yolks, the ricotta, spinach (you can use frozen if you don’t have fresh, just make sure it’s well thawed and drained), marjoram and a couple of pinches of salt and pepper.
Back to the pasta sheets. Put a teaspoon of the filling mixture at regular, well-spaced intervals. Paint around them with the egg whites. Lay another pasta sheet on top and press down over the mounds of filling. Cut into ravioli shapes with a pasta cutter.
Bring a pot of water to boil, with a bit of salt and olive oil. Cook for about 2 minutes. Whilst it’s cooking, make the sage butter. Gently heat the butter in a frying pan with the slightly torn-up sage leaves. Spoon out the ravioli into your serving dish, cover with the sage butter and serve.
Orecchiette pasta with cauliflower
Orecchiette al cavolfiore
Ingredients for 4 people
Cauliflower – one medium sized
Garlic – 1 clove
Chilli – 1
Extra virgin olive oil – 2 tablespoons
Orecchiette – 500g
Salt
Parmesan – grated to serve
This is a different take on the more common orrechiette with broccoli, which we found at a lovely little trattoria in Urbino.
Cut the cauliflower into little florets, cook in salted boiling water for 5 minutes and then drain. Peel the garlic and seed and chop the chilli. Heat the olive oil (Marchigiani if you can find it) and gently cook the garlic and chilli for a few minutes. Add the cauliflower and cook for a further 5 minutes so there’s a bit of colour to the veg.
Cook the orecchiette in salted water according to the instructions on the packet. Once it’s al dente, drain and toss into the cauliflower. Serve with a generous handful of grated parmesan.
Pan-fried trout with polenta crust and almonds
Trota in padella con impanatura di polenta e mandorle
Ingredients for 4 people
Trout – 2 whole ones gutted, rinsed and patted dry
Polenta – 1 cup
Olive oil – 2 tablespoons of the peppery kind
Lemon – cut into wedges
Almonds – 2/3 of a cup, slivered and blanched
Always hungry to extend our cooking repertoire, Cathy and I did a course called ‘Flavors of Olive Oil’. It was run by Deborah Krasner, an olive oil aficionado who efficiently taught us the multitudinous uses of fine olive oil, from soups to cakes. Cathy’s favourite was the pan-fried trout with polenta crust. Even the crunchy skin was delicious. I was turned on by Deborah’s orange and caraway seed cake. It uses olive oil instead of butter, so it’s guilt free (low in saturated, high in monounsaturated fats) and apparently very forgiving to make for a cake novice like me.
Roll the fish in a plateful of the polenta. Shake off the excess.
Heat a cast-iron frying pan, and when it’s hot, add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. When the oil is hot add the fish. Brown the fish on both sides, about 4 minutes per side depending on the thickness. Once they’re cooked put each fish on a plate with a wedge of lemon.
Wipe the pan and heat the remaining olive oil. Brown the almonds over a medium-high flame and stir continuously. As soon as they are golden and aromatic pour the almonds and oil over the fish. Serve with a flavoursome green salad.
Orange, almond and caraway seed cake
Ingredients
Unbleached flour – 300g
Sugar – 250g
Fine sea salt – ¼ teaspoon
Baking powder – 1 teaspoon
Bicarbonate of soda – 1 teaspoon
Eggs – 3 large ones
Full fat milk – 300ml
Olive oil – 100ml of the fruity kind
Orange – grated zest of 1
Vanilla extract – 1 teaspoon
Sliced almonds – 80g
Caraway seeds – 1 tablespoon
Icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 180oC / gas mark 4. Grease a bundt mould tin (one of the ring shaped ones) with a bit of olive oil and don’t forget the middle funnel bit. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate through a sieve into a big mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the eggs, milk, olive oil, zest and vanilla.
Using a whisk, beat the wet ingredients together in the centre of the bowl, gradually drawing in the dry ingredients as you do so. Continue until all the ingredients are blended. Now add the almonds and caraway seeds and mix lightly with a spatula or wooden spoon.
Pour the smooth batter into the bundt tin and bake for 50–60 minutes, or until the cake is cooked through (if you stick a metal skewer in it will come out clean) and golden brown. Cool it in the pan on a rack then run a knife around the edge and invert it onto a serving plate. When it’s completely cool dust with icing sugar, admire it for a minute and then eat a slice with a cup of tea.
‘Choking priest’ pasta
Ingredients for 4 people
plain flour – 250g
Eggs – 2
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon
Every little corner of Italy has a pasta that it calls its own, and if you’re lucky it comes along with a bit of history or a nice story. The best I’ve heard so far is Le Marche’s very own strozzapreti. Not only does it have a clever little twist in it that means sauces (like the ubiquitous wild boar ragù) stick to it in gooey lumps, but best of all, its name means ‘priest choker’.
This, Sandro our estate agent explained, goes back to the time when the church was a big landowner in Le Marche. The farmers’ wives would make this pasta to grease the palms, or rather fill the bellies, of the local clergymen. But the farmers would go wild with jealousy (eating your wife’s pasta is tantamount to bedding her, Sandro told us) and so wish for the pasta to choke the gluttonous priests to death. Anyway, we’ve had fun making our own strozzapreti at home. It’s just a shame we have no priest friends to invite round for dinner.
Make the pasta according to the instructions for lemon ravioli. Lay the thin dough on a floury board and cut into long strips about 3cm wide. Take two wooden barbecue skewers and roll a length of dough around first one skewer then the next. You should end up with an ‘S’ shape, with a skewer in each hole of the ‘S’. Give it a further little twist to make sure that the priest really gets it, and place on a well-floured tray.
Once you’ve made enough for 4 people, throw the pasta shapes into salted, boiling water. When they are cooked they will rise to the surface. Scoop them out and mix them into whatever sauce you have come up with.