Cooking for Three! Three Recipes: Salad with Oranges, Timballo and Pavlova!

Last night I had my piano tuner over for dinner. He actually came over to replace a broken string on my piano ("stringing for his supper," as he put it), but since it had been quite a long while since we've socialized together, I promised to cook dinner.

Well . . . what a dinner it was. It was only three courses - very simple, really, but what fun it all was!

We started with a mixed green (red leaf, friseé and red friseé) salad with oranges and cucumbers. I made an ad hoc version of a creamy something or other somewhat akin to Dijon but also to blue cheese dressing, but with Greek yogurt in place of sour cream. It was fantastic and surprisingly light. We all had seconds.

Then I made a Timballo with Rigatoni rigati in tomato sauce layered with roasted eggplant. We all had seconds of this too!

And finally, pour la pièce de resistance, I made a Pavlova topped with whipped cream laced with my homemade apricot butter and Grand Marnier and raspberries macerated with sugar and lime juice on top of that. Sound outrageous and decadent? It certainly was. Some of us had seconds, some of us had thirds.

For the salad (sorry no pictures), any combination of greens and vegetables and fruit will do. You can leave out the fruit as well; there is no fixed notion of what one should or should not do in a salad, unless you're talking Nicoise or Caesar, of course.

When making the dressing, a hand emulsion blender is perfect for this procedure. Better still if the blender comes with a mini food processing attachment. 

3 cloves of garlic

2 large tbs. Dijon mustard

1 tbs. fresh tarragon (or 2 tbs. dried)

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil ("EVOO")

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/8 tsp. Kosher salt 

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

4 tsp. crumbled blue cheese (of your choice - I prefer using a creamy blue cheese from Norway or Denmark, but any will do

Put the garlic in the processor and blend with the salt until it is chopped very fine. Add the mustard, vinegar and tarragon and blend until an emulsion is formed (a matter of seconds). Add the yogurt and the cheese and blend again. Taste for seasoning and correct with more salt or cheese according to your own taste. I don't use too much cheese in the dressing because I also crumble some cheese in the salad. Mix the salad well and serve with a good helping of black pepper.

Timballo is a dish which has various names ("torta" or "bomba," and others as well) and which is made with varied ingredients, depending on which region in Italy it is made. The basic premise is to encase a variety of ingredients in pasta sheets and bake in a spring form pan or a casserole dish which is then un-molded (see photo). In Bologna, at the renowned ristorante Al Pappagallo, they carry it to the nth degree by taking tortellini in panna (cream) and encasing it in puff pastry! It is their signature dish and it is the epitome of decadence; especially so as it is usually served between the antipasto and the main course! 

Timballo

It is a rich dish so it is wise to serve this dish when cooking for a lot of people or a special occasion. My timballo, or timpano (as the shape in the photograph above clearly demonstrates) was made in a traditional Sicilian fashion. Macaroni in red sauce layered in between layers of roasted eggplant.

Preheat oven to 350ºF

For a 10 inch pan or casserole dish, you will need:

6 long sheets of freshly rolled out pasta dough, set to dry a bit on dry tea towels. (See my blog dated, April 29, 2013 for recipe for fresh pasta.)

10-12 slices of roasted eggplant

1 lb. macaroni (your choice: Rigatoni, Penne, Farfalle, Gemelli, Shells or a combination of  two or three if you really want to gild the lily).

4 cups passata di pomodoro (see blog entry, dated April 7, 2013)

2 cups heavy cream heated and seasoned with a cup of grated Grana or Reggiano Parmiggiano or Pecorino Romano (your choice)

EVOO

Grated cheese and extra sauce for the table

Grease the pan with the olive oil

Line the pan with the pasta sheets so that each sheet overlaps to cover the entire bottom of the pan and hangs over the edges at least as long as the height of the pan. 

Cook the pasta only half way through (you want it a bit raw as it will finish cooking in the oven). Dress it with the sauce.

Start to make layers beginning with a layer of eggplant and then pasta and some of the cream. Continue adding layers until there are no ingredients left.

Take the overlapping sheets of the pasta and begin to cover the timballo so that there are no holes or cracks. Brush a little oil on top and ladle some tomato sauce on top, cover with aluminum foil and place on a roasting pan lined with foil. 

If you make ahead, you can refrigerate the timballo but you should definitely take it out of the fridge at least 2 hours before you put it in the oven. 

Bake for at least one hour. After about 45-50 minutes, remove foil and check for doneness by piercing it with a chopstick or a long skewer to test for heat. Bake for another 10-20 minutes or until you know it is fully cooked. You will know when the timballo is ready when the pasta casing has shrunk from the sides. 

Let rest for a few minutes. Take a large round serving platter and place on top of the timballo. Using hotpads, invert the mold and pull the pan away from the timballo. Use a sharp knife to cut and a cake spatula to pull the sliced pieces away and place on a plate or a pasta bowl. You can pour more sauce on it if you like and sprinkle cheese on top of the dish.

Encased pasta 

As you can see, the contents must submit to gravity so be careful when serving.

Buon appetito!

Now! Pavlova!

This dish is so divine and so fantastically sweet that it can be addictive. I have made it several times and has never failed to impress and to satisfy, although, I will say that at one Easter dinner, someone said they wouldn't eat what they couldn't recognize. I kept saying: meringue and whipped cream with berries but she wasn't having any of it. Her loss!

The Pavlova was created and named after the famous prima ballerina Anna Pavlova in Australia or New Zealand during or after a world tour in 1926. It is a combination of merinque that is baked at a very low temperature for about an hour and a half and then left in the oven to dry for at least 5-6 hours or overnight. The longer the better.

Take a large piece of parchment paper and draw a 10" circle using a spring form pan as your guide. Place the paper on a large roasting pan and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 225ºF

6 egg whites

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 tsp. white wine vinegar

2 tsp. corn starch

Juice of 1 lime

1 tsp. vanilla

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks start to form, add half of the sugar and the vanilla and continue to beat until you see hard peaks. Add the rest of the sugar and continue to beat at high speed until the egg whites take on a very stiff high gloss.

Meringue!

Using an extra fine sieve, add the corn starch and continue to beat. Fold in the rest of the ingredients. Take a rubber spatula and pour the meringue on the parchment paper, making a large mound directly in the center of the circle. Take a large metal spoon and begin to flatten the mound and work your way out towards the borders but remembering that you want a wall of meringue at the edges so you can fill it later on. You should have a large unbaked crater as shown in the photograph below.

Pavlova Shell

Place the Pavlova shell on the middle rack of the oven. Bake for about 1-1/2 - 2 hours. Check the Pavlova periodically to ensure that it isn't cooking too fast or that the temperature of the oven isn't making the Pavlova to brown in any way (if so, lower the heat to 200º). Your goal is a perfectly white, hard shell with a moist gooey center somewhat akin to marshmallow (but decidedly not that at all). When you think the meringue is finished, turn the oven off, leaving the Pavlova shell in the oven for at least 5-6 hours. I leave it in overnight so that it dries, dries, and dries some more. (A word to the wise: it is always better to bake the shell the day before you intend to serve this dessert.) If you don't need the oven, keep it there for sake keeping as the meringue once baked is extremely delicate. It is highly recommended to leave it absolutely untouched until ready to plate and serve.

For the filling(s):

1-2 boxes raspberries (you can use strawberries as well or a combination of the two or other berries if you wish.
1/2 cup sugar
Zest from 1 lime
Juice of 1 lime

Mix berries gently with the sugar and the lime zest and juice. Refrigerate until ready to use.


1-2 cups heavy whipping cream (you can have less or more, it's up to you)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

2 tbs. Apricot Butter
1 tbs. Grand Marnier

Beat the whipping cream, sugar and vanilla together until the cream is extremely stiff.

Mix the apricot butter with the Grand MarnierFold in a small bowl and gently fold into the whipped cream.

Pour the cream into the crater and using a spoon, spread the cream in exactly the same way as you did with the meringue, thus creating yet another crater. Fill the crater with the berries and juices.

Serve immediately.

Pavlova