italian

Perfect Pizza Dough Recipe

- Alex 1 Comment

IMG_3103

So back in November last year, I attended the Food SA awards and promised to put some focus on South Australian producers.

I’ve not done the world’s best job of that, have I? Still, the other week at the Cellar Door Festival Pangkarra, based in Clare, had a stand so punters were able to try their pasta and purchase a wide range of their foods.

Pangkarra started life as a legume and cereal producer but these days, this fifth generation family owned business produces fine foods, such as flours and pastas, too. And while I have no doubt that this kind of value adding takes a lot of effort that many primary producers can’t afford, it is a brilliant way of ensuring that more money flows back to the people who produce the food, rather than middle men.

I’ve seen Pangkarra pasta in my parents’ local Foodland (unfortunately not in my own) but never had the presence of mind to purchase it. And the Cellar Door Festival wasn’t really the place to buy pasta – it being fragile and all. But I was easily tempted by a 1kg bag of the stone ground, wholegrain durum flour. It was offered at the special price of $3 (I think it’s normally around $7, so this is quite a discount) and I could have bought 6kg at an even greater knock down price. I also knew I had no hope of carting 6kg of flour around for an afternoon!

Now, Pangkarra does actually have a pizza dough recipe on the website, but I’ve been using an Antonio Carluccio “recipe” (you can find it in Complete Italian Food) for years and there are some things I find need no fiddling at all.

For one pizza, mix 1 generous tsp of dried yeast, with a generous ½ tsp of sugar and 125 mL of warm water (think tepid). Leave to allow the yeast to activate (the mixture will start to froth a little) and add in 200 g of flour. I was warned that the Pangkarra flour would be more thirsty than run of the mill (ahem!) flour – and it certainly was, so have some additional water to hand to bring the dough together.

This is usually quite a stiff dough and was especially so in this case because I didn’t want to end up with dough that was too wet. I always let my KitchenAid do the first lot of kneading for me, then I just form the dough into a ball, cover it with a slick of oil and leave it to rise.

Making the pizza is easy! Preheat your oven to as hot as it will go (250°C fan in our case), lightly oil a pizza pan, and roll out the dough. Put the dough in the pizza pan, add a generous slick of tomato paste, some dried oregano and chilli flakes and then lots of slices of mozzarella cheese. Finish off with toppings of your choice (in our case, onion, ham, spicy salami, some green capsicum, artichokes, and black olives) and bake until done. In our oven, this is just 10 minutes.

Slice and eat immediately!

The Pangkarra flour made a good dough and good base. I usually add salt to my pizza dough but in this instance I forgot (thanks to my pint sized kitchen ‘helper’) and while I did notice (don’t you always, if you know!) Andy said he didn’t think it needed it – a sign that the flour itself has plenty of taste.

It’s obviously very strong flour so I really am going to have to have a go making my own pasta with it …

NOTE:  This post has not been sponsored in any way.  I paid for the flour and, had it been awful, I would have told you so!

Assaggio

- Alex 2 Comments

 

 

date of visit: Thurs 5 July 2012

I have ummed and ahhed about writing this review. I visited Assaggio as part of a large group (there were 12 of us) which dines out fortnightly on a Thursday. This was my first time dining with most of the people and I always feel a bit self conscious reviewing someone else’s choice of venue. I also think that very often a large group is an unfair test of a restaurant.

However, last night Assaggio was awarded Restaurant of the Year in the Restaurant and Catering (SA) Awards for Excellence. This pushed me into putting down a few thoughts, because, frankly, my meal didn’t represent the best meal of the year (or, indeed, the best value meal of the year). And a bit of balanced consumer criticism never goes astray.

There are some things about Assaggio which I rate very highly. A dedicated vegetarian menu is available at all times – which is a definite plus because too many places offer just a token vegetarian offering*. The interior has plenty of soft surfaces so that, even though the tables are somewhat snug, there is none of the clatter that you endure at so many restaurants and cafés. Décor is smart and there is a wide window to peep into the kitchen.

Service was reasonably smooth but certainly not flawless: there was the occasional hiccup or delay with various requests (noted because one of those requests was my glass of wine!). A distinct incongruity was the fact that, when serving plates, the staff wore white gloves. The restaurant is simply not that smart. I’m actually struggling to recall going to any other restaurant where waiting staff served wearing gloves …

Food and wine wise, things certainly didn’t live up to their price tag. I ordered a glass of the Felton Road Chardonnay, which was around $15. Felton Road is a well known and tidy NZ producer and while I’m not overly familiar with the wine I have a sneaking suspicion that the bottle had been open a day or two too long. The punter ordering wine by the glass needs to be aware that this can be a problem, as does the restaurateur. If the wine is pricey enough that you’re going to keep on serving it when it’s a little past its prime you need to take it off your ‘by the glass’ list. Very often I’d query a glass in this kind of condition but, in a large group of people, most of whom I don’t know, I preferred to keep my mouth shut and let the evening keep on moving.

For entrée, I ordered the stuffed zucchini flowers. They were stuffed with a spinach, gorgonzola, ricotta and pine nut mousse. The gorgonzola wasn’t particularly strong so if you’re someone who’s not a big fan of blue cheese, don’t let that put you off. Unfortunately, while the filling was fine, the delicate flowers were swamped by a heavy breadcrumb crust, so that the dish became more about that crust than about the flowers or mousse. At $19 a serve this was a disappointing to say the least.

Main course wise I think I chose poorly. Or rather, I lacked imagination because I opted for the guitar string saffron pasta, served with blue swimmer crab and a tomato and shellfish sauce. There was nothing wrong with this dish and, price wise, it was on a par with the shellfish pasta I’d had at the Highway Hotel a week earlier. But at a restaurant that’s winning Best Restaurant gongs? I’d expect it to eclipse a pub pasta by a long way.

When we got to dessert I was, genuinely, quite full – so at least portion sizes aren’t a problem at Assaggio. I ordered the nougat. At $9 a serve I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. Oh – a piece of nougat, perhaps 3 cm long and 1 cm square (I’m being generous). I wasn’t the only person to order the nougat and I wasn’t the only person whose eyes popped out of their head at the combination of miserliness and cost!

After including my coffee, my share of the bill (and we did actually split the bill along individual lines because there’d been quite a disparity in ordering) came to $80. That’s the same as I paid at Press where I’d had more interesting food and considerably more to drink!

My impression was that Assaggio was nice but overpriced for what it was. And since that meal I’ve chatted to quite a few people, to see if my experience was a one off. Uniformly, opinion has been the same: “nice”, “good”, “too expensive”, “other places I’d go first”.

Is it enough for the “Best Restaurant” in South Australia to be “good” or “nice”? I don’t think so when there are so many restaurants where you can find “exciting” and “excellent”.

* Incidentally, Assaggio also offers a gluten free menu, although no one at our table made use of that.

Assaggio Ristorante on Urbanspoon

Easy Pasta Recipe

- Alex Leave a comment

IMG_2105

Disclaimer: San Remo was kind enough to send me some of their artisan pasta to try out for myself.

A while back I noted that San Remo had released a range of artisan pasta. I’ve now had an opportunity to try this pasta for myself and I’m pleased to report that it is definitely a cut above the average dried pasta.

Andy and I like our pasta cooked quite differently. In my opinion, he likes his pasta cooked too much, and he thinks I like it underdone. This means that dried pasta needs to be able to handle a fair bit of cooking without going soggy and claggy. And trust me – there are plenty available that do!

We tried out the San Remo casarecce – short lengths of twisted pasta which hold a finer sauce really well. I was impressed before the pasta even hit the pot because the packet was easy to open without resorting to scissors or ending up with massive tears in it or pasta all over the floor. I know this sounds trivial, but the standard plastic packaging used for most food stuffs seems to defeat me.

Sauce wise I made a very simple tomato based sauce. For the two of us, I finely sliced one onion and cooked that gently with a few cloves of garlic. I added two roughly chopped rashers of bacon and one (very hot!) finely chopped chilli. When the bacon was starting to look cooked, I added a tin of crushed tomatoes, a sprinkling of oregano and a splash of white wine. I let that all cook down for a while before adding a chopped red capsicum. I finished the sauce off with some beef stock that I had lying around in the fridge.

The beef stock was definitely the masterstroke, as it gave the sauce a lovely depth of flavour. Given the elements of this sauce, if I hadn’t been using up what was in the fridge I would have opted for either chicken or vegetable stock.

So – the sauce was excellent (of course), and easy and all done in hardly any time at all. One thing to note – when using tinned tomatoes I do find it a good idea to let the tomatoes cook for a little while. Not only does this reduce and thicken their juices but it also cooks out the slightly weird ‘raw’ taste that you sometimes get with tinned tomatoes.

The pasta, with its twisty shape and little crevices, held on to the sauce really well. It didn’t collapse from a little extra cooking, and I felt that it still had a good bite to it. It also definitely tasted better than the average dried pasta (and also better than many ‘fresh’ pastas available).

One note: San Remo clearly thinks us South Australians are big eaters! The packet says that a serving size is 125g (so four servings in a 500g packet). I used 100g per person and we still had a very generous amount of pasta left over. Unless you’re very, very hungry you might want to adjust the serving size appropriately. Of course, if you don’t, you’ll have some left over for lunch!