Franci

Recently the weather has not been the greatest. Either too windy at night or rainy, fist time in a couple weeks we are eating outside. So nice. For me a nice salad with the lightly smoked sardines under oil from Trader Joe’s, I am down to the last 3 cans and 2 slices of my pizza that I defrosted. Husband had salad and leftover steak. I made also some braised chicken with steamed potatoes for the kids. I know, everybody eating something different 😆

Loooved this salad, made with truroots sprouted mung beans but according to one of my favorite recipes from Ripailles, the lentils salad. Don’t have savora or walnut oil (in next shopping trip) but I use a honey pecan mustard and some extra walnuts in the salad. Lovely

Fried rice with the brown rice the kids didn’t want for dinner. The bacon in the fried rice I think improves everything 🤣

I don’t think I ever got a caffè freddo...my sister loves it, I will have to ask her. On my part cold coffee is bad and milk in coffee is equally bad 🤣 I don’t drink cappuccino and milk in coffee is a crime 😁. But I know I might be considered weird by many.

Un macchiato is perfectly acceptable at any time, the quantity of milk is minuscule, a latte e caffè no. Is my mind, as Italian, not really because milk plays a role in digestion. A cappuccino is a meal in itself. My question when seeing someone drinking a cappuccino after a meal is: are you not full already? Do you need more food on top of what you just had? I am a caffè sipper 😙. I also associate corretto mainly with a old people drink 😁 it was my grandparents used to start their day, caffè with grappa. But maybe it’s jut me.

Char siu pork for dinner with green beans and some grilled peppers. My husband got as a gift a 15 lbs bag of Californian brown rice and he keeps pushing it to the children. Rice was left untouched, also tonight, I think he is giving up finally 😁 I made a baked savory millet from a friend’s recipe, she uses ricotta but I needed to finish some cottage cheese, so I used that. Did not really paired with the rest of the dinner but it thing it would be ok with a couple fried eggs on top. The rest of the house would not even considering eating bird food as they call it 🤣

I know it’s great my oven get to 550F. Still dreaming of a pizza oven where I can regulate top and bottom separately 😁

I love fry polenta, fried in butter of course. Your polenta is on the soft side, compared to mine, it might be trickier to fry. You could make gnocchi di polenta. In my mom’s hometown they are known for coarser polenta and a little thicker, once cold is easily sliceable and absolutes no problem to fry or grill. Sharing if anybody cares: in risotto al salto I don’t use any eggs or breadcrumbs, just risotto and I still manage to turn the rice. In the pan I use a ring to make the cakes and press down a bit the risotto, then, I’ll remove the ring to form the next cake. My trick, besides time to form the crust, is to put the ring back on the cake and I have a super flexible spatula, present of a Japanese friend (very cute, with a frog shape) that is really good at the task. Flip, remove the ring and slowly form the crust on the other side. Thank you @Kim Shook, you are always so kind! I’ve seen some many good meals tonight! Tonight I’ve grilled some Key West pink shrimps, fried cod for the kids, fried zucchini, cauliflower and a little bit of bruschetta with the bread of the other day.

@weinoo, so here it is the recipe Pizza in teglia alla romana. 440g all purpose flour, use any you have available, don’t use something too rich in protein, unless you plan to keep the dough multiple days in the fridge. 329 g water cold 12 g salt 8 g extra virgin olive oil 3 g instant yeast (I use SAF) Add all the flour and the water in the mixer. Start the mixer, using the flat beater, and mix on low until all flour is wet. No dry flour at the bottom. Take the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate half an hour to 1 ½ hours. Start again the mixer on low and let it go for 2 minutes. Add the yeast and increase the speed of one more level and let it go for other 2 minutes. Increase the speed one more time and let it go other 2 minutes. Add the salt, and increase the speed and let it go again other 2 minutes, adding slowly the oil at the end. I am attaching a photo of how the dough looked when done. Transfer to the counter, let it sit for a couple minutes and “close” the dough by hand. I do some slap and folds and make a round boule. The technique in Italian to create tension in a round dough is called pirlatura, in Spanish is called bolear el pan, in English, I don’t know (is there a name for it?). Put in a lightly oil container, let it sit 30 minutes to one hour (depending on how hot it is) and then transfer to the fridge. You can take it out the same day 3-4 hours before baking or the day after, still taking it out 3-4 hours before baking. When it’s out I portion it and give 2 sets of folds. For this quantity I use 650g of the teglia (I use a perforated half sheet pan) and I have a little dough left (120-130g) that I keep for a mini pizza the day after. For the folds, I use the technique of this guy: start watching at 16:47. I do 2 sets of these folds about 15 minutes apart before putting in a container with the cover oiled, just as he does. Let it rise at room temperature. After about 2 1/2 hours, I start preheating the oven 550F with stone function in my oven. At about 3 hours or depending on the rising, I spread in the tray, I use this technique. Note: the size of the container she uses to rise the dough is important. And also the flour she uses in the tray is durum (some people mix also durum and rice flour), I found that I bought Bob’s red Mill 100% stone Ground whole wheat organic flour (it was the only flour left at the moment and I don’t like it for baking except in very small quantity but perfect for dusting! Doesn’t burn much). I spray oil on the pizza in the pan (I have a chocolate gun) and bake at the very bottom of the oven 8 minutes total at 550F when is “bianca”, no tomato, no other stuff, just oil. I turn the tray at 4 minutes. Never open before because it’s when you get all the bubbles.

@Kim Shook sorry the bread didn’t come out right! Did I get the recipe right? I am puzzled. It looks like just mix things in a bowl, stir, and than pour into the baking pan? No folds in between? If so doesn’t surprise me. The bread I made above it’s a no knead, same recipe of the focaccia. But I gave to it 3 sets of folds!

I will post it later 😊

Almost looks like the pizza bianca in teglia that I was looking for.

Steamed buns, duck in plum sauce for the kids. Husband and I grilled salmon and I made a pizza bianca that came out spectacular

Forgot to post this of the little one when she saw bread 🤣

Ciambella with extra pizza dough

I am in the teglia alla romana phase again. Sorry, you are going to see many of them. Same dough of the pizza I made also a ciambella bread. And my husband with the excuse we are not going out keeps buying jamons. So, we had a little bit of jamon, chorizo Fermin, pizza, and bread, salad.

@Duvel how good the fried turnip cake, must be a lifetime I don’t have it! Love that stuff. Today finally some vegetable in the house, although I’ll try to avoid Instacart in the future, prefer picking my own stuff. But I didn’t feel like going in the outside world today! I cooked some cauliflower, string beans and spicy sauté escarole. A little bit of focaccia and pizza I previously froze and for the rest of the family I made 2 pieces of wagyu sirloin I still had in the fridge and needed to cook. For myself I cooked some penne and sauté with a little bit of the spicy escarole. Everybody happy. So difficult to take pictures at night! Anyway missing the meat and the pasta!

Happy anniversary @liamsaunt! Love oysters I forgot to take a picture of dinner! Very little vegetables left in the house...urgently need to go shopping. I defrosted 2 octopus legs and steamed a potato, added a handful of chickpeas to it, oil and parsley. I grilled 2 pieces of Wagyu sirloin and made a small plate with beets (bought under vacuum to use for emergencies 😄) plus baked something that looked a cross between a ciabatta and a focaccia. Not bad!

Hi guys! @liamsaunt how lucky! Lovely. And I missed @BonVivant crevettes and don’t want to start thinking of good white asparagus! I need to catch up on this thread (and many others!). If anybody remembers, some time ago, I was on the quest of my perfect recipe for pizza in teglia alla romana. I am making some progresses. I loved tonight pizza

I keep looking at websites but honestly, it’s very hard to beat Costco prices on the sockeye salmon and other fishes and overall the quality has been better of all other places I’ve tried (at least supermarket level). Good thing I added to my regular purchases has been frozen octopus legs from Whole Foods, easy to do a quick dinner salad. I also buy from my local frozen place, wild fork, which I love for meat, local Key West Shrimps, I am buying also frozen soles from US, avoid anything from South East Asia.

@Smithy, they came out so well!!!

Taking notes! Thank you. Some websites prices are still pretty high, will check again in little bit. @joancassell, I think I ordered in the past from VitalChoice but definitely not frozen seafood.

This was the topic at dinner yesterday night. How hard the fish industry has been hit with this pandemic. Result is that lot of fish is getting frozen. Suppliers that is the past were only selling to restaurants are opening now to general public. Do you have names, links you’d like to share? Are you going to start buying fish online? Thanks!

Cool. I have a very good friend in Amsterdam for you!

Of course, you have 😆!!! Enjoy the last days of your stay.