A special dinner for a special Autunn evening in San Miniato Tuscany. Here is the menu we cooked and shared together on the final night of the first-ever Pink Pelican group tour to Northern Italy.
Recipes are below, but first, if you are at all interested in small group travel and adventures with like-minded women like us, then please click here for more.
After seven days of exploring, eating, hiking, swimming, cycling, sipping, cooking, and nonstop chatting through Piedmont, Liguria, and Tuscany, we shared our last supper together at a villa near San Miniato.
That morning, we went to the weekly market to buy what we needed, that afternoon, we cooked together, and that night, we feasted. It was the perfect end to a really special week.
Last supper – Pink Pelican Cooking Class Menu
Salt roasted onions with ‘fondue’
Rolled chicken with garlic, capers and sage
Braised white beans with parmesan
Autumn salad with walnut dressing and gorgonzola
Roast capsicums
Roasted pear sponge with mascarpone and biscotti crunch
Salt roasted onions with ‘fondue’
Serves 6-12 (you can serve them one whole onion per person or go halves which we did)
Prep time 20 mins
Cook time 3-4 hours for the onions, about 10 mins for the sauce
This was one of the best things I ate on this trip, and I’m happy to report that we made it ourselves! The general consensus was that this would make a really fun starter back home, and here’s the really good news – it’s not hard to make, and all the elements can be done in advance! The recipe (or a version of it) is traditional to the Piedmont region, especially the cheesy ‘fondue’ sauce, which is quite like a cheese custard and absolutely delicious here with the onion or on its own with toasted bread.
One of our incredibly generous guests ‘anonymously’ gifted the group a white truffle on our last night (I know! So cool), and it was the perfect finish to this very good dish.
Here goes…
For the onions
1 ½ cups rock salt
6 onions
For the ‘fondue’ sauce
1 cup milk
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp salt
250g cheese, grated (we used Parmesan on the night because that’s what we had, and it was great, but more traditional would be a fontina-style cheese, a Heidi Gruyere in Australia would be ideal)
To serve
½ cup breadcrumbs
½ cup grated cheese (whatever you used above)
Olive oil, for drizzling
Tip about 1 ½ cups of rock salt on a roasting dish’s base and preheat the oven to 160C. Place six brown onions on the rock bed and then pop in the oven for about three hours or until the onions are really soft (stick in a knife to check how well they’re cooked).
Set aside to cool.
For the fondue sauce, set up a double-boiler with a saucepan of simmering water and a glass or ceramic bowl resting on top. Whisk the milk, yolks, cream, and salt together in the bowl and cook for about ten minutes, whisking most of the time, all of the time towards the end. Once it has thickened up so the ‘custard’ coats the back of your spoon, remove from heat and stir in the cheese to melt. Set aside.
Now, let’s turn back to our onions. Slice the tops off horizontally so you create a lid of sorts. You want to cut about 1.5cm from the top. Now, using a dessert spoon, loosen out the central piece of the onion. It should almost ‘pop’ out whole like a baby, cooked onion. You want to leave a ‘wall’ of onion inside the skin to hold everything up. Return them to their salt tray.
Roughly chop the cooked onion centres. Reserve about a cup of the cheese sauce and stir the chopped, cooked onion into the rest. Now, gently spoon this filling back into the onion cavities. Reserve the extra sauce and chill until needed. Do the same with the filled onions. They can stay in the fridge like this for a day or two.
When you’re about 20 minutes from wanting to serve these up, preheat the oven to 180C.
Mix together the breadcrumbs and cheese and generously sprinkle this on top of each onion. Drizzle with oil and pop in the oven for at least 10 minutes, or until the tops are golden and bubbly.
Warm up the remaining sauce and serve with some crusty bread to mop it up and, if you’re very lucky, some shaved truffle.
Rolled chicken with garlic, capers and sage
Serves 4-6
Prep time 20 mins (not including chicken prep)
Cook time 40 mins (plus 15 mins resting)
A really terrific party dish, this is super easy once you’ve got your chicken rolled and sorted, which I recommend asking your butcher for help with, more on this below!!. It’s a doddle to carve, tastes terrific and can happily stretch to serve quite a few (thanks to the beans and a big green salad on the side).
1 whole chicken, de-boned, butterflied, then cut into two pieces, rolled and tied***
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsp capers
1 bulb garlic, cloves peeled and roughly chopped
A good handful of sage leaves
1 cup white wine
30g butter
Juice of one lemon
Heat the olive oil in a large (preferably cast iron) pan, then brown the chicken pieces on all sides until golden brown. Remove from heat and season well.
Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the olives, garlic, and sage to the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes, then pour in half of the wine and cook for a minute more, stirring well to scrape up all the good bits from the bottom of the pan.
Return the chicken pieces to the pan and transfer the dish to the oven to cook for 30 minutes (or more or less depending on size). If you have a meat thermometer (they’re great btw), you want an internal temperature of no less than 75C.
Remove from the pan once cooked and cover with foil to rest for at least 15 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the rest of the wine and finish with a nob of the butter.
Slice the chicken into pieces about 2cm thick (or your preference). I like to serve these over the warm white beans and then drizzle the pan juices on top. Finish with a good squeeze of lemon and serve. DELICIOUS.
*You might need to ask your butcher’s help with this. I bought four rolled double chicken breasts for our dinner together from the butcher in San Miniato. He had de-boned the chicken, kept the skin on and then rolled it with slices of prosciutto before tying up. If trying this at home, you can follow this very indepth video tutorial on how to de-bone/butterfly a chook. Then I’d cut it into two breast pieces, season the inside of each well with salt and pepper, then lay the prosciutto across each and roll and tie. Or you could, very nicely, ask your butcher and I’m sure they’ll be happy to help!!
Braised cannellini beans
Serves 6-8
Prep time 15 mins (plus overnight or at least 6hrs soaking)
Cook time at least 30 mins but really depends on the beans!
This is such a great base beans recipe—use it for a simple braised beans dish as per below, throw a cup or two into a minestrone recipe, puree with olive oil and lemon juice for a white bean dip, or make a gratin as per the one in the new book What Can I Bring.
3 cups (585 g) dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
⅓ cup (80 ml) olive oil
1 Tbsp sea salt
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 cups (500 ml) chicken stock or water
2 Tbsp thyme leaves
Start with the beans. Drain after soaking, then rinse and place in a large saucepan. Cover with enough water to come about 2 cm over the beans. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, the garlic cloves, and the salt. Cover and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat as low as possible and cook until the beans are just tender. Keep checking after 30 minutes; you don’t want them to overcook and fall apart in the water. Drain and set aside.
Serve warm with the rest of the olive oil and a mountain of shaved parmesan.
Punchy, crunchy Autumn salad
Spread a cup of walnuts on a roasting tray with a teaspoon of fennel seeds and roast for about 10 minutes or until aromatic and golden. Tip into your mortar and pestle, add a good glug of good olive oil, the zest of one lemon, a glug of balsamic vinegar and a good pinch of salt. Bash everything together into a delicious warm dressing.
Roughly chop a few handfuls of radicchio and lettuce leaves, finely slice a fennel bulb (keep the fronds for garnishing), julienne, a tart apple, and crumble in about 1/2 cup blue cheese. Spoon over the dressing, drizzle with a little extra EVOO and serve up!
Piedmontese capsicums
Serves 6-8
Prep time 20 mins
Cook time: Around 1 hour
These capsicum boats appear on antipasto plates all over Italy and are best when served at room temperature which makes them perfect to make ahead. I pack them on a bed of salad leaves and by the time we’re ready to eat, the capsicum’s juices have made a lovely dressing. Win win. They’re also a brilliant make-ahead side dish for summer barbecues. Any leftovers make a great pasta sauce when chopped finely and tossed about in a hot frying pan for five minutes.
4 red capsicums, halved and seeded
4 tomatoes
8 anchovy fillets, drained and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsp capers, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Mixed salad leaves
A handful of basil leaves, to serve
Preheat the oven to 160C. Lightly oil a large baking dish, place capsicum halves, cut-side up and well-spaced, in the prepared dish Cut tomatoes in half lengthways and place one half, cut-side down, inside each capsicum boat. Combine anchovy, garlic and capers and scatter over tomato. Drizzle with oil and balsamic and bake for 1 1/2 hours, until capsicum and tomato are soft and tender. Place mixed salad leaves on a large serving platter and top with capsicums and all their beautiful juices.
Hot Roasted Pear Sponge Pudding
This is a terrific base recipe for pretty much any fruit you’d like to turn into a hot pudding: fresh berries, ripe stonefruit, poached apples or quinces, or, in this case, roasted pears. Likewise, play around with spices and flours here. You could swap the cinnamon for ginger, add vanilla, orange or lemon zest, or whatever you think will work well!
For the pears
6 pears, peeled, halved and cored
100g butter, cut into cubes
1 cup white wine
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
140g butter, soft, really soft (plus extra for greasing)
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
¼ cup milk
1 1/2 cups plain flour and 1 cup wholemeal or rye flour
Preheat oven to 180C and grease a roasting pan or ceramic dish (about 6-cup capacity).
Arrange the pears on the bottom of the dish, top them with pieces of butter, drizzle with the wine and sprinkle with the sugar and cinnamon. Cover with a layer of foil and cook for about 40 minutes or until the pears are soft.
For the sponge topping, place the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until combined (don’t worry too much about ‘creaming’ here—if your butter is soft enough, it shouldn’t take long to mix together). Add the eggs, beating well between each addition. Then fold in the flour and milk or yogurt.
Spread this mixture on top of the cooked fruit (it should still be hot) and then finish with a sprinkle of the reserved sugar.
Into the oven, it goes for about 25 minutes. Serve warm with cream or ice cream.
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