Have you ever heard of Torta Verde? That's Italian for "Green Cake". I always crack up at the idea of a "Green Cake" when it actually has nothing to do with cake at all and is in fact a savoury vegetable pie. I've also heard it called Torta Pasqualina, or "Easter Cake" and that version has whole eggs dropped in to the pie so that when you cut through you get slices of hard baked egg in the middle of your pie. There are probably about a million different versions of this pie out there.. and I think the reason lies in the word Easter - a pie made traditionally at Easter time which would be Spring in Italy and when the first young, tender veg would be harvested. Which is why Swiss Chard makes an appearance in this recipe as it over-winters well and puts on a final flourish in early Spring just before it heads on to seed later in the season. Wild herbs like Nettles and Dandelions would also be added, and you can still find recipes ar
Yesterday the girls were off sick with a cold, and I can't say I was feeling 100% either. My energy was low and when my eldest asked for soup for lunch, I admit, I did an internal sigh. I went to the cupboard and grabbed a couple of potatoes and an onion.. and that is when it happened. That is when I began to channel my Italian Granny! Seeing the potatoes and onions and thinking.. what else? What other something could I add to the soup to make it, well, soup. It was then I had a recollection from my childhood, a flash of an image, a forgotten smell, of a soup made up of the lowliest ingredients, that tasted so good, was warm and comforting and embodied everything a soup should be. My Granny's rice soup. By some twist of good fortune I had some left over rice in the fridge. And as I searched through my memory the tantalising images came flooding back of Swiss Chard and perhaps, celery? So I set out to make it.. and as an afterthought, grabbed my camera to photog