When chef, Rowley Leigh, suggested serving a frittedda at our, somewhat premature, 'end of covid' celebratory lunch in June, 2021 I thought he was talking a bout an omelette. I missed the lunch because my daughter came back from London with, guess what, covid, so it was a while before I really familiarised myself with Sicilian frittedda. Since then it's become a family staple and I'm particularly partial to extending the primavera theme by adding a few Jersey Royal or Cornish new potatoes. Obviously fresh peas and beans are best but frozen will still give a pretty good result. Just adjust the cooking times accordingly. I also like to add a little preserved lemon. It's not traditional but, with North Africa just across the Strait of Sicily, it doesn't feel too sacrilegious.
Frittedda is a tasty vegetable stew / salad originating in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. Prepared with fresh broad beans, peas, asparagus and artichokes, it’s a ‘primavera’ classic for spring (in Italy) or early summer in the UK and can truly be called “spring on a plate”. The vegetables are slowly sautéed, and gently shaken rather than stirred in order to preserve the textures and flavours of each ingredient – the sweetness of the peas, the pleasant bitterness of the artichokes, and the nutty flavour of broad beans.
These flavours can be rounded with the addition of agrodolce, sauce made with caramelized sugar and vinegar. Our Frittedda will work with the antipasto, as a side dish with the cheese tart of pork, or a vegetarian main course. Back in Palermo, it is often served with panelle – Sicilian chickpea/gram flour fritters.
My artichokes were so young that no choke had formed at the centre; larger ones will have to be quartered and the chokes carefully removed. Fresh peas can be added to the mix, or as a substitute for asparagus.
The agrodolce sauce (one part sugar dissolved in two parts white wine vinegar and reduced by half) can be gently mixed in, warm, at the end. How much you add is a matter of choice. If you're serving frittedda as a side dish, you don't want it too fierce so keep it minimal. If it's as part of an antipasta platter a stronger agrodolce flavour might be in order.
This Easter, we’re doing things a little differently by serving up a lamb shoulder studded with anchovies & rosemary. We suggest serving this up with borlotti bean caponata and chargrilled pointed cabbage.
This rhubarb is almost too good for crumble. It shines when gently poached—just fresh fruit juice and sugar will do. The key is not to overcook it: two to three minutes is plenty. Like toasting pine nuts, turn away for a moment and it’s burnt/overdone! Serve with thick yoghurt and our BFS granola for a simple, elegant breakfast.
Tapas come in many guises, from simple tortilla to London-centric ‘picture on a plate’ restaurant creations but often in Spain, and also Chez Ben’s, they can just be a ladle of whatever is in the pot at the time. Spain has an abundance of bean stews and Fabada Asturiana is, without question, the best known – almost the paella of the north. It's as simple as they come but totally dependent on the quality of the meat ingredients. It's almost a religion and the packs of, ready to go, belly pork, morcilla and chorizo are available in every food shop (including Ben's Farm Shop). Complete authenticity requires fabes de la granja (large dried runner beans) and a lightly smoked, semi cured morcilla (black pudding), chorizo and thick slices of salted belly pork. In damp Asturia, they smoke all their preserved meats in the chimney. The morcilla is the only one that keeps it’s form when cooked so definitely isn't interchangeable. The real deal beans are expensive and hard to find so most people, including me, substitute fava/butter/judion beans. It's important to stir as gently and little as possible to keep the beans intact.
The end result isn't exactly short of flavour but the extremely inauthentic mojo picon adds a little body to what can be a pretty thin broth. As with all these dishes, a slow cooker is ideal.
First Nation people were baking beans, sweetened with maple syrup, a long time before the Pilgrim Fathers arrived. A rum distilling industry soon developed in New England so the maple syrup was swapped for molasses or black treacle and Boston Baked Beans were born. It’s hard to imagine that tinned baked beans came from anywhere else. They were the first thing I cooked after my mother shipped me off to university with a slow cooker and a copy of Jocasta Innes’s Pauper’s Cookbook and they’ve remained a firm favourite ever since.
For years I thought that anything other than the green Genovese version was sacrilege - until I was introduced to its Sicilian cousin aka Trapanese. Since then, I’ve been swimming with the Trapanesian fishes. The only caveat is that you have to have the right tomatoes. Only the finest and tastiest will do and that definitely doesn’t include cherry - or anything available in the supermarket.
You need that mythical beefsteak tomato some old lady in a french provisioners used to make you a sandwich, one hot afternoon just outside Carcassonne about twenty years ago. As you can tell, it was the highlight of my holiday but I was firmly put in my place a few years later when a friend, who had had a similar experience told me that she had extracted some tomato seeds from said sandwich, smuggled them back to Blighty, germinated and grown them the next year. Now that really must have been a good sandwich.
Anyway, back to the pesto. It’s a simple concoction of peeled and deseeded diced tomatoes (blessed by the lady in black from Carcassonne), blanched almonds, garlic, basil and a little mint. Recipes invariably call for Sicilia or Sardinian pecorino but I reckon it’s best left out of the sauce and grated over the finished dish.
An indulgent dish of nduja, artichokes and ricotta for a spicy sausage dish with a difference.
Our seasonal hero this May is the humble broad bean. For the gardener, autumn sown broad beans should be just ready by the end of the month but Spanish and French will have been around for months. As with peas, you have to be pretty hard core to turn your nose up at frozen but freshly picked and podded, they’re in a league of their own. If you’re lucky enough to get a May harvest, you certainly won’t have to worry about double podding them.
For this simple Rowley recipe, a good quality olive oil and tuna, such as the Ortiz Bonito del Norte (white tuna) are essential. Serve al fresco and with a pale rose.