simple. It’s just stewing beef, red wine, tomato paste, rosemary, garlic and anchovies for seasoning. That’s it. As Jill mentioned in her introduction to this recipe in the magazine (I’ve only included the link to the delicious web page here), anything more would ruin it.

While the price of the beef for it made my eyes water (paying CHF45 – A$48 – for 1.8kg of the cheapest cut of beef I could find), it was so worth it. It’s perhaps one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever made; just a matter of placing all the ingredients into a casserole dish (my beloved blue Le Creuset I had brought over recently) and placing into a moderately slow oven for four hours. Simplest dinner party recipe I’ve done.

Rich flavours and melt-in-the-mouth tenderness

While Jill suggests serving this with some polenta, I decided make some mashed potato instead, as I’m still warming to the taste of polenta. But it didn’t matter – the hero of the night was the peposo. What an amazing dish. After four hours of quietly cooking away, I lifted the lid of the dish and the aroma of red wine, garlic and rosemary immediately assaulted us. It tasted as good as it smelt. The rich flavours of the wine and garlic perfectly complemented the rosemary and beef, which was so tender it easily pulled apart with just a fork and melted in the mouth.

It’s a shame that, being here, I’m now six months out with the recipes in delicious. They’re now publishing summer ones. But, there’s always next year’s May issue, and its Italian winter delights, to look forward to within its pages.

Vying for my husband’s affection – with lasagne.

Transcendent
But then, my lasagne is always perfect. Though perhaps I’m biased.

Vying for my husband’s affection – with lasagne.

Starting the layers; sheet,
meat, sauce

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always loved my mum’s lasagne. Growing up, we had a family tradition where someone would get to choose what the family meal was on their birthday; I remember most years choosing lasagne. As a kid, I never really knew why I loved it so much – I mean, it tastes great; it’s made by my mum – however, there was always something else about it that just made it what it is, but I could never quite put my finger on it. As an adult, I worked it out; it’s texture. There are the soft, thin layers of lasagne sheets; the saucy, chunky, meatiness of the filling; perhaps my favourite part, the creamy gooeyness of the white béchamel sauce; and the slight crispiness of the cheese melted on top.

Once I moved out of home, I got mum to show me how to make it and these days, it’s one of those few recipes that I don’t have an actual recipe written down for; I just grab the ingredients I need, and I just *know* how much of each thing I need to make it perfect.  Some onion, garlic, mince, tinned tomatoes, tomato paste, red wine, oregano, mixed Italian herbs and some bay leaves make up the sauce. Just simple butter, cornflower and milk gives me a great white or béchamel sauce. And lasagne sheets. I use commercial lasagne sheets these days as they’re perfectly fine, but if you want to go the whole hog, make them fresh yourself. I’ve done it once, but it was such a hassle, I’m not sure I’d do it again.

Bubbling and golden out of the oven

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, makes fresh lasagne sheets almost every time. I don’t know how she does it. I mean, I know the method of making them, but for the quantities of lasagne she makes, that’s a lot of lasagne sheets. And I have to feel for poor Emperor D. Being of Italian descent, his mum makes the most amazing pastas. Her pasta sauce is just divine – my sister-in-law has tried many times to replicate it, but apparently has not quite tasted the same. But her lasagne is very different from mine.

I always tease Emperor D about whose lasagne he thinks is better – his wife’s or his mum’s. I shouldn’t be so mean, but I never tire of hearing him emphatically exclaiming that mine is very good, while at the same time diplomatically stating that ‘they’re each very different’, as if comparing apples with oranges. And they are quite different. Emperor D’s mum comes from Sicily, in southern Italy, where it seems they do things a little different to other parts of Italy. But then, most regions of Italy do the same dish with slight variations. I’ve asked her about a particular dish – minestrone for example – that I’ve seen in a cookbook, and she’ll look at the recipe and say, ‘that’s not minestrone – not how we do it. That minestrone is from northern Italy’. I’m amazed that she can tell there’s a difference, let alone what part of Italy it’s from.

Buon appetito!

Emperor D’s mum makes lasagne with only a meat sauce, very thinly layered between thick homemade sheets of fresh pasta. There’s no béchamel or even cheese on top. It’s nice, but for me, I like the structure, the textures and the taste of my own better. And to say that I prefer something of my own cooking over something of Emperor D’s mum is saying a lot – she is an amazing cook and I have no hesitation in saying that I prefer her versions of other dishes I do. But when it comes to lasagne, which my mum has made with love since I was a little girl, I find that the original – the version I’ve grown up with – is still the best.