Cima di Rape, Simple with Orecchiette and Polenta

I will get to cima di rape in a minute, but before I’d like to share a thought about cooking is simple and a recipe is often there just for inspiration or guideline. 

Cima di rape makes a variety of great dishes

I got a DVD with Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers from a foodie friend for Christmas. I don’t know if it is the warm yellow light in his kitchen, the sunlight in his garden when he goes around and picks the vegetables or herbs that grow in the pots or what but it is an absolute beauty of a program. It is of course his very nice English too pronouncing all the words perfectly without eating the endings. The greatest thing is that there are no real recipes with grams, decilitres or millilitres to mess about. It is really simple and anyone can adjust the recipe to their taste with more of this or less of that.

My first encounter with Nigel Slater was when years ago I had ordered some books on amazon and when the order arrived instead of what I had ordered I found a recipe book with lots of recipes and no photos by some chap called Nigel Slater. I had never heard of him then. Well, a lot of meals have been cooked and eaten since and Nigel Slater has become a famous cookbook author. I am eyeing his “Tender” in the bookshop now. If not before, then perhaps for Christmas…

Cima di rape or broccoli rabe at the market

For a few weeks I have noticed an interesting green vegetable at the farmers market. It has small broccoli like flowery heads between the deep green leaves. The appetite for the rich leafy greens in the spring time is itching my winter bored stomach and seeing all sorts of new edible greens appear on the counters is like salt and pepper to any meal. Such joy!

So I grabbed a bunch of cima di rape that in English might also be known as broccoli rape, broccoli raab or rapini, in German Stängelkohl and is popular in Southern Italy. It is grown in Switzerland to an extent and even the common supermarket is selling it, strane that I had not noticed it before.

Here are two simple recipes for two, both done in 30 minutes. Freshly cooked meals and the recipes here are really just for inspiration. Whilst most savoury recipes can be experimented with, the exceptions are cake or more complicated dessert recipes where it is useful to follow the number of eggs or grams of baking powder.

Orecchiette with cima di rape and pancetta

200g oricchietti pasta

Olive oil

500g cima di rape, chopped into 1-2 cm pieces

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1-2 peperoncini, thinly sliced

(Lemon juice of a quarter of a lemon, optional)

Salt and pepper

100g pancetta

Bring enough water to boil, add salt into the pasta water and cook the pasta till al dente.

Heat some olive oil, sauté the cima di rape with some garlic and peperoncini for ca 15 minutes until the stem bits have softened. Add the lemon juice if you chose to use it.

Add the pancetta slices and mix with the leaves. Mix the pasta with the vegetables and drizzle a little good olive oil on top. 

Orecchiette pasta with cima di rape and pancetta

Polenta with cima di rape and champignons

Ingredients:

6 dl water + 1 cube bouillon or fresh chicken stock

125g polenta

10g butter

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

0.5 dl olive oil

500g broccoli rape, cut into 1-2 cm long pieces

250g button champignons, halved or quartered if necessary

1 peperoncino, thinly sliced

1 clove of garlic or a small bunch of ramsons (green wild garlic), sliced

Salt and black pepper

Bring the water to boil with the bouillon cube and add the polenta. Turn down the heat and cook under low heat stirring often for ca 20-30 minutes until the polenta is al dente soft. At the end add the butter and parmesan and stir well to create a creamy consistency.

In the mean time in another big pan heat the oil and add the sliced garlic and peperoncinio and broccoli rape. Cook at high heat for a few minutes. Add the champignons and mix with the broccoli rape. Turn the heat to medium and continue cooking for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve the vegetables on the polenta, hot.

Sautéed broccoli rabe with champignons on polenta bed

Easter Farmers´ Market – goat’s cheese or chèvre chaud on spring greens salad

Tulips in the market

The time of the year calls that bunnies, coloured eggs both real and fake, chicken from feathers, clay or cloth, hens of every possible colour, tulips and heaps of greens have conquered the April market.

 

Easter eggs

Onion peel for colouring the eggs, 2 francs a bag

Easter Bunnies

Two new cheese stands have also sprung out of somewhere this spring. In one of them there are lots of interesting goat’s cheeses, however their selling methodology seems a bit uncoordinated with four people behind the counter and only one visibly engaged in direct selling activity. The others are trying to make way past each other bumping into each other from left to right and the other way round with pieces of cheese in their hands. It seems like Brown movement of molecules in slow motion. After waiting in line for 5 minutes without any particular movement on the other side of the counter and listening to one of the sales force talking to himself most of the time and asking pointlessly who was next and doing nothing about the answer I left and turned my steps to another small cheese stand.

I was after some goat’s cheese for my lunch and just as to turn around the bizarreness of the other stand I had disappointedly left behind there was a most beautiful kind of Romanesque young man as friendly as one can imagine and I got exactly what I wanted immediately – the last piece of the round goat’s cheese that I was looking for.

Cicco rosso

Among the things that I could eat anytime are the grilled goat’s cheese bruschettas or grilled slices of bread with melted goat’s cheese on top. On a bed of fresh portulac, rucola or rocket, young cicco rosso and verde leaves mixed salad the chèvre chaud makes my belly smile. A salad dressing made from some orange juice, olive oil, salt and pepper gives the salad and the goat’s cheese the necessary fruity note.

Chèvre chaud - grilled goat´s cheese salad

 Bruschettas with goat cheese persimmon

Lime Or Lemon is 1 year old: celebrating with cinnamon loaf or cinnamon rolls transformed

Spring 2012 - April

The past 365 days have been intense with eating, cooking, reading cookbooks and food magazines, surfing through other food blogs and an enormous amount of (online) food writing, visiting farmers´market, taking pictures, talking about food, experiencing good and bad eateries, making my first pasta, discovering new ingredients like quinoa, stachys or salsify, foraging in the forest for blueberries and mushrooms, gasping and smiling at the breakfast, lunch and dinner photos my friends have sent through mobile devices, making lists of things I want to learn and cook and not the least creating a cookbook with my colleagues from various different nationalities, cooking and taking pictures for the book and trying out others´ recipes and this way getting to know their world too.

I am grateful to my friends who urged me to start a blog after dinner one night and I thought ah, why not! My sister took away the fear of the technical complexity and indeed I was surprised how easy it was. I thought I was ready to go public and share what’s going on in my head and my kitchen with others. I hope some recipes have found a new life in someone’s kitchen. 

People have dropped by at Lime Or Lemon? from 90 countries. I like to think how awesome it is that in a couple of clicks we can land in a new (food) world through internet and witness all the food bloggers creating so diverse content, sharing their work of food art and promoting cooking, healthy eating and education about food.

The top 3 most visited articles in the first year were:

Lime or lemon - what´s the difference?

Dutch delight - mustard soup 

Cocktail de pulpo y camaron, Acapulco style

The good thing about cooking for the blog is that my dinners often take place much earlier now as I need to catch the daylight for the photos. 
Special thanks to T for the inspiration and Mark and Marek for leaving the most comments.

I am happily celebrating the 1 year anniversary with one of my all time favourites cinnamon rolls but this time in a new form of a layered loaf. Looking forward to new encounters in the unimaginably rich world of food!

Cinnamon Loaf
Ingredients:

30g fresh yeast

0.5 teaspoon salt

4-5 tablespoons sugar

0.5 teaspoon cardamom powder

3dl milk, lukewarm

180g white wheat flour

240g half-white wheat flour

1 egg, beaten

100g butter, half melted

70g butter, very soft for spreading

3 tablespoons cinnamon to sprinkle

1.5 dl sugar to sprinkle

Melt the yeast with salt and 1 tbsp sugar until it turns liquid. Add the rest of the sugar, cardamom, and milk. Mix. Then add the flour, mix. Add the beaten egg and the butter and mix until the dough is homogenous for 5-10 minutes. Cover with 2 kitchen towels and leave to rise in a warm place for 1 hour. Avoid any draft.

Fit a loaf form with baking paper. Set the oven to 200°C.

Be generous with butter, cinnamon and sugar

When the dough has doubled take it out of the bowl onto a well floured surface and cut it into 2 or 3 pieces for rolling out depending on the space you have available. Roll it out into a centimetre thick layer and then spread some soft butter on the dough, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Being generous with these 3 components makes a difference in the end result. 

Fit the cinnamon dough squares into the baking form

Cut the dough into squares that fit into your baking form and place them in it.

Then repeat with the other layer of dough until finished. Place the form into the oven and cook for 45 min or until the match comes out without clean when testing.

Cinnamon loaf

The Estonian way would be to eat the cake straight away warm from the oven and drink cold milk to it. Of course if this is alien to you, choose your own favourite drink.

Cinnamon rolls transformed into a loaf