LITMIR.BIZ

Vignarola (braised spring vegetables)

      Simple springtime vegetable dishes like this have always figured highly in our family. When we were on holiday in Sicily, I used to make a little stew that Margherita could have, with the long, bendy, green zucca trombetta, which is a kind of cross between a courgette and a pumpkin. I would sauté it with onions and garlic, add some spinach and peas, cover it with white wine and simmer it for 20 minutes or so.

      Vignarola is simply a celebration of that moment in spring when you have an abundance of beautiful artichokes, and the first of the broad beans and peas. In the restaurants in Rome they will bring out little dishes of bright green vignarola along with artichokes alla Romana and fritti, with baskets of bread and olive oil, and sometimes bowls of the first young broad beans of the season. You open up the pods and there are maybe only three or four tiny beans inside, which you eat raw with pieces of pecorino and pepper. Such a wonderful collection of flavours and textures.

      Vignarola is so simple, but what makes it special is that the vegetables are cooked one after the other in olive oil and with the tiniest amount of water, so that each one tastes totally of itself. As the season goes on you can take some vegetables away and add others, such as spinach or chard, but keep the essence of the dish by using good frozen broad beans and peas. I like to have any that is left over in the fridge to smash up for a sandwich, to put out with burrata and toasted bread, or warm up alongside some grilled chicken or steak. One morning when Plaxy and I were on holiday in Puglia in the spring, for brunch I made a vignarola quickly with fresh peas and beans I had bought in the market along with some cime di rapa (turnip tops). I toasted some bread, fried a couple of local farm eggs, broke them up and mixed them into the vegetables, which I crushed a little bit, and we ate from bowls, sitting looking out at the sea, and it felt like some of the best food I had made in my life.

      Serves 6

      artichokes 4 small

      olive oil a little

      spring onions 5, chopped

      sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

      podded fresh broad beans 200g

      podded fresh peas 200g

      fresh mint leaves 10

      1 Prepare the artichokes as here and cut into quarters.

      2 Heat a little olive oil in a pan, add the spring onions and cook briefly.

      3 Drain the artichokes and add to the pan. Season, cover and cook for 2 minutes.

      4 Add the broad beans with a couple of tablespoons of water and cook for another 2 minutes, then add the peas, plus another 2 tablespoons of water. Cook for another 2 minutes, adding a little more water if necessary. Each vegetable should now be tender and the water should have been absorbed.

      5 Finish with the mint leaves. Eat warm or cold.

      Artichokes

      x 4

      I know I cannot claim artichokes (carciofi) only for Italy, but they are such a quintessential ingredient, so steeped in Italian history, and things of such beauty and fascination that they have been captured many times in Italian art. There is even a famous Italian bitter liqueur, invented in the 1950s, called Cynar, from Cynara scolymus, the botanical name for artichoke. It is made with various plants and herbs, but artichokes are the main flavouring and the dark bottle has an iconic bright red label with a green artichoke on it. Usually you drink it as a spritzino, mixed with prosecco and soda water. I remember when I was quite young seeing an advert on TV set in a square outside a bar in Milan where fashionable people sat around tables drinking Cynar underneath a massive metal sculpture of an artichoke.

      There is another story that the name Cynar comes from Greek mythology: Zeus, the ruler of the sky and all the gods, was besotted with the nymph Cynara, who drove him mad with jealousy, so he transformed her into a spiky artichoke to remind him of both the green of her eyes and the pain she caused him.

      Artichokes were developed by the Arabs in Sicily and first found their way onto the mainland in the sixteenth century, when the Jewish people were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition and artichokes were one of the ingredients they took with them. The first artichokes were said to be very hard, even more spiny and very bitter, but over the years they have been cultivated to be sweeter, softer and more friendly, though they retain that very special tinny flavour that I love, either when they are raw, or when simply boiled whole with a little bit of butter.

      The artichokes that I like most are the small spiny ones, which have a deep, essential, slightly bitter flavour, but small doesn’t necessary equal tender. Even bigger artichokes can be tender. What is important is not size, but age. The fresher the better: look at the stem of the artichoke and it should be green, not turning black.

      Artichokes in cooking

      Artichokes are fantastic on their own, but their elegant touch of bitterness gives so much depth of flavour to other dishes. An artichoke risotto is beautiful, and if I make a vegetable lasagne, I always want to put artichoke in there, as it goes so well with the béchamel and cheese, and adds its own texture to that of the other vegetables.

      When we used to go on holiday every summer in Sicily, artichokes were one of my favourite things to put into a frittata, or to make into a little stew like vignarola with other spring vegetables, or to mix with other greens in the chicory family, maybe with some potatoes added, to serve with some chicken or a pan-fried fish like John Dory.

      Or we would eat them at my friend Vittorio’s restaurant in Portopalo after they had been roasted, sprinkled with oil and salt, in the ashes of the wood-burning stove, with each artichoke perched upright in a series of ‘cones’ forged into a special grill pan. When they came out, smoky and tender, you just peeled off the blackened outer leaves and ate the rest straight away. Artichokes are so important to the Sicilians that out of their season you could often find them in the supermarkets cleaned, cut into four and frozen, along with other vegetables, such as spinach, peas or broad beans.

      Rome, too, has held a great importance in the development of artichokes in Italian cooking. Between January and May/June, artichokes and puntarelle are the two vegetables that are celebrated in Rome more than anywhere else in Italy. In the famous Campo di Fiori market you see the guys sitting at their tables taking beautiful purple and green artichokes from big baskets, and as they prepare them the outer leaves fall like petals into boxes at their feet. As they work they rub the cut artichokes with lemon juice and all you have to do is take them home and cook them.

      When I am in Rome I always like to eat carciofi alla giudìa (artichokes Jewish-style). The special Romanesco artichokes grown in Lazio (which are very different to other varieties because they have no spikes) are pressed down and fried, with the stalk upwards, so that they open out and turn golden like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, then they are sprinkled with lemon juice and salt. There are famous restaurants in the Jewish quarter in Rome where the guys sit all day by the till, just like their counterparts in the market, turning boxes and boxes of artichokes, because everyone who comes

Скачать книгу