Cheese and Pears

Archive for May, 2009

Risotto Recipes: Saffron Risotto (risotto alla milanese)

Posted on May 29, 2009 06:30:58 AM

Almost four months so far and just one risotto recipe (it was the first one: mushroom risotto. I added some tips there, so it’s worth checking out ). This can’t be good, so here I make amends with an Italian classic: risotto alla milanese, with saffron, which is kind of expensive but worth it.

Now, this is a simplified version, the original risotto recipe would also use veal bone marrow in the sauté, but here in Dublin veal is virtually impossible to find in the form of simple piece of meat, so I won’t bother looking for a bone marrow. At least use beef stock if you can.

This risotto recipe is for two people.

• 30g (1 oz) butter
• ½ onion, chopped
• 130g (4 ½ oz) risotto rice (or normal rice if you just can’t or don’t want to)
• ½ glass white wine
• A few strands of saffron
• ½ liter (1 pint) beef stock
• 30g (1 oz) parmesan

Heat the stock in a separate pan.

Melt half the butter in a pan and add the onion. Let it sweat at low heat for 7-10 minutes then add the rice.

Turn up the heat and keep on stirring for 2-3 minutes until the rice is lucid.

Now pour the wine, turn down the heat, and keep on stirring.

When the wine has gone, pour the first ladle of stock and add the saffron, which is usually grounded and melted separately, but I prefer to add it straight to the rice.

From now on there are three simple rules: keep the heat at medium level, wait for the stock to be almost completely absorbed before adding the next ladle, and never stop stirring.

After about 15-20 minutes the rice should be al dente. Timing is essential here: make sure you don’t add the last ladle of stock right before taking it off the stove as the rice should be neither too dry nor semi-liquid.

Now it’s my favourite moment: take the rice off the heat, add the rest of the butter and the parmesan, give a quick stir and cover with a lid for 2-3 minutes. Uncover, give a good final stir and serve straightaway.

This risotto recipe is from Milan, if you have the chance to be in that area, try it. I’m not that crazy about Milan, to be  honest, but you have two wonderful lakes, Lake Garda and Lake Como in the area. Italian lakes holidays in the North seem to have gained more and more popularity over the past years.

More risotto recipes

Zucchini Recipes: Baked Stuffed Zucchini (zucchine ripiene)

Posted on May 21, 2009 10:39:31 PM

(the URL is wrong, I know…) This is ons of my favorite zucchini recipes: baked stuffed zucchini. It’s a perfect mid-week dish: scrape, stir-fry, fill, bake. Facile, isn’t it?

For two people:

• 2 zucchini
• ½ onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 50g bacon bits
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• salt and pepper
• 1 ball of mozzarella cheese. diced
• parmesan (optional)

Score the zucchini length and width-wise, making sure you don’t tear the skin. With a spoon, scoop out the pulp, dice it and set aside.

In a frying pan, heat the olive oil and add the onion and the bacon. Let it sweat at low heat for about 10 minutes until the onion is tender and lucid and the bacon is a bit crispy.

Add the chopped tomatoes and the 3/4 of the zucchini pulp and let it simmer for 10 minutes and take off the heat. Let it cool and mix in the mozzarella cheese.

Preheat the oven at 180°C 356°F.

Lay the zucchini shells in an oven proof pan and fill them with the stir-fried mixture. Grate some Parmesan on top if you  like.

Bake the stuffed zucchini in the oven for 25-30 minutes and serve hot. Easy zucchini recipe…

Chicken Recipes: Lemon Chicken with Saffron

Posted on May 18, 2009 05:40:59 PM

There’s a new cookbook on the shelf: Gennaro’s Italian Year , by Gennaro Contaldo (click here if you’re reading from Europe), Jamie Oliver’s mentor. The list of recipes I’d like to try is done already, and as I hadn’t used saffron for a long time, I started with this chicken recipe. For two people:

• 2 chicken breasts or thighs
• 2 carrots
• 1 stick of celery
• 85g (3 oz) peas
• ½ onion
• salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil
• a few strands of saffron
• juice of 1 lemon
• ½ glass of white whine

In a bowl mix together the lemon juice, the wine, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Put the chicken in a snug container, rub the salt and pepper and pour the marinade all over. Leave the chicken in the fridge for as long as you can up to 12 hours to marinade.

Take the chicken out of the fridge and let it reach room temperature. In a frying pan, or a oven proof dish heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the chopped onion and let it sweat on a low heat until lucid and soft (7-10 minutes).

In the meantime preheat the oven at 180° C (350°F).

When the sauté is ready, add the chopped carrots, the peas and the celery, turn up the heat and add the wine, let it evaporate and turn down the heat again. When the vegetables are a a bit tender, set aside.

Re-heat the remaining oil and add the chicken pieces, and fry them on both sides until light brown. Now put everything together (starting from the bottom): vegetables, chicken and marinade and put it in the oven for about 45-60  minutes.

Ten minutes before it’s ready, dissolve the saffron in some hot water and pour it on the chicken.

Fastes chicken recipe ever.

Soup Recipes: Peas with Onion and Bacon Bits

Posted on May 12, 2009 05:50:38 PM

This is a grey area of soup recipes. Is it a soup? Is it a second course? Is it a pasta sauce? No need to decide. This is a real like-mamma-used-to-make classic I cooked for myself the other day as main course, and used as pasta sauce the day after (not suitable for spaghetti, choose a smal-sized short pasta).

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ½ onion, chopped
• 50g bacon, diced
• 150g peas
• 250ml vegetable stock
• ½ glass of white wine
• dry rosemary (optional)

Put the peas for the soup 4-5 minutes in boiling water if frozen. Heat the stock in a separate pan.

Heat the olive oil with the bacon, and sauté the onion until it’s lucid and tender.

Add the peas, turn up the heat and pour the wine. When it’s evaporated turn down the heat and add a ladle of stock.

From now on it works like a risotto: add a ladle of stock at the time and wait for it to be absorbed before adding the next one.

When the peas are cooked enough for your taste (after 20-25 minutes), the soup is ready season with salt and pepper and serve.

Did  you like this soup recipe? Try more vegetables

Mushroom Recipes: Tagliatelle with mushrooms and zucchini

Posted on May 9, 2009 05:40:54 PM

After the fresh homemade pasta recipe, what to do with all that yellow stuff? Here’s a little suggestion: tagliatelle with mushrooms and zucchini. Mushroom recipes in Italian cuisine are just too many to count, but we have to start somewhere, so here we go.

As the fresh pasta cooks very quickly, it’s better to prepare it after the pasta sauce.

For the sauce for 2 people you’ll need:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 200g (7 oz) mushrooms, chopped
• 1 courgette, chopped
• single cream
• ½ glass white wine

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the garlic. Sauté for 5 minutes at medium heat and add the courgette and the mushrooms.

Turn up the heat, stir and pour the wine.

When the wine has evaporated, turn down the heat again and let the pasta sauce simmer for about 10-15 minutes until cooked. Add some hot water if it’s too dry (but mushrooms usually let go plenty of liquid).

When the sauce is ready, add the cream. Don’t be shy with it, add as much as you need to make the sauce creamy enough.

Bring a pan of water to boil, add salt and the tagliatelle. Cook the pasta for 3-5 minutes until it’s al dente, drain and transfer immediately to the sauce pan. Mushroom recipe done.

Eating fresh homemade pasta (made by you) is a different story, isn’t it? Also, check out these pasta recipes.

Fresh Homemade Pasta (pasta fatta in casa)

Posted on May 7, 2009 05:41:48 AM

Making fresh homemade pasta is not difficult, sure it’s time consuming, but it pays off in the end.

First of all, you’ll need a pasta machine. This from Amazon.co.uk is the pasta machine I have, and it does a decent job. This one from Amazon.com is basically the same.

For the pasta dough. The basic ingredients are: flour, salt, eggs. The proportions are typically: 100g (4/5 cup) flour x 1 egg. This is not a strict rule, actually I wanted to make it more eggy and yellow, so I added a yolk or two.

In the end I used 500g flour ( 1/5 cups), 5 eggs, 3 yolks and a pinch of salt.

Which flour? Some cookbooks get around this problem in a smart way: “pasta flour” they say, or 00 flour (finely grounded wheat flour), which is what you would use in Italy. As 00 flour is not sold in the supermarket, if you don’t want to be ripped off by one of those Italian food delis, I would stick to either strong flour or all-purpose flour.

Now, for experiment’s sake, I made two doughs, one for each kind of flour, and even though the strong flour was a bit harder to work, the results were very good in both cases.

The homemade pasta dough. Sift the flour in a bowl, add the salt and make a well in the middle. Break the eggs straight into it and beat them with a fork. Start circling around (using fingers or fork) and bring in the flour. When you have a kneadable pasta dough, transfer it to the working surface and work it for 10-15 minutes, add some more flour if it’s too wet, or sprinkle it with water if too dry. When it’s elastic and smooth dust it with flour and cover it with clingfilm. Let it rest for 30 minutes.

The preparation. In the meantime, take all the paraphernalia for the staging area. Use a large surface (read table), cover it with a tablecloth and dust it all over with flour. Fix the pasta machine, and leave the flour packet and a knife at hand.

Roll it. Take third of the pasta dough and flatten it as much as you can with your hands. Stick it between the rolls of the pasta machine and start rolling it from less thin to thinner. Pass the dough 4-5 times before changing the settings. This is where you need an extra pair of hands to hold the dough. If you’re planning to make lasagne, make it as thin as possible, a  little less if you’re making tagliatelle.

Let it dry. When the strips of pasta have the desired thickness (like the ones in the picture), if you’re making lasagne your job is over, you can let it dry. If you’re making tagliatelle though, don’t go back to the pasta machine yet, let it dry a little bit, let’s say 15 minutes, otherwise it will be all sticky long before hitting the boiling water. When you have your tagliatelle, stretch them out carefully and let them dry completely. If you’re not using all the pasta you can freeze it.

More pasta recipes and homemade pasta recipes.

Italian Sponge Cake Recipe: paradise sponge cake

Posted on May 2, 2009 09:32:02 AM

Everywhere you go there’s a sponge cake recipe.

This called torta paradiso. Like all sponge cakes, it’s a perfect cake not only for breakfast, but for anytime you feel the urge to bake and you don’t have much time in your hands nor many ingredients in the kitchen. And inf the urge is still there, go for more breakfast biscuits and cakes.

From an Italian perspective, paradise sponge cake is more a concept than a traditional cake, as it’s always different but with one two constant elements: it must be made with basic ingredients, and must be as soft as possible. Basic means flour, eggs, sugar and butter; to make it soft, you’ll need to whip the egg whites separately, and substitute half of the flour with wheat or potato starch or flour.

But here are the ingredients for a not-so-large sponge cake:

• 4 eggs
• 150g (3/4 cup) granulated white sugar
• 125g (½ cup) all-purpose flour
• 125g (½ cup) potato starch, or potato flour, or wheat starch
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 100g (½ cup) of butter
• zest of ½ lemon
• icing sugar to dust (optional)

Preheat the oven at 180° (356° F). Grease a cake tin with some butter and dust it with some flour.

In a bowl sift and mix together the flour, the starch, the salt, the baking powder and add the lemon zest.

Separate the yolks from the whites. In a separate bowl mix the yolks with the sugar, until the mix has a pale color and a bubbly look.

Whip the egg whites until firm and add them to the egg mix.

Melt the butter in the microwave and add it to the egg mix.

Finally, add the flour mix and stir just enough to put together all the ingredients.

Pour the mix in the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes.

The right moment to take it the sponge cake out of the oven is when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out dry.