Insalata di puntarelle, capperi e acciughe Puntarelle salad with capers and anchovies
Puntarelle is difficult to get in this country, but beautiful, especially raw, rinsed and kept in a bowl of ice cubes to get rid of the bitterness. It’s a real thirst-quencher. When people ask me what puntarelle is like, I usually compare it to fennel, because they share very similar characteristics, apart from the aniseed flavour of fennel. The puntarelle season runs from October to January/February, but as the time goes on it can become more bitter and woody, so you need to wash it much more, and also eventually discard the tougher parts. Otherwise, the closest you can get is chicory, cut into strips, but don’t put these in ice.
When we make this dish, we usually discard the outer leaves of the puntarelle, but, if you like, you can keep them to serve as an accompaniment to fish or meat, especially barbecued meat. Blanch the leaves briefly in boiling salted water, then drain, chop and sauté in a little olive oil. Mix with some toasted pine nuts and some sultanas that have been soaked in water for half an hour or so to plump them up. You could even add the mixture to this salad – spoon it on to your plates first, then arrange the salad on top.
2 tomatoes
2 heads of puntarelle.(or chicory)
8 anchovy fillets
2 tablespoons baby capers (or 3 tablespoons larger capers)
small bunch of chives, cut into batons
4 tablespoons Oil and lemon dressing (see page 52)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
Blanch the tomatoes, skin, quarter and deseed (see page 304).
Discard the outer green leaves of the puntarelle, slice the hearts very thinly lengthways, then wash well under cold running water until the water is clear – the puntarelle will turn the water green at first – to take away some of the bitterness. When you serve the puntarelle it needs to be really crisp, so put it into a bowl with some ice cubes and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours, adding more ice if necessary, and it will curl up beautifully.
Drain the puntarelle well and pat dry. In a bowl, mix together the tomatoes, anchovies, capers, chives and finally the puntarelle. Season, but be careful with the salt, as the anchovies and capers will add quite a lot of saltiness. Toss with the oil and lemon dressing and serve as quickly as possible, drizzled with the olive oil.
‘Unique and pungent’
Capers are beautiful things, with a unique pungent flavour, which we use a lot in Italy, especially with antipasti, but also with meat and fish. When Prince Charles talked about boiled mutton with caper sauce at a celebration of English mutton and they said this was an old English sauce, I was amazed. Of course you see capers in jars all over the world these days, but I had always thought of fresh capers as Italian. Then I did some research, and found out that in the 1700s there were guys who brought Marsala wine and capers over to England from Italy.
The best capers come from the islands of Salina and Pantelleria off Sicilia, with their volcanic soil and hot climate. The capers, which are not pods, as many people think, but tiny tight flower buds of the shrub Capparis spinosa, grow everywhere. The shrubs are planted in special trenches which are dug to hold them firm and protect them from the sirocco wind. And of course, the people of each island will say that their capers are the best.
Like saffron, capers are harvested by hand, in the late spring/early summer, before they begin to open. It is only if you pick them at just the right time that you get the proper, stratified texture. If the bud hasn’t developed enough, they are too compact. Like olives, they must be cured, as they are too bitter to eat as they are. The best are laid down on canvas outside, to get the sun for a couple of days, then layered with salt in wooden barrels, though they can also be put into brine or wine vinegar.
We use them in tartar sauces, hot caper sauces, sweet and sour sauces and salsa verde, and serve them with any kind of dish where you want their saltiness and special flavour to cut through a fatty ingredient. Sometimes, also, we soak them for 24 hours, then crush them, and fry them as a garnish for fish dishes. It is always best to add capers to dishes at the end if you are using them in cooking, or they will be too strong.
If the buds are allowed to stay on the bushes, they open into beautiful white flowers that seem to turn the whole island into a sea of white, before developing into fruit, which we call the caper berry, or cucunci. They look a little like green olives on stalks, but when you cut them in half they are full of tiny seeds. They have a similar flavour to capers, but are less intense. Sometimes we combine capers and caper berries in the same dish, as in Monkfish with walnut and caper sauce (agrodolce, see page 426) in which the caper berries go into a rocket salad.
Insalata di endivia e Ovinfort Chicory with Ovinfort cheese
Ovinfort is a fantastic Sardinian blue cheese that didn’t exist ten years ago. Now I think it beats any French Roquefort – though I would say that, wouldn’t I? In the North of Italy we are more used to blue cheeses made from cows’ milk, but this is made from very high quality ewes’ milk and matured for ninety days, so it has quite a strong spicy flavour. People sometimes forget that cheeses have seasons – like every other natural product – and this one is available most of the year except between September and mid-December, when the ewes need their milk for their lambs. If you can’t find Ovinfort, you could use a hard Gorgonzola, or even Roquefort – just don’t tell me.
If you want to serve this dish for a party, you could use each chicory leaf to hold the pear and cheese. Drizzle a little mayonnaise into each leaf, put a slice of pear on top, followed by a slice of cheese, and let everyone help themselves.
2 ripe pears, such as Comice
2 heads of yellow chicory and 2 of red chicory (if possible, otherwise 4 yellow)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (see page 53)
1 teaspoon English mustard
2 tablespoons Giorgio’s vinaigrette (see page 51)
150g Ovinfort cheese (or mature Gorgonzola)
salt and pepper
Peel, quarter and core the pears, then slice