As announced a couple of days ago in this post https://gigliocooking.com/sapori-dimenticati-e-ritrovati/
I’m back with more recipes, all simple but really tasty, sometimes elegant, sometimes fun. In the meantime I’ve been busy in the kitchen, finding the enthusiasm I thought I had forgotten and which has instead resurfaced, just as the taste for old-fashioned foods is resurfacing.
A contrast of flavours gives a different touch to any dish. In this recipe, grapes are added. I know, they’re not in season. But nowadays supermarkets have everything in every season and, although we try as much as possible to use local produce, it’s easy to be tempted.
BULB 
CROSS-SECTION OF THE STEM
AGLIONE SHOOT AND ALMOND SOUP WITH GRAPES
Ingredients for 4:
100 g blanched almonds
50 g pine nuts
2 cloves of aglione (I used a quarter of a bulb of fresh aglione – the cloves haven’t fully separated yet. This aglione is even more delicate)
50 g breadcrumb soaked in water
250 ml water
4 aglione shoots
4 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons apple vinegar
Vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
200 g seedless grapes, to serve
Grind the almonds, pine nuts and garlic in a food processor, taking care not to overwork them or the nuts will turn oily.
Add the soaked bread and the water and blend to a fine purée, scraping down the sides of the bowl from time to time. Cover and keep in the fridge until needed. The nuts will swell and the mixture will become creamy.*) Note
Finely slice the shoots and stew them in the oil, adding stock as needed. Season with salt and pepper.
When cooked, let them cool a little before blending to a fine purée.
Put back on the heat and add the almond and aglione cream.
Cook to blend the flavours, adding hot stock to adjust the consistency.
At the end, add the grapes cut in half and cook for one minute.
Serve hot.
You can add a few fresh marjoram leaves to this soup, and serve it with croutons dressed with oil and salt. Unusual and elegant.
*) at this point you have another recipe ready-made. This little cream, perhaps enriched with some herbs – but I assure you it’s delicious even plain – is already a recipe in its own right. You can use it the way you’d use mayonnaise, on roasted vegetables, on fish (wonderful with sole), but also in a tasty sandwich.
UNSHELLED BUDS IN OIL
Pellegrino, as you saw in the previous post, put the “shelled” buds in jars.
I wanted to try leaving the shell on.
I brought a pot of water to the boil with a few spoonfuls of wine vinegar. I salted it. The proportion of salt is rather high, but still lower than what’s usually used for vegetables in oil: 20 grams per litre of water.
I boiled the buds for 12 minutes, drained them and then spread them on a cloth to dry.
You need to wait a day before “packing” them into jars with the seasoning you like. I used fennel flowers from Sapori della Toscana and chilli pepper. And extra virgin olive oil, of course.
Always be careful with preserves: botulinum, a nasty bacterium, lives in the absence of oxygen and is extremely dangerous. Take all the necessary precautions.
CHICKPEA SOUP WITH AGLIONE
Chickpea soup is so simple that each of us has a different version of it.
As simple as it is, at the same time it’s a little laborious. If only because the chickpeas have to soak for at least a day (ideally changing the water once), be drained (we already have a bowl and a colander to wash), put in a pot, covered with water and cooked. Then, in many cases (again, it depends on how you make your soup) you need another pot to start the actual soup. That’s my case. Today I even have one more pot, where I’ve slowly stewed the thinly sliced aglione shoots. There’s a reason I do it this way, and I’ll tell you in a moment.
For the soup today I felt like making the usual soffritto with onion (I used a shallot), onion and celery, cooked slowly without, to be honest, actually frying. Then I added the chickpeas with some of their water and cooked for about a quarter of an hour to let the flavours blend. Don’t forget the salt. Then I blended everything into a velvety cream. I poured it into the pot where the aglione shoot was stewing. The reason is that I wanted the little pieces of aglione to be there, to add extra texture to the velvet.
A sprinkle of pepper and a drizzle of good oil to serve. Then let your imagination run: croutons, herbs, crispy guanciale……
FRIED AGLIONE BUDS
The buds need to be cleaned of their sheath.
Make a fairly runny batter, with equal weights of flour and water. I also added some fennel flowers. I dipped the buds in it and fried them until lightly golden. Lovely when hot, sprinkled with a little salt.
In this preparation the garlic flavour is stronger than in all the others shown so far.
A quick blanching in water and vinegar reduces the drawback, at the expense of texture.
And if we didn’t manage to use the tender shoots in time, and the buds have turned into sumptuous flower heads, we’ll pick the flowers to brighten up our home. We could also dry them and use them for next Christmas decorations. Nothing goes to waste, not only because it’s right for the Planet, but because it makes us happy.
