Le Feste
Such a blast spending the holiday season at our place, dining and wining with our Salento family and enjoying everything from cozy moments by fireplaces to aperitivi under the palm trees. We have gathered at one another, brought nibbles and dishes to the table, had drinks in the sunshine, and played pool at the palace. The cheers have been many, food plentiful, and laughter, well, a never ending story that will keep us warm until summer (though we reunite already for Easter). We have truly celebrated this holiday season in the name of friends becoming family, and though the commensality that we all so dearly treasure mostly been voided cameras, some of the preparations have nevertheless been captured. These photos do not even start to reflect the delight of le feste, which have been surreal and dreamy, at once genuinely felt and moment-by-moment treasured as lived, but they capture some of the delights that we have enjoyed beyond all the chatting, cheering, dancing, and playing in our wine and dine moments of being together.
New Years
Cozy start at the end of the year at our place with our beloved Gaynor & Liam. We started with an aperitivo, come di solito. I had prepared a platter with my nowadays classical and much appreciated garlic-chickpea mash with vegetable sticks. On a somewhat experimental loop as I am with my cooking, I had also made bite-size broccoli-pucks topped with imported black tångrom from Sweden. The evening was indeed off to a great end of new beginnings.
The broccoli-pucks turned out a true hit; one of the best thing that they had ever tasted actually! Fortunately, I have written down the ingredients so that a variation may be done for future dinner parties. This is rare, for I usually go with the flow and rarely keep track neither of ingredients nor measurements. But since I did these with the ambition to come up with a new classic, I kept reckord at least of what I had put in them, however I will need to taste my way through the proportions. Beyond continuous tasting while cooking, my secret is usually really good extra virgin olive oil, loads of garlic, chilli, and a mixture of spices that I by chance grab from my spice-trolley. The broccoli-pucks are no different in making. Neither are the slices of baked tofu topped with black cabbage and red tångrom that I had prepared for the luncheon at Shelagh’s the day before new years. Delighted as the other guests were to have vegan caviar, mostly because it brings nice texture and color without the fishy flavor, they could not really tell what it was that made the slices so good. One by one they tried to figure out the seasoning. Well, they mentioned the lemon and the dill, and some could even sense the salvia, but there was something more. This time around, it was my preference for Coratina olive oil, with which I with a gentle touch of love had massaged the cabbage for over 10 minutes, that made the secret. Its spicy and utmost delightful character brings a piquant flavor to the dish, at once a soft touch to the cabbage.
In the Capture of Darlin’ Company
The baked tofu with vegan pesto, red tångrom, and skewers that I had prepared for New Years Eve has just been served and Gaynor excuse herself: she just needs to take a picture! “I never do this, but it just looks so good that I just have to,“ she says in her most wonderful of scottish accents. I take the rare chance to take some too, and to the joking hint of Liam, him asking if he should have his chin in this angle, I capture one of our darlin’ moments spent wining and dining together.
Our stomachs all full and glasses empty, we happily wiggled our way from our place in Sanarica to Paolo’s palace in Muro. One never comes empty handed in Italy, and I had taken the saying si bussa con i piedi rather literally and made two platters for the late night snack table. One with vegetable sticks and my garlic-infused chickpea dip, and one with a take on my lasagna verde. I figured that it makes for a better dish to eat lasagna verde as a finger food in-between dancing, playing pool, and cheering for the new year, so while making some lasagna for the next day dine, I took the opportunity to combine the cooking, making two kind of dishes out of one.
Epiphany Eve
Befana was spent in the most amazing of companies at Cristiana & Emanuele. Sitting around the table with our Salento family, it felt like being in a movie, for the setting was just that perfect! Loving of an atmosphere with which we hang out, Cristiana had prepared an all-vegan lunch with two curries. I am on a green challenge for 2023, and as this is meant as an inspirational journey for me, not as a fuss for our friends to care about, I experimented my way into this blast of a lunch with cime di rapa.
Cime di rapa is not only a traditional flavor of Puglia, but also one of my absolute favorite (winter) greens. The spicy and somewhat bitter taste of the veggie is not for everyone, but if one likes it, one commonly loves it, and I truly do love it! As I recently had done the broccoli-pucks and felt like doing something fun with cime di rapa, I decided to do a take on the pucks. The base of the pucks, with green lentils to glue the veggies together, was topped off with a salt-chilli-garlic-oregano seasoning and voilà, buon appetito per noi. They were served with spicy fagioli verdi and asparagi.
With our hearts full of love from all the fun times spent during le feste, we are now back in Nyköping. Though we have clear memories of all the blurring joy of luncheons, aperitivi, dinners, and late night cheering with darlin’ friends, it is one night in particular that will get us through the dullness of Swedish winter: that of Gaynor and Liam’s first dinner party at their house. What an evening, playing old vinyls, dancing, and eating the most delicious of foods! Liam had cooked all day, making for instance an all-green daal for me. He had visited the local farmer and bought some cavoli salentini — also called mugnuli — and made the dish with them instead of spinach (which he had, had he been in London). If that was not enough, he had bought me a bag of the veggies to take home. I was so happy with his dish that I made a similar one a few days after. I used split green peas instead of green lentils, probably some other spices than he did too, but it made for a pugliese inspired dal of sorts that we enjoyed together with red wine, speaking about that night in Muro.
Season(ed) with love
I love tasty foods almost as much as I love our jolly friends, and as habitually as I share my foods with them, as habitually do I use fists of spices to give the food their flavored character. To make the most of spices, one should heat them together with some real good extra virgin olive oil before adding the rest of the ingredients. The scent of the heated spices will bring as much aroma to the delights of cooking as it will savour to the dish and the commensality with which it is shared.
