Insalata Caprese - tomato, basil and mozzarella salad

Recently, I have fallen in love with Italian food (thanks to my favourite chef Gorgio Locatelli) and have almost cooked more Italian food than Chinese food! This salad, in my humble opinion, symbolises Italian food - simple ingredients simply prepared/cooked to let the quality of the ingredients shine through the dish. When you come to think of it, the colours of this salad actually resemble colours of the Italian flag!

Since the greatness of this dish depends on how good the ingredients you can get, I would suggest you buy the best possible ingredients you can source. For extra virgin olive oil, I used a Liguria DOP extra virgin olive oil. For balsamic vinegar, I heeded Locatelli's suggestion and looked up the description and list of ingredients on all the vinegar bottles to search for words 'must of grape' and 'aged in wooden barrels' and avoid words like 'caramel' or 'flavourings'. In the end, I bought one which also happened to be the most expensive one in the local Tesco (about £10). A vinegar that costed £10 is admittedly costly, but a little goes a long way. For tomatoes, I bought British Vittoria cherry tomatoes (on the vine) which has an intensely sweet flavour. I took them out of the fridge for 1 hour to get the chill off them and even put them under the sun for half an hour, which according to Nigella Lawson the Domestic Goddess, makes the tomatoes taste more tomatoey.

Serves 1 greedy person or 2 not-so-greedy ppl with substantial main course to follow

Ingredients:

1. About 12 cherry tomatoes
2. 1/2 ball of mozzarella (about 60g)
3. About 15 young basil leaves
4. Extra virgin olive oil
5. Balsamic vinegar
6. Salt
7. Black pepper

Method:

• Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves and tear the mozzarella into smallish pieces.
• Arrange basil leaves, mozzarella and tomatoes on a plate and drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and season with salt and freshly grinded black pepper. Serve immediately.
  

Mushroom and lemon pasta

Ok, this may not be authentic Italian but this is so refreshingly good, which makes it ideal for a summer alfresco lunch in the garden. Sunny British summer days are short-lived, but eating this, whatever the weather, brings sunshine to me. As a matter of fact, I have been eating this for 2 consecutive lunches and I think I can go on eating this for the rest of the week...

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1. 200g penne (or any dried pasta)
2. 40g (about 2 heaped tablespoons) grated Grana Padano cheese/Parmigiano Reggiano/Parmesan cheese
3. 1 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
4. 1 teaspoon lemon zest
5. 30g butter
6. 100g mushrooms (I used chestnut mushrooms, but any variety would be fine)

Method:

• Cook the pasta in boiling salted water according to packet instructions.
• Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms; grate zest; juice the lemon and grate the cheese.
• In a small shallow pan, melt 2/3 of the butter on medium heat and saute the mushrooms. When the mushroom is cooked, add salt and pepper to taste.
• Add in the remaining butter together with lemon juice and lemon zest and cook for 1 minute.
• When the pasta is cooked, drain the pasta. Reserve about 2 tablespoons of pasta water.
• Add the pasta to the mushrooms. Then, put in half of the grated cheese and stir through. If the pasta looks dry, add in the pasta water.
• Serve the pasta sprinkled with the remaining half of the grated cheese.

Herby Breaded Brill

Hooray! Exam's over and I am as free as a bird again! Sorry for not posting for so long: I got Y to confiscate my laptop and lock it somewhere so that I was prevented from spending hours online without getting any study done! When I get older, I tend to get more freaked out at exams... I now honestly don't know how I had coped with the A-levels in Hong Kong many many years ago. This time round, it was just some exams for leisure study but the pressure blew me off out of the roof! ARGH... Anyways, I am free again and I can't wait to get back to the kitchen again!

I made this herby breaded brill a while ago with the recipe from the great Marco Pierre White on the Knorr website... I basically followed his recipe except that I used brill instead of plaice, dill instead of parsley and em... Marigold Bouillon Powder instead of Knorr's stock granules! (sorry Knorr, but I do swear by your excellent chicken stock pot! =p). Lovely to serve these with some unorthodox mushy peas (i.e. mashed frozen peas with butter).

Serves 2 very greedy people

Ingredients:

1. 2 fillets from 1 brill
2. 5 tablespoons of plain flour
3. 1 tablespoon of Marigold Bouillon Powder (or any stock granules)
4. 2-3 eggs
5. 100g of breadcrumbs
6. A small bunch of dill
7. Vegetable oil
8. 1 lemon

Method:

1. Remove the skin from the brill fillets. Clean and wipe dry. Cut into 6 big pieces.
2. Place flour, beaten eggs and breadcrumbs respectively into 3 separate bowls.
3. Season the bowl of flour with 1 tablespoon of Marigold Bouillon Powder.
4. Add finely chopped dill to the bowl of breadcrumbs and mix them together.
5. Dip a piece of fish with flour, then egg wash and finally coat them in breadcrumbs. Do it with every piece of fish.
6. Pour some oil into a frying pan. The oil should be enough to coat the frying pan and has about 0.5 cm depth.
7. When the oil is hot, shallow fry the fish. Cook them on both sides until golden brown.
8. Place them on kitchen towel to soak excess oil.
9. Serve with lemon wedges and some mushy peas on the side.