Franci

There are two regions in Italy which are very big on egg pasta: Piedmont and Emilia Romagna. In Piedmont tajarin, very fine taglierini, are made exclusively with egg yolks. The dough is much silkier and you can roll it thinner, tastier. I went to read suggestions on my Italian forum: some people use just yolks, other 2 whole eggs and how many yolks needed for a kilo flour. I'm easy: i open my eggs in the mixer bowl, weight and add about the double in weight as flour. So I just follow the rule of about 50% hydratation, little more hydrated for filled pasta, a little drier for tagliatelle. But I've heard of 40 yolks to a kg flour to be really normal. Sometimes I use a mix of durum flour but it's absolutely not traditional.

I made a beef stock with shank, so a we had a little bowl of the stock with broken up angel hair's, bone marrow with a runner & stone baguette, roasted and rubbed with garlic, salt. Some very good smoked guanciale. Cauliflower. Carrot and jicama that my kids like.

Anna, try this one. Scale it down if it's too much. 1 kg flour 150 g lard 30 g salt 15 g honey, not too aromatic 18 g baking powder 150 g milk 300 g water Don't work it too much, like a shortbread. It should be soft but not sticky. Let it rest 1 hour. Make 150 g portions. Roll them out in 3-5 mm thickness and punch them with a fork.

Thanks! I really like the idea of making sheets of fig paste. BTW, some time ago, I've asked in Kitchen Consumer about a hand cranked mill for making almond flour. I ended up buying this Westmark grater and it is brilliant at grinding dried fruit, I LOVE it.

Darienne, I still don't have the book but I tried many recipes online from the Power Hungry book. I'll definitely look for the one you mentioned. I'm so picky about fresh figs, that I cannot even think of buying a store bought fig, they just don't compare. But dried figs it's different. Thanks Andie, I already saw your beautiful sugar plums, but I have more in mind the cakes or bars you can serve with cheese, so definitely no coconut. The fig and tea idea is great and I will keep it in mind!

Pan de higos, lonzino di fichi or fig salame. I love to eat them with cheese. I have already googled for recipes. Do you know other less known fig "cakes", what kind of figs do you prefer? Favourite recipes or anything to share on the subject?

We had a big Christmas lunch, so dinner was just to feed the kids and cook some food that was prepared for yesterday night and we didn't manage to finish. Yesterday plan was to have baccala' fritters 2 ways, something that is very Ligurian, and a Prawnscrackers' recipe, with olive oil roux, potatoes and baccala'. We could only finish one kind and only tried a couple for taste of Prawncrackers' beignets. I fried those tonight and also a tray of homemade potatoes coquettes. Plus some greens to help eating the fried food.

It was 10 years I didn't make cartellate, I wanted to compare 2 recipes. It was a lot of work. These are little pastries traditional from Puglia as well. It's the same ubiquitous dough from there, same almost to the one used above for purcidd, basically flour, extra virgin olive oil and white wine with a pinch of salt. The dough is rolled in the pasta machine, small strips are cut, pinched and rolled into rosettes, then dried for a day. After they are deep fried. Then afte a day, they are dipped in vincotto or honey. They are better after resting for quite some days, now after 3-4 day I already changed my mind on which I like better.

I love the 100% criollo from Francois Pralus. You need to like very dark chocolate.

As Mjx is saing originale or originario is a rice suitable for puddings or soups, very starchy.

Today I made a biscotto from a town called Ceglie Messapica, it's a Slow Food Presidia. It is really a delicious cookie. I used fine almond flour, toasted almonds with the skin coarsely ground, sugar, honey, egg and some orange peel, I didn't have rosolio and used instead some orange water. Filled them with a traditional cherry jam and a less traditional Seville orange marmelade. Also made 1/4 with a little bit of cocoa in the dough

Darienne, so sorry if it feels confusing, once I'm done I will write down names under each picture, talk about different names for the same sweet and possible regional variations. The little fried balls above, just one town next to the other are called in a different way! The other fried pastry strips above are usually called chiacchiere (ch in Italian is pronounced k) and are prepared for carnival (and I use a different recipe) but having trimmings from the other pastries which I'm still not done, I just decided to turn them into chiacchiere

I got the Koska Pekmezi, I already used in the past to make cookies and saba bread, it's plain no added spices. http://www.amazon.com/Koska-Grape-Syrup-Pekmezi-400g/dp/B000LRH6UO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419130178&sr=8-1&keywords=Pekmez

Did I say I wasn't going to do anything this year? Maybe because my father is around, maybe because I was chatting with the owner of my local Italian deli, who actually comes from the town I was born, so I end up promising these sweets called cartellate, fried and dipped in vincotto ( or saba). I actually purchased the Turkish version on amazon, because it's easier to find, relatively cheaper and no added sugar, like an easier to find Lebanese version. I made 2 doughs just to compare, rolled the 1st dough today and doing the 2nd tomorrow. They need to dry 1 day before being deep fried. I also made purcidd or sannachiudr, they are slightly different than struffoli. Also here 2 versions. Today I fried some purcidd, plus trimming from cartellate which got transformed into chiacchiere, not to get wasted. I am curios to compare the different recipes I tried.

Gingerbread house was much smaller than last year and decorated simply, with things I already had in the house. I brought it this morning for my son's end of the school party and the kids assaulted it.

I decided no cookies this year. And I was going to say no also to gingerbread house but my children really begged for one. I made two small houses...good I still had the model from the previous year and a recipe that works for me...tomorrow I'll go to my daughter preschool and with the children we are going to decorate and assemble the house. My father, who is visiting, also begged my for some "cartellate", "purcidd" and almond cookies...I'm not sure if I can make it. If so, I'll come back with pictures.

I went to Eataly today and I bought some salumi. So I baked a pide, a Turkish flat bread, and we had some mortadella, coppa and a very good speck and some piave vecchio that we like a lot. Some salad on the side.

Yesterday, we had over for dinner my parents in law and an uncle visiting from China. We had Chinise red pork roast, shrimps in a dipping sauce made by my husband's uncle, kale, saute' bruxelles sprouts leaves, sweet potatoes and some orange pork ribs. That's the only thing I managed to take a picture of.

Not really a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in my house. I made Siu Yuk, Origamicrane recipe is super, already tried different times. Double baked sweet potatoes, Bruxelles sprouts leaves and some green beans not pictured, plus I'll be forever grateful to Darienne for pointing me to the cranberry galette last year (my son had 3 (!) slices

Unfortunately for you on the east coast, I'm in Brooklyn. I guess they are carrying them just for thanksgiving

I bought them today at whole foods at $19/lb.

Tagliatelle with chanterelle mushrooms

Nice. I'll try that :-)

I am with you completely. I would call them raviolini rather than tortellini, sorry to be the usual pedantic Italian. All the vegetables tortelli (not tortellini) I know are served "asciutti", not in stock. That said, I would rather make a minestra nel sachetto (adding maybe some spinach to the mix) or a minestra imperiale or some passatelli. If making ravioli in brodo, having no choice, I would rather make a mix of wild herbs or maybe a cheese filling but would not be something I would like to eat myself. If it's a velouté rather than a clear stock I could see some vegetable tortelli with no problem.

We had caserecce with Bruxelles sprouts, chilli pepper, garlic and bacon. I wished I had some smoked grating ricotta