Italian

Messada di bue – Italian-style cured beef

May 10, 2011 Food & drink

I’ve said this before, many times, but it bears repeating – the best thing about cooking is the transformation of unpromising ingredients into something better. Take this dish… normally, I’d never dream of eating a piece of brisket without at least a couple of hours on a low heat, let alone raw, but here it [...]

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Should you eat rabbit?

December 1, 2010 Food & drink

Douglas Coupland’s Generation A is a story about a time when all the world’s bees have died and everybody is hooked on a drug that makes them want to be alone. It’s full of Coupland’s characteristic little asides and stories, including one where the highly-politicised, overwrought and transitory girlfriend of one of the characters freaks [...]

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Crostata di more, or Italian blackberry tart

September 4, 2010 Food & drink

Every year, I make the mistake of going blackberry picking in shorts. The thorns on the blackberry canes are fine – I can avoid those – it’s the nettles that always seem to grow around them that get me every time, but foraging food isn’t meant to be easy. You should put a bit of [...]

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Duck prosciutto – the simple art of making your own ham

February 20, 2010 Food & drink

Salt gets a bad press. I know it’s responsible for the untold misery of heart disease, high blood pressure and a thousand other fairly major medical complaints, but it also has a near mythical ability to preserve food and concentrate flavour, the closest thing to culinary alchemy there is. This duck prosciutto, a ham born [...]

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Carpaccio of beef with rosemary

December 30, 2009 Food & drink

There isn’t much cooking involved here, just a little frantic scorching and some very thin slicing. The seared crust of the beef is given a gutsy punch from an excess of rosemary and a good seasoning of salt and pepper. The brief cooking time leaves the centre of the meat entirely raw. It almost goes [...]

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Amaretto and chocolate torte

December 23, 2009 Food & drink

At this time of year, I tend to over indulge a little, not too much, but enough to make me think that, yes, I really do need to go to the gym or grind out some miles along the canal bank. This recipe was the start of the Christmas downfall for this year. It’s rich, [...]

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Jamie’s Italian, Brighton

September 12, 2009 Eating out

I love Brighton. It’s vibrant and exciting, but still has some of that shabby seaside charm and a little of the old menace chronicled so expertly by Graham Greene in the brilliant Brighton Rock. As a seaside town, it’s hard to beat, and as a place to eat out, even harder. As an end-of-holiday meal [...]

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Porchetta, or slow roasted Italian loin of pork

April 29, 2009 Food & drink

The loin of a pig is a magnificent cut of meat, a dense strip of heavy meat flanked by part of the belly and encased in skin destined to crackle, nested in a cradle of bones. As a joint, this has everything. Preparation is simple, and the most important parts happen in the butcher’s shop. [...]

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Pollo Alla Cacciatora, or Italian Chicken Stew with Chianti

March 2, 2009 Food & drink

Chicken cacciatora is a simple dish that yields impressive results. The preparation of this dish takes minutes, but the magic happens over hours as the chicken marinates in wine, before bubbling away in a low oven. The end result is tender chicken in a deep and savoury sauce rich with wine and tomato. Authentic, rustic [...]

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