Asparagi in fricassea (Asparagus in an egg and lemon sauce, fricassea-style)

In Italian cookery terms, when you cook something “in fricassea”, it means that you add egg yolks that you have already mixed with lemon juice to a hot, cooked dish, at the very end, generally off the heat. The yolks thicken and become a velvety, lemony sauce that enrobe the other ingredients. The trick, obviously, is not to scramble them.It is a Northern Italian cookery technique that always delivers a subtle elegance to the final dish.
Typically, it is rabbit, veal, chicken and lamb, that are cooked “in fricassea” , the meat first being braised “in bianco”, without tomatoes. 
Some vegetables too can be cooked “in fricassea”: artichokes, peas, mushrooms, carrots, courgettes, broad beans and asparagus.

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Torta di farro della Garfagnana (emmer savoury pie from Garfagnana)

A savoury pie typical of Garfagnana and Lunigiana, those mountainous areas in between North Tuscany, South Liguria and west Emilia Romagna, sparsely populated, traditionally poor (hence their rather sombre style of cooking), thickly covered in chestnut tree woods (hence the many dishes based on chestnuts, once called “the bread of the poor”, because they were free and highly nutritious) and where mushrooms and wild boars are still abundant. It is farro, however, or emmer (Triticum dicoccum), a type of wheat, that is perhaps the most celebrated produce of this part of Italy.

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Scorze di agrumi candite – my candied citrus peels

This is a method for candying citrus peels that works FOR ME. It is not a professional method, it has flaws, it is not “the perfect”, BUT it works for ME (hence that “my”). It delivers the type of candied peels that I like: still juicy and fruity, with a faint bitterness in the background, not overly sweet.
The following are to be regarded as working notes, drawn from experience and other cooks’ versions.
I do not have any “culinary scientific evidence” for some of the things I say – you decide, if they make sense to you or not.

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Minestra di zucca, ceci e spezie medievali – a pumpkin and chickpea soup with a Medieval flavour

This soup does not claim any specific provenance; in fact, I developed the recipe over a few suppers. And yet I daresay most Italians would immediately recognise it as “Italian” – even if the spicing might throw them at first. Continue reading “Minestra di zucca, ceci e spezie medievali – a pumpkin and chickpea soup with a Medieval flavour”

A relatively quick fish soup, with potatoes and giant white beans (using Perard soupe de poisson)

Fish soup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do not even remember the last time I made a fish stock. It is not a process I enjoy – too much simmering,  puréeing and sieving for my liking. When I want to make a fish soup and I need a stronger cooking medium, rather than plain water, I am more than happy to Continue reading “A relatively quick fish soup, with potatoes and giant white beans (using Perard soupe de poisson)”