Casarecce alla maltese

Though I'm just at the start of my Maltese culinary adventures, one thing I have learned about very quickly is the ftira maltija - basically the Maltese sandwich. It's made with ftira, a crusty round bread unique to Malta (as far as I can tell), tomatoes, tuna, olives, and of course capers, which grow wild on the islands. I decided to turn the sandwich into a pasta dish, and the result was quite good, maybe even better than the sandwich!


I used casarecce because I happened to have a bunch on hand, but you could probably substitute almost any type of pasta here. I think both long and short types would work, so spaghetti, farfalle, maccheroni, whatever. The casarecce I used were whole wheat, which I think goes well in this dish, as there are a lot of strong, salty flavors.

Ingredients (per person):
75 g. whole wheat casarecce
1 small yellow onion
1 large clove of garlic
1 small can good-quality tuna
4 large green olives
A handful of fairly fresh capers
Crushed tomatoes/tomato pulp
Extra-virgin olive oil
Oregano
Pepper

First, bring a large pot of water to a boil. While it's heating up, prepare the other ingredients. Peel and chop the onion; crush the garlic, peel it, and then chop it up a bit into even smaller bits; and rinse the olives and capers. Crush the olives with the flat side of a knife to remove the pits and then chop them up. Drain the olive oil from the tuna and break it up a bit with a fork.

When the water is boiling, salt it, and add the casarecce, stirring them every so often to keep them from sticking. After a few minutes, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and when it's hot, add the garlic. After about 15 seconds, add the onion too. Once the onion has turned soft, add the olives, capers, tuna, and tomato pulp, and turn the heat down to low.

When the casarecce are al dente, drain them and add them to the sauce. Sprinkle with oregano and pepper, stir up, and serve warm. Especially serve warm if it's a gray, rainy day like it was here today - in Malta, there don't seem to be gutters, so just a bit of rain makes the streets get crazy flooded!!

Fusilli estivi con pesto

This is a sort of take-off on caprese - the classic Italian salad of mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. Here the basil comes in the form of pesto, which is very useful if you have too much basil to make a normal caprese!


Though I had my own basil plant last summer, this summer I've been moving around/on vacation too much to deal with having plants, so I've just been buying basil at the farmer's markets each week. The only problem with this is that you can't buy basil in quantities smaller than a gigantic bunch, and of course basil only lasts for a few days, so you have to eat it quick!

Since I really can't eat that much basil on my own, I've just been using as much as I need and then turning the rest into pesto. This has led to a bevy of interesting pesto creations for dinner, and so far, this pasta is my favorite.

Ingredients:
75 g. fusilli per person
A handful of cherry tomatoes
Ciliegini di mozzarella (the little cherry tomato-sized balls of mozzarella)
Kalamata olives (I added them to jazz things up, but if you want to keep it simple, they can easily be omitted)
Pesto
A few basil leaves for garnish

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, and add the fusilli. Wash the basil, cherry tomatoes, and olives, and chop the cherry tomatoes into halves. Pit the olives, and chop them into halves.

When the pasta is done cooking, drain it, and run cold water over it to cool it. Drain again, and combine with the pesto, mixing well. Add the cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, and olives, and mix again.

Serve, adding the basil leaves on top.

Farfalle with watermelon

This pasta is certainly not traditional, but it is tasty and it's a great way to use up any extra watermelon you've got sitting around!


I read somewhere that you can use watermelon pretty much anywhere you would use tomato. While watermelon is clearly no tomato substitue, the idea of using watermelon in a savory dish intrigued me, and as I have a gigantic watermelon sitting in my fridge, now seemed like a good time to try it out!

I did use the watermelon pretty much as I would use cherry tomatoes, though I probably put more thought into the other elements of the dish that I would have if I were using tomatoes. I wanted to combine the watermelon with something salty to highlight its sweetness, so I chose black olives, which worked perfectly. I imagine feta would also be delicious here, but I'll have to try that one another time.

Ingredients:
75 g. farfalle per person
1 large slice of watermelon per person
A handful of kalamata olives
Several leaves of basil
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and, in the meantime, cut the watermelon into small chunks. Rinse and pit the olives, slice them in half, and add them to the watermelon. Wash the basil leaves and chop them up.

When the water is boiling, add lots of salt, and then the farfalle. Let cook until al dente, drain, and run under cold water. Drain the farfalle again, and mix them with the watermelon, olives, and basil. Drizzle with olive oil, and add the pepper (I didn't add any more salt because I had used a lot when cooking the farfalle, but if you think the dish needs it, go ahead and add some more).

Serve immediately or after refrigerating - this is a great dish for a hot day!

Fennel and orange salad with black olives and pearl couscous

At its most basic, this salad is a simple mix of fennel and orange slices drizzled in olive oil and served with a bit of salt and pepper. The combination of fennel and orange is delightful and quite different from your usual salad flavors.


Because I wanted to make this salad a main meal and not just a side to something else, I decided to liven it up with some olives and sweet onions. I added a hearty batch of pearl couscous (also called Israeli couscous or Lebanese couscous), which is quickly becoming one of my favorite grains, and voilà - a wonderful Winter salad that makes a nice contrast to all the soups and stews and other hearty fare that's generally on the table at this time of year!


Fennel is another one of those vegetables that I had never even heard of, let alone tasted, until I went to Italy. In Italy however, fennel is everywhere, and though I don't think I ever actually ate any fennel while I was there, I did become a big fan of fennel tea.

Fennel has a lovely anise flavor that mixes perfectly with the sweet, very slight tartness of oranges. Though I could only find baby fennel at the market this week, the salad is usually made with full, grown-up fennel. It is supposedly of Sicilian origin, though I've also read that the salad, or at least something very similar, is a traditional Greek food. In any case, it's delicious and I'm sure you can come up with lots of interesting variations on it, should you so desire.

Ingredients:
1 bulb of fennel
2 smallish oranges or 1 large orange
2 green onions or 1 red onion
A handful of kalamata olives
100 g pearl couscous
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Fill a small saucepan with about a cup of water and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling, turn the heat off and add the pearl couscous. Cover the pot and let sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Wash the fennel, chop off the very bottom, and trim off the leaves, reserving some to garnish. Chop the onions into medium-thick slices. Rinse the olives and pit them if necessary by crushing them with the flat side of a knife.

Combine the fennel, onions, and olives in a large bowl. Peel the orange(s) over a bowl to catch their juices and divide them into sections.

When the pearl couscous has absorbed all the water (takes about 10 minutes), fluff it with a fork and add it to the fennel, onions, and olives. Combine the orange juice (hopefully you'll have at least a couple spoonfuls - if not consider adding a bit more, or alternatively, use some lemon juice) with a spoonful or two of olive oil. Drizzle the olive oil and orange juice over the salad, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stir well to combine.

Spoon the salad into your serving dishes, then add the orange slices and finally, garnish with the reserved fennel leaves.

Pizza with potatoes and olives

Potato is not something you usually see on pizza here in the U.S. - at least, I've never seen it, though I have friends who claim they have, so I suppose it does exist somewhere in the country. In any case, it's definitely not as common here as it is in Italy, where, after my initial surprise, I soon got used to the sight of pizza with cubes or, more frequently, thin strips of potatoes on top.


I never actually tried pizza with potatoes while I was living there, partly because I was still a bit suspicious of the idea, and partly because my normal lunch spot served a version of pizza with potatoes and brie, and I'm not particularly fond of brie.

However, I was back in Italy over the holidays, and I took advantage of the opportunity to eat many many pizzas, one of which (well two largish slices of one), eaten on a particularly cold day outside the train station in Bologna, was a pizza with potatoes and olives. I think it was the freezing weather that caused me to order it - something about warm potatoes on pizza just seemed incredibly appealing that day in a way it never had before! And it turned out that all my previous hesitation about eating potatoes on pizza was unwarranted - the pizza was delicious. And so of course, I had to try it on my own back at home, which brings us to the recipe for one very tasty pizza with potatoes and olives!

For the dough:
150 g bread flour (though I usually use at least some whole wheat flour, I thought that a pizza with whole wheat flour and potatoes would just be too much, so I stuck with plain white flour for this one)
A spoonful of sea salt
1/2 package active dry yeast
A spoonful of olive oil
Warmish water

For the toppings:
Half a can of tomatoes in their juice. If they're in season, of course, fresh tomatoes are fine - in either case, I strongly recommend using San Marzano tomatoes. I was able to find several cans that had been imported from Napoli, and they are wonderful, so get them if you can!
A dollop of triple-concentrated tomato paste*
A spoonful of salt
A small spoonful of sugar
About 50 g pizza mozzarella
1 potato
5 or 6 black olives
Oregano
Olive oil, if desired

*An Italian friend and fellow pizza-maker gave me this tip about adding the triple-concentrated tomato paste to the sauce to make it extra flavorful. Unfortunately, I don't know if you can find the stuff here in the U.S, so if you can't get it, just use double-concentrated. In Italy, you can buy the triple-concentrated paste at the supermarkets (the brand is Mutti), so I made sure to get myself a tube on my most recent visit!


About an hour and a half before you plan to eat your pizza, make the dough. Dissolve the yeast in a small amount of tepid water and let sit until activated (a sort of film should form on top). Pour the flour into a large bowl and make it into a fountain-shape with a well in the middle. Sprinkle the salt around the edges. Pour the yeast-water mixture into the middle of the flour, along with the olive oil, and start to mix the flour together with your hand, incorporating flour from the sides of the well. Add the water a bit at a time, until the dough forms a not-too-sticky mass that separates from the edges of the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead for about ten minutes, until the dough resists when you push down on it. When the dough is ready, spread a bit of olive oil on the inside of a clean bowl, form the dough into a ball, and place the ball in the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in a warm non-drafty place, like a closet or under a bed, for an hour.

If you have a baking stone, place it in the oven and preheat the oven to approximately 500º F/250º C. If you don't have a baking stone, just preheat the oven.

Peel the potato and chop it into cubes or strips, whichever you desire (this pizza was also an opportunity for me to make use of my wonderful stocking present, pictured below).


Bring a pot of water to a boil, salt it, and add the potato. Let the potato cook until fairly soft, though not mushy - 10-20 minutes. Test it with a fork to check - the fork should go through the potato pieces, but the pieces shouldn't break apart. When the potato is done cooking, drain the water and let the pieces cool.

If you're using fresh tomatoes, peel them and seed them, squeeze out all the watery juice parts, and then chop into smallish chunks. If you're using canned tomatoes, just chop them, and even that may not be necessary if they're pre-crushed. Place a small saucepan over medium heat and add the tomatoes, the dollop of tomato paste, the salt, and the sugar. Cover and let cook about 10-15 minutes, turning the heat down to low once the sauce starts to boil.

Chop the mozzarella into small bits and rinse the olives, pit them if necessary, and chop them into halves (I learned the hard way that this is an important step - non-chopped olives have a tendency to roll off the pizza and onto the baking stone where they become little black charred pieces of gunk).

Have all your toppings ready when you make the pizza - you don't want to let the pizza sit around a lot while you're putting stuff on it because that increases the chances it will stick to the pizza peel, which tends to lead to disaster.

After the pizza dough has sat for an hour, take out the bowl, and turn the dough out onto the floured pizza peel. Lots of people use cornmeal on the peel to keep the pizza from sticking but I really don't like the way it tastes on the bottom of a pizza, so I just use flour and try to be very careful! Of course, if you're not using a baking stone, just place the pizza dough on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or some such thing and put that in the oven when ready.

Punch the ball of dough down and then flatten it out to a disc. Place the disc on top of your fists and cross them, bringing the right one in front of and across the left. As you uncross your fists by bringing the right fist back, the dough should spin a bit, stretching as it goes. Repeat this, even tossing into the air when you can, until the dough is nice and stretched out into a thin disc. You can finish it off by rotating it on the peel, pinching the edges as you go. Once the pizza dough is formed, make sure it isn't sticking to the peel by bouncing it around a bit or blowing underneath it.

Spoon the tomato sauce onto the dough, leaving plenty of space at the edges, especially if you like crust! Sprinkle on the mozzarella, then add the potatoes and olives. Drizzle on a bit of olive oil, if desired, and sprinkle the oregano over everything. Quickly transfer the pizza from the peel to the baking stone by giving the peel a sharp jerk (try to have it as horizontal as possible while you do this).

Let the pizza bake for 8-10 minutes, until the crust is golden-brown. Remove from the oven, and eat immediately!

Pizza Napoletana

This pizza falls under the category of pizza rossa which literally means "red pizza" in Italian and refers to pizzas that use tomato sauce, but no cheese (there is also pizza bianca - white pizza - which has cheese but no tomatoes). Though I have seen some recipes online that call for mozzarella, the type I usually saw on pizzeria menus in Italy did not have any cheese, so I stuck with that version.


Though Naples is most famous for being the birthplace of the classic Pizza Margherita and to a lesser extent the Pizza Marinara, I think this particular pizza, whose origins are not as clear, gets to be called 'Neapolitan' because its ingredients are very typical of Southern Italian cuisine.

Many non-Italians do not realize just how regionally diverse Italy is, but the fact is that up until its unification in 1861, there wasn't really an 'Italy'. There were city-states like Florence and Venice, kingdoms like the kingdom of Naples, and all sorts of other territories and republics, but there was no Italy, either politically, culturally, or even conceptually.

The gaping differences between regions, and particularly between the North and the South are still largely apparent to anyone who spends even a few days in the country. Ask any Milanese person about the South and they'll immediately go into a long tirade about how nothing ever works there, how nobody seems to care about things like rules and laws, and how everyone is consistently late for everything. Similarly, ask a Neapolitan about the North and you'll get an earful of how cold the Northerners are, how they just can't sit back and enjoy life and how they are always worrying and rushing off to do silly things like work.

The differences extend beyond cultural attitudes into almost every aspect of life. For example, while Italian is the official language of the country, almost every region has its own dialect (sometimes several), and these dialects differ from each other far more than say, a Scottish accent does from a Brooklyn one. A large number of these dialects are actually incomprehensible to Italians who did not grow up speaking or hearing them. When I saw the movie Gomorra, which was about the Neapolitan mafia and was almost entirely in Napolitano, the Neapolitan dialect, it had Italian subtitles from start to finish, and it's a good thing too because without them I would have been completely lost!

The diversity and richness of local traditions in Italy is also apparent, and very important, in its cuisine. Every region and often every city or town has its own proud menu of traditional dishes - the Ligurian trofie al pesto, ossobuco and risotto alla Milanese in Milan, bucatini all'amatriciana in Rome, bistecca alla Fiorentina in Florence, burrata and orecchiette in Puglia, and spaghetti al bolognese from Bologna (unsurprisingly) are only a few of the thousands and thousands of regionally celebrated dishes.

The pizza napoletana presented here may not actually be from Naples, but its ingredients are certainly more typical of Southern Italian cuisine. When I think of the food of Southern Italy, I mainly think of three things: tomatoes, seafood, and spiciness. In contrast, Northern Italian food often tends to be richer and creamier, using butter where Southern dishes use olive oil, or risotto where Southerners use pasta, and certainly using a lot less peperoncino!

This particular pizza, while it does not require the use of peperoncino (though you can add it if you so desire), is very very salty. Make sure that when you sit down to eat it, you have handy a large glass of water, or better yet, wine!

To make it, you will need:
About 150 g flour (I used whole wheat as always)
Yeast
Water
A pinch of salt
About 100 g of San Marzano tomatoes, peeled and crushed to just pulp (I actually just use canned tomatoes for pizzas, since my unstrained tomato sauces tend to come out fairly juicy and would probably get the dough sopping wet)
A handful of black olives, with the pits removed
A smaller handful of capers
5-6 anchovies
A few leaves of basil
Oregano
A spoonful of olive oil

First of all, you need to make the dough. If you are using active dry yeast as opposed to instant yeast, activate it by putting it in a small bowl with some tepid water. Sift the flour into a large bowl, add in the yeast first, then the salt and the water, a bit at a time, and stir until everything is well combined, and you have a moist but not overly gooey ball of dough.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes or until it is springy and resistant. When the dough gets to this point, place it in a floured bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a cloth and leave in a warm, non-drafty place for an hour to an hour and a half.


At least 45 minutes before you plan to bake the pizza, preheat your oven to 500º F / 260º C. If you are lucky enough to have a pizza stone, put it in the oven before you start to preheat it.

If you are making your own tomato sauce, peel the tomatoes and strain them to get nice solid pulp. Otherwise, just open the can (but if you go with canned tomatoes you should still buy canned San Marzano tomatoes because they are the best).

Prepare the toppings by washing the olives and capers and tearing the basil into little bits. When you have all your toppings ready and after the dough has doubled in size, take the dough out of the bowl and gently shape it into a flat circle, making it as thin as you can. If you haven't yet mastered the art of spinning pizza dough into the air and elegantly catching it on your fists, just try bouncing it back and forth from fist to fist (no nails!) and then stretching it out further on a flat surface, pinching the ends a bit.

Transfer the pizza to an oiled baking sheet (if you're not using a baking stone) or a pizza peel (if you are using a baking stone).

Spoon the tomato sauce in an even, not-too-thick layer over all the pizza except the outermost rim. Distribute the olives and capers evenly over the pizza, and then place the anchovies on in strips radiating out from the center. Sprinkle everything with the basil and oregano and add just a drizzling of olive oil.

Put the pizza into the oven as quickly and as carefully as you can. Let bake for 7-8 minutes, remove, and serve piping hot!

Penne "alla Greca"

This is a wonderful pasta dish to make in the summer because it involves very little actual heating. Besides that, it's super-simple and soooooo good! Though the classic tomato sauce with vegetables will always be my favorite pasta dish, this one is definitely in the running for second place.



For one person, you will need:
75 g of penne or other short pasta
25-50 g of feta
10-12 cherry tomatoes
Half a medium-sized red bell pepper
One small red onion
A handful of kalamata olives
Olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Salt & pepper
Dill (fresh is better, but dried is easier to find and it works just fine)
Mint (same as for the dill)

In the version pictured here, I didn't have any dill or mint on hand (this is from when I was Italy and dill is almost impossible to find there), so I used some fresh parsley which also worked nicely

Set some water to boil in a large pot. While you're waiting for the water to boil, chop the cherry tomatoes into halves or quarters if they're very large, and dice the pepper and the onion. Combine the cherry tomatoes with the pepper and onion in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Add the lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill, and mint, stir everything up, and then let sit.

Once the water has come to a boil, salt it, and add the penne. Then, pit the olives by crushing them under the flat side of a knife and chop them in half.

You should let the penne cook just until they are al dente, i.e., 'to the tooth', i.e., cooked through but still chewy and somewhat resistant to your teeth when you bite into them. Though with enough experience cooking various types of pasta, you can usually make a pretty good guess as to when the pasta has cooked just the right amount, the most foolproof way to get good al dente pasta is simply to test every so often by fishing one out and munching on it!

Once the penne are done, drain them, and then mix them into the pepper-onion-cherry tomato mix*. Add the olives, crumble the feta over everything and enjoy!

*If it's a really hot day, this pasta also works wonderfully well served cold - just run some cold water over the penne immediately after you drain them. I usually don't do this, but that's because I love the way the feta just melts in your mouth after it's come into contact with the warm pasta...