Cheese and Pears

Archive for February, 2009

Pimp my pasta sauce

Posted on Feb 26, 2009 05:37:44 PM

Can this pasta sauce be called a recipe? Let’s say it’s something less than a recipe and something more than a ready meal. This is the idea: let’s take Lidl’s tomato sauce, which is excellent, and pimp it.

For a basic tomato pimped sauce for two people you’ll need:

• ½ jar of ready tomato sauce
• ½ leek
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper
• about 10 olives

I guess you already know what to do, right?

Heat a pan, add the olive oil and the finely chopped leek. Sauté at low heat until it’s lucid but not yet brown, then pour the tomato sauce and the olives. Let it go for 10 minutes and this pasta sauce is all pimped and ready.

Armanda’s ring cake (ciambellone di Armanda)

Posted on Feb 24, 2009 10:16:34 AM

I found this ring cake recipe in an old handwritten notebook. I don’t know Armanda, but this ring shaped cake dipped in the morning milk is delicious (just like my other breakfast cakes and biscuits).

• 3 eggs
• 200g (7 oz) sugar
• ½ glass of milk
• 100g (½ cup) butter
• 5 drops of vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons of rum (or 5 drops of rum extract)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 300g (2 ½ cups) flour
• icing sugar to dust

Once you have all the ingredients ready, preheat the oven to 180° (350F).

Beat the eggs and the sugar then add the melted butter and the vanilla essence. Keep beating for 5 minutes then add all the other dry ingredients.

Butter a round, loose-bottomed 20-24cm cake tin and dust it with flour, discarding any excess. Pour in the mix and level it.

Leave it the oven for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out almost clean. Once out, dust it with icing sugar.

If you liked this ring cake, try more cakes

Salad Recipes: Blatant Italian Salad

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 07:35:39 AM

Time for salad recipes: oven switched off, gas knob pointing upwards: let’s call a truce and make a salad. It really couldn’t be more Italian than this.

• 1 bag (about 3 oz) of rocket
• 250g (½ pound) cherry tomatoes cut in quarters
• 5 green + 5 black olives
• 50g (3 ½ tbsp ricotta cheese
• 30g (2 tbsp) flaked Parmesan cheese
• 6 sliced radishes
• salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil and vinegar to your taste

Salad recipes and vegetables.

Easy Chicken Recipes: Hunter’s chicken (pollo alla cacciatora)

Posted on Feb 19, 2009 06:22:09 AM

Here is one of my favorite chicken recipes and a classic of Italian food: Hunter’s chicken (pollo alla cacciatora)

btw, bright luvely picture isn’t it? Could it be more out of focus?

I don’t want to sound harsh, but chicken and turkey meats are fairly tasteless. The good thing about it though, is that you need to find good recipes to make them sexy. This Jamie Oliver’s version from Jamie’s Italy (reading from Europe? click here) is one of them: hunter’s chicken, a popular Tuscan chicken recipe, where King and Queen are wine and olives,

To get the best out of this chicken recipe, start marinating it the day before. If the sauce is not too liquid it’s great with pasta too.

I followed Jamie’s recipe almost literally (see notes below). These are the ingredients for three people:

• 1kg (2 ½ lb) of chicken pieces
• salt and pepper
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 2 cloves of garlic
• red wine to cover the chicken (Chianti in the original recipe)
• flour for dusting
• extra virgin olive oil
• 3 anchovy fillets
• about 10 black olives
• one 400g (1 pound) tin of plum tomatoes

The day before, season the chicken and put it in a bowl with the bay leaves, the rosemary and one crushed clove of garlic. Cover the chicken with the wine and seal the bowl with cling film. Leave it overnight to marinate.

Drain the chicken, setting aside the marinade. Pat it with kitchen paper, and leave it half an hour until it reaches room temperature.

Dust the chicken with flour. Heat a frying pan, add the olive oil and fry the pieces gently until lightly brown. Remove the chicken from the pan and add the sliced clove of garlic and the anchovies. Let it go for another 2-3 minutes, then add the rest: olives, tomatoes, chicken and marinade. Let it simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 180°.

Transfer the chicken to the casserole and leave it there for about 1½ hours, or until the meat is very tender.

Jamie says:

• you need ½ bottle of red wine to cover 2kg of chicken, but it’s not enough, and you know what they say: bottles of wine don’t grow on trees. I’m sure that the hunter’s wife won’t be offended if you mix 2/3 of wine and 1/3 of water
• use an ovenproof pan, which I don’t have yet
• bring the chicken to the boil and put it in the oven straightaway covered with a lid or tinfoil. But there’s a lot of liquid marinade and I prefer to let it coagulate, so I left it simmer for 15 minutes and put it in the oven without covering it. For the same reason, next time I’ll try with a free-range chicken, as it’s supposed to release less water

As I said, one of my favorite chicken recipes. Feel free to look at the rest of my meat recipes

Coffee (caffé)

Posted on Feb 17, 2009 10:25:37 AM

Is this, strictly speaking an Italian food recipe? Yes it is. Italians didn’t invent coffee and sure are not the only ones who enjoy it, but boy we are fussy about it!

With coffee places at every corner, a good espresso in Dublin is now easy to find, and expensive, as an espresso macchiato would cost you 2 euros. I guess coffee is still seen as something exotic, and fortunately enough, I tend to forget how cheap it is in Italy (“90 cents” said the barista last time I was in a bar in my hometown.  “Are you sure?” I replied). Anyway, the place in Dublin where I had the best coffee is Butler’s Chocolate Café at Blanchardstown Centre.

If you’re at home, use coffee maker, which we call moka (if you’re reading from Europe click here). You can find all sizes: from single cup coffee makers to twelve. If you already are a proud owner of this interesting device invented by Alfonso Bialetti, you should already know  how to use it, if you don’t, here you can find extensive instructions. In a nutshell it’s:

water in the base + coffee in the strainer +  top part + fire

Well, there’s more actually, these are a couple of things you want to know:

• use filtered water. The coffee will taste better, and and the moka will last longer
• it doesn’t matter if you like strong stuff, don’t push the powder in the strainer or the coffee will taste awful
• the moka needs to retain the coffee flavour, so don’t wash it with soap, EVER!
• for the same reason, if you only use it less than once a week, make one test coffee first, and throw it away
• change the gasket and the filter when it’s brownish, that’s becasue it’s burnt
• when the base pot is covered with limestone it’s time buy a new moka
• with a low flame, the coffee will brew slower, enhancing the flavour. A higher flame though, will give you hotter coffee, which is part of the pleasure
• keeping the lid open while it’s brewing will let the steam go away, but you wanna close it when the coffee is starting to come out, or it will spatter all around
• spend a little more and get decent stuff. Here in Dublin I buy Lavazza, and if we were not in recession I would definitely buy Illy
• no instant coffee, please
• if this coffee maker just isn’t your cup of tea, you can go for other types of coffee makers, like a small coffee machine or one of the best electric coffee makers.

Thin Pizza Crust (pasta per pizza sottile)

Posted on Feb 14, 2009 09:45:16 AM

This pizza crust definitely is my best so far. For this thin crust pizza dough I used Linda Collister’s recipe for pitta bread in Bread: From Sourdough to Rye: From Ciabatta to Rye (reading from Europe? click here).

For a pizza crust recipe for 3-4 people you’ll need:

• 500g (4 ½ cups) strong white flour preferably sifted
• about 300 ml (10 fl 0z) of lukewarm water, preferably filtered
• 15g ( 1 tbsp) of fresh yeast or a 7g (½ tbsp) sachet of dry instant yeast
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

For the topping, typically the minimum requirements are:

• one tin of chopped tomatoes
• one ball of fresh mozzarella cheese and/or any kind of cheese that melts (like the Camembert in the picture)

In a bowl pour 2/3  of the water and the yeast. Stir until it starts bubbling, then add the olive oil and keep stirring.

Add a handful of flour, and start mixing it with your hand, when it’s smooth add another one, and so on. After the second or third handful you can add the salt.

Work the dough with your hand in the bowl until you have collected all the flour, start using both hands when it gets too hard to work it with just one.

Transfer the dough to the working surface and knead it for 5-10 minutes. The final result should be an elastic, slightly moist dough, that sticks for a second to the working surface, but comes off easily. If you think it’s too dry add some water, just few drops at the time.

Dust the bottom of the bowl with flour and put the dough in it. Cover it with cling film and let it rise until it has doubled in size (it should take about two hours).

When it’s ready, start preheating the oven at 220° leaving the baking tray in.

Push the dough gently with your knuckles to let the air come out, dust the working surface with flour.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until it’s very thin (about ½ cm).

Tear off a piece of oven paper that fits the baking tray and lay the dough gently on it.

Cover the  pizza dough with the tomato sauce, add a sprinkle of salt.

When the oven is ready, take out the baking tray (remember: it’s hot!) and transfer the thin crust pizza dough, using the four corners of the oven paper (you will probably need an extra pair of hands here), then put it in the oven.

After 15 minutes you can add the mozzarella cheese and the ham, then let it bake for about 20 more minutes, until the mozzarella is melted, and slightly brown. If you are used to a thicker homemade pizza crust, remember that a thin crust pizza needs less cooking.

One note on water. The bread and pizzas recipes usually give a fixed quantity of water and then say that you should add more if the dough is too dry, or add flour if it’s too wet. I don’t think that the latter makes much sense.  Adding flour changes the balance with the other dry ingredients (yeast and salt in this case), so I think it’s wiser to use just part of the water and then add the necessary to make the dough moist enough.

If you likes this classic of Italian food, try the rest of pizza recipes.

Eggplant Recipes: Grilled Eggplant

Posted on Feb 7, 2009 12:06:28 AM

There you go, grilled eggplant as a main course. Who said that cooked or grilled vegetables were born as side dish? If Peas with onion and bacon bits can also be a pasta sauce, then a grilled eggplant can be your main course. In Italian cuisine, baked eggplant usually is a more popular choice, but this is ideal if you fell allergic to the oven knob.

• 1 eggplant per person
• 1 Tablespoon of olive oil
• 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar
• salt and pepper
• parsley

Preheat a grill, or a nonstick pan.
Slice the eggplant into ½ (0.2 in) cm slices.
Mix together in a bowl the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
Place the slices on the grill/pan and let them grill until they’re dark and dry, but not withered, then place them in layers in a casserole or a dish.
Spread the dressing and the parsley on top of each layer. Be generous, but don’t soak them. Use a spoon, or (better) a kitchen brush. If you run out of dressing add again the ingredients in the same proportions.

There’s no need to serve them hot, this eggplant recipe is good at any temperature.

A couple of notes on how to cook eggplant:

Slicing. Eggplants tend to darken after cutting, don’t slice them all in one go, just what you can put on the grill.

Dressing (1). As oil tends to come to the surface, remember to stir the dressing.

Dressing (2). I like the taste of vinegar on eggplants, but feel free to change oil-vinegar proportions according to your taste.

More eggplant recipes: eggplant parmesan

Is grilling out of question? Try an Italian salad (whatever it means…)

Cooking eggplant is fun, if you liked this grilled eggplant try the rest of vegetable recipes.

Mushroom risotto (risotto ai funghi)

Posted on Feb 4, 2009 10:24:13 PM

If risotto is the most Italian recipes, mushroom risotto is probably the most popular. All risotto recipes are a routine, practice these steps and there’s not much that can go wrong.

Before I go ahead, one thing which is often forgotten of risotto, is that it is naturally gluten free, so it’s totally celiac friendly.

This mushroom risotto recipe is for 4 people:

• A medium onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 + 3 tablespoons olive oil
• between 250 and 300g  rice (about ½ pound) depending on how hungry you are
• 400g (14 oz) mushrooms
• 1 liter (2 pints) vegetable stock
• ½ glass of white wine (or maybe a little bit more…)
• 50g (3 ½ tbsp) grated Parmesan cheese
• 30g (1/3 cup) butter

Prepare the mushrooms. First step of a risotto recipe routine. Put the olive oil in a frying pan with the garlic at medium heat. When it’s hot, add the mushrooms and cook for 10-15 minutes. Check the seasoning. Remove them from the heat when they’re still a bit raw.

Heat the stock. Use home made stock or a cube. I find it handy to keep it in the pan simmering beside the rice.

Stage 1: let’s sauté. Chop the onion finely and add it to the sauce pan with the olive oil. Let it cook for about 10 minutes at low heat until tender.

Stage 2: enter rice. Turn up  the heat and pour the rice. Stir until it’s lucid and has absorbed the oil. Don’t let it burn!

Interlude: white wine. Pour the wine, it will evaporate quickly.

Stage 3: stock, please! When the wine has evaporated, turn down the heat and pour some stock. One or two ladles should be enough: the rice should be moistened but not covered. Keep stirring. When most of the stock is absorbed repeat the operation.

Stage 3 ½: the main ingredient. After 10 minutes add the mushrooms. They will bring some of their cooking liquid with them, so wait for it to be absorbed before adding more stock.

Stage 4: finish cooking. After about 10 more minutes start tasting the rice, it should be almost cooked.

Stage 5: the secret chamber. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the butter and Parmesan then stir briefly and put a lid on the pan. Let it rest for 3-4 minutes.

Remove the lid, stir furiously for 30 seconds and serve the mushroom risotto immediately.

A couple of notes on:

• The word. Risotto is the name of the dish, the Italian word for rice is riso
• The kind of rice. The best kinds of risotto rice you can buy are Arborio, Carnaroli, Vialone nano. As they’re usually fairly expensive outside of Italy, parboiled rice will do.
• Starchy or not. As stirring releases the starch in the rice, there usually are two opposite views: hardly stir until you add the butter in the end, or don’t stop doing it. I prefer stirring: not only because I make sure that the rice won’t stick to the pan, but also because I can know better when it’s time for the next ladle of stock.
• Wine. Buy cheap white wine and keep it in the fridge just for cooking. If you really want to be fussy about it, pour the wine in a glass half an hour before starting to cook: it will be at room temperature when you add it and won’t slow down the cooking.
• How creamy do you want it? Between a dry risotto with almost no stock left, and one so liquid you need a spoon to eat it, there are different degrees. It should be neither this nor that. Once you’re more familiar witht the recipe you’ll know when’t it’s time to take the pan off the stove.
• And if it’s creamy enough… Eat it in a bowl, not in a dish. All the juice will gather at the bottom and you can dip the rice in it.

If you liked this mushroom risotto, there are more risotto recipes