Mary Berry's summer classics
TRIED-and-tested tips from Saturday magazine’s celebrity chef, Aldo Zilli
Hello and welcome to Saturday. It’s finally the weekend and it’s been a very long week. Today
is the time to relax, but I’ll be doing some food shopping and preparing for a barbecue tomorrow. Before that, I will talk about this week’s book, Mary Berry Cooks.
If you missed the TV series, I recommend you watch it. Mary comes across as very relaxed and informative.
Often, the chef might not appear much in TV cookery books but here, Mary features on many pages and the photography is clever and inspiring.
To say Mary is a good addition to the kitchen is an understatement. I have written about her numerous times, as her books keep on coming, and I am never disappointed. So keep writing Mary and good luck.
As for this week’s recipes, the way the chicken (opposite) is cooked very much reminds me of my mamma, Maria. Every Sunday she would get a chicken, quarter it, place it on lots of potatoes in a roasting tin and add olives, garlic, rosemary, white wine and water, then cook it in the oven for about an hour, and that would be our centrepiece on the table.
And this summer pudding is a feast for the eyes, with lots of colour and seasonal berries. My own version is a strawberry, caffeine-free tiramisu with orange juice, instead of coffee and orange liqueur, to soak the sponge biscuits, and mascarpone mixed with cream, egg yolks and vanilla. Yum!
Buon appetito.
Mediterranean all-in-one chicken
1kg main crop potatoes, peeled and cut into 5cm chunks
3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, cut into wedges
2 garlic cloves, crushed
6 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, snipped into 1cm pieces
6 chicken thighs
6 chicken drumsticks
5 preserved lemons, cut into quarters
1½ tsp paprika
3 courgettes, thickly sliced
1 x 200g can anchovy-stuffed green olives, drained
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
SERVES: 6
PREPARATION: 10 MINUTES
COOKING TIME: 1 HOUR
Preheat the oven to 220?C/425?F/Gas Mark 7. Place the potatoes in a large roasting tin with 2 tablespoons of the oil. Toss well to coat them. Add the onion, garlic, bacon and chicken pieces and toss together.
Add the lemons to the roasting tin. Season everything well and sprinkle with the paprika. Roast for 40 minutes.
In a bowl toss the courgettes in the remaining tablespoon of oil and season with salt and pepper, then poke them in among the chicken and scatter the olives over the top. Return to the oven for a further 20 minutes, until the chicken and vegetables are golden brown and tender.
Summer pudding
Butter, for greasing
1.5kg mixed summer berries (such as blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, blackberries and loganberries)
400g caster sugar
1 large unsliced white tin loaf, about 2-3 days old
SERVES: 12
PREPARATION: 20 MINUTES, PLUS OVERNIGHT CHILLING
COOKING TIME: 2-3 MINUTES
Butter and line a 900g loaf tin, or two 450g tins, with a double layer of cling film.
Remove leaves and stalks from the fruit and put blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants in a pan with the sugar and 75ml water and bring to the boil. Cook for 2-3 minutes until the berries have just softened and burst. Raspberries, blackberries and loganberries don’t need cooking, but if using only these, cook one type to release the juice. If used in combination with cooked fruit, just add to the pan at the end.
Cut all the crusts off the loaf. Cut the bread lengthways into medium-thick slices. Generously brush berry juice on one side of each slice that will line the tin.
Place a slice of bread in the base of the tin, juice side down. Trim to fit. Put a slice of the bread on either side, inside the tin, and cut slices to fit the ends, putting the juicy sides against the tin. Spoon a little berry juice into the base, making sure the bread is well soaked. Add the fruit gradually, making sure the bread soaks up the juices and becomes red. When the tin is full, top with bread to seal it, making sure there are no gaps. Spoon over a couple of tablespoons of juice to turn the top red. You should have about half the berries left.
Cover the top of the tin with cling film. Put a weight, such as a can of baked beans, on top of the loaf to press the mixture down and allow it to soak into the bread. Put the loaf in the fridge overnight.
Peel back the cling film, turn the loaf upside down on a plate and free it from the tin. Remove the cling film. Serve sliced with the remaining berries and juice.
Aldo’s tip: “If you are entertaining, keep it simple and seasonal; the food will taste better and save you money. Get as much preparation as possible done the day before.”
Recipes taken from Mary Berry Cooks, photography by Georgia Glynn Smith (BBC Books, £20). To order your copy at the special price of £16.50, with free UK delivery, call the Saturday magazine Bookshop on 0871 471 3469 or visit expressbooks.co.uk. To order by post, send a cheque made payable to The Express, along with your contact details, to, The Express, Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF. Calls cost 10p per minute plus network extras. SP: Spoke, London W1B 2AG.
