La Fiorentina - Grilled T-Bone Steak, Florentine Style - Cooking Italy 3

As I may have mentioned here before, I am not much of a meat eater, especially red meat.  It's not that I am particularly opposed to eating meat - I think the whole issue of eating ethically, responsibly and healthily is so much bigger than just whether we should eat animals or not - it is just that there are a whole lot of other things (especially vegetables) that I like more.  The last time I ate a steak I think was probably close to a couple of years ago;  however this was an assignment for the Cooking Italy group (a group dedicated to learning to cook Italian food through the recipes of Marcella Hazan from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking), so in the interests of group participation I thought I would give it a go.

Now, were I preparing this in "true" Florentine style the T-bone steaks would come from Chianina cattle - the largest, and one of the oldest breeds of cattle existing today.

Photo source

Of course, here in New Zealand, Chianina cattle are fairly thin on the ground, but I still managed to pick up some passable looking T-bones - a bit thinner than the 1.5 inches thick that Marcella's instructions called for, so I knew I would have to adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Now I have to say that I was a little nervous about Marcella's method, as the meat is cooked completely without oil - no oil either on the meat or cooking surface, but then a little olive oil is drizzled over the meat after it is cooked.  I would normally rub some olive oil into the meat before then applying it to a dry pan.  However, Marcella recommends against this - suggesting that in doing so the oil can scorch and impart an unpleasant taste to the meat.  So, as I said, I was somewhat nervous about that - intuition suggested to me that dry meat and dry pan, I was going to end up with a dry finished steak!  I worried for nothing - the end result was a juicy, succulent steak, with absolutely no splattering or smoke.  I would definitely cook a steak this way again - it might be another two years before that happens mind you!

For two people you will need 1 to 2 T-bone steaks (depending on size).  If the ones you come across are like mine, you will definitely need one per person;  on the other hand if you can get a genuine Chianina T-bone one steak between two people will be plenty.  You will also need coarsely ground black peppercorns, flaky sea salt, a clove of garlic (lightly crushed), and some extra virgin oil.

Heat a cast iron grill pan till very hot ( I let mine heat for at least 10 minutes).  Meanwhile, rub the coarsely ground black peppercorns into the meat on both sides.

Grill the steak according to your preferred degree of doneness, which of course will also depend on the thickness of your steaks.  I like mine rare, and my steaks were about 1.5-2cm thick, so I grilled mine for about 3 minutes on each side.

After cooking the first side, turn it over and sprinkle salt on the side you have just cooked.  Then when the other side is cooked, turn it over and sprinkle salt on that side.  Then while it is still on the grill, rub the slightly crushed clove of garlic over the bone, drizzle with a hint of olive oil, flip it over and quickly do the same on the other side.  Then remove to a serving plate and allow to rest for a few minutes before serving.

I served this with some oven baked potato wedges, simply drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with flaky sea salt and dried oregano (fresh rosemary would be even better, but use what you have), then baked at about 200 degrees C until brown and crispy (about 45 minutes).

I also served a crisp salad of iceburg lettuce (not normally my lettuce of choice, but seemed like just the thing to go with a steak), pears, blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts with a lemon vinaigrette.

So, despite my reticence about eating a steak, and about the cooking of it, all things considered, I thoroughly enjoyed this meal and would certainly make it again - sometime.

Baked Aubergine with Saffron Yoghurt Sauce & Pomegranate

 

A couple of weeks ago, I promised to tell you a bit more about one of my new cookbooks "Ottolenghi, The Cookbook". This book totally has the "drool factor", and if you only buy one new cookbook this year then my suggestion is that you make it this one, unless of course you plan to hang out until May when Yotam Ottolenghi releases his new book "Plenty" - yet another one to add to my wish list.

In July 2002 Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi opened Ottolenghi in small premises in Notting Hill, London.  To quote from the book ... "food shop, patisserie, deli, restaurant, bakery.  A place with no single description but at the same time a crystal-clear reflection of our obsessive relationship with food."  There are now a total of four outlets in London, and the book came into being by popular demand from regular customers.

This book is an absolute celebration of food, with an emphasis on using outstanding, fresh ingredients and preparing them in the most natural way possible, avoiding complicated techniques and fussiness.  The magic lies in bringing ingredients together in ways which are at times unexpected, but which enable each individual ingredient to shine - marriages made in heaven that don't need any tricky preparation. Vegetarians and meat lovers alike will find plenty in this book to suit their table, while a large section on baking and patisserie will appeal to those who like to bake.

I found this book both inspiring and innovative, and I find that I am turning to it several times a week.  Offerings from this book include:  "roasted butternut squash with burnt aubergine and pomegranate molasses", "cauliflower and cumin fritters with lime yoghurt", "portobello mushrooms with pearl barley and preserved lemon", "Camargue red rice and quinoa with orange and pistachios", "marinated rack of lamb with coriander and honey", "roast chicken with saffron, hazelnuts and honey", "seared duck breasts with blood orange and star anise", "grilled mackerel with green olive, celery and raisin salsa", "apple and olive oil cake with maple icing", "plum, marzipan and cinnamon muffins", "salty peanut and caramel macaroons", "white chocolate and raspberry tartlets".

Today's recipe - a salad of aubergine, pine nuts and pomegranate with a tangy saffron yoghurt dressing is typical of many in the book - easy to prepare, robust, bright and bold flavour and colour, and great texture.  This is one I will keep coming back to.

Roasted Aubergine with Saffron Yoghurt Sauce

& Pomegranate Recipe

Adapted from "Ottolenghi, The Cookbook"

Vegetarian

Serves 2 as main meal, or 4 as a starter

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

3 medium sized aubergines

juice & seeds from 1/2 a pomegranate

2 tablespoons pine nuts. toasted

large handful of basil leaves, torn

olive oil

sea salt and black pepper

For the sauce:

3 tablespoons of hot water

pinch of saffron strands

3/4 cup thick Greek yoghurt

1 clove garlic, minced

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

sea salt

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C.

Cut aubergine into thick slices or wedges.

Place in a roasting dish, drizzle with plenty of olive oil, and sprinkle with flaky sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Roast the aubergine for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.  Remove from oven, and cool to room temperature.  At this stage the aubergine could be refrigerated for up to three days, and then brought back to room temperature before assembling salad and serving.

While the aubergine is cooking make the sauce.  Allow the saffron to infuse in the hot water for about 5 minutes.  Then combine with the yoghurt, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and a pinch of flaky sea salt.

Whisk everything together well until you have a pale creamy yellow, smooth sauce, flecked with the saffron threads.  Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.  Chill until ready to serve.

Sauce will keep refrigerated for several days.

To assemble, arrange the aubergine on a large platter and drizzle with the saffron yoghurt sauce.  Sprinkle the pomegranate seeds and pine nuts over the top, and lastly strew with the torn basil leaves.

This would serve four people as a starter or side dish, or two people as a meal on its own.  I found that I did have sauce leftover, which I subsequently used to dress a salad of roasted beetroot, puy lentils, goats cheese and walnuts.

I've just discovered the Cookbook Sundays Group, where other people like me have shelves lined with cookbooks that just don't seem to get used so much.  The idea is to dust off the shelves, cook something from one of the books, and link it up with the book.  Since, the Ottolenghi Cookbook is probably my favourite cookbook, I thought I would revisit this recipe and share it with the group.  Please go and have a look at what everyone else is cooking up.

Get the book:

Available from Amazon, Book Depository UK and Fishpond NZ

Spaghetti & Pesto with Potato & Green Beans Recipe - Cooking Italy 2

 

Let me begin by telling you, before you suddenly leave the page, that this tastes a whole lot better than it looks in this picture.  So here's the scenario:  dinner is piping hot and ready to serve, partner is starving and hanging out for dinner, but wait I need to photograph it first before we can eat - and, oh no, camera batteries are flat and so are the spares.  iPhone to the rescue thankfully to snap off a quick photo, but somehow it's just not the same.  Nevertheless, this tasted incredibly good (think comfort food that's still good enough to impress company) - so keep reading.

This was my second assignment for the Cooking Italy group (a group dedicated to learning to cook Italian food through the recipes of Marcella Hazan from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking), and turned out to be another one of those "prepare everything ahead, assemble at the last minute" dishes that you know I love so much - the pesto and potatoes were prepared earlier in the day, then spaghetti and beans cooked, and dish assembled just before serving - as I just mentioned this dish is easily good enough for guests, and you won't be spending all your time in the kitchen instead of with your guests.  I think this would also be good even with the pasta cooked early (maybe some of your favourite shapes, rather than spaghetti), and then everything assembled and served at room temperature as a salad.

Marcella says of this dish:  "When serving pesto on spaghetti or noodles, the full Genoese treatment calls for the addition of boiled new potatoes and green beans.  When all its components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory."  I think she's right.

As far as the pesto goes, I wrote about it not so long ago in this post, so you know my feelings on the subject.  Now I am certainly not going to go all "pesto-police" on you and tell you that you must make your own.  However, it seems that the whole point of this dish is the pesto, so if you are only ever going to make pesto once in your life I would urge you to make it now. As to which method you should use, I recommend the mortar and pestle method (I really believe the texture and taste is superior), but if the thought of doing it by hand is the only thing that gets between you and making your own pesto then go right ahead and blitz it up in the food processor - instructions are given here for both methods. Regardless of whether you buy a ready-made pesto, or follow the recipe here, there is one unique ingredient to Marcella's pesto and that is the addition of some butter at the end.  Sounds a bit weird I know, and I have to admit I was skeptical, but it works - it gave a lovely, velvety creaminess to the pesto, the magic of which I think is more apparent once it is actually incorporated in the dish, and it seemed to me also that once the butter was added the pesto somehow increased substantially in volume.  So even if you use a store bought pesto in this dish, take the time to add the butter before tossing it through the pasta and vegetables.

A note about quantities - Marcella's original recipe states that it serves 6.  To serve two people, I used exactly her recipe, but just cut down the quantity pasta.  So my ratio of vegetables and "sauce" to pasta was probably considerably more than would be traditional, but I was pleased with the results and you should feel free to adjust quantities to suit your own tastes.

Spaghetti & Pesto with Potato & Green Beans Recipe

Adapted from Marcella Hazan's

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Vegetarian

Click here for printable copy

For the pesto:

2 cups fresh basil leaves, tightly packed

2 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons pine nuts

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

coarse sea salt, large pinch

1/2 cup finely grated parmigiano-reggiano

2 tablespoons finely grated pecorino romano

3 tablespoons butter, room temperature soft

Wash basil leaves in cold water, and gently pat dry with paper towels.

If making in a mortar and pestle:  Put basil, garlic, pine nuts and salt into the mortar, and using the pestle grind everything into a paste.  Add both cheeses and grind evenly into the mixture.  Add the olive oil, pouring in a thin stream, beating into the mixture with a wooden spoon.  Once it has all been incorporated, beat in the butter until evenly distributed through the pesto.

If making in a food processor:  Put basil, olive oil, chopped garlic, pine nuts and salt  into the bowl of the processor, and process to a creamy consistency.  Remove from processor and transfer to a bowl, then mix the two cheeses in by hand.  Then mix in the softened butter and beat until everything is thoroughly amalgamated.

Set aside.

For the pasta (for 2 people):

3 small new potatoes

250g young green beans

pesto, as above

250g spaghetti (or pasta of your choice)

Boil the potatoes, skins on, until just tender.  Once cool enough to handle, peel and slice thinly.

Cut the ends off the beans and set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil, salt liberally.  Add spaghetti to the rapidly boiling water to cook.  Approximately 3 minutes before the spaghetti finishes cooking, add the beans into the pasta pot.  Spaghetti should be al dente and beans cooked through, but neither too soft nor too hard.

Before draining the cooked pasta and beans, remove 2 tablespoons of the pasta water and stir into the pesto to loosen.

Drain, and toss the cooked pasta, beans and potatoes together with the pesto.

Serve immediately.  I also sprinkled some extra grated parmesan over the top.

Grilled Fig, Haloumi & Pomegranate Salad

 

Over Christmas I was lucky enough to add a few great new cookbooks to my collection.  One, "Ottolenghi, The Cookbook", was a Christmas present to myself picked up on a trip to Auckland from Cook the Books. The other two, Donna Hay's latest book "Seasons" and "Falling Cloudberries" by Tessa Kiros were acquired with some book vouchers I got for Christmas from my very generous and adoring Dad.

These are some wonderful books, and over the next few weeks I plan to share with you some of the things I've been making from these books.  Today, I want to take you inside the Donna Hay book.

This book is the best of her quarterly, seasonal magazines that I am sure many of you love - everything is presented with her inimitable style and flair.  I love her ability to transform just a few simple ingredients (so many of her recipes seem to have just half a dozen ingredients), without complicating them in any way, into something wonderful.  The book features such gems as: Spring - "paper-bag snapper with preserved lemon" and "milk chocolate and coffee layer cake";  Summer - "yellow cherry tomato tarte tatin" and "white peach and fig granita";  Autumn - "pumpkin, spinach and goat's cheese pie" and "sticky orange and vanilla upside-down cake";  and Winter - "olive-crusted veal with feta mash" and "pear and espresso panna cotta.  This book really makes me look forward to the changing seasons.  There is plenty in this book for both vegetarians and meat eaters alike, and for anyone who likes simple, fantastic tasting food without the fuss.

Today's recipe - grilled fig, haloumi and pomegranate salad - is from the summer section of the book.  It is the very first page I opened the book at when I found it in the book store, and I was immediately hooked. As you might expect, this salad took just a few minutes to put together, but it seemed like something utterly special and luxurious.  This has much to do, no doubt, with the fact that here in New Zealand fresh figs are actually a bit of a luxury and are available for such a short time.  This would certainly be a fabulous dish to serve up to someone you want to impress or spoil for a special occasion or, as I did, have something really special when you have to dine alone.

In the original recipe, Donna suggests frying the haloumi in some olive oil;  however, I chose to grill it and was happy with the results.  Since I had the grill out, I thought that grilling the figs might be nice, although the original recipe didn't call for doing anything to them other than cutting them in half.  I did hedge my bets though - as I wasn't sure whether I would prefer grilled or plain figs I only grilled half of them.  As it turned out, I loved the way that grilling them seemed to really intensify the sweetness and juiciness of the figs, so next time I would grill them all.

Grilled Fig, Haloumi & Pomegranate Salad Recipe

Click here for printable copy

Adapted from "Seasons" by Donna Hay

Vegetarian

Serves 2

1/2 cup mint leaves

large handful rocket (arugula) leaves

4 green figs, halved

200g haloumi, sliced thinly

1/2 pomegranate, seeds and juice removed

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Heat a ridged grill pan until hot.  Cook the haloumi on both sides until nice char marks are starting to appear, and the cheese is just starting to soften.  Cook the figs, cut-side down, until lightly charred and juices are beginning to run.  Remove from the grill.

Allow to cool slightly, then cut or tear the haloumi into smaller pieces.  Cut the fig halves in half again (so now your figs are in quarters).

Remove the seeds from the  pomegranate (I like the "spanking" method - incredibly satisfying), and retain any juice that comes out with them.

Arrange the figs, haloumi, mint and rocket leaves in a bowl or platter.  Sprinkle the pomegrante seeds over the top and drizzle over the juice.

Lightly combine the red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, and drizzle over the salad.  Toss gently to combine.

I'm also submitting this post to Cookbook Sundays, hosted by the lovely Brenda at Brenda's Canadian Kitchen.  She's worth a visit any day of the week, but why not head over there right now and see who else has dusted off their cookbooks - you'll almost certainly find some great recipes, and maybe you'll discover a new book you'd like to add to your collection.

Tomato Bruschetta Recipe - Cooking Italy

There are few things that I like better than curling up on the sofa with a good book, and when it comes to time out to do just that my preferred reading material would usually be a good cookbook rather than a gripping novel. As you might imagine then, I have quite a good collection of cookbooks; although, I still have an equally extensive "wishlist" of culinary tomes that I would like to add to the shelves.

Now you've heard me mention before my love for Italian food, and as you might expect I draw constantly on a number of Italian cookbooks for my inspiration. In that vein, one cook and author who inspires me, and whose books have been on my wishlist for quite some time, is Marcella Hazan. Imagine my excitement then, when on a recent visit to Spinach Tiger (one of the food blogs I visit regularly), I stumbled across the Cooking Italy group - a group of like-minded food lovers and bloggers who are learning to cook regional Italian food together by cooking their way through Marcella's book The Essentials of Classic Italian Cookery.

Each month Angela (aka Spinach Tiger, and the group founder and co-ordinator) posts a selection of dishes from the book, which the group will then cook, discuss and post their results. Of course, because most of the group are in the northern hemisphere, I will at times be seasonally out of step with everyone else. (Right now, for example, while I'm up to my armpits in peaches and tomatoes, most of the group are up to their knees in snow!!) Which means that sometimes I'll simply choose something from the list that they made 6 months ago - get the picture.

And so I come to my first dish, and coincidentally the very first dish the group prepared as well - Tomato Bruschetta (pronounced brusketta by the way). Seasonally, of course, this is the perfect time for this dish. But it also strikes me as very fitting that this should be the first dish that I make, as it absolutely epitomises for me what Italian food is all about - that the best food arises from cooking with exceptional, seasonal, locally produced ingredients, simply prepared - food which highlights the quality of the ingredients rather than showcasing the talents of the chef.  In that vein, this is a relatively simple dish to put together, but there is no place to hide here - you need to use the very best ingredients that you can get your hands on. Here in the New Zealand summer (such as it is) all of the ingredients required are at their best right now, and I got everything I needed at the Christchurch Farmers Market on Saturday - everything locally grown or produced, with the exception of the garlic which had travelled a few hours down the road from Marlborough.

This would be a good appetiser, but I enjoyed it for a light lunch so much that I have had it nearly every day since (nice change from the hummus and pumpkin seed crackers that I usually have).

So about those ingredients - choose a good, crusty sourdough or artisinal loaf - something that is going to retain good body, texture and chew once it has been grilled - this is not the time for the Tip Top white sliced! Tomatoes should be perfectly ripe, preferably organic, - don't even think about making this with those pale, insipid, tasteless hot house tomatoes in the winter. Roma tomatoes are recommended for this, because they have more flesh and less seeds than other varieties, but the ones I had were just fine. Garlic - fresh only - no garlic paste out of the jar! Basil - obviously fresh, not dried - although I would suggest that if you don't have fresh basil to hand, a bit of pesto "dobbed" on top or some rocket (arugula) would be great alternatives. Lastly - olive oil - the very best extra virgin olive oil that your budget will allow.

Tomato Bruschetta Recipe

adapted from Marcella Hazan's "The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"

via Spinach Tiger

Click here for printable copy of recipe

These are the quantities I used for a lunch for one, and you can just use that as a per person guide if you are serving several people

1 garlic clove

2 thick slices good, crusty bread

1 large fresh, ripe tomato (or 2 if they're small)

3-4 basil leaves , torn into small pieces

extra virgin olive oil

flaky sea salt

black pepper, freshly ground

Cut tomatoes in half, remove seeds and cut into small dice.

Grill or toast the bread until crisp and golden. (Although this was not suggested in the recipe, I drizzled the bread with a little olive oil first and was pleased with the result.)

Cut the garlic clove in half, and then rub the cut side over the toasted bread. You will be surprised at how much flavour this imparts without having to mix minced or chopped garlic into the tomatoes.

Top the now garlic-infused toast with the diced tomatoes, torn basil leaves, and drizzle with olive oil.

Season with the salt and pepper, and serve immediately.

Summer on a plate - enjoy!!

Making the most of summer's bounty

Well it's that time of year when my love affair with asparagus has given way to summer fruit. Really nothing says summer to me more than an abundance of apricots, peaches, nectarines, raspberries and strawberries, and this year (perhaps because the summer weather has actually been pretty crappy!) the fruit seems to be especially good. Interesting parallel - worst summer I can remember for about 15 years, best summer fruit I can remember for about as long.

So, needless to say, I have of course been indulging in plenty of unadulterated fresh fruit - big bowls of it every morning, but I've also been cooking with them and trying to set some aside to enjoy a bit of summer in the middle of winter.

I've made lots of sorbet ...

... raspberry, white fleshed nectarine, and apricot. My apricot sorbet is made using this recipe from Stone Soup. For my nectarine sorbet I used David Lebovitz's recipe - David is after all close to Godliness, in my opinion, in matters of frozen desserts! That's my nectarine sorbet in the top right corner of the picture above, which as you can see is quite a lot paler than that in the picture on the recipe link. I suspect that is because the nectarines I had were white fleshed ones, and that yellow fleshed ones would deliver a deeper pink sorbet, though I still think my pale pink version is very pretty. My raspberry sorbet is made using the following recipe adapted from the "River Cafe Italian Kitchen" cookbook. This has really intense flavour, and the colour is just drop-dead gorgeous.

Raspberry Sorbet Recipe

Makes about 1.5 litres

vegan, gluten free

800g fresh raspberries

1 whole Meyer lemon, preferrably organic, plus

juice of 1/2 lemon

350g caster sugar

Wash the lemon thoroughly, and if you are not using an organic lemon give it a good scrub to remove any wax that might be on the skin. Then cut the lemon (skin and all) into smallish pieces, discarding any pips, and put into a food processor. Put the caster sugar into the processor with the lemon, and blitz until you have a thick puree with little bits of lemon peel still visible. Add the raspberries and blitz again until everything is combined. Add the lemon juice, and taste. At this point you may add a little more sugar if the raspberries are too tart, or you may want to add a little more lemon juice - the lemon flavour should be noticeable but not overpowering.

Chill the puree for several hours (I like to leave it in the fridge overnight). Then pour the puree into an ice-cream maker and churn according to your machine's directions.

First note: You may want to strain the puree before churning to remove the pips. Personally I don't - I think it is inherent in the nature of raspberries to have pips, and I like the slightly more rustic nature and texture of an unstrained sorbet.

Second note: If you don't have an ice-cream maker - go and get one today before summer is over. I promise you won't regret it. Contrary to what you may think, this does not have to cost you a lot of money. Whilst it is true that I covet a "serious ice-cream machine", with a built-in refrigeration unit, that might set me back $1,000-$2,000, Mr Snowy here does the job just fine and he only cost about $40. I think normal retail for this is about $80, but I picked this up in one of those 50% off electrical goods sales that Briscoes have just about every second weekend. Or there are literally dozens of similar machines available on TradeMe at almost any time.

Of course the sorbet you make now is not going to keep all winter - after a while it starts to go all icy and the texture changes. But I'm very excited to have come across this recipe for Roasted Apricot Sorbet on Couldn't Be Parve. I haven't actually made this recipe yet (though I did pass the link on to a friend who has made it and declared it to be "absolutely divine"), but I have roasted several batches of apricots (6kg in all) and put them in the freezer to make into sorbet during the winter. Let me tell you that when I had a wee taste of the first batch I almost went weak at the knees - they taste soooooo good!! I know that these are going to make the most heavenly sorbet, but they would be divine as they are on good vanilla ice-cream, or dolloped on top of crumpets instead of jam, or used to fill a tart ... or just eat them straight out of the pan when no-one's watching.

I have plans to also roast some nectarines and some peaches this week, as I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to treat them exactly the same way. Will keep you posted on progress.

And speaking of jam, I've made some Apricot & Vanilla Jam using this recipe from Trish Deseinne.

I made this jam, exactly according to the recipe and I will definitely make this again. There is absolutely nothing that I would change about this - it is probably the best apricot jam I think I've tasted for years. It is not too sweet and the set is just perfect - I think it's the lemon juice that helps on both these fronts. I ended up with about a dozen jars, and don't you just love my special labels I produced ....

I'm so excited I have been labelling everything in my pantry!! These are relatively inexpensive, and available in any quantity - even very small quantities (just half a dozen, or even just 1 or 2) if you want them. If you're interested in some labels of your own for your pantry ingredients or preserves send me your query via the "Contact Me" box on the sidebar of this blog. I know that's a little bit Martha, but then for someone who is obsessive about folding (my folding of fitted sheets is legendary), this should come as no surprise.

I hope this has inspired you to do something with all that beautiful summer fruit that's out there right now. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you've been doing with summer's bounty.

Chocolate Panettone French Toast Sandwiches

Today is, believe it or not (and really how could you not), World Nutella Day! Three years ago Michelle at Bleeding Espresso and Sara at Ms. Adventures in Italy decided to give the celebration of Nutella its own special holiday, and World Nutella Day was born. To a Nutella lover, it seems incredibly fitting to me have a special day on which to totally indulge in this pleasure.

So, of course, a celebration brunch was called for! As I just happened to have a panettone (a gorgeous Italian fruit cake, which is frequently served at Xmas - refer Source Guide) sitting in the pantry, some Nutella french toast sandwiches seemed like a good idea.

First of all you need to make a nice eggy bath for your sandwiches, using free-range eggs, grated orange zest, orange juice, milk, and a dash of maple syrup or honey.

Next cut the panettone into thick slices, and spread half of the slices thickly (this is not the time for a "thin smear") with Nutella. Sandwich together and then give your sandwiches a nice soak in the egg mixture while you melt a bit of butter in a pan.

Once the pan is hot, add the sandwiches and brown on both sides. Serve immediately with a dollop of mascarpone cheese, and finish off with a sprinkling of crushed "Ferrero Rocher" chocolates on top.

Chocolate Panettone French Toast Sandwiches Recipe

6 thick slices of panettone, or other stale bread

2 free-range eggs

grated rind & juice of half an orange

1/4 cup milk

1-1/2 teaspoons maple syrup

lashings of Nutella

1-1/2 tablespoons butter

mascarpone

2 or 3 Ferrero Rocher chocolates, crushed

Put eggs, orange juice and zest, maple syrup and milk in a wide, shallow dish, and whisk lightly to combine. Set aside.

Spread Nutella on three of the panettone/bread slices. Spread as thickly as you can without breaking the bread. Place the other three bread slices on top to make sandwiches.

Drop butter into a frying pan, and set over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, put sandwiches into the egg bath, coating both sides separately. Once the pan is hot and the butter is melted, add the sandwiches to the pan, and cook until browned on both sides.

Remove to a serving plate. Place a dollop of mascarpone cheese on top and sprinkle with the crushed chocolates.

Enjoy!

Do you have a favourite way to enjoy Nutella? - I'd love to hear about it.