La bergamote, souvenirs sucrés – Tarte aux pommes, à la bergamote et confiture de framboises

I didn’t want to feature another dessert, but it was just impossible due the circumstances and to the encounter with an amazing citrus. I found the wonderful bergamot at my favorite store, which I never thought it was possible to find in the US. I am infatuated by bergamot scent and deeply in love with it. I just want to bathe in its scent and rub its peel all over my body.

Bergamot is quite famous in Nancy, my hometown… bergamot candies made with bergamot oil are a symbol of the city and the recipe is impossible to find, it’s somehow kept secrets among local “confiseurs” (specialists in making confiserie which include candies or any specialties made out of fruits, sugar or any sweet ingredient). They also make bergamot soaps that smell ridiculously good, you just want to eat them.

Bergamot scent is a pure delight, but very few eatable products contain that flavor, only Earl Grey tea, and some bergamot jam you can find locally in Nancy.  Bergamot is mainly used in perfumes, scents, essential oils, for healing purposes, etc.. and I am wondering why its use in cooking is not that popular, since its a citrus that looks like a big lemon with a smell and flavor that is pure delight. I know in some Moroccan dishes they used preserved bergamot instead of lemons, but that’s the extend of its use in the culinary world.

It ’s very easy to get addicted to bergamot once you taste it, so be careful to not sink into it and turn into a bergamot junkie, like I am.

These tarts are superb, flavorful, citrusy, a tiny tarts and slightly bitter but so “parfumées” it’s like eating your favorite perfume in a mouthful. Imagine your eating your favorite Chanel or Dior perfumes…Besides, there’s little sugar, so they’re very light. I used a standard mixed flour crust whose recipe you can find here. You have to try bergamot, but the side effects are dangerous, you might develop a strong addiction to it.

Ingredients for 10 tartlets

For the crust, recipe here

For the filling

• 1 bergamot juice and zest
• 6 medium apples, peeled and sliced
• sugar (to taste)
• 2 tbs raspberry jam

Preparation

For the crust follow recipe.

In a mixing bowl, mix apples slices with juice of one bergamot and zest. Add sugar. Mix well and let it infuse for about 2-30 minutes.

Roll crust and cut in about 10 cm diameter circles. Remove slices from bowl, drain and kee the juice. Set the juice aside. Place apples slices on the dough circles. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 30 minutes or until the bottom is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and let it cool but keep lukewarm.

Add raspberry jam to the bergamot juice you saved. Mix well to obtain a smooth mixture. Place one tsp of raspberry/bergamot mixture on top of the apples. Serve lukewarm.

Desserts

Chèvre, l’autre facon – Chèvre pané et sauce aux poivrons grillés, miel et balsamique

Have you ever felt like a goat cheese appetizer but not on a salad or on toasts? This warm goat cheese appetizer has been one of my favorites, and makes such an elegant small dish with simple and down to earth flavors.

It’s one of those appetizers, that you make regularly because it’s so good and so quick to prepare, you can prepare the red pepper salsa in advance which can be appreciable when you have guests and many courses, then you don’t have to stay in the kitchen while your guest are having a good time in the living room. Since I love to have everything ready when guest arrive and not drink my glass of wine by myself with my vegetables, I had to find recipes that would allow me to do that.

For a long time, goat cheese was not one of my favorites, I thought it was too strong and smelled like a real goat (the same smell you can encounter at the gym, when people don’t use deodorant and have been working out in dirty clothes). I got to appreciate it more while living in Paris, sometimes during the weekend, all you want to do is get out of the crowded city and explore the countryside, see some greenery and breathe fresh air.

During our weekend getaways, we discovered a few goat farms where they raised goats to produce cheeses. Yes, when you enter the farm the goat smell is hard on your nostrils, much worse than cows or horses, and when you leave, you smell like a goat too, but c’est la nature!!..little by little, I somehow got to appreciate the diversity of goat cheeses and their flavors, and now it’s an ingredient I adore.

Ingredients for 4

• 8 slices of goat cheese (1.5 cm thick)
• 2 red bell peppers
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1.5 tsp honey
• 1 tbs balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbs parsley, chopped
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 tbs sunflower oil (or vegetable oil)
• 1 egg
• 1 cup plain bread crumbs
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Cut the cheese in 1/2 inch thick slices. Whisk egg and dip cheese slices in it, then coat with bread crumbs. Set aside.

Broil red pepper under broiler on all sides until the skin grills and turns dark. Remove from the oven, let it cool and remove the skin and the seeds. Cut in small strips, then in small dices. Set aside.

In a pan, heat olive oil and add shallots, brown the shallots, then add garlic. Cook for another few minutes to get the flavors out. Add honey, cook for a few minutes, then add balsamic vinegar, let it reduce. Add red peppers, stir well and coat peppers with mixture. Add parsley. Remove from heat.

In a pan, heat sunflower oil, brown the breaded goat cheese slices on both sides. When golden brown, remove from heat.

Place 2 slices of goat cheese in a plate and divide the red pepper salsa around them.

Appetizers

Les artichauts sont de retour – Tagine d’artichauts, pois chiches, pommes de terre, poivrons, et olives vertes

It looks like artichoke season is starting and you see them come out on the shelves, one of the largest producer being close to the Bay Area in Castroville (they claim to be the artichoke capital of the world, which is quite a big statement, but they certainly do produce a lot of them), we have in San Francisco, lots of beautiful artichokes, the babies, the medium, the large, you pick which one you want. I even planted some in the garden, but seems like it takes over 300 days for them to grow, so I cannot count on my own crops this year!

I had some fresh chick peas left from last week and I just wanted to use them in a tagine. They remain green and taste so good but cook very quickly so when using them in a dish, they only need to cook for 15 minutes or so, therefore add them at the end. I love tagines, I could eat them every day. The flavors of all the spices infusing with all those wonderful vegetables is a pure pleasure to cook (and to eat of course too). After 10 minutes of placing the tagine in the oven, the house starts to be filled with incredibly aromas. It’s like a pure perfume. Ca embaume.

As in the majority of my tagines, I used Ras el hanout which is a traditional mix of Moroccan spices and literally means “the roof of the grocery store” in arabic. A few common spices included in Ras el hanout are cardamom, mace, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, lavender, ginger, nigella, turmeric, etc..but so many more. It’s used in Middle Eastern cuisine to enhance many dishes such as couscous, meat dishes, etc…

The composition of Ras el hanout can vary from 24 to 21 spices but can go as far as 40 spices, so there are so many variations of Ras el hanout as there are cooks, manufacturers and tastes. I bought a big bag of spices in a Moroccan grocery store in France that will last me my lifetime, and that is a very nice blend, not one spice overpowering the mix, and a very well balanced combination. Unfortunately the manufacturer did not include the list of the spices he used, so I am afraid I won’t be able to know what has been used and to what quantity. In France we have a huge Arabic population, probably the biggest among all other European countries, which means a lot of stores with great products and very inexpensive.

Anyone who loves artichokes and spices, will really enjoy this dish, besides the beauty of tagines is that it might take you a while to clean the artichokes, and peel the potatoes, but then you just put it in the oven and cooks by itself, comme une grande fille!

Ingredients for 4

• 2 large potatoes, peeled and cut in big squares
• 8 medium size artichokes, trimmed
• 5 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 large red bell pepper, cut in big square
• 1 cup fresh chick peas
• 1.5 tbs Ras el hanout
• 1 preserved lemon, cut in 4 quarters
• 1/2 cup green olives, cut in halves
• chili powder
• salt and pepper

Preparation

In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients together except for the chick peas and using your hands mix well.

Place the vegetables in your tagine pot, cover and cook in a pre-heated oven at 390F for about one 1h30 min. Add chick peas 20 minutes before removing tagine from the oven. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve as a side dish or as a main dish, with a quinoa or couscous accompaniment.

Side Dish, Vegan, Vegetables

Une ancienne tarte – Tartelettes sucrées au pavot

This tart is an old specialty from Lorraine, to be more precise, the city of Toul (a very small town near Nancy), which no one in the US probably knows where it is nor how to pronounce it…nothing wrong with it, since most French people don’t know it either (as far as the location is concerned). What is Toul famous for? probably some Gris de Toul, a dry white wine, and its cathedral.

Originally this dessert has another layer of dough on top, so technically it’s a tourte instead of a tarte, a tourte is somehow the equivalent of a pie, because of the top layer of dough. Poppy seeds are supposed to help with digestion, and its use is quite common in Alsace-Lorraine, Austria, Hungary, and Central Europe’s cuisines. Some poppy seed tarts are savory, mixed with cheese, but the use of poppy seeds is very common in sweet desserts also. The original recipe has no sugar, due to the fact that in the last century, sugar was considered to be a luxury ingredient among peasants, and no one could afford it. Even though poppy seeds tend to be naturally sweet, I just could not imagine a so called “sweet” tart without sugar, so I added some in the filling and also I sprinkled it with orange sugar when cooked.

The poppy seeds need to be crushed into some sort of a paste, that’s the only way you get to taste the subtlety of the poppy seed flavors and its beautiful blue color. I crushed it, but still wanted to keep a bit of the crunchy texture, so in this case it’s a semi-paste.

In the past, poppy seeds were also used as herbal mixture to make some sedative and calming drink, then due to many fatal mistakes in dosage when given to babies, they decided to stop its use.

I made a regular dough of 300 g that is enough for a large tart for 6-8 people, since I only made 4 tartlets, I had leftover dough. You can adjust quantities accordingly or use the extra dough for some other fruit tarts.

The crust is a mixture of various flours which is something I usually do, it gives the crust a very distinct and subtle taste, I stopped using just plain white flours in crusts.

Ingredients for 4 tartlets

For the crust (enough for 8 tartlets)

• 5.29 oz (or 150 g) white flour
• 1.76 oz (or 50 g) almond flour
• 1.76 oz (or 50 g) quinoa flour
• 1.41 oz (or 40 g) sugar
• 3.52 oz (or 100 g) butter, diced
• 1 yolk
• some water

For the filling (for 4 tartlets)

• 4.23 oz (or 120 g) poppy seeds
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 5 tbs almond flour
• 6 tbs sugar
• 5 tbs crème fraîche or heavy cream
• orange sugar for sprinkling
• sliced almond for sprinkling

Preparation

For the crust

In a mixing bowl, combine all flours together, add sugar, mix well. Add yolk, butter and water (the equivalent of what you removed in the white part of the eggs), mix well but not too much, in order to form a nice ball. Wrap in a plastic film, and place in the refrigerator for at least 30 min.

For the filling

Boil milk and pour on top of poppy seeds. Soak the seeds in milk and let them absorb the milk. Crush them using a mortar. You need to get somehow a semi-paste.

Place seeds in a mixing bowl, add sugar eggs, almond flour and cream. Mix well.

Roll dough and place in individual tartlet molds. Fill with the poppy seed mixture and cook in a pre-heated oven at 365-370F for about 25 minutes, until the bottom of the crust is golden brown, but make sure to not overcook the filling, or it will dry out.

Remove from the oven. Let them cool, and sprinkle with orange sugar and sliced almonds.

Desserts

Petit plat mais grandes saveurs – Oeufs cocotte, crème de courgette, tomates séchées et artichauts

Oeufs cocotte can be simple, refined, original, creative, or whatever you want them to be. No one can resist the charm of those more contemporary “oeufs cocotte“. The traditional oeufs cocotte were more sober and simple, but we have reinvented them with new ingredients. There so many ways to prepare those unctuous little eggs, this is one version among so many others. They make great appetizers when you have some guests who most of the time enjoy their little individual pot, they’re fun to make, to serve and to eat. So the fun is tripled.

Oeufs cocotte are very easy to prepare, you can prepare the ingredients in advance and assemble them at the last minute. The most difficult trick is the perfect cooking of the eggs. Some rules will allow you to master the technique of a perfect oeuf cocotte. Prepare a double boiler (bain marie) in a pre-heated oven so that when you place the eggs, the water will be slightly boiling. The cooking time of oeufs cocotte can vary, depending on the oven and the size of the eggs. Don’t wait to remove the eggs until the whites are cooked, remove them when they’re still runny. If you take them out when they’re just perfect, they will harden after being served.

In French cocotte means “hen“in slang, and is sometimes used as a endearing word for kids, allez ma cocotte viens voir mamie.

The cream of zucchini and artichokes combine two great textures and flavors together, the sundried tomatoes give it a pleasant Italian twist. Don’t forget the “mouillettes” with your oeuf cocotte, mouillettes are little sticks of bread to dip in the yolk! You cannot have oeuf cocotte sans mouillettes!

Ingredients for 4

• 4 zucchini, diced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 tbs fresh thyme, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves
• about 16-20 baby artichokes
• 4 eggs
• 4 sundried tomatoes, diced
• 2 tbs white wine
• juice of one lemon
• 1 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Pre-heat oven at 375F. Place a double boiler (bain-marie) in the oven and let the water slightly boil.

In a pan, heat olive oil, add onions, let them brown. Add zucchini and thyme. Cover with lid and cook at medium heat until tender, add salt and pepper. Let it cool and blend in a mixer to obtain a purée. Set aside.

Start trimming artichokes. Remove the hard leaves outside, then trim to top with a knife cutting the green and hard part of the leaves. Fill a large bowl with water and lemon juice and place artichokes in it. The lemon juice will prevent artichokes from darkening.

In a pan, heat olive oil, add garlic and let it cook for a few seconds stirring. Drain artichokes and add to the pan, stir a one minute or so, then add white wine. Cover and cook at low heat until artichokes are tender, adjust with salt and pepper.

In a small ramequin, add cream of zucchini, then artichokes, sundried tomatoes, and top with an egg. Add fresh ground pepper.

Place the ramequins in the double boiler (bain-marie) and cook until the eggs whites are slightly runny, you will have to check occasionnally. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with parsley and serve with mouillettes (country bread taosted and cut in sticks). As an appetizer, it’s perfect with a small salad on the side.

Appetizers, Vegetarian - dairy

Canapés inattendus – Canapés au chèvre et champignons, miel et sel de lavande

I made a pizza a few nights ago, something I don’t do as much as I used to, and I had leftover dough I didn’t want to through away. I just hate to throw away food and more so doughs that can be used in so many different ways. I have been thinking to combine goat cheese and lavender on some sort of a tart or small bites, voilà, c’est fait en un tour de main (it’s done in a hand twist if you have dough of course). Those canapés are tiny, about 2 inches in diameter, even though they seem a lot bigger by looking at the picture.

As much as I dislike lavender as a scent, I would never buy lavender soaps or fragrances, but I adore lavender in food, it feels like Provence with its warm and sunny days, vibrant colors and flower fragrances. Lavender is like vanilla for me, the smell in fragrances makes me cringe but I love cooking with it.

The particularity of pizza dough, is that it needs to cook fast at high temperature, to get a crisp bottom and not chewy. Usually I bake it in a very hot oven, at high temperature and the dough is always perfect. Well, it’s perfect for me, since I like it crunchy and not soft and chewy.

I used large oyster mushrooms, but any mushrooms such as cremini, would work fine. You could also use eggplants, that makes a great combination with goat cheese.

Never throw away leftover dough of any kind, you can always use it, it makes beautiful bites so when unexpected guest show up, they come in handy.

For about 12 canapés

• pizza dough or pate brisée
• 1/3 lb mushrooms
• 12 slices goat cheese
• honey
• lavender salt
• 1 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Sauté mushrooms, in olive oil, add salt and pepper and let cook until the water evaporates.

Roll dough very thinly, about 2 mm thick. Cut 2 inches circles with a cookie ring. Place some mushrooms, top it with goat cheese. Sprinkle with lavender salt and honey.

Bake in pre-heated oven at 400F for about 10 minutes until the bottom is golden brown and cheese has melted.

Serve hot.

Appetizers

Méli-mélo croquant – Salade de printemps aux pois chiches frais, carottes naines et ricotta salée

After the seafood month, I thought it was about time to celebrate springs, at least in California. The beauty about California is that they grow a lot of fruits and vegetables and you get quite a lot of different varieties so it’s easy to eat local and get a healthy diet but most of all varied. It’s been raining quite a lot but then clears up and it’s a sign that springs is on its way.

Unfortunately France has been devastated with a lot of storms and floods, but the area where my parents live has been less severely affected.

After a trip to my favorite store last weekend, to the other side of the Bay, I saw that many springs vegetables were starting to be on the shelves, among those, some beautiful fresh chick peas in their green pod.

It has been a while I haven’t seen fresh chick peas, I remember my grandparents in Italy would grow them in the garden and my mom would eat them raw with a little salt, the same way you could eat fresh raw fava bean. So of course, I had to buy some, and of course I had to buy a lot. So more chick pea dishes are coming this way. Fresh chick peas can be eaten like the dry kind, and cook as fast as peas, so if you over cook them, they’ll get mushy.

There is usually one or sometimes two peas in one pod, unlike peas or fava beans. They’re delicious raw and have a sweet flavor that are delightful in salads. Round baby carrots are very sweet and flavorful and their crunchiness is perfect on a spring salad like this one where all ingredients are raw.

I remembered this wonderful salad in Tel Aviv where they had cut the cucumbers as sticks and left it unpeeled, so that’s what my cucumbers look like.

The vinaigrette is simple, I wanted a fresh, light and fruity vinaigrette that would enhance the natural flavors of all the ingredients therefore avocado oil combined with pomegranate vinegar did accentuate that particular delicious flavor you get in raw vegetables.

Ingredients for 2

For the salad

• 1/2 frisée salad
• 1/2 cup fresh chick peas
• 6 round baby carrots, peeled
• 6 purple baby carrots, peeled
• 2 radishes, paper thin sliced
• 4 Persian cucumbers, cut in sticks
• 1/2 avocado, sliced
• 1 tbs sunflower seeds

For the vinaigrette

• 3 tbs avocado oil
• 1 tbs pomegranate vinegar
• 1 tbs mint, chopped
• 1 tsp scallions, chopped
• salt and pepper

Preparation

For the vinaigrette, mix all ingredients together and mix well.

In a mixing bowl toss salad with some vinaigrette. Divide the salad in each plate, add the rest of the vegetables. Add ricotta salata on top, sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Top with remaining vinaigrette.

Express - Less than 30 minutes, Salads

A la pêche aux moules….- Moules et praires aux poireaux, bière, piment et herbes

A la pêche aux moules, moules, moules, je ne veux plus y aller maman, les gens de la ville, ville, ville, m’ont pris mon panier… despite mon panier, I still want to go mussel fishing!

I am afraid I cannot stop eating seafood, it’s becoming an obsessive compulsive thing, I somehow realized the more you do something, the more you want to keep doing it…and right now I am dealing with eating mussels or anything that looks like a mussel (so clams are included in it). I promise this will be the last seafood dish for a little while, unless I am unable to control my seafood compulsion and if I come to that point, I think I will have to start doing yoga or meditation.

I have been to my favorite store this weekend to the other side of the Bay and loaded my cart with so many wonderful goodies I thought I would never find. I think the day I will leave the Bay Area, I will miss this store so much, because at this point I have not seen something that amazing and exciting anywhere else, not even in any European city…just Berkeley, California. Berkeley I salute you.

Mussels are so popular in Mediterranean cuisine, and moules marinières, probably the most common way to prepare mussels in Belgium (and in France too), and are on every menu of any French restaurant in the US. So enough of moules marinières, and let’s add un “petit piment” in our mussels. Dans la vie, il faut du piment!, we need some spice in your life, don’t we?

Leeks and mussels go so well together, and here the broth is enhanced by lemon juice and chili, with a dash of beer, what a flavorful combination. I usually count 2 lbs of mussels per person, depending if you serve mussels as an appetizer or main course and the appetite of your guests.

Ingredients for 2

• 2 lbs mussels
• 1 lb clams
• 1 shallot, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 leek, chopped
• chili flakes
• juice of one lemon
• a dash of beer (1/2 cup)
• 1/2 tbs parsley, chopped
• 1/2 tsp basil, chopped
• 2 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

In a large pot, heat 1 tbs olive oil. Add shallots and garlic, stir and let it brown for a few minutes. Add leeks and cook until tender, then add chili flakes.  Add mussels and clams to the pot. Stir well, adjust with salt and pepper.

After the mussels and clams are half open, add beer. Mix well. Cover and let the mussels cook until they open completely. Add lemon juice and 1 tbs olive oil, stir and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes, at the end at parsley and basil.

Appetizers, Express - Less than 30 minutes, Fish/Seafood

Une brioche toute simple, mais si moelleuse – Une brioche parmi tant d’autres

This brioche is simple, quite unpretentious and low-key, light, fluffy but nonetheless very tasty, just like we enjoy to have on some mornings with butter, jam and strong coffee. There are many versions and kinds of brioches, you just have to play around with quantities of eggs, flour, sugar butter and yeast, but the technique is always the same: a “pâte levée“, a “rised dough” . Pâte levée technique consists of preparing the dough the night before with a yeast, then refrigerate it overnight. The cold will enable the dough to ferment slowly in a cold environment, therfore acidity developed by the cells of the yeast will give more flavor to the ingredients and a better aspect to the dough due to the reinforcement of the tenacity of gluten.

Anyone who has been to France knows what brioche is, it’s probably as famous as Eiffel Tower, baguette and croissant. After brioche tressée that tastes more like Pain au lait (milk bread?) that I have been making for a while and the extra rich Farro brioche with goose egg, I went back to a more simple and traditional version of brioche. Retour à la simplicité.

Basically its origin goes back to Middle Ages in Normandy where similar “rised dough” have been retraced. Brioche is not considered a bread in France but a viennoiserie, which is slightly different. Techniques of making viennoiseries are similar to those of making bread but since they have more fat and sugar content, they’re considered more like pastries.

On Friday evenings when I realize I have nothing left for the Saturday morning breakfast, I start making one of those brioches, yes it needs to be prepared the night before and needs to rise in the refrigerator overnight for a light and fluffy dough. I am afraid you cannot cut any corners if you don’t have a bread-machine and will have to wait for the day after to enjoy it.

Breakfast is sacred in my little world and getting up in the morning with nothing to eat is not an option! Even though I have been living in the US for many years, I am not used to the brunch concept, I guess it’s hard to change habits. Brunch is a little confusing, it makes sense if you get up at 11 am but not if you’re up at 7 am like me and have breakfast as early as 7:30 am, call me boring but I like to stick to my traditional coffee, bread, jam and butter in the mornings. Et non, on ne se débarasse pas de ses habitudes comme ca! (no, you don’t get rid of your habits so easily!).

I have been playing around with ingredients quantities, putting less sugar than required because I love jam on my brioche slice so it’s sweet enough for me but you can certainly add more sugar in the dough if your tooth is sweeter.

Ingredients for 6 people

• 10.58 oz (300 g) flour
• 1.5 cup lukewarm milk
• 1.41 oz (40 g) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3.17 oz (90 g) butter
• 1 dose dry yeast or fresh yeast
• 2 pinches salt

Preparation

Place flour in a mixing bowl, add dry yeast (if using fresh yeast, needs to be dissolved in milk), sugar. Mix well all ingredients.

Add one egg, milk and salt and gradually mix all ingredients. When the dough has thickened, add the extra egg. Knead the dough to incorporate the egg. It might be sticky at the beginning, but keep kneading.

Add butter at the end and mix until the dough becomes elastic but not too sticky. Let it rise for 3 hours. Then, knead a little to remove the “air”.

Place in the refrigerator overnight with a plastic warp, and preventing air from getting into the container.

In the morning, remove dough from the refrigerator, knead slightly and cut in 4 equal parts and form little balls. Place each ball in a greased rectangular baking pan loaf.

Let it rise for an additional hour and cook in a pre-heated oven at 365-370F for about 40 minutes.

Let it cool and enjoy plain or with your favorite jam. I don’t usually add extra butter, since the dough has already some, but you can!

Breads, Breakfast/Brunch

Orzotto, quasi come un risotto – Orzo allo zafferano e calamari

It looks like I am on some seafood addiction lately, I understand it can get boring for people not fond of seafood. I bought extra calamari when I made the stew to be able to use in some other dish.

That wonderful little cereal used here, barley is one of my favorites. What I love about barely is that it always remains firm, so you always get that crunchy and a very pleasant little chewy bite. I used pearl barley whose bran layer has been removed (vs. bran barley) its size doubles volume when cooked due to its high content in fibers. It contains a lot of minerals and vitamins therefore makes it a perfect nutritious and healthy grain with low glycemic index. Orzo in Italian means barely and not “orzo pasta”.

The consumption of barley goes back to Greek and Roman civilizations due to its nutritious properties, the easiness of its transportation and long preservation, it’s supposed to be one of the most ancient grain that can be retraced back to the Egyptians.

In Italy, Orzo is also used in making a drink mixture called “caffè d’orzo“, basically it’s a powder like coffee (you can either dissolve it in hot water like instant coffee or preapre it in a moka maker) and used like coffee with milk to be served for breakfast. Its consumption as a drink started in the XVIII e century among peasants and continued throughout the years. It was mostly a drink consumed by elderly and kids for its healing properties, it’s nowadays served “al bar” (coffee shop) like espresso and is even more expensive. I love my bowl of caffè d’orzo, sometimes that’s my dinner!

I love saffron barley as much as I love saffron risotto, sometimes I just like something that has a less creamy texture than risotto, more chewy and fluffy, so barley or farro are my first choices. You can make this dish with farro too, it has equally lots of great nutrients. This barley dish has tons of character with the presence of saffron and gives it a distinct Mediterranean flair. A simple and flavorful dish very easy to prepare, un ottimo primo piatto molto gustoso ma veloce da preparare!

Ingredients for 2

• 6.34 oz (or 180 g) barley
• 1/2 shallot, finely chopped
• 1 dose saffron
• vegetable broth
• 1 garlic clove
• 1/3 tsp paprika
• 5.20 oz (or 150 g) calamari, (either already cleaned or not)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Start preparing the barley like a risotto. In a pot, heat 1 tbs olive oil, then add shallot and brown. Infuse saffron in lukewarm broth. Add barley, coat with olive oil and progressively add broth, adjust with salt and pepper (I did not use white wine like in a traditional risotto nor parmesan) and proceed until barley is cooked. You want the barley to have absorbed all the liquid unlike in a risotto, the barley needs to be somehow “dry”.

In a pan, heat 1 tbs olive oil, add garlic and stir. Add calamari, paprika, salt and pepper and sauté at high heat until calamari are cooked but not rubbery and still tender. Reduce a little of the liquid, but keep some.

When barley is cooked, add to the calamari pan, and mix well until the juice has been absorbed by barley. Sprinkle with parsley and serve hot.

Fish/Seafood, Grains