Focaccia

Thought I'd write a quick post about the joys of Focaccia, which is an Italian flat bread for those of you not familiar with it. I first tasted Focaccia when I was an exchange student at the Italian University of Padova, and have loved it ever since. It has a light yet doughy texture, with a subtle chew, and is very often cooked with crusty salt and herbs - my favourite way of preparing it.

Two shallow Focaccia ready to go in the oven

The best thing about Focaccia as far as I'm concerned is that it can be prepared so easily - that is if you have a bread machine at least. Not that I bake bread in a bread machine, that really wouldn't be possible with Focaccia. It's the kneading and rising side of things that I use it for. Some people love to knead I know, they see it as a source of relaxation, but to me it's simply a pain in the hands!

My bread machine is an old Panasonic model, well over ten years of service but never misses a beat. It has a good selection of different settings, but only one is much used in my household, 'Pizza'. This is only a 45 minute cycle, but provided you give your dough a good hour or two once the bread machine cycle has run then, it works well for a whole range of different Italian style flat breads, not least of which is Focaccia.

Here's the recipe I use. This amount will do for a large lasagne style deep dish, or for two regular flan dishes as shown in the pictures.

• 1 tsp dried yeast
• 450g Bread Flour
• 1½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 275ml water
• 2 tbsp olive oil (plus extra for coating the pan and for drizzling)

The method is quite simple:

1. Empty the yeast into the bottom of the bread machine bucket, add the flour on top, then sprinkle with the salt and the sugar, pour on the water, and finally add the olive oil.
2. Let the machine run the Pizza cycle or similar, then leave the dough undisturbed for an hour or so.
3. After the hour is up, pour a generous amount of olive oil into a deep baking dish and empty the dough out into it. Turn the dough in the olive oil to coat it, knocking it back and pushing firmly into all the corners so that it fits the rectangle. Leave for another hour or so somewhere warm, covered in a tea towel.
4. After the second hour is up your dough should be quite risen. Now push your finger deep down into the dough, but not quite to the bottom, to make the characteristic holes. Scatter generously with rosemary leaves and sea salt, and drizzle with more olive oil.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200ºC for 15-20 minutes until as brown as you prefer.
6. Leave to cool briefly, for as long as you can resist that gorgeous, soft, herby and salty delight ...

Topping and other flavours can be added according to season and taste, this year my wild garlic with caramelised lemon zest worked particularly well.

Wild garlic and caramelised lemon zest at the front, plain wild garlic at the back.

If you'd like to see more pictures of my Focaccia's being prepared, head over to my Focaccia pictures in Picasa Web Albums.

Italian Slow Roasted Lamb Shoulder with Potatoes & Olives

I'm a big fan of the slow roast, though perhaps I do have something of an ulterior motive. It gives me time to get on with other things (which this Sunday unfortunately meant studying), yet means I can create a delicious tender and well flavoured Sunday roast without having to spend as much time and effort creating it as you might think. This Sunday it was lamb again, but given an Italian twist through the combination of a few recipes.

I rarely if ever follow one recipe, but I guess I'm experienced enough in the kitchen to combine them, picking up their various strengths whilst adapting them to suit what I have in the house and what it is I'm trying to cook. I do have an extensive library of cookbooks, well over 100 now, ranging from small pamphlets produced by local groups like the WI (that's the Women's Institute for international readers) to huge tomes like McGee's On food and cooking and the Italian classic The Silver Spoon. I absolutely love cook books, but much prefer scouring old book shops and charity stores for them, as opposed to buying new ones. I've found some wonderful gems that way, for example the fabulous Time Life Good Cook series.

But back to the slow roast. The tradition of slow roasting like this on a Sunday apparently goes back to the days when villages like mine used to have a communal bakery. Bread of course is traditionally baked very early in the morning, and needs a very hot oven. As these village ovens cooled people often used to bring their meat to the bakery and use the residual heat to cook their Sunday lunch, whilst they went off to Sunday church. Of course the longer you cook a slow roast the more tender and moister it gets (up to a point that is), leading to the idea that the longer the sermon in church the better your lunch would be! Not being a religious person myself, I tend to head to the pub (my favourite local The Lamb in Silverton) rather than the church, but at least I'm supporting some sort of local institution that way. I'd recommend the Dob's Best Bitter in particular, though that may be a bit biased again, seeing as the Exe Valley brewery who make it are based in my village.

I'd chosen a shoulder of lamb from Crediton Farmers market courtesy of Higher Hacknell farm this week, and picked up some waxy potatoes there from Linscombe as well. I knew I had some black olives knocking about at home, so decided to re-do an old recipe from Antonio Carluccio's Italian Cooking, but with a nod to Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat Book and a touch or two of myself thrown in for good measure. Basically what you need is this - black olives, waxy potatoes, shoulder of lamb, onion, rosemary:

The ingredients ready to combine

Put all this together in a deep roaster, add plenty of seasoning, and toss together to make sure it's all well coated:

Everything ready to go in the oven

Roast in a hot oven (220ºC) for about 20 minutes, then turn down to about 150ºC for another 3 hours or so. Timings not too critical, you've got a fair bit of leeway either way with this sort of cooking - enough for a pint at least. I did baste it once during this time, but it's not imperative. One small note - I don't use my fan oven for this, I use a conventional oven. I find the fan is too hot and tends to dry things out too much with it's constant convection.

Eventually you should end up with this:

Everything cooked and ready to serve

You'll probably need to pour off some of the fat, depends on the meat. I used spring lamb this time around wish isn't very fatty, so only poured off a very small amount, but later in the season they'll be a lot more. Then straight out onto the plate and enjoy!

Flavour wise it's pretty strong, and if you don't like olives then you won't like this. It will depend to a certain extent on the olives themselves though as they tend to dominate - these were particularly strong, even a bit strong for me if I'm honest, but still delicious none the less.

We had a primo with this, something B cooked up with Ricotta, left over home made paste and chives from the garden - it was wonderful, really light and tasty. If you're looking for a light supper in the heat this would be the business I reckon - but that's probably another blog post :-)

Primo - home made tagliolini with a ricotta and chive sauce