Dolce Vita Diaries: The Recipes

By Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb

A selection of delicious Italian recipes, inspired by one couple’s journey of a lifetime

In 2005, Cathy and Jason threw in successful careers as TV presenters and producers to become olive farmers in Italy. With their one year old daughter and Italian dictionary in tow, they found themselves in the middle of a European nowhere untouched by modernity.

This exclusive low-price ebook gathers together the more than 50 delicious Mediterranean-inspired recipes that feature in the full ‘Dolce Vita Diaries’.

Recipes include:

- Pan-fried trout with polenta crust and almonds
- Onion and sapa tart
- Real ketchup with Italian tomatoes
- Strawberry pannacotta with balsamic
- Saffron risotto
- Fig jam

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Feb 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007458233

Book preview

Dolce Vita Diaries: the Recipes

After leaving their careers in television, Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb, accompanied by their young daughter Rosie, packed up their LA lives and headed for the Mediterranean. They had bought an abandoned olive grove to earn them an honest, if back-breaking living. The following delicious recipes have been inspired by their love of olive oil and their experiences of la Dolve Vita; they can also be found along with the captivating story of Cathy and Jason's adventure in The Dolce Vita Diaries, available as a separate print and ebook.

Olive oil tasting

Infusing olive oil

Lemon ravioli with sage butter

Orecchiette pasta with cauliflower

Pan-fried trout with polenta crust and almonds

Orange, almond and caraway seed cake

Strozzapreti

Maccheroni di Campofilone

Aubergine involtini with sapa sauce

Preserving lemons

Hollywood pasta

Roasted butternut squash risotto with home-made pesto

Cannellini humus with parsley

Cannellini humus with lemon and basil

Plum, peach and almond cake

Pear, parmesan and rocket risotto

Oven-roasted tomatoes

Marinated aubergines

Lentils from Castelluccio

Panzanella

Fusilli with courgette and saffron

Sliced steak on a bed of rocket and tomatoes

Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms

Grilled lamb

Oily chicory

Silvano and his sacred sapa

Polenta with sapa

Sapa and pecorino

Sapa with ice cream

Sapa with strawberries

Onion and sapa tart

Penne all’arrabbiata

The Loro Piceno Shield

Twice-cooked biscuits

Fat chips shallow fried in olive oil

Battered feta cheese

Real ketchup with Italian tomatoes

Artichoke and pea bruschetta

Halloumi stir-fried with harissa

Taverna Loro

Focaccia

Pumpkin flowers stuffed with sheep’s ricotta

Potato soup with pig’s cheek

Strawberry pannacotta with balsamic

Spaghetti with lemon and parmesan cheese

Trout preserved in olive oil

Ricciarelli biscuits

Mandarin breakfast cake

Hazelnut meringue layer cake

Oven-baked perch with potatoes, olives and mandarin olive oil

Antipasti: Meat, cheese and bruschetta

Spaghetti with anchovies, olives and capers

Secondo piatto: Breaded veal cutlets

Contorno: Potatoes roasted with garlic and rosemary

Seafood fritto misto

Spaghetti with clams

Spiralini with ricotta and tomatoes

Vincisgrassi

Osso buco

Saffron risotto

Spaghetti for hungry footballers

Cherryand pinenut focaccia

Fig jam

Olive oil tasting

Ingredients for olive oil tasting

Bread – white

Representing

Africa

Mustapha’s Moroccan Extra Virgin Olive Oil

California

B.R. Cohn Sonora Gold

Italy

Badia a Coltibuono Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Chianti

Spain

Núñez de Prado Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Andalusia

Pour each oil into a white saucer, so you can get a good look at the colour and viscosity. Cut the bread into small cubes. Dip in oil and eat. Simple.

Word on the street is that the bread can modify the flavour and mask the subtleties of the oil, so, for purists, dispense with the bread and instead pour some oil on a teaspoon, suck it into the mouth with a slurp and wait for it to flow down the back of the throat.

Infusing olive oil

Ingredients for cold infusions

Rosemary – a big sprig

Dried chilli – one large one or several small

Black peppercorns – a small handful

Garlic – a whole bulb

We’ve worked out two ways to infuse the oil. The first is what we call warm infusion, where we gently heat the flavourings in a saucepan of oil for maybe an hour. Then there is cold infusion, where we leave the flavouring in the olive oil for a couple of weeks – the flavour slowly ebbs out in a more natural way. Things like lemon rind or basil, which contain water, go mouldy if you cold infuse them. But on the other hand, when we heat up the oil the result is a bit bland because the volatile aromatic flavour compounds are destroyed.

Our success stories so far have been cold-infused dried chillies, rosemary and roasted garlic (we nuke the dastardly bacteria with a good roasting).

Get creative and mix up whatever ingredients take your fancy. You will need a variety of glass bottles, corks and funnels. You are best off sterilizing the bottles beforehand – 10 minutes in boiled water will do the job.

Simply put your flavourings into a bottle and then fill with olive oil so that they are covered and there are no air bubbles.

To roast the garlic, preheat the oven to 190o C / gas mark 5, wrap the whole, unpeeled bulb tightly in kitchen foil and roast for about 40 minutes or until the cloves are soft. Once the bulb is cooled down a bit, pull off individual cloves and shove as many of them down the neck of the bottle as you can. Then fill and cover with oil.

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Olives stone-ground with lemons

Just when we’d really got the