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Joe Trivelli’s recipes for lamb chops, panada, bagna càuda and apples cake

These are dishes with which to warm up. Hearty, simple, warming food that I like to share. It’s time to stoke the fire, or the bonfire, and treat yourself well.

Arrivals from the south of Italy have asked me why there isn’t a friggitoria (fry shop) in London. I pointed them to the chippies, to demonstrate there wasn’t the gap in the market they thought. The fried vegetables and lamb here is something that I am adding to the menu at my fantasy friggitoria. Something to eat with your fingers and worth the bother of disposing of the oil the following day.

It’s time to stoke the fire, or the bonfire, and treat yourself well

Panada is also something of a fantasy dish. Pure comfort food, a savoury bread pudding with a Renaissance touch of grapes. It’s a great way to use up some of the extra bread you’ve been baking. It’s also a good one to prepare ahead and then pop in the oven after a march around, if not the countryside, the block.

Lucky me, I often find myself in Piedmont for a few days at this time of year. I know of no other place that excels at winter food as much. Bagna càuda is a regional highlight and this recipe is the traditional one. Once you’ve spent a good hour making it, you could be forgiven for thinking that dunking vegetables in this mostly oil sauce has lost its appeal, but the flavour is like nothing else and the experience not half as heavy as you expect. It is the best dipping dish in the world, the variety of the raw and boiled vegetables spicing up each bite.

Fried vegetables and lamb chops

Frying at home is to be undertaken when you have no distractions. You may like to feed these to your guests “à la minute”, frying in batches, or keep everything warm until all is ready. This recipe makes a lot and takes patience to fry. Serves 6

plain flour 150g
olive oil
celeriac ½
sprouting broccoli 300g
sage a bunch
caperberries 40g
lamb cutlets 12
thyme a few sprigs
eggs 2
semola flour 200g
egg whites 2
sunflower oil for frying
salt, pepper
chilli flakes
lemons 2

To make the batter, sieve the flour into a bowl. Add 3 tbsp of olive oil and whisk in 230ml of water until smooth. Cover and set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Peel the celeriac and cut into irregular pieces, a few centimetres thick. Blanch these in boiling water for 4 minutes and then the broccoli for 2 minutes. Set aside. Pick the sage leaves. Soak the caperberries in water.

Trim the fat from the lamb cutlets and bash them with a rolling pin until they are 1cm thin. Make a couple of incisions into each and insert some thyme leaves and sprinkle with a little salt. Whisk the eggs and, holding by the bone, dip each cutlet into this wash, then dredge in the semola, then back to the egg and once again the semola to make sure it’s well coated. Set aside on a plate ready for frying.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter. Drain the caperberries and dry with kitchen towel. Now you are ready to heat the sunflower oil. Do so in a pan that is at least double the height of the oil – a large, stable wok is ideal. Use a thermometer or a dollop of batter to check the temperature; 180-190C is ideal. In batches, put the lamb straight in and then fry the vegetables and sage leaves dipped first into the batter. Place carefully into the oil so that they don’t splash. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to turn everything over. Please don’t try to cook everything at once, but do so in batches, ending with the caperberries. Drain on a serving plate lined with kitchen paper.

Season with salt and pepper and dust all with a sprinkle of dried chilli – I like to pound it very well in a mortar and pestle until it’s like powder – and serve with lemon wedges. Eat with your fingers.

Panada with grapes and Gruyère

I think that’s what you call this. I’d eat it with a bitter winter green salad for supper in front of the fire. Serves 6

savoy cabbage ½ (about 250g)
onion 1
salt
fennel seeds 1 tsp
Muscat grapes 250g
olive oil
pepper
bread wholegrain, 3 doorstep slices
Gruyère, fontina or similar 100g
parmesan 1 tbsp grated

Shred, wash and blanch the cabbage in salted water for 4 minutes. Don’t throw the water away.

Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.

Slice the onion and fry over a medium heat with a pinch of salt in a pan you can move to the oven. Add the fennel seeds, and add dashes of water if you think the onion may catch. Once the bottom of the pan is browned but not burned, add the grapes. Stir for 2 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan as you do so, allowing the grapes to burst but not squishing them. Turn off the heat, add the cabbage and combine with another couple of tbsp of oil, and a liberal amount of roughly cracked black pepper. Use several ladles of the cabbage water as stock to loosen. You could use meat stock instead if you prefer.

Cut the bread into thick doorstep slices, 3 will probably do. Tear these over the top of the pot and sink into the cabbage and grapes. Make sure some of the grapes and cabbage show through. Cut the cheese into slivers and dot around, following with the parmesan and a drizzle of oil.

Bake for 25 minutes until golden.

Bagna càuda

The way to serve this is to give everyone a small amount of sauce in their own hot bowl and serve the vegetables separately: raw and boiled. Use the vegetables to stir the sauce. Serves 6

garlic 1 head
extra virgin olive oil 200ml
salted anchovies 125g
unsalted butter 80g, softened
potatoes 3 large
carrots 6
celery 1 head
red chicory 3
white chicory 3
fennel bulbs 2

Peel the garlic. Cut it in 2 and remove the central new green growth. In your smallest saucepan, over the lowest heat, add half the oil and the garlic. (On a gas cooker, adding a heat diffuser might be your best bet.) The garlic needs to cook without frying or browning until completely soft – 30 minutes at least. Should the garlic start to fry, take the pan off the heat for a moment.

Bagna càuda is the best dipping dish in the world

While this is happening, wash and dry the anchovies. If they are under oil, just drain the fillets, but do make sure you have enough actual fish, as they will include the oil as part of the total weight on the tin. Add the anchovies to the oil and continue stirring with your wooden spoon, encouraging them and the garlic to “melt” into the oil. Then add the rest of the oil and continue stirring until a thick sauce is achieved. There is no need to adjust the temperature. Then add the butter and mix in. The sauce needs to be kept warm until served.

Boil the potatoes, then cook the carrots and celery as much or as little as you like – with a bit of crunch or a whole lot of give. Cut the potatoes into fat fingers. Wash and slice the chicories and fennel. You’re ready to go! Get dipping!

Apples, walnuts and ricotta

This simple and delicious pudding is the ideal way to finish a meal. Serves 6

shelled walnuts 100g
golden caster sugar 40g, plus extra for sprinkling
sea salt
olive oil
apples 6, medium-eating, not too soft, (about 600g)
ricotta 500g, fresh
cinnamon ⅛ of a stick
brown sugar 2 tbsp

Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.

Blitz the walnuts with the sugar and a good pinch of salt until they are fine crumbs, but not so much that they are paste. Scrunch up a large sheet of baking paper and flatten it out again. Barely oil the centre and then sprinkle with extra sugar. Use it to line a small 20cm loaf tin.

Peel the apples and bob in a bowl of cold water so they don’t discolour. Slice the apple into ultra-thin 3mm slices, turning through 90° to avoid the cores. (You can use a Japanese mandolin if you have one and are good at that sort of thing.)

Make a layer in the bottom of the tin with some of the apples and sprinkle over some of the walnuts. Add another layer of apples and walnuts and so on, building it up like a lasagna. It takes me 4 layers to come out even – it’s nice if the last layer is apple, but with some walnuts peeping through. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, turn the heat down to 160C/gas mark 3. Sprinkle with a little more sugar and return to the oven for an hour. Allow to cool before serving.

Reheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.

Without ceremony, turn the ricotta out on to a nonstick baking sheet. Grind the cinnamon in a mortar and pestle and sprinkle it on to the ricotta with brown sugar and a tiny pinch of salt. Bake for 20 minutes. Slice while still warm and serve with the cold apple flan.

Joe Trivelli is co-head chef at the River Café