Franci

Another summer squash that is particular from the riviera is zucchini trombetta. it is different than the regular zucchini. It's much firmer, hold the cooking very well and it has seeds only at the rounder tip where the blossom is attached. If you can find the seeds, I highly recommend it. A way people enjoyed it here is in "torte verdi", Italian or French version very similar. Tourte de cougette trompette.

I'm sorry I don't have the time to join you in the cooking but I'm reading and going to come back to steal some of you ideas. Meanwhile I want to add some of the ways I enjoy zucchini. Zucchine alla poverella. (povero=poor) Slice the zucchini, salt them and leave to dry overnight on towels. Deep fry. Layer the fried zucchini and dress with white wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, garlic salt and fresh mint. Mint and vinegar are key. Another very famous Italian dish, is spaghetti alla Nerano, in the States I don't know how is (or how expensive is) to find provolone del Monaco and caciocavallo di Sorrento. In this blog you can see both cheeses. I tried in the past with mozzarella, just doesn't work. I also enjoyed many times this Tian of courgettes and potatoes. I don't like the wine in it and honestly didn't follow the recipe to the T, just the idea. In my area of origin, in Apulia, we call this kind of dish Tiella. The most known Tiella is riso patate e cozze. But it is very common to find also the zucchine in there. It is a very difficult dish to do properly. It can be really delicious or total crap. This is a good video, sorry in Italian but watching is good enough, in reality this is cooked in a earth ware pot and baked in a brick oven.

They freeze really really well, you can have fried zucchini blossoms in winter! Wash them and dry them really well, very gently, I use a salad spinner. Then freeze in a container in layers. Key is to dip in batter and fry while they are still frozen, otherwise they turn into a mush. You cannot stuff anymore. I know everybody says to go with a light batter with the blossoms (beer, sparkling water, rice flour), but my preferred batter is eggs and flour, plus salt something in the middle between pancake batter thickness and crepe. Needs to coat the blossoms without being neither too heavy nor runny. Deep fry. Another way Italians like to fry the zucchini blossoms is to make a batter flour, yeast and salt, some sugar and water and add the shredded zucchini blossoms and then let it double in bulk and dip fry. Something looking like this I also enjoyed very much watching this video of Ottolenghi going in a farm in Turkey to catch the blossoms when they open in the morning. Here. Shelby you can also shred the blossoms and add to the zucchini to make a risotto or pasta.

Just the idea of a fish pie...or shepard pie. Indian food. My Americanized idea of Mexican food: mess on a plate. But I love coriander ( cilantro)

Today's dinner: calf's liver, onions and shallots

Tonight we had a rotisserie duck with cauliflower and carrots cooked under the duck and some watermelon rind chutney

We had a frittata of zucchini trombetta and blossoms Then Stephane Reynaud ratatouille, where I use my preserved lemons instead of Menton lemons (ah,ah actually I used preserved Menton's lemons) and rabbit. My favorite bits: head and liver.

Very Ottolenghish dinner: two of his recipes contemplating feta and zereshk: chicken thighs and couscous cakes. Loved the cakes.

Mm84321, very nice job! Thanks Emily, yes, the rolls have spaghetti inside. I think this is one of the many reinterpretations of pasta alla norma. I cooked really al dente some spaghetti ( de cecco, only 3 minutes) and sauteed in a bit of tomato sauce for a minute more, so the pasta could absorb some of the sauce. You need to keep it quite al dente or it will overcook. I sliced and salted the eggplants, rinsed them and dip-fried. I poured a bit of tomato sauce in a oven pan and started to assemble my rolls: slice of eggplant, a bit of grated ricotta salata (which I didn't have and replaced with Turkish white cheese), a bit of the spaghetti and a spoonful more of sauce if necessary and a leaf of basil, rolled and placed in the pan, keeping the rolls tight. A light drizzle of sauce, some grated ricotta salata and it went in a very hot oven to get some browning, just 10-15 minutes, watching it would not get dry. It is best it let it rest until it's warm. Tonight I made some fried sticky rice dumpling (a. Nguyen) with some adaptations for the filling.

Tonight for dinner we had eggplant rolls a la Norma

Dinner tonight: vine leaves yogurth pie with salad

Yesterday I started a batch of no knead brioche (recipe from Ideas in Food book), substituting some of the water with orange blossom water. This morning the dough was doubled in bulk but it looked greasy. I baked almost all of it and the brioches were a disaster: heavy and greasy. It was too hot. Luckily, I left some of the dough and put it in the fridge, took it out in the afternoon, it had more of the smooth brioche feel. What a huge difference! For sure I had made better brioche in the past, although the little brioches I made in the afternoon were decent compared to the one baked this morning. You can clearly see it in these pictures, in the first the no no brioche it's the one resting on its side, the 2nd picture it's obvious. So, the only thing I accomplished was to finish the sugar on top of the brioche and some more orange blossom water. Then I went back to to the cupboard and decided to take some of my losses and dumped the mushrooms that have been there forever, followed by green azuki beans, the net rice wrap and a few other jars... With the heat I'm not really in the mood to use miso for soup. To you have suggestions for using miso in good amount? Some pickles? Some marinating? And for the dry shrimps besides some fried rice or stir-fried vegetables? Thanks

Thanks!That is an idea. Unusual rice wrap are common in this house... Definitely Plantes Verdes, I'll see if I can donate what I cannot manage. It is fun in some ways...this is really forcing myself to be more creative and effective. This afternoon I discovered fekkas, Moroccan biscotti. So I'm done with almonds, raisins, some of the sesame seeds and some orange blossom water. I'm making also a no knead brioche where I used more orange blossom water and hopefully going to finish my pearled sugar.

I forgot to add to my list a package of vine leaves. So today I had Ottolenghi lamb pie and used up some zereshk as well. I have still plenty of leaves. More in the next few days.

About twenty years ago I started dating all staples with a Sharpie, and about eighteen years ago I started discarding anything without a date, without apology. It has become a very useful habit.I really should start doing it! After I'm clear... And thanks for the recipe for the dumplings. This baked mochi, instead, reminded me of something I read some time ago. Here. Even easier, no eggs and can use up nuts!

By taking some of the food on the table, I realized I'm very short of time! And after writing a list I started to panic...

Hi guys, I need a bit of help: I have one month to clean my cupboards! I know that I'll not been able to finish everything but I want to be effective in limiting my waste. I really appreciate if you have hints and suggestions for me. I don't want to go out and buy other ingredients and want to maximize the quantities used in a recipe (like no more nuts flours or difficult ingredients, ok to buy food used regularly like eggs or flour). Ex. orange blossom water. I'll try to post also everything I'll be making in this one month here. I've not yet checked what I have in the freezer... 1 box bonito stock in packages Nori sheets (n. 9) 1 bottle of sushi seasoning (about 280 ml) 320 g of sushi rice 2 cups about of red lentils 2 jars of small dried Chines black mushrooms 2 small jars of dried woodenear mushrooms 1 cup scant of green azuki beans 1 cup of giant white beans dry 1 package of dry nice noodle 1 package of rice net spring rolls wraps 1 open package of rice spring rolls wraps 1 box of 250 g of wheat starch 320 g tapioca starch 160 g glutinous rice flour 120 g rice flour 1 jar of rice syrup 1 small bottle Mexican vanilla extract 1 small bottle, halfway, of Madagcar vanilla extract 2 vanilla beans 80 g cocoa powder unsweetened Pearl sugar for brioche au sucre 1 bottle of orange water about 180 ml in it 600 g of 10X sugar 1 jar of bakewell cream 320 g of jasmine rice 1 cup basmati Assorted nuts: toasted almond from Spain, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds 1 cup toasted black sesame seeds 500g soft brown sugar 1 can coconut milk 1 small can wasabi powder Yuzu powder 1 tiny jar of shrimp paste (belancan) 1 bottle mirin 1 jar chili radishes Taiwanese Refrigerator White miso unopened Homemade preserved lemons 1 small jar anchovy paste 1 big jar Ligurian anchovies under salt 1 open jar of XO sauce 1 package of zereshk 1 bottle oyster sauce 1 bottle of soy sauce ½ jar plum sauce 1 bottle of Koon yick wah kee sauce 1 jar of home made sriracha in the freezer 2 bottles and half of fish sauce (1 from Vietname, 1 Red Boat and half of a Blis aged fishsauce) 1 bottle sake for cooking 1 big package of dry shrimps Tahini Cornichons Coarse mustard Mustard Hazelnut oil Avocado oil 2 drawers full of spices... For ex. to use orange flower water, it would be nice to combine with sesame or a lot of the cocoa...so more ingredients can be used at the same time! Thanks, I'm loading some pictures as well.

Minestrone alla genovese for Italians just means with added pesto at the end of cooking, out of the heat. But I had to ask in Italian cooking forums, to people from Genova, what it is really included in this soup. This is the answer I had and I made the soup accordingly: The minestrone genovese doesn't have tomatoes, or carrots, nor onions, squash in used in small amount in the winter, the main vegetables in this minestrone are lume' (fresh beans similar to borlotti), zucchini, green beans and eggplant (just one and the tiny round variety that is used in Liguria for stuffing) and the lucky one that finds it in his bowl can eat it, then a lot of potatoes because the minestrone should be dense, so that a spoon can stand in it. The vegetables are cut very small, also the potatoes, although some need to be left whole, so you know then it's ready. The vegetables are not pureed but crushed with a fork. The pasta especially brichetti are used, or rice. So you need to take into consideration the cooking time and time to let the soup cool down a bit. The pesto is added out of the stove, never let the pesto cook. Actually, the pesto for minestrone is slightly different: in the mortar pound the garlic and the grated cheese, add the basil, and ending with more cheese. No pine nuts, the taste of which would be lost in the minestrone and people from Genova are known to be parsimonious. Some extra virgin olive oil. My notes: I made the minestrone in the pressure cooker:30 minutes. The look was not particularly appetizing at first, but I crushed with the fork the vegetables and the whole potatoes, added the pasta and cooked al dente (brichetti hold the cooking very well), adjusted salt. It needs to be stirred often, the bottom tend to burn easily. I added pesto out of the stove and let it cool. It is normally greener because Genovesi like it with more pesto than me. It is different then my normal minestrone but I really enjoyed it.

Basquecook, what a great job! I like everything. Tonight we had stuffed eggplants.

Cold minestrone genovese style

I'm sorry I missed your post! Hope you had a lovely time here.

Tonight we had timballo di ziti

Tonight I had a frisella, a salad and leftovers

Yeah, Scottyboy, welcome back, I love your food. Thank you, Rotuts! I normally do this soup differently, richer. But I had the bones from the bass and I didn't want to waist them. So I made a quick fish stock in the pressure cooker. I sauteed some garlic in oil, added a very big heirloom tomato, peeled and chopped, and added the stock. Cooked quickly again in the pressure cooker, adjusted seasoning and added the ditalini al dente. Normally, I would add some monkfish and some langoustines for flavor and also a little bit of spiciness. But in my hometown there is also a very common dish, where you proceed similarly (garlic, oil, tomatoes and lots of water to keep it very soupy) but add mussels at the end and ditalini, with plenty of black pepper.

Children's dinner A simple tomato-fish soup with ditalini Some goujonettes of bass which I also enjoyed And since the husband is away, I can cook stuff he would never eat...like this phyllo pie.