Franci

Finally a successful recipe for ricciarelli di Siena and I made my usual hazelnut cake from Langhe, just because my parents never tried it

You could use it to cook pork chops with a pear sauce. Cook the pears cut in slices with butter deglazing with white wine, adjust seasoning and puree'. Dust the pork chops with flour and shake the excess. Saute' in butter and deglaze with white wine, adjust seasoning. Add the blueberries and cook for about 2'. Plate the chops. Crush about half of berries in the sauce and leave the other whole. Dress the chops with the sauce and serve with the puree'. Instead of pork you could use quails, duck or other game meat.

That's a very good tip, I have Sahadi's walking distance from me but I never seen them carrying bitter almonds. Maybe I'll be better asking.

I tried another Paradiso cake, this time from Iginio Massari. It's a very good cake, very rich buttery and a little crumbly, a recipe in English if you are interested. . In my mind this is the equivalent in the cake world of what a Viennese whipped shortbread cookie is in the cookie world. I think American pound cake has a much tighter crumb (which is not necessary a bad thing, in fact that could also be my preference)

Wow, Andie, I already checked on Amazon. That is roughly 3.5 times more than the price I paid here in Italy. I'm not going to make amaretti with it...but at 5 g at the time to replace almond bitter extract maybe...

Do you have a good source-at a decent price- for bitter apricot kernels? It is so annoying...in seems in the US they have been transformed in super food while in Italy is cheap stuff and alternative to the harder to find bitter almonds or used to make amaretti for the industry. I just bought a pack of bitter apricot kernel flour for 10.40 Euro a kilo. Anything compared to this available for sale in the US?

Today I made something typical from Bologna: pinza bolognese. It belongs to the same family of ciambella a pasta dura. In Emilia the simple ciambella is called "brazadela" and it is traditionally dipped in wine. This recipe comes from pastry chef Omar Busi. This recipe compared to my usual is more buttery, sweeter and more tender...that's the tendency of pastry chefs. The filling is usually mostarda bolognese, not to be confused with mostarda mantovana or cremonese.

Savoiardi or biscuits a la cuillere

Anna, look at the video of the Kosmik strawberry pistachio, I think it looks very nice. Ah, so, by watching the video I've discovered they use the same pistachio cream I used, so it's supposed to be intense.

I'm not normally so productive but I'm taking advantage of this month of rest in order to try new things. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of the inside of the ciambella, it's gone but here is the same cake, where it has been used chocolate instead of candied orange (I like this better, it's more the taste of panettone for me). This version is a little richer but also often you can buy in store plain with sugar in grains (that I cannot find in the USA, only a little coarser belgian sugar but not this one). Yesterday I had some relatives visiting so I made Christophe Michalak's frantastik fraise/pistache. I think the French use a pate de pistache which is done with caramelized pistache, almond etc...I used a pure Bronte pistachio cream so overall for me this cake was very intense, I should have reduced the quantity of pistachio. The base is a pate sablee, then a biscuit trocadero pistache, I replaced the strawberry pure with pectin with Rigoni d'Asiago strawberry jam, then white chocolate pistache chantilly, caramelized bronte pistachios, strawberries

I'm from Puglia, in the South of Italy but growing up I spent a lot of time in Lombardy where my mother is from. Back in Puglia Pane with durum flour (my local is quite dense not the big wholes of the nearby Altamura. Pane di Altamura, an amazing bread) Friselle are the staple dry bread of the summer that we dressed like in Spain do "pan con tomate", after they have been briefly soaked in water. The taste of friselle is very different depending on the flour used (barley, whole wheat, durum flour, if they are made with pasta madre etc) Panfocaccia is something I really enjoyed eating. Like the vast array of focacce and stuffed focacce. Focaccia barese is famous. I loved our local focaccia (a mix of durum and 00 flour and potatoes with a filling of onions, black olives cured in wine, which will stain all the inside of the bread, and capers). Pucce in Lecce that are baked with olives with pit! From the North I miss the real "michetta" almost impossible to find as good as in the past also in Milan. Totally empty in the middle with a nice nutty flavor. And I absolutely adore all the bread "a pasta dura", in this category there are many breads from the North: biove, coppia ferrarese, bauletto, bananine). The Sardinian bread: pane carasau is really special. My husband keep saying that his grandfather from the North of China used to eat something very similar. Then if I start taking about special breads for holidays then the list gets very long: tortano napoletano, pizza al formaggio (which looks more like a panettone not like a pizza) is soooo good.

Ciambella a pasta dura with raisins and candied orange peel.

Today we opened 2 different pistachio cakes I made yesterday to compare them. The one with the ground pistachio on the rim wins for everybody. Really nice and fondant.

When living in the south of France, I always had plenty of duck fat around. I often used it to pan fry scallops. And there is a wonderful recipe from J. McLagan for duck biscuits (using duck fat, plus cracklings). I liked to use it for baking all kind of root vegetables and to cook cabbage.

Today I made for my father one of his favourite cookies, a biscotto from Ceglie Messapica. An almond shell with jam filling

And yesterday, still from Giovanni Pina, I made these chocolate baciotti. They are not really like amaretti but still made with almond flour, sugar and egg whites. Overall too sweet for me, my mom which has a very sweet tooth likes them.

Thank you, John. I'm enjoying trying these cakes.Here they are still quite common in the bakeries. More elaborate and richer cakes with cream are found in pastry shops and are regarded as cakes for occasions, dinner parties, for Sunday lunch etc. but they are smaller and thinner and elegant. Everybody likes Cristophe Michalak also in Italy. I'm going to make a Fantastik myself one of these days. I just got back with the kids from gelato. If you are interested this is what was on display at our favorite gelato/patisserie more tarts and torte ready to join the display And cakes are not sold by the slice. If anybody wants something sweet with his/her coffee there are cornetti (croissants) or brioche especially in the morning or mignardises thanks, Mjx. The only time I recall making a schiacciata fiorentina was with yeast but I think for the schiacciata with baking powder the overall technique and ingredients are very different, you will have a very different product. This is a buttery, rich cake slighly crumbly. Since you ready Italian you can find easily the recipe googling "torta paradiso" Giovanni Pina. I'm so curious to try the torta paradiso from other pastry chefs.

Leonidas, I just sent you the recipe This morning I baked a Torta paradiso. It's a rich cake with clarified butter, eggs plus egg yolks, flour cut with potato starch. It was a bit sweet for my liking but not for my parents or my son.

yesterday, I made a Torta sabbiosa, something that is traditional from the region of Veneto but since a cake with the same name is also a well known German cake (Sandkuchen) I'm wondering at what point has been introduced in Italy. I think it's the kind of cake, given its peculiar sandy texture, you either love or hate . Let's say I don't love it. The Italian version is almost a 4/4 but half of the flour is substituted with potato starch. Any German that can talk about the German version? I also believe I didn't do a good job with this cake, it was just too hot and the butter was way too soft to start with.

Thanks! Not that I can visibly see. We just lined the floor and the side with a liner, how is it called in English...landscape liner?

Great idea, I'm going to steal it! This was instead our raised bed idea. We had some bricks in the garden left by the landlady and we stacked 2 rounds of them to get a pretty decent height but we didn't want to mortar them because we don't know how long we are going to be in this house. So I had the idea of wrapping the outside with plastic wrap. It has been holding for almost a year now. This is a picture from last week, too bad I didn't get a photo of the zucchini trombetta (or courgette trompette).

Either the 70 mm or the 60 mm would be great. I even tried them in mini pie molds (and they were very pretty), something like this and I think it's even better for functions, just one bite and no crumbs! I'll PM the recipe later tonight.

John, it's really nice. It amazing sometimes how a very simple recipe can give so much gratification. I can PM the recipe if you like it. I know for British English corn flour is corn starch. This is a flour made from corn, finely milled.

Thank you, Shelby! It's nice to be back...home. Although I confess I'm not sure anymore where home is :-) Yesterday night I made another classic sweet from Lombardy. It's called "sbrisolona" which means "crumbly". It's a simple crumble of butter (in the past was just lard) and hazelnut flour (which has progressively been substituted with almond flour), corn flour, white flour, little egg. Often you'll find whole toasted almond in between the crumbs. Usually it's not cut but broken with a fist. So, to make it more presentable, I've made in the past using pastry rings for individual cookies. This recipe, still from Giovanni Pina, was new to me. I really liked it with my coffee.

Greetings from Italy, everybody! Here it's very hot at the moment but at night, when the heat gets down a little, I'm turning the oven on. Over this month in Italy I'll try to experiment on traditional Italian regional specialties, all gâteaux de voyage, as the French would call them. Yesteday, I made an Amorpolenta from Bergamo (to distinguish it from the one from Varese or surrounding towns) from pastry chef Giovanni Pina. It's a polenta cake with corn flour of course, almond flour, potato starch, white flour, eggs and butter. It's very tender and fragrant.