My Italian food
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)”
Update 2023: here in London, we can now buy fairly good cow ricotta, freshly made every day from Eataly, in Bishop’s gate. I can also recommend sheep ricotta made in Yorkshire by Yorkshire Pecorino (they deliver nation wide). If you live in London, you can order sheep ricotta from Sicily (giving plenty of notice) from my local Italian deli in Highbury Barn, called Da Mario. Having said all this, I still prefer to make my almost ricotta when I need it and occasionally I succumb to the supermarket variety.
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One of the foods I miss most from Italy is fresh ricotta – the real deal of course, not the industrial type which I can get also here, a tasteless and pappy substitute. Fresh ricotta is another thing altogether: sweet, milky and light, creamy and yet not insubstantial: with a sprinkle of sugar or with a drizzle of olive oil, it is culinary nirvana. Here in the UK, even in London, fresh ricotta is still very hard to come by: I tried the Neal’s Yard’s one (made in England) and I was not impressed, but I also saw beautiful looking Italian fresh ricotta at Gastronomica, in Borough Market (I was told it is flown in every few days).
Because it’s so hard to find good ricotta in the UK, many years ago I started making “home made ricotta” – though it is actually nothing more than fresh cheese: milk coagulated with some acid (lemon juice, vinegar, rennet, citric acid the most common) . Continue reading “Ricotta al caffè (coffee ricotta cream and tips on home-made “ricotta”)”
Parmigiana di zucchine/courgette parmesan is the lesser known cousin of aubergine Parmesan. The basic idea is of course the same: to alternate layers of fried or grilled courgettes, mozzarella and grated Parmigiano or pecorino, interlayered with tomato sauce. From this basic starting point, many variations have been devised: sometimes it is made in bianco, that is to say without tomato sauce, scamorza can be used instead of mozzarella, prosciutto cotto and/or sliced boiled eggs could be added, or béchamel sauce for a richer dish. It is a lovely, homely spring-summer dish that makes a perfect piatto unico, one meal dish, served with a a tomato salad, perhaps. Continue reading “Parmigiana di zucchine (Courgette Parmesan)”
Malfatti literally means “badly shaped” and the name fits perfectly these misshapen, fragile dumplings. Under different names (gnudi, strozzapreti, gnocchi verdi, rabaton) malfatti appear in many parts of northern and central Italy and they share the same logic: cooked, chopped leafy greens (chard, spinach, nettles) are mixed with a binding ingredient (eggs, ricotta, breadcrumbs, flour), formed into fragile gnocchi-like morsels, poached and dressed, generally, with melted butter and Parmigiano or with a light tomato sauce They are delicate but not insubstantial. Continue reading “Malfatti di spinaci e ricotta (Spinach and ricotta gnocchi)”
Italian home cooking 