Cauliflower Pasta

This cauliflower pasta recipe is the proof that you can make pasta with pretty much anything.The cool thing about this cauliflower pasta is that you cook the cook the pasta and the cauliflower in the same water: additional taste guaranteed.

For 2 people you will need:

• 160-200g (5-7oz) short pasta (ie no spaghetti)
• a cauliflower
• olive oil, salt and pepper
• a handful of raisins
• a handful of grated Parmesan
• ½ glass whit wine
• a clove of garlic

Chop the cauliflower and cook it in boiling salted water for 10-15 minutes until tender. Turn off the heat. Take the pieces out of water using a ladle, but keep the water, as you will use the same for the pasta.

In a frying pan heat the olive oil with the garlic and gently stir-fry the cauliflower. After 2-3 minutes add the white wine. When it’s evaporated, add pepper and raisins and, and some more salt if necessary. Continue stir-frying for about 10 minutes more.

From the frying pan to the bowl

In the meantime, bring the cauliflower water back to boil and cook the pasta (follow this post on how to cook pasta if you’re not sure), without adding salt.

When you drain the pasta, make sure you keep some cooking water. Put the pasta in the frying pan with the cauliflower, on a medium heat, and mix everything together. Add a tablespoon or two of cooking water if it’s too dry.

Sprinkle with Parmesan and that’s how this cauliflower pasta is done.

Cod and Green Bean Salad

This green bean salad with cod is a very, very easy salad recipe, made with frozen beans and cod (fresh frozen as the cook of an unfortunate restaurant said about his food in an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen nightmare USA).

This salad is so simple that I wasn’t even sure if I should post it, but in the current economical climate I cannot afford to waste anything. And it’s so quick that you don’t even need to weight the ingredients, it all works with handfuls.

For two people:

• two handfuls of green beans
• two fillets of cod
• a handful of olives
• olive oil and vinegar
• salt and pepper
• ½ glass white wine
• a clove of garlic

Put the runner beans (frozen or not) in salted boiling water, and cook them for 10-until tender, drain and put aside.

In a frying pan, heat the some olive oil with the garlic, then add the cod (roughly cut in pieces) and stir fry for 2-3 minutes, pour the wine and let it evaporate and cook it in its water until tender.

In a bowl put together the green beans, olives and cod, dress with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Fastest green bean salad recipe ever.

Potato Salad

Here we are, posting about Italian food again after quite some time, with a very easy potato salad. Summer (sic) is gone and darkness, more than rain, is upon us. This means that from now until next March, all pictures will be taken in artificial light, in other words, they will be bad.

The original potato salad recipe had mayonnaise, which I replaced with ricotta cheese. Side dish for two people:

• 300g (10oz) peeled and diced potatoes
• 1 red pepper
• 1 stick of celery
• 2 tablespoons of ricotta cheese
• 1 tablespoon of milk
• salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon of horseradish sauce
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons of Parmesan

Place the potatoes in a saucepan and cover with salted water. Bring them to the boil for 10 minutes, then drain and let them cool.

Slice the pepper (discard the seeds) and cut the celery sticks in half-rings. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan with the garlic and stir fry the pepper and the celery at medium heat for about 10 minutes until tender. Put them aside and let them cool.

In a bowl mix the ricotta cheese, Parmesan, salt and pepper, horseradish sauce and loosen a little with milk. When the vegetables are at room temperature put them in the bowl and mix them with the ricotta dressing.

If you don’t want to break the potatoes, I would mix this potato salad using the hands. Ala Jamie Oliver.

If you liked this recipe for potato salad, try more vegetable recipes and potato recipes.

Risotto with Walnuts and Spinach

The magic of risotto recipes has happened again: taking two flavors that you know they’ll match (and walnuts, as it turns out, match with pretty much everything) and making a risotto out of them, even if you’ve never done it before.

It’s quarter end, and we’re all pretty crazy down at The Company, so this time I won’t go over the risotto routine again (sauté, toast rice, add wine etcetera), you can find it at the the post that started it all, the mushroom risotto recipe.

Risotto recipe for people:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• ½ onion, chopped
• between 250 and 320g (9-11oz) risotto rice
• ½ glass white wine
• ½ litre (1 pint )of stock
• 200g (7oz) frozen spinach
• 100g (3 ½oz) walnuts, half roughly chopped, half finely chopped
• 30g (1oz) butter
• a handful of grated Parmesan

Thaw the spinach in boiling water, drain, squeeze and set aside.

Heat the stock.

Following the routine, add the finely chopped walnuts at stage 1 with the sauté, and the spinach at stage 3½.

When you’re finished, just before serving, stir in the rest of the walnuts.

More risotto recipes

Baked stuffed zucchini

(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…

Peas with Onion and Bacon Bits

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

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

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.

Let’s go back to a classic: eggplant parmesan. This indeed is a lighter version, as the eggplant is grilled and not fried (speaking of grilling eggplants, if you are more keen on even lighter eggplant recipes, try the grilled eggplant).

Interesting historical note. Traditionally, the name of the dish is explained as Eggplant Parma-style, “parmigiana” (parmesana in old Italian) being the adjective for the city of Parma. According to another interesting theory though, the name comes from parma = shield, which would recall the layers that compose the eggplant parmesan dish.

This eggplant recipe for Parmigiana is for two people:

• 2 eggplants
• 400g (about 1 pound) tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 ball of mozzarella cheese
• 4 leaves of basil
• extra virgin olive oil,
• salt and pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic
• red wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar (optional)
• Parmesan cheese

After cutting the eggplants into ½ cm (0.2 in) slices we need to get the water out. Put a colander in the basin, rub some salt on each slice and lay them in the colander, one on top of the other in two piles. Place a dish on top of the piles and, on it, whatever is heavy enough to push down, like two packets of pasta. Leave gravity do its job for 30 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the sauce for the eggplant parmesan layers. This is not the real conserva sauce, as it should be, but a quicker version (these are hectic days with lot of work and no fun). Heat a frying pan and add some extra virgin olive oil. When it’s hot, add the cloves of garlic and the basil leaves. When they start to shrink, pour the chopped tomatoes and let it simmer until the liquid is absorbed. Adjust salt and pepper and add just a little bit of sugar if you find it too acid, and a little bit of vinegar to give it a weird twist.

After the 30 minutes have passed, preheat a grill or a non stick pan, no need to use oil. Now the eggplant slices should be wet, get some kitchen paper, pat dry each slice, grill them, and put them aside when they are brownish.

When the last eggplant slice has cooled down, preheat the oven at 180°. Take a not too big oven proof pan and start building your shield. It goes like this: a layer of eggplants, a ladle of tomato sauce, a sprinkle of Parmesan, two or three pieces of mozzarella. And so on, until the slices are finished. The top layer should be only tomato sauce and Parmesan.

Cook the eggplant parmesan in the oven for 30 minutes or until the top is golden.

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.

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.