2014 A to Z Blogging Challenge - I is for Italian veal rolls (involtini) with stuffed aubergine: Chef in Venice #11

There's nothing better than getting away from cooking 24/7 and going on holiday..... and cooking! 

Involtini of veal

My excuse is it's more relaxed cooking - and food shops and markets in other countries are always so much more exciting!
We're going back to 2011 now - seems a long time since my last holiday....
Been to Venice a few times - the Biennale keeps dragging me & my friend back - I've been told I'm going next year (yay!).

Cooking for yourselves rather than eating out in Venice (along with a few other canny tips) means you can get by on a shoestring - I'm only a poor chef after all.
I also try out new things. Right then I was trying out roasted whole aubergines. We served them at a few weddings afterwards - a great vegetarian alternative for hog roasts I find.

Roasted aubergine

1. Cut aubergine in half lengthways.
2. Slash the aubergine flesh with a sharp knife in centimetre wide cuts so you almost get down to the skin, but not quite. Then turn it 90 degrees and cut the other way so you end up with diamond shaped cuts.
3. Cut garlic cloves in half and place these in random places in the cut aubergine. Do the same with rosemary and oregano sprigs.
4. Drizzle olive oil over generously, season with salt and pepper and roast in the oven @ 180 oC for about 20 mins.
5. Once cooked you can either leave to cool and scoop out the flesh and use for aubergine caviar or you can chop the flesh and mix it with.. say... parmesan, oregano, salami, tomato and cooked onion and place it back in the aubergine shell and re-bake it to let all those flavours melt together. Tasty!

Involtini veal raw with mozzarella, roast peppers & capers

With the involtini of veal you can either roll it in pancetta like I did with this one or secure it with cocktail ticks like the one above. You can be all healthy and bake it in the oven or fry it in butter with lemon juice added in at the end.

A trip the the Veneto hills is definitely recommended! (It really is that blue!)

Random figurine with parasol on the backstret walk early morning. Get to know the back streets & shortcuts - saves fighting your way through the grockles! 

Besides the 2 main exhibition centres of the Biennale (Giardini & Arsenale) other countries have their pavillions scattered in random palazzos, churches and tumble down buildings across the city - and it is these which by far provide the best experience... maybe because you have a break in between finding each one, or that actually finding some of them is a mission in itself!

For the 2011 Anish Kapoor offering you had to travel by vaporetto as Basilica di San Giorgio sits on its own island. Less is more they say. It is a work he has done apparently in other venues, but this was the first time in a sacred place - and the symbolism sure got everyone thinking....



Related posts 

Other Chef in Venice posts

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Involtini of veal

A quick picture before rolling up the veal last Friday. I have a hole in the back of my kitchen clock at the moment, and all the time seems to be falling out of it, so in the rush this was all I was able to take.Batted out veal escalopes rolled in pancetta, with roasted peppers and red onion, mozzarella, parsley and basil.

Once rolled (left) you refrigerate it to help it set in shape, then unwrap and roast on a roasting rack/ trivet at 200 oC. 20 minutes was medium, 30 well done.

This went with parsley pesto, grilled vegetables, tomato and basil salad and garlic bread.

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Chef in Venice #3 - Veal escalope with risotto Milanese, roasted raddichio Treviso and beurre noisette

Ideally when you do this you need a stainless steel frying pan and flour or polenta. Unfortunately on this occasion, as I was on holiday, I had neither.

Using a stainless steel pan and my salt tip is the best solution - non-stick pans just can not get hot enough. To get the heat you need to get a good seal, the non-stick pan it will smoke, burn and will be ruined beyond repair for the next time you want to use it.

The risotto Milanese was made in the traditional manner with softened onion, rice, saffron, white wine (prosecco substituted), then marscapone and the finest parmesan reggiano (how I love the Billa shop) and herbs (I used fresh chopped marjoram) to finish.

This was the first time I had tried using the raddicho Treviso. In the UK you normally use the round raddichio (chioggia). If you buy a ready prepared salad mix it will undoubtedly have raddichio in it, for both colour and flavour. Treviso - a large industrial town - is just a few kilometres from Venice and it‘s where many people who work in Venice actually live. I had seen the Treviso variety in the market many times before but had always passed over it. What we had been missing out on! Like Belgium endive, raddicho is also really nice cooked. I pan fried it on a high heat to colour the outside, then finished it off on a baking tray in the oven - though you could just keep it in the pan to cook, but as I only had one pan I needed it for the veal.

To cook the veal let the butter melt in the frying pan till it sizzles. You could now coat it in flour or polenta. Add your veal to the pan and fry on both sides for about a minute (this is, after all, the veal equivalent to the beef minute steak). For the ebst flavour you want a good caramelised colour - which I couldn't achieve here with the non-stick pan. Then remove the veal to a plate to rest leaving the butter and juices in the pan. The butter should be nut brown in colour by now - if not, you can let it cook a little longer - but too long and it will burn. Add strained lemon juice (I used ½ a lemon) and chopped parsley (although as we had chives growing on the altana I used those).



For more Venice dishes see here - http://www.thecotswoldfoodyear.com/search/label/venice

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