It looks like a crêpe, but is not one. It’s made out of chick pea flour and quite a popular little snack in the South of France. Actually there is an Italian version of it called “Farinata” or “Cecina”  (ceci = chick peas) and eaten in the bordering regions of Nice. I think Socca came originally from Italy and was spread out in the South of France. Chick pea flour is used a lot in Middle Eastern cuisine and probably was introduced to Southern Europe during Arabic invasions…

There are different versions of it, actually the traditional one has only chick pea flour, no egg, no milk and is cooked in the oven. I adjusted mine a little, I placed it in the oven after I stuffed it. The real socca Niçoise is served with just cracked pepper and has to be eaten very hot, or it tends to harden quickly. Street vendors do sell it and it’s mainly eaten on the spot. I somehow like its texture, it’s softer and a little thicker than a crepe but the chick pea flour gives a specific unusual flavor. My version is a little different from the traditional socca, I combined two flours and I stuffed it. You can serve this socca with a tomato concassée (concassée de tomates). Also, you can use spinach, chards, and other types of greens, but I like the rucola because of its peppery taste, it goes perfectly with chick pea sweet flavor.

Actually, I don’t know the South of France that well (been there twice), since we always went to Italy visit the family during Easter, Summer and Christmas. My parents never went anywhere else on vacation, only to their hometown in Italy and at some point, I really wanted to visit other cities, but that was not an option, so I am much more familiar with Italian cuisine, Marchiggiano style than traditional Southern French cuisine.

Besides anytime, my mom wanted to go home, she always used all kinds of excuses, nonno Bruno being sick, zio Tonino being depressed with some kind of unexplained disease, freshen up the house, etc…so whatever reason was good to take a trip to Isola di Fano (her village). Besides Nancy-Isola is only 9-10 hour drive, so not that big of a deal. You can hop on the car, cross Switzerland and get to Italy (mainly in Chiasso, the Italian Border) in about 5 hours.

The thing is with my dad, he hates stopping when he goes from point A to point B, so he would drive non-stop from Nancy to Isola (about 1000 km) and was not happy to let the girls out not even for the “pause pipi“  Peepee break?  and would tell us, not to think about it, as if you stop thinking you want to urinate, then everything is fine, the urge is gone. Yes, my father has always been a character…

Ingredients for 4-5 socca

For the socca

• 1/2 cup (a little more) Chick pea flour
• 1/2 cup white flour
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• water (enough so that it forms a creamy batter)
• 1 tbs olive oil + 1 tbs for the pan
• salt
• coarse black pepper

For the filling

• 1/2 head of radicchio, chopped
• 1 bag rucola or 2 bunches
• 2 garlic cloves
• 3 tbs kalamata olives, chopped
• 3 tbs goat cheese
• 1 tbs olive + extra for drizzling
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Mix the two flours together. Add egg and gradually milk, water and olive oil. If the batter is too thick add water. Add salt and mix well to obtain a creamy and smooth consistency. Set aside.

In the meantime, prepare the greens. In a pan, heat olive oil chopped garlic. Let the flavor of the garlic come out without burning it, then add greens. Adjust with salt and pepper, and stir to wilt them (about 5 minutes), when cooked, set aside and keep warm.

Heat olive oil in a pan, add one small ladle of batter and proceed like you would for a crepe, spreading the batter all over the pan and evenly spread it. Cook and turn on the other side. Proceed the same way until all the batter has been used.

Fill half of the socca with some greens, goat cheese and olives, fold the other half on top and fold once more in a quarter, in order to have a little triangle. Place in a pre-heated oven at 380F for 5-7 minutes. Crack a good quantity of black pepper on top. You can serve this with a tomato concassée.

In France we don’t have something called brunch, we either have breakfast or lunch. Brunch is an Anglo-saxon concept, and I like it.

There is a restaurant in Sausalito (San Francisco North Bay), called Le Garage where I really like to have my brunches on Sunday, it’s facing the marina and has a huge outside patio, they serve really good mouillettes with prosciutto and asparagus.

Mouillette in French means a small and long piece of bread you dip in oeuf à la coque. Oeuf à la coque literally means Egg in its shell, implying with soft yolk. If the yolk is hard, then it becomes oeuf dur (hard egg). The English translation I found for oeuf à la coque is boiled egg, but I don’t think it’s really that accurate. Oeuf à la coque is a part of every French kid childhood and I remember mine with those two eggs waiting for me on the kitchen table before I would leave for school in the morning.

What’s great about mouillettes is that you can add any side dish you like and make a great brunch with all kinds of combination you like.

I found the cutest mini yellow carrots at the Berkeley Bowl and had to buy them, so then ended up wrapped in pancetta, not a bad way to end. You can also use asparagus instead of carrots, they’re great too, or serve it with thinly sliced prosciutto, you can use your imagination and combine ingredients you like.

Ingredients for 2

• 4 eggs
• 2 heirloom tomato
• 2 cups rucola
• 6 small yellow carrots
• 6 slices pancetta
• rock salt
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar
• parmigiano reggiano shaved
• Grilled baguette cut in  3 inches long sticks

Preparation

For the eggs

Place eggs in a pot of water, start counting 3 minutes from the time the water starts boiling. Remove from pot (it’s better to cook the eggs at the end).

For the carrots

Boil carrots in water, when cooked wrap one slice of pancetta around, add pepper and place under broiler until all sides are grilled.

For the tomatoes

Cut tomatoes in small cubes, add olive oil, toss and sprinkle with rock salt and pepper

For the salad

Sprinkle rucola with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a little salt, and shave some parmesan on top.

Serve each item in a large plate, dip your mouillettes in the egg and enjoy!

I have been thinking about this recipe for a while that my grandmother used to make when I was a child, called tacconi. I loved those so much, because they’re always remained a little crunchy and I have always loved pasta that remains al dente, even more al dente than it should be. I would never eat overcooked pasta. My grandmother used to make a ton of those tacconi on Sunday and distribute them between my parents and I and my oncle and kids (since we all lived in the same house, different floors). That was the Sunday treat.

Tacconi are some rustic pasta from Marche region made with half fava bean flour and half regular flour. They’re cut thick and long and are served with a garlic tomato sauce.

I could not find just 100% fava bean flour, so the closest I could get is a mixture of half chick pea, half fava bean flour. Instead of white flour, I used whole wheat flour, that’s why those tacconi have a deep brownish hearty color.

Now the original tacconi have a different shape too, they look like thick spaghetti, not short like those gnocchi shape little nuggets. Actually, I somehow reproduced the shape of gnocchi sardi, called malloreddus. Obviously this dish is somehow a result of two Italian cuisines, the Sardinian  and the Marchiggiana…then if you think that pesto is from Genoa, then it combines three cuisines.

As for the pesto, rucola pesto is something I really love, the bitterness of wild rucola mixed with parmesan and pistacchios make a wonderful combination. The asparagus add another green and delicate touch.

Ingredients for 4

For the pasta

• 1/2 cup fava bean flour (or mixed chick pea and fava bean flours if just fava bean not available)
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• water

For the pesto

• 2 cups of wild rucola
• 3 tbs pistacchios
• 2 garlic cloves
• 4 tbs parmigiano reggiano
• 4 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 bunch asparagus

Preparation

Start preparing the pesto. Mix all ingredients in a mixer and mix until medium consistency, you don’t want to pesto to be too thin, but with some grainy texture, and feel the pistachios.

Cut asparagus in about 1 inch length and cook in boiling water for about 5 minutes or until cooked but still firm.

For the tacconi, mix both flours together in a bowl and add enough water to make a dough that is not sticky or soft but rather thick and dense. Remove from the bowl, and transfer to a well-floured surface, add flour if necessary. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes.

Let rest in a plastic wrap for about 30 minutes.

Cut the dough in about 2 or three pieces and roll dough into a 1/8 inch cylinder, and cut into 1/4 inch pieces. Roll each piece pressing with your thomb on a gnocchi board or a fork to give it some ridges. Repeat process with all the dough.

Bring water to a boil, add salt. Transfer the tacconi and cook for about 6-7 minutes.

Drain, transfer to a bowl, add pesto and asparagus. Mix well but carefully not to break tacconi nor asparagus.

Tra una torta e una pizza – Tarpiz con verdura mista del sud, feta e rucola

When you can decide what to make between a pizza and a tart, and you end up doing something in between those two, it would be inaccurate to call it either tart or pizza, that’s why it should get its own name. Entre les deux mon coeur balance (in between those two my heart can’t decide), like my heart has been balancing between France and Italy my whole life, so I might as well be a representation of this round and savory Tarpiz…really Tarpiz is really what it is…and I feel I am a Tarpiz myself.

Lately, I have been avoiding to use white refined flours in my pastries or other dishes where it requires flour. I have been going to the Rainbow and buying all those wonderful cereal flours, such as quinoa, kamut, buckwheat, spelt, etc…they’re wonderful for baking, very healthy since high in fibers and protein and most of all they taste absolutely amazing. I definitely stay away from white refined flour when possible. 

Our modern society has been consuming too many refined and industrialized food, lacking nutrients and vitamins. We have forgotten natural and ancient grains used in the old time as far as Antiquity, such as spelt, kamut, millet, etc…and really wished that restaurants would also serve food that would be focused on nutrition rather than heavy in grease and sugar to make it more “flavorful”. Flavor is not linked to sugar and grease, but on quality of the ingredients.

Anyway, this Tarpiz is made out of whole wheat and kamut flours, topped with grilled vegetables, and rucola. I love pizza bianca (white pizza) with rucola they serve in Italy. 

For about 4 people

For the dough

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup kamut flour
• fresh yeast dissolved in 1/2 cup lukewarm water or less
• 2 tbs olive oil
• salt

For the topping

• 1 red bell pepper, grilled
• 1 small size eggplant, sliced crosswise
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 tbs feta, crumbled
• a few cherry tomatoes (5 or 6 cut in half)
• 1 tbs kalamata olives, chopped (optional)
• 1 handful of wild rucola
• salt and pepper

For the dough

Mix flours together. Dissolve one tsp of fresh yeast in 1/2 glass of lukewarm water. Stir well until the yeast has completely dissolved. Mix yeast, salt, olive oil with flours, making a dough. Knead the dough to make it into a nice and elastic texture. Let it rise for a couple of hours at medium temperature. It needs to double it size. Then fold again, make a ball, wrap in plastic and leave in the refrigerator for one about one hour.

For the topping

Broil the bell pepper under the broiler, until all sides are browned. Remove, let it cool and remove the skin and seeds. Cut in stripes.

Cut the eggplant crosswise, sprinkle with salt and olive oil and broil under the broiler on both sides. When nicely browned, cut in half or quarter depending on the size of the eggplant.

Cook the onions slowly in olive oil until they become soft almost like a jam. 

Start spreading the dough, then top with onions, eggplants, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper stripes, olives, feta cheese, salt and pepper. Cook in a preheated oven at 375F for about 25 minutes. Remove and add rucola. Serve hot.

Beautiful artichokes are one of my favorite vegetables, especially the baby ones…they’re small, tender, and make beautiful and delicious dishes. The only draw back is the preparation, and trimming, since it can take some time to remove the hard leaves and trim them, some people prefer to use easier to prepare vegetables. In French we say, quand on aime on ne compte pas, when you love, you don’t count, which is somehow the way I go along withe life and cuisine in general. What count is the result, not really the time spent in the kitchen (obviously when you have time).

The great thing about California, is that you get many fruits and vegetable locally grown so that availability of fresh and organic produces is huge. 

In France we have similar baby artichokes but they’re purple and are called artichauts poivrade, very popular in the South of France, Italy and Spain.

My mom always brings form Italy cases of artichokes from my uncle’s garden, she keeps them half-cooked in jars, filled with olive oil, garlic and herbs and uses them to put on top of pizza or to eat as is as antipasto, with prosciutto. Those can be preserved that way for over 6 months and are delicious, crunchy, full of flavors since they’re infused in olive oil and herbs.

The other wonderful ingredient in this recipe is the Farro (or spelt), it’s the Italian name of the grain, also used in English. In France it’s called épeautre and is one of the oldest grain, very rich in protein and cultivated in Italy at the foot of the Alps in a region called Garfagnana. It is a very robust plant that grows in tough climate and is resistant to cold, therefore, its culture does not need pesticides and other chemical such as wheat does, that’s why Italian farro is a part of organic agriculture.

Ingredients for 2

• 10 large uncooked shrimps
• 1/2 lb farro
• 2 hanful rucola
• 10 small baby artichokes
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 3 tbs dry white wine
• salt and pepper

For the vinaigrette

• 2 tbs avocado oil
• 1 tbs orange-champagne vinegar (or any other citrus vinegar)
• 1 tbs chopped basil
• 1 garlic crushed

Preparation

Cook farro in 3 times its quantity of water for about 20-25 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Trim the artichokes removing the outside leaves and cutting the tip of the heart to keep just the tender and yellowish heart. Cut in quarters and place in a bowled filled with water and lemon juice to prevent the artichokes from darkening.

Saute artichokes with garlic in olive oil, stir and add white wine, salt and pepper. Cover and cook until the artichokes are tender. 

Saute shrimps in olive oil salt and pepper.

In a salad bowl, mix farro, artichokes, shrimps, let it cool a little, then add tomatoes and rucola.

For the vinaigrette, mix all ingredients together, mix well and add to the salad. Toss and serve.