Cheese and Pears

Archive for April, 2009

Easy recipes: Cheese and pears (formaggio e pere)

Posted on Apr 22, 2009 12:50:30 PM

I bet you ended up here because you were looking for easy recipes. You found one.

Dublin’s cloudy sky (which, by the way, arrived after many, almost uninterrupted sunny days. I think the in-Ireland-it-rains-all-the-time crap should be dismissed once and for all) is no friend of unskilled photographers like me, but here we go:

• 2 slices of cheese
• one pear
• 2 teaspoons of honey

Like all easy recipes, like all simple dishes, it’s as good as its ingredients. I admit that the pears were not the best, and the honey was ordinary. But the cheese is mature sheep cheese that comes directly from my aunt’s little village in Sardinia.

A slice of warm bread and a glass of wine should complete the picture.

Needless to say, it should be eaten combining the flavours together.

Soup Recipes: Pearl Barley Soup (zuppa d’orzo)

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 06:35:31 PM

Now that spring is here, and windows can be left open and kitchen aromas can fly out, let’s continue the trend of winter soup recipes (after the lentils soup). This one is taken from Tobie Puttock’s Daily Italian (reading from Europe? click here)

This soup recipe is for 4-6 people:

• 100g (3½ oz) pearl barley
• 1.5 litres (2½ pints) chicken or vegetable stock
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large carrot
• 1 large zucchini
• 1 large potato
• 1 leek (the white part)
• 3 sticks of celery
• 1 large onion (or half if you’re not a onion lover)
• 2-3 finely sliced cloves of garlic
• 50g (2 oz) of diced bacon
• salt, pepper

Place the barley in a bowl and cover with tap water. Let it soak for one hour.

In the meantime, chop, slice, dice everything like a mad.

Heat the stock for the soup, and in another saucepan, heat the oil and sauté gently the carrot, zucchini, potato, leek, celery, onion, garlic, pancetta.

When the vegetables are a bit tender, add the stock and the drained barley.

Cover and let the soup simmer for one hour. If you like, take off the lid the last 15 minutes to make the soup a bit thicker.

More soup recipes and vegetable recipes

Pasta Recipes: Pasta with Lemon and Sage

Posted on Apr 18, 2009 08:42:23 AM

Typical case of taking one of the pasta recipes from a magazine, ending up doing a different thing that works, partly because you don’t have all the exact ingredients, partly because you feel that the original recipe could be much better with some change.

Pasta recipe for four people:

• 320-350g (11-12 oz) fusilli pasta
• zest of one lemon
• 10 leaves of sage
• 20g (1 ½ tbsp) butter
• 5 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
• 2 tablespoons of ricotta cheese

While pasta is cooking following the packet instructions, and this post on how to cook pasta, melt the butter in a frying pan and add the breadcrumbs and 5 torn leaves of sage. You’re not frying, just make sure everything is coated in butter.Take off the heat and put aside.

Peel one lemon and cut half of the zest into small pieces, the other half into sticks.

When the fusilli are ready, drain them, but keep some of the cooking water. Put the frying pan with the bread and sage mix back on the heat, and pour the pasta, a little bit of cooking water, the lemon zest pieces and the ricotta cheese.

Stir for 1-2 minutes and serve. Decorate the pasta with the lemon zest sticks and the remaining sage leaves.

Make sure you only peel the yellow part of the lemon zest, which is really thin and gives the lemon flavour. The white part right underneath it is has a bitter taste and could spoil the pasta sauce.

More pasta recipes

Pasta recipes for beginners (or how to cook pasta properly)

Posted on Apr 14, 2009 05:08:12 PM

Before publishing more pasta recipes, few, well known rules about how to cook pasta properly won’t do any harm. Before starting, consider that different types of pasta will cook in different ways. Ribbed pasta (like rigatoni) will attract the dressing better, but a non-ribbed pasta on the other hand will cook more evenly.

Pasta goes into boiling water, everybody knows that. But not many know that pasta likes space so there has to be plenty of water. Every 100g of pasta require one liter of water. 300g means 3 liters.

What about salt? There’s a rule or two for that too. Salt has to be added after water has reached boiling temperature, or boiling will be delayed. If you have one liter of water add 10g of salt, for 2 liters add 20g and so on.

A general opinion about cooking pasta is that you have to add oil to the water in order to keep the noodles separated. This is useless, and a waste too. Use good quality pasta in enough water and it won’t stick.

Wait for 30 seconds for the salt to dissolve and pour the pasta. If you’re using spaghetti, use your hands to push them down instead of breaking them. Make sure you don’t touch the boiling water.

When you add the pasta, the water will stop boiling, so try to make it boil back as quick as possible by turning up the flame and covering the pan. When it’s boiling again, turn down the heat a little bit and uncover the pan. In general, the level of heat should be the highest you can get without making the water boil out of the pan.

With a wooden spoon move the pasta every now and then, this is a great substitute for oil in order not to make it stick. If you’re not sure for how long to cook it, follow the instructions on the packet, which should be for pasta al dente (dente = tooth). It means not so hard to be raw but not so cooked that it won’t fall to the floor if you throw it at the wall.

Al dente is how pasta should be in the end. Don’t overdo, for at least three reasons: pasta won’t stop cooking until it’s cold, and long before you’ve finished eating it, it will be like chewing gum; if it’s too cooked your stomach will take longer to process it. And finally: this is the way the do it in Italy. Once you become an al dente expert, you can taste it to know when it’s time to drain it, using the packet as general guide.

When it’s time, have the colander ready in the sink, and drain the pasta. Get rid of all the water (in some cases you might still need a little bit of it). Add the pasta to the sauce, if it’s in another pan, and let it go for 2-3 minutes, until everything is well mixed.

Pasta should be eaten immediately, but if you’re going to eat it at work the next day, or if you’re preparing a cold pasta salad, put it under cold water after draining it. This will stop the cooking.

More pasta recipes

Thin crust light pizza (pizza sottile e leggera)

Posted on Apr 12, 2009 08:16:07 AM

There we go with another thin crust pizza. Before you start, if you haven’t taken the test “are you Italian when you go to a pizzeria? in the thin crust pizza do it now.

Why light? Because it contains a part of rice flour, which has hardly any gluten (=less elastic after kneading) but a lighter taste.

Why thin? Because it’s a lighter way to enjoy pizza: lighter means less dough. The ingredients here are for 500g of flour. If you have a normal oven this means two batches, so if you feel one is enough, stick half of the dough in the freezer and use it the following Friday (which is the best day to make pizza at home).

• 350g (2 ½ cups) strong flour
• 150g (1 cup) rice flour
• 15g (1 tbsp) fresh yeast or 7g (½ tbsp) dry yeast
• about 300ml (10 fl oz) lukewarm water + 60 ml (2 fl oz) to spare
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

For the topping, basic stuff:

• 1×400g tin (about 1 pound) of chopped tomatoes
• salt and pepper
• oregano
• 2 balls of fresh mozzarella cheese
• 125g (4 ½ oz) diced bacon

Put the 300ml water in the microwave for 30 seconds, then add the yeast and the olive oil. Stir until it bubbles.

Sift and mix the flours in a bowl and add the salt. Make a hole in the middle and add half of the liquid mix. Using a fork, start mixing drawing circles from the centre outward. Then add half of the remaining water and keep using the fork, or one hand if it’s too hard.

Now it’s time to balance flour and water to obtain a kneadable dough. Make sure you’re picking up all the flour at the bottom of the bowl, and add some more flour if it’s too sticky, or some extra water if it’s too dry.

When the dough is solid enough to be kneaded, transfer it to the working surface.  The basic kneading technique is to use the part where the hand meets the wrist to stretch the dough and roll it back on itself. Then turn it 90° and repeat. Now, I’m not a kneading master, but I’ve added an extra step which I think is useful. After stretching the dough, before rolling it back, turn it upside down: the even side which was touching the working surface will be now on the top, and the rugged side will be at the bottom. Now roll it back.

After 10 minutes of hand kneading, the dough should be elastic enough. Put it back in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and let it raise for about 45-60 minutes. The basic rule for bread is to let it raise until it’s doubled in size,which takes more than one hour, but I tend to be a little impatient with pizza.

Preheat the oven to 250°/500°F/gas 9.Make sure the baking tray is inside.

In a separate bowl mix all the ingredients for the topping apart form mozzarella, which you’ll tear in pieces and put aside.

Roll half of the dough with a rolling pin until it ½ cm thick, place it on a piece of oven paper and spread half of the tomato mix on it. Put it on the baking tray and bake for about 5-7 minutes, until the edges are a bit golden.

Take out the half-baked pizza and add the mozzarella pieces and the bacon. Put it back in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and the edges are darker.

Needless to say, enjoy it with a beer, not wine.

Here are more pizza recipes, and check also this nice website where some people really live for pizza.

Soup recipes: Lentil Soup (zuppa di lenticchie)

Posted on Apr 9, 2009 06:34:42 PM

One of my favorite lentil soup recipes with red lentils.

This lentil soup recipe could be a side as well as a main course, it only depends on the quantity. Strangely enough though, lentils don’t seem to be very popular in Ireland, even though they have all it takes to make an excellent soup: they’re easy to cook, tasty and filling. In Italy on the other hand, they’re honored members of the tradition, but we tend to eat them in special occasions, like new year’s eve dinner, where lentils symbolize the money that new year is supposed to bring.

This recipe for lentil soup is very basic, it will feed two people for 2-3 days (they’re excellent for lunch boxes):

• 200g (½ pound) red lentils
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• ½ diced onion
• 3 diced carrots
• 75g (2 ½ oz) diced bacon
• 1/3 glass of white vine
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 liter (2 pints) of stock
• 1×400g tin (about 1 pound) of chopped tomatoes
• 3 diced riped tomatoes

Leave the red lentils to soften in a bowl in cold water for one hour.

Heat the olive oil in the sauce pan and add the diced onion carrots and bacon. When the sauté is lucid, pour a little bit of white wine and let it evaporate.

Add the red lentils and let them toast (think of it as a stage two of the basic risotto recipe).

Add the stock, the chopped tomatoes and the tomatoes and let it simmer for one hour, or until the lentils are tender enough.

Let the soup cook away, they don’t have to be al dente.

Cookbook review: Jamie’s Italy by Jamie Oliver

Posted on Apr 6, 2009 12:18:46 AM

This cookbook review is for Jamie’s Italy (or Jamie’s Italy if you’re reading from Europe) is Jamie Oliver’s journey through Italy, with also thoughts on the country here and there. Here are some of the reasons why I love this cookbook:

• it’s cookbook written by a non-Italian, which is a nice slap to all those Italians who don’t like when non-Italians teach them how to cook
• The recipes are straightforward and really work, you only need to follow them.
• There’s a good balance between classic (aubergine parmigiana, baked pasta, pizza…) and more sophisticated recipes.
• pictures are what they should be in a cookbook: taken on planet earth and not in food Heaven.
• It might be pure editorial strategy, but Jamie’s attitude towards Italy and Italian cuisine is of respect and genuine curiosity

I read some reviews saying that this cookbook only uses ingredients you find in delis, but it’s not true: pasta, ricotta, Parmesan, basil, tomatoes, they’re all at Lidl and Tesco.

Recipes from Jamie’s Italy: Hunter’s chicken, Pork chops with sage, Shortcrust pastry for the fruit tart