My Italian food
Ideal cold weather fare. I had some excellent beef broth in the fridge (made with a beef tongue, some brisket and some chicken + usual aromatics: celery, carrot, onion in which I had stuck a clove, parsley, bay leaf) and other bits and bobs: finely shredded,steamed cabbage, some boiled pearl barley and some boiled and peeled chestnuts. To make a minestra was the obvious choice.
I reheated everything together + a generous handful of parmesan a tavola.
A delectable recipe from one of the best books about Italian food written in English Secrets from an Italian kitchen, by the wonderful Anna Del Conte. If you want to learn how to cook Italian, grab any book from Del Conte, one from Marcella Hazan and you are sorted for life. Continue reading “Zucchine ripiene con ricotta e amaretti (Courgettes stuffed with ricotta and amaretti)”
A delicious, “culinary joke” from Sicily. Mulinciani ‘mbuttunati is a typical summer dish of whole aubergines cooked in tomato sauce, with a twist though. A deep slit is made into the aubergine belly (turning it into a “button hole”) and the usual suspects of much Southern Italian cooking are inserted into it, garlic, pecorino cheese, basil/mint (the “buttons”). Here you have it: buttoned up aubergines!
Continue reading “Mulinciani‘mbuttunati (Buttoned up aubergines, a.k.a stuffed Sicilian aubergines)”
Pizzoccheri is a substantial, earthy buckwheat pasta dish from Valtellina, the northeast, mountainous part of Lombardy, near to the Swiss border. It is an earthy dish with lots of cheese and butter, with potatoes and savoy cabbage, suitable for cold weather and big appetites – comfort food. Actually, there is also a lighter, more spring-like version of pizzoccheri, where cabbage is replaced by fagiolini, fine spring green beans. In other words, there is always a right time to enjoy this beautiful pasta dish. Continue reading “Pizzoccheri (Buckwheat pasta with cabbage, potatoes and lots of butter)”
Italian home cooking 