Italy, Montefalcone, Il Campi restaurant

Found this little restaurant hotel in an unknown, nothing to see town on the drive to Croatia, it is around an hour from Trieste or 2 hours from Venice. Excellent seafood from nearby Adriatic Sea, served raw or simply cooked, to taste the natural flavors. I tried these dishes:

Dondoli (clam, served raw)

Scampi (crayfish, served raw)

Mussoli (clam/mussel like shell)

Capesante (small scallop)

Zottoli (baby octopus)

Moleche (soft shell crab)

razor clam

There are 2 young chefs working in the kitchen, what I am impressed is that not just the degree of cooking is controlled very accurately, they even make very good fresh puff pastry desert with lemon cream.

Veal liver nut crust

1. Season veal liver with salt & pepper, place on a baking tray.

2. Blend pin nuts with salt, pepper, chili/curry powder (optional), and an egg white, spread on top of veal liver. Bake at 220˚C until nut crust turns golden, around 15 minutes.

Carrot, quinoa, mint and cashew nut salad

Very easy to make salad that is colourful, with different textures and full of flavors.

1. Cook 1 part quinoa in 2.5 part water until soft, around 15 minutes.

2. Shred carrots into small pieces, season with salt and pepper. Mince a bunch of mint, mix with carrot, cooked quinoa and cashew nuts. Season with lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil

Growing lemon grass

When I was travelling in Laos, I learned to use lemon grass in cooking. The cooking class Chef Joy told us that we could grow lemon grass at home, easily. Just put lemon grass in a cup of water, in one to two weeks time, roots will come out, then plant in soil. By the end of its growing season, it will have multiplied into more lemon grasses, typical of the 'onion' family.

I tried and have planted 20 lemon grasses. I have to wait and see how long it takes, in France, for them to multiply!

Finger food

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Some dishes to serve when having an aperitif at home.

Air-dried beef & asparagus roll

1. Peel the outside tough skin off asparagus, if necessary, blanch or bake until just soft.

2. When asparagus are cool, wrap a piece of air-dried beef on the outside, trim to size.

Chorizo cream on endive

1. Remove the skin of chorizo and cut into small pieces, mix with sour cream.

2. Separate endive into leaves and arrange on serving platter, quenelle a spoonful of chorizo cream in the middle of each leaf.

Smoked salmon with shredded carrot

1. Shred carrot, season with salt, pepper and olive oil, rest for 10 minutes before use.

2. Spread butter on bread, then a spoonful of carrot, top with a piece of smoked salmon.

Strawberry slope

In the courtyard, there is a low bank, if I do nothing, it will be overgrown with weeds and need to keep trimming and tidying. I have been thinking how to make that space useful, knowing that not many plants like to grow on a slope. April is planting strawberry season and all garden centers are promoting strawberry plants. With a bit of research, I found out that strawberry likes to grow on a slope, and with their runners, they will soon spread and cover the whole surface. On top, there will be strawberries to eat!

Smoked salmon and tofu

1. In a big bowl, cut soft tofu into cubes, cover with boiling water to warm them up.

2. Cut smoked salmon into cubes, shallots into thin slices, wash a handful of rockets.

3. Sweat shallots, then add in salmon and rockets, stir-fry until cooked. Serve on top of drained tofu. 

Roast pork and crackling

1. Use a sharp knife or needle to stab the skin of belly pork to half a cm deep, as close to each other as possible.

2. Rub salt and pepper on all sides. Bake, skin side down at 220˚C for 15 minutes, turn upside down and bake at 220˚C for around 30 minutes until the skin bubbles up and becomes 'crackling'. 

Pear and blackberry pudding

1. Cut two slices of bread into small squares, soak in a mixture of 2 eggs, 150gm sour cream and 60gm brown sugar.

2. Peel and cut 4 pears into cubes, cook at medium heat with the juice of a lemon until just soft. Off heat, mix in 150gm blackberry jam.

3. Half fill a baking dish with blackberry pear mixture, spoon bread mixture on top, sprinkle white sugar on the surface. Grill at 200˚C until golden. 

Veal liver pineapple and pesto sauce

1. Cut veal liver into thick pieces, season with liqueur, salt, pepper and a teaspoonful of cornstarch.

2. Cut zucchini, celery and pineapple into chunks, shallot into thin slices.

3. Sweat shallot, add veal liver, sear until all sides brown, keep aside.

4. Cook zucchini, celery and pineapple with salt & pepper until soft, add a heaped spoonful of pesto sauce and veal liver, mix well and serve. 

Goat cheese and dry tomato nut cake

1. Mix 200gm ground hazelnut with 100gm flour, a big pinch of salt and a spoonful of sugar, rub in 100gm butter then mix in 1 egg yolk.

2. Whisk 1 egg white with a pinch of salt until 'hard peak' stage. Fold gently into nut mixture. Spread on a baking paper to around half a cm thick, bake at 170˚ until golden, around 20 minutes.

3. When the nut cake is cool, place dry tomato, cut into small pieces, on top, then cover with half cm thick slices of goat cheese. Grill until goat cheese softens. 

Food to share

I like Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer's books, his farming and gardening methods are efficient, less effort, less orderly and more natural. One of his methods to reduce loss of harvest because of grazing by wild animal, is - to grow more. He plants wild fruit trees and sows root/seed crops in his land around the farmed areas to provide food for wild animals. When they can find enough to eat, there will be less attack on his cash crops.

This is the vision for my land too. Whenever there is an area that could be planted, I will think twice about having flowers or fruits.

This is a bed of mixed fruit bushes, with goji berry at the back, blue berry in the front and some less common ones like Blue honeysuckle berry, Huckleberry, Myrtle, and some wild ones mostly eaten by birds, like Black Chokeberry and Juneberry, both have fruits that are edible by humans but not the most tasty (sweet) ones. All these berries are very high in antioxidants and nutrients.  I ordered them from this website:

http://www.planfor.co.uk/garden-plants,gourmand-hedge-uk.html

Roast lamb leg and vegetables

My new oven is equipped with a built in meat thermometer, it makes cooking a big piece of meat much easier. I push the thermometer needle into the middle of the meat and set the finished temperature, cooking will stop when desired temperature is reached.

1. Cut vegetables like carrot, parsnip, celery, leek etc into chunks, place in a baking dish.

2. Make quarter inch deep cuts on both sides of lamb leg, rub salt, pepper and coriander powder all over. Place on top of vegetables, drizzle olive oil on lamb and vegetables. Bake at 220˚C for 15minutes, turn lamb leg over and bake until 65˚C inside. 

Grilled vegetable with chorizo sauce

1. Grill or steam asparagus and endive, serve on plate, sprinkle salt and pepper on top.

2. Cut chorizo into small cubes, mix with 100gm sour cream, spoon mixture on top of vegetable.

Cheese and dry tomato soufflé

1. Make a white sauce with 30 gm flour, 30 gm butter and 300ml milk,, season with salt and pepper. When cool, mix in 3 egg yolks.

2. Grate Parmesan cheese and cut dry tomato into small pieces, add to mixture.

3. Butter a big baking dish, pre-heat oven to 220˚C.

4. Whisk 3 egg whites with a pinch of salt until 'soft peak' stage, gently fold into mixture, pour into baking dish until half an inch below the rim. Bake at 220˚C until the surface turns golden, around 10 minutes, reduce to 170˚C for a further 10 minutes.

Hydrangea corner

A few years ago when I visited South Africa, in a manor house in Stellenbosch, they had a huge area full of hydrangeas, literally a sea of hydrangeas, the giant rounded balls of white, pink and blue flowers made an impressive sight.

In the north side of my house, I planted 48 hydrangeas to re-create, in a small scale, this visual effect. I have to wait a couple of years for the plants to grow big. 

Planting a hedge

One side of the farmland is next to the road and there is not a single tree there. So anyone driving along will see our house and land. The most urgent job this spring is to plant a hedge to make the farm less exposed. It is roughly 100m long and we estimated to plant 100 hedge trees. It will be a mix hedge of laurel, beech, hazelnut, and some flowering bushes among them.

Planting a 100 trees sounded like a daunting job, indeed if it is done by manually digging holes for the tree, it will take a long time and end up with painful arms and back.

There is more land here than in our previous house, and we have a vision of how to use the land, we have decided to invest in a multipurpose tractor to relieve the workload.

The tractor has drilling equipment, and 100 holes are done in just 3 hours, planting the trees took 4 hours: no big deal. 

Blackcurrant mousse cake

Blackcurrant cake in rarely seen in cake shops but well received by my family.

1. Use almond cream to make the cake base in a metal ring, around 1 cm high.

2. Disolve gelatin in hot blackcurrant jam, max 2 %, keep 100gm aside. When cool down to around 30 ˚C, mix in equal volume whipped cream, pour mixture into cool cake then fridge until set.

3. Warm the 100gm blackcurrant gelatin mix to around 35 ˚C, pour gently onto the set mousse surface covering the whole top.

4. Warm the ring with a fire gun to release the cake. 

Pigeon breast with broad bean

Fresh broad bean is another spring vegetable, its mild taste goes well with delicate pigeon breast.

1. Season pigeon breast with salt and pepper. Sear both sides brown then keep in 100˚C oven for 15 minutes, meat will be pink in the middle.

2. Cook broad bean and cabbage in olive oil and salt until soft.

Curry tomato pigeon legs

In French restaurants, it is common to serve pigeon breast and legs in two cooking method, this is a simple way to serve pigeon legs in a stronger sauce.

1. Sear pigeon legs both sides till brown.

2. Cook tomato sauce with a pinch of cumin, coriander, chili, season with soya sauce and sugar, add in pigeon legs and cook for 3 minutes.