Franci

I’ve seen (and tried) recipes with yeast and baking powder at the same time, with cream as liquid, a mix of milk and water, with oil or lard or a combination. You’ll have a very different result (more similar to piadina than bread for example) also some people prefer them empty inside, with a pocket, some people only get a full crumb. This is maybe not the typical tigella flavour but I like that way: 520g flour, 2% salt, 8-10% extra virgin olive oil, about 260-270 water, yeast depending on your time. I let it raise, divide the dough into 40g balls (about 21) and since I cook in 3 batches when I get to 7 balls I roll them out with a small pin to fit the holes of the tigelliera and go on so I have the first batch ready (rather than making 21 balls and rolling all of them at the same time). I let them rise again about 20-30 minutes covered. Meanwhile I preheat the tigelliera. Cooking in very fast, about 2-3 minutes on one side, 1-2 minutes on the other. I’ve seen on Amazon.de you have the tigelliera 2 torri, the one with 7 holes is the best for me. I make tigelle once a week for years, I keep them in the freezer and are an amazing snack. My kids love them.

@Duvel, we made same plans for dinner! I made a classic of the house, the duck in plum sauce (it is from Sunflower food galore, one of my most loved chinese food blogs, unfortunately she doesn’t write anymore) but decided to pair Italian, with tigelle instead of steamed bread. Some sauté carrot and broccoli stalks (I always do when I collect enough broccoli stalks in the fridge). My son did the peppers, sweet and sour. And photo of his tigella 😁

I am becoming a very lazy cook. I was tempted to go out and buy some new books but decided instead to create a Pinterest board, so much info out there...in a book maybe I will keep 4-5 recipes if I am lucky! Anyway, yestarday some sauté napa cabbage, sauté cauliflower, bruschetta with my bread, a hanger steak and short ribs.

Now I am curious which bread you buy! BTW, I don’t know if anybody is interested but I find the only bread doesn’t give me the gluey effect (needed bread for meatballs for example) when I was in Brooklyn was to use friselle from my Italian deli. There are many kinds of friselle, some are really crusty and whole wheat, I am talking about the plain one, white flour. Good thing is that they are dry, so you can keep long time, just need to soak with some liquid.

@ambra, you know I never had ribollita? For me it’s one of the few things that I totally understand you need to have in Toscana, with the right bread to get it right, so I would not even attempt to do at home. Soon or later... We are never been big on chicken but we discovered we really like this heritage chicken from our frozen food market, so I think we are going to establish a chicken night from now on 😁

Thank you, guys! Definitely will follow your recommendations. We are going to start building the brick raised beds next week, I guess...in the meantime we are likely going to be out of the house as they are doing some major drilling for replacing some pipes. While this is done, we have time to plan for what we want to plant. My husband doesn’t seem very concerned but I worry about the iguanas as well. I don’t know if we should cover all the fences with a tight metal net.

We will get the soil from that coop, here and most likely ask for a second consultation. See what we can do with the lemon tree! Ah, ah, my husband is too optimistic on spacing the plants :), given how inexperienced we are it’s great to get advice from you

We got a consultation from a guy in the second link I posted with the list of veg to plant and he advises against citrus, they is a lime tree a little more resistant but they get sick very easily. I was dreaming of having a lemon tree! In the more shady areas the guy suggested papaya or a mini banano tree. I’d like a mango or my daughter love pitaya

@KennethT here you can see a list of winter vegetables. This is prime planting season.

We are going to build brick raised beds of approximately one foot. Given the current level of the soil, plus the raised bed with could achieve a depth of 20 inches. On the longer side there are a lot of roots but since we are not going to plant fruit trees but only vegetables, I don’t think should be an issue, right? We were thinking of buying soil and plants from this coop So far we made a list and trying to fill the spaces. We want to have trellis so the vegetable can grow above the fence. Ah, another big problem. Here there are iguanas everywhere!

Hi expert gardeners. After a very unsuccessful attempt at gardening in Brooklyn with a garden with less than ideal sun exposure, here we are trying again in Florida. Suggestions along the way would be great. This is what we have. I am attaching some photos and a map my DH wrote. Sunlight you see in the first 2 photos is at noon.

This is pretty much how we do tofu 90% of the time. Preheat the oven at 375/400F. Firm or extra firm tofu, blotted with paper but not pressed, cut in cubes, put in a tray and sprinkle with a starch about 40-50 g for a block (potato starch, tapioca, whatever you have around), salt, any spice you prefer (we do the mala spice mix from flybyjin, Korean pepper used for kimchi, sesame seeds, poppy seeds), shake well the tray, so that every side of the tofu cubes are covered and then spray oo drizzle with oil (I use the chocolate gun, it’s very handy for this) and shake again. Transfer on a baking tray with parchment and cook about 20 minutes, flip the tofu and cook about 18-20 longer. You need to find your temperature, oven function and time, so it puffs slightly, stay crunchy outside but not dry.

Happy Birthday @Shelby!!! We are a year apart Today Chinese roasted pork, bai tsai, rice and crispy tofu

Last couple dinners. Picanha on Thurday. Yesterday it was my husband birthday so we lobsters on the grill

I’ve not tried yet the sofrito from Matriz. I’ll keep my eyes open if I see it in stores. Btw, we have only one supermarket on the island, it’s a Winn-Dixie, I don’t like the place much, quality is not great to me but I swear, so many ingredients I don’t know from South America. Too bad I am not particularly interested into it. I am sure I could find dishes I like but it requires a lot of investigation that I am not willing to do at the moment.

Me of your great looking baccalà mantecato. It’s a lifetime I don’t eat it! So good. I never seen stoccafisso in the US, baccalà of good quality only a couple of times. But if I think of baccalà at El Corte Ingles 😅 in Lisbon...

Apparently I need to increase my portions, that’s what the growing teenager told me

That’s exactly what he says! I am the difficult one. Btw, he should get his own account because he is always using mine to snack and read the dinner thread 😂 So, second time cooking the mahi-mahi roes. This time it looks like I did a good job, I got thumbs up. Very simple: sprayed with some extra virgin olive oil, salt for a couple hours, then cooked on the cast iron grill, cut, more oil, parsley and salt. Same for the mahi-mahi. Salad and some broccoli on the side.

Interesting this guy talking about stages of the roes

Today’s fish is mahi-mahi. I have roe as well. Not an expert cooking roe. I cooked shad roe a couple of times, sautéed in butter and eaten on toast. I cooked this time with shiitake and escarole first. In a clean pan sautéed some of the fillets and two roes, dredged in flour before, the membrane was too tough for my liking. I didn’t think pan was too hot but maybe it was...suggestions? I have two more

You know you made his day 😃😁

First time ever the husband did bbq ribs on the Weber. Side of collard greens and sauté watercress

Tonight I baked the rose fish from yesterday with some cherry tomatoes and potatoes, side of bai tzai, sauté cremini mushrooms and xialong bao from TJ’s for the kids. Yesterday, I baked that huge barrel fish head and cooked the fillet for the kids. Simple salad on the side. The meat from the head was a lot but not that much, leftovers were finished at lunch today.

🙏 saving the link

🤣 20 people. Do you have a link to a recipe bwt? Plenty of recipes on line but if you have a trusty source, better. Good idea! Curious to see how much meat we can get from the head. I will report back!