Jags Italian cookery thread

Italian food is amazing.

 

Italian breakfast (prima colazione) consists of caffè latte (hot milk with coffee) or coffee with bread or rolls, butter and jam. A cookie-like rusk hard bread, called fette biscottate, and cookies are commonly eaten. Children drink hot chocolate, plain milk, or hot milk with very little coffee.

 

*prints picture out and eats it*

 

Lol. Xxxx

 

(almost) Flour-less Chocolate Cake

Don't know whether this one can qualify as Italian or not but it is delicious so I'll put it in the bunch. It can be made rather quickly, approximately 40 minutes + 20 minutes to cook it.
It is really good, people will fight over the last slice with melee weapons and improvised firearms. it is acceptable for people suffering with coeliac disease if you don't dust the tray using wheat flour, not so much for the diabetic (one third of the overall weight is pure sugar). No Milk, no Yeast needed.

Ingredients:

• Eggs, 3 .
• Butter, 100 g.
• Sugar, 200 g.
• Starch, 100 g. Wheat starch is the best. Corn starch is alright. Potato, last choice.
  
• Bitter cocoa powder, 50 g. Use the best quality cocoa.
  
• Powdered, vanilla flavoured Sugar Because vanilla is so. good. Regular powder sugar is acceptable too.
  
• Some more Butter and Flour for greasing and dusting the oven tray.

Tools:

• Oven.
• Oven tray. A round one about 30 cm in diameter. Detachable bottom is best.
  
• Handheld mixer, and a powerful one will help even more, equipped with mixing and whipping tools.
  Hand tools can also be used, if you've got tireless frantic Bruce Lee steel hands. Good luck whipping the whites though. I hope you don't have carpal tunnel syndrome.
• Two bowls, one large and another one not too large but deep. You'll make less of a mess with that while whipping the egg whites.
• Wooden spoon.
• Sieve. Not really mandatory but it helps a lot.

If you are gluten intolerant , the flour is superfluous, just use more butter, it is only to prevent the cake from sticking to the tray. Or use rice flour to dust it or whatever.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Put the yolks in the large bowl and the whites in the deep one, you'll need them later on.
Melt the butter using gentle heat. Avoid frying it at all costs. Bain-marie is the safest method.
In the large bowl, with a hand mixer and the appropriate mixing tools, thoroughly mix the yolks with half the sugar (100 g.) to a smooth compound.
Slowly Pour the melted butter, mixing it in.
In order,always mixing with the handheld mixer, add the other 100 g. sugar, the cocoa and the starch. Sift cocoa and starch as you add them, it helps avoiding the formation of clumps. At this point you will have a really thick,dense compound in your hands, don't worry, it has to be like this for now.
With the hand mixer and the appropriate wireframe whipping tools, in a deep bowl whip the egg whites until very stiff. We call this procedure "montare a neve fermissima". They must be indeed very firm. The air bubbles trapped inside the whites is what will give the cake its softness, so this is a crucial step for getting a good result. Don't add the usual pinch of salt to the whites: it is largely superstition. It only helps with stiffening the whites if you are cooking in a butt-freezing kitchen.
Now you have to incorporate the whites into the mix of the other ingredients using a wooden spoon , do it gently with a bottom to top circular movement avoiding to spoil the whites, go easy and try to get a smooth mix. Don't overdo to avoid squeezing the precious tiny air bubbles out of the whites.
At this point, thanks to the fluffy egg whites, the mix will be fluid enough to be poured.

Turn on the oven, temperature 180 C° and while waiting it to preheat grease with some more butter the bottom and sides of the oven tray (the detachable bottom kind is the best), sprinkle with some flour too.
Transfer the mixture in the tray, the cake must result about one finger thick. When the oven temperature is right, put in the oven mid-height and cook for 20 minutes. I use a ventilated electric oven, and the program for pastry baking. Time may vary.

You can optionally use a toothpick to probe the inside of the cake to make sure it is cooked (the pick should come out dry) and if it is, put the cake to cool down over a grid. Sprinkle with powdered vanilla sugar, if you don't plan to serve it with whipped cream instead. Done !
Cut it into squares, or the shape you like best.

It is so good by itself, but served topped with freshly made whipped cream it tastes even better. To sweeten the cream use more vanilla flavoured powdered sugar, not common grainy sugar ! Taste it to be sure it is sweet enough.

And please refrain from resorting to canned spray cream, that's an unholy concoction devised by lazy heathen slobs

 

This is your thread Jags.
So as you are Italian, it counts. X
I will try this soon.
Thanks. X

 

CACIO E PEPE.

Which is, sheep cheese and pepper.
Welcome to the basics of Italian cookery, our soul food, feet firmly set in ancient and (upper) middle age ground. This is a pasta recipe of three ingredients. I'm covering this because the BBC news site mentioned that, so here we go. It's gonna be a rough ride so this time no suggestions about the amounts of stuff to be used: no one used a scale to cook a dish for herdsmen and woodsmen on a campfire.

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti or other kind of dried pasta (penne rigate, maccheroni, paccheri)
  
• Black pepper, to be ground espresso.
  
• Pecorino cheese, again as usual, middle aging so it is easy to grate but still kind of soft. The importance of this ingredient cannot be underestimated, so buy the best, after all It is the only seasoning used , along with pepper.

Take a bowl , large enough to contain all the pasta, and grate a very substantial amount of cheese into it. Then grind a lot of black pepper and add it as well - don't use powdered pepper, grind it fresh from grains.
Bring the salted water to boiling point. Chuck your pasta in the pot.
Keep a ladle at hand: when your macaroni are still cooking, starch will surface. skim that starch along with a little cooking water .
Add that starchy water to the bowl and mix it with the cheese and pepper, until you obtain a water-cheese cream of appropriate texture.
As soon as your pasta is cooked, drain it (not thoroughly, a bit wet is better) and fling it still fuming in the same bowl. Mix it all up. Serve it while it is still steaming. Swear and be rude to anyone who doesn't start eating it right away: remember, it's a shepherd's meal.
As usual, I never recommend preserving any kind of food. Eat it up hot & straight away, and if you manage to have company during these disease ridden times, share it , not forgetting to also provide your guests with way too much red wine. Castelli Romani rosso, but if you're more of a white wine person, I'd go for Est! Est! Est! (yes, it's a wine) or Frascati, or Gotto d'Oro.

Alternative, more complicate gourmet version recipe: Use a pan and toast half the fresh ground pepper in it, then add the starchy water. Keep cooking the pepper in a miserly amount of water while you still cook your pasta. drain it half cooked and chuck it in the pan with some more starchy water and finish to cook the spaghetti in the pan, always mixing, while you also prepare the cheese-pepper-water cream aside (with MOAR pepper). When cooked, shower the pasta in the pan with the cream and mix it like mad, and serve it. It adds little to the final result and will make you swear a lot if your timing is not perfect and things could go wrong in more than a way.​

This is the original , old times pasta dish that also inspired the saying "è come il cacio sui maccheroni" = "it is like cheese over macaroni" , which means "a perfect match".

 

CACIO E PEPE.



Which is, sheep cheese and pepper.
Welcome to the basics of Italian cookery, our soul food, feet firmly set in ancient and (upper) middle age ground. This is a pasta recipe of three ingredients. I'm covering this because the BBC news site mentioned that, so here we go. It's gonna be a rough ride so this time no suggestions about the amounts of stuff to be used: no one used a scale to cook a dish for herdsmen and woodsmen on a campfire.

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti or other kind of dried pasta (penne rigate, maccheroni, paccheri)
  
• Black pepper, to be ground espresso.
  
• Pecorino cheese, again as usual, middle aging so it is easy to grate but still kind of soft. The importance of this ingredient cannot be underestimated, so buy the best, after all It is the only seasoning used , along with pepper.

Take a bowl , large enough to contain all the pasta, and grate a very substantial amount of cheese into it. Then grind a lot of black pepper and add it as well - don't use powdered pepper, grind it fresh from grains.
Bring the salted water to boiling point. Chuck your pasta in the pot.
Keep a ladle at hand: when your macaroni are still cooking, starch will surface. skim that starch along with a little cooking water .
Add that starchy water to the bowl and mix it with the cheese and pepper, until you obtain a water-cheese cream of appropriate texture.
As soon as your pasta is cooked, drain it (not thoroughly, a bit wet is better) and fling it still fuming in the same bowl. Mix it all up. Serve it while it is still steaming. Swear and be rude to anyone who doesn't start eating it right away: remember, it's a shepherd's meal.
As usual, I never recommend preserving any kind of food. Eat it up hot & straight away, and if you manage to have company during these disease ridden times, share it , not forgetting to also provide your guests with way too much red wine. Castelli Romani rosso, but if you're more of a white wine person, I'd go for Est! Est! Est! (yes, it's a wine) or Frascati, or Gotto d'Oro.

Alternative, more complicate gourmet version recipe: Use a pan and toast half the fresh ground pepper in it, then add the starchy water. Keep cooking the pepper in a miserly amount of water while you still cook your pasta. drain it half cooked and chuck it in the pan with some more starchy water and finish to cook the spaghetti in the pan, always mixing, while you also prepare the cheese-pepper-water cream aside (with MOAR pepper). When cooked, shower the pasta in the pan with the cream and mix it like mad, and serve it. It adds little to the final result and will make you swear a lot if your timing is not perfect and things could go wrong in more than a way. ​

This is the original , old times pasta dish that also inspired the saying "è come il cacio sui maccheroni" = "it is like cheese over macaroni" , which means "a perfect match".

 

Yummy Jags .
I made Italian carbonara yesterday.

 

PASTA CU MACCU

Maccu is a cream of broad beans. Pasta cu maccu is a traditional Sicilian soup with pasta,
It is time consuming to make. it is a peasants' dish, also a vegan one.


Ingredients

• broad beans 300g
  
• pasta 250 g (I used tagliatelle, bur common spaghetti will do)
  
• one white onion
• 2 carrots
  
• celery
  
• salt, pepper
  
• olive oil
  
• wild fennel (opt.)

Wash the beans and keep them soaking 12 hrs. in water with half teaspoon of baking soda

Peel the beans from their skins (boring, took me half an hour)

Cook the beans with the fennel (optional) in abundant water (no salt yet) for 2-3 hrs at the lowest heat, under lid. Check on it to be sure it doesn't run dry.

Now mince carrots, the onion and celery stem and in a large pot fry them with olive oil for a few minutes at medium heat then add the beans but keep their cooking water aside and warm.

Now add salt, pepper , keep cooking the sauce 40'-1 hour



if you want you can use a handheld blender direct in the pot until it all turns into a smooth cream.

Add warm bean cooking water if needed.

Finally put your pasta in the sauce and cook it for the time necessary.
While serving, sprinkle a bit more black pepper and optionally a little more extra virgin olive oil.



This dish is traditionally cooked for the feast of st. Joseph in Catania.

 

ooH WE are back Jags xxx

 

WARM PORK

(no ssly... it is pork loin scaloppine)

A quick recipe for dinner

• 500 g. pork loin
• 250 g, cherry tomatoes
• flour
• dry white wine 1 glass
• garlic, 1 clove unpeeled
• extra virgin olive oil
• black pepper, salt
• minced parsley

cut the pork in slices, salt and beat it on the cutting board.

wash the tomatoes and cut them in halves or quarters

in a large pan, fry a clove of garlic without peeling , just crush it. after 3' remove the garlic.

flour up the loin pork slices and fry them on both sides for like 5'

add the tomatoes and let it go at medium for 5'

now add the wine and apply a lid and let it go for about 7'

finally remove the lid , salt and pepper and let the sauce thicken up on medium-high heat as desired. a minute before end, add the minced parsley.

 

I am thinking that this dish could use some fennel seeds thrown in. If you try it before me, let me know how it turns out.

 

Looks Wonderful xxx

 

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