Fresh thoughts, sformato and beige food
"so much cooking is simply repetitive behaviour seasoned with fresh thoughts." Rachel Roddy
'Fresh thoughts' I'm not sure that these exist, except in the brains of those handful of geniuses scattered throughout history. The rest of us just have the same thoughts recycled over and over again. 'Repetititve behaviour' if ever there was any.
It's one of those non days - nothing happening except a trip to the dentist for a checkup and clean - not a joyful thing - and nondescript weather outside - although that was good for a walk back from said dentist. No food either - it's my fasting day, so not even a chance to do something just a tiny bit different for dinner.
All of which leads to difficulties when it comes to thinking of writing a blog. One even wonders why bother. On such days it's a struggle to overcome the dullness and be inspired. Rather like the expression on the face of the lady in the above poster. She looks doubtful, and the fresh thoughts have a tinge of desperation to them - alcohol. Mind you just the right amount of alcohol can sometimes be an amazing prodder of the idea producing part of the brain. Not available on a fasting day however.
So, as usual I flicked through my ideas notebook and came across the header quotation from Rachel Roddy, which was attached to a recipe - Baked leek and egg gratin - which I shall come to in a moment. Suffice to say at this point that leeks, eggs and bechamel are involved. It looked very beige - and therefore linked to one of the other ideas I came across - Beige diets - and which I explored briefly - but which I am ignoring for now.
With respect to food I am already pondering on what I might cook for the rest of the week, and more importantly for a lunch with friends here on Monday. And maybe it's the weather again, but I'm also feeling somewhat uninspired on that front. I would dearly like some fresh thoughts on that - the discovery of a brilliant new recipe is much more possible than a brilliant idea of my own - but in spite of skimming a few obvious books, so far I have not really gone YES! Well a mini yes to a pudding, but so far nothing else.
So when I found the article to which my note in my ideas book pointed, and found that quote in its context of the above recipe, I discovered, from more words from Rachel Roddy, that the preamble was about sformato and the fresh idea was her dish which had been inspired by 'sformato':
"I have mentioned sformati before. It’s a blanket name for an infinite number of baked or steamed dishes made from combinations of the following: vegetables, eggs, bechamel, breadcrumbs, cream, milk, seasonings. There is action in the name, too; removing the bake from whatever form or mould it was cooked in renders it “unmoulded”. In The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, Gillian Riley describes sformato as Italy’s pragmatic, stress-free answer to the souffle." Rachel Roddy
Rachel Roddy's version in particular is quite appropriate for the fresh thoughts part of the quote. As is the 'repetititive' behaviour found in cooking. So what is sformato? Well her definition varied slightly from this one, which tells us that like many dishes from around the world the answer is somewhat vague and diffuse:
"it’s a general word, meaning “unmoulded” in Italian, which covers a collection of recipes involving béchamel sauce, eggs, cream, cheese, vegetables, breadcrumbs, spices, and seasoning, but not necessarily all of these things all at the same time. It appears throughout Italy in countless variations, united only by their presentation – turned out from a mould to reveal their perfect form." Vicky Bennison/SBS
Which sounds vague, yet definitive, with the emphasis on the 'turned out' part of the equation. And yet Rachel Roddy - and numerous other examples that I saw did not turn out their concoctions - which you would think would disqualify them from using the name 'sformato' - and to be fair Rachel does not use it here, but she does elsewhere - without the turning out.
Rachel Roddy's recipe in fact is full of fresh thoughts in that I now see that it is not a 'sformato' it is a gratin. Sformato comes into it because she was inspired to make it via thinking about a recipe for 'sformato' from a lost cookbook, and a meal in a restaurant in which leeks were cooked in the same way as in her recipe - chunks roasted in the oven with butter and then covered with a béchamel before grilling or baking in the oven to get a browned and crunchy top. The cook had mentioned that hard-boiled eggs, could be added as well, and so Rachel did. Hence the finished dish.
Others, however, have also strayed from the notion of turning out the finished dish - Sweetcorn and ricotta sformato - Clare de Boer/New York Times; Spinach and ricotta sformato - Julia Busutti Nishimura/Gourmet Traveller and Rachel Roddy herself in The Guardian with her Sformato - or vegetable bake - frittata is another dish that springs to mind when describing them.
I also discovered along the way, that spinach seemed to be the most common vegetable used when making a 'sformato' and that Tuscany was often mentioned as the place of origin. I'm keeping an open mind on that though. Maybe Tuscany claims ownership of anything using spinach. It's not the usual spinach and ricotta combination however. Most people when attempting to describe a sformato described them as a kind of soufflé but not so fussy. And I'm not sure about that either. The connection to the soufflé idea is that the spinach is mixed with a béchamel, egg yolks and sometimes Parmesan, and the beaten egg whites are folded in separately. But not always. Of course. The unmoulding part is particularly suitable for impressing and means that the sformato is often cooked in individual ramekins. Some examples: Spinach and Parmesan sformati - Lachlan Mackinnon- Patterson/Food and Wine; Spinach sformato with Parmesan sauce - Our Italian Table and Gennaro Contaldi's Cheesy spinach terrine - Gennaro Contaldo/Nourish Magazine, which to be fair is not called a sformato but is described as one.
As Rachel said, these dishes can be made with just about any kind of vegetable - even rice in the case of Jamie Oliver and his Courgette and tomato rice sformato or Cheese, potato and basil sformato - Matt Tebbutt/BBC
Sformati are not confined to the savoury part of the meal however. There are also sweet versions and these more or less always are indeed turned out. The two below are vegetable based - Sformati di carote (Carrot flans with Parmesan cream) - Vicky Bennison/SBS and
Pumpkin and amaretti flan with anise cream (sformato di zucca con crema all'anice) - Stefano Manfredi/SBS, but I saw chocolate and fruit ones too.
I see I have not said much about the connection to beige, and certainly many of the examples above are not at all beige. But there are plenty of cauliflower and potato ones out there as well. And maybe Rachel's gratin is a supreme example of beige food as comfort food. It looks very beige - so much so that the photographer obviously felt the need for some greenery to brighten up the photograph, but I suspect that it nevertheless was delicious in a comforting and bland way - as beige food so often is.
As to fresh thoughts to brighten up the repetitive nature of cooking with reference to my own life. I suppose I do do slightly different things to familiar dishes every now and then. But I never have brilliant brain waves that come from almost nowhere. My fresh thoughts are based on the familiar - even when I'm concocting some sort of fridge raid dish I can never think of that one wild idea that would transform it into something really special. But that's alright. Good not brilliant will do.
YEARS GONE BY
October 28
2024 - A day off
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2017 - Melbourne's laneways
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