Franci

Do you want to know how many boxes of pasta we keep open in Italy at one time The only time I usually keep under control the quantity of pasta (even if the boxes are closed) is in the summer when it's really hot and you have flour/rice/pulses in the cupboard and if you have flour spoiling or rice then even if you keep in jars you might end up throwing everything out. I have boxes of pasta open for very long time in glass jars.

Thanks Snowangel! I got a little bit lost in that topic. So, I guess a major problem I might have had it's just a matter of fat. But if I recall correctly someone was saying that fat is more important in pot stickers (eh, eh, they seem to me already kind of fat on their own). I might try to cut some lardo di colonnata into the ground pork. Folding for me it's easy. I'm Italian and used to closing italian ravioli. Yours, even without the pleating, look very inviting. What's your preference on the filling side? I'm more proud of myself pleating baozi for the first time yesterday and my 2.5 years old son, although half shanghainese, said to me that he prefers italian ravioli but steamed bread was a winner.

Thanks, Amy! I also did some pot stickers, leaving the dough a little ticker. Nice crunch. I tried yesterday to make meatballs out of some pork I had left and I just got to the conclusion that I need another cut of pork or need to buy pork somewhere else, although it's a nice shop around here. Next time I'll try the filling first, I don't know why didn't come to me. Being a tired mum. Cheers

Hi Doodad, I'm reading very good reviews on the book, do you like it? Nice meal BTW, here is a picture of the filling Considering it was my fist attempt I'm happy about how the dough turned out and the look, need to give it another try soon.

From what I've been reading here, the meat in the filling for jiaozi it's ground to a paste. Today I tried the Hunan dumplings from Barbara Tropp's book. The recipe calles for hand cut meat or coarsely ground port butt. I got a neck with good fat grounded by the butcher but, in all honesty, I didn't like the filling much. I'm not sure if it's because I'm used to a different texture or I just found a lacking of seasoning. It is just a Hunan thing to have a coarse texture? Second question. In the recipe she didn't suggest to make a "belly" to the skin. I thought it was kind of the rule for home made jiao zi and also for pot stickers.

Did anybody try the Faitout Plume? It's 30% lighter because of a steel lid. In France the price is much lower, 89 € instead of 119 € of a regular same size LC (20 cm). Any thought? Thanks

Thanks everybody, very interesting! It's a little bit like Italy, you cut high canadian flour with 00 flour. I'm more familiar with the US/UK/Italian market. In Italy, for ex. if you buy flour in supermarkets it's not displayed the W, only the general use for it,and the Canadian flour it's already "cut" and ready to use. However, for serious home bakers there are some mills who provide all the specifications for flour needed. I guess I was looking some online store like Tibiona for Italy or King Arthur for the US. I'm already thinking of some Panettone baking for Christmas. Well, thanks, I think I need to get used to the products and get familiar with what is available. Thanks for suggesting the book.

Hi. Yesterday I found myself really struggling to buy flours. I know that lower numbers are associated with lower protein but beside that I found very difficult to buy flours without added levain or other ingredients. There were tons of packages for brioche or cereal or other kinds of loafs but I didn't manage to find a good, simple, high protein flour for bread making. Is there any mill which sells on line and lists all the specifications for flour (W in particular)? I was looking something like Tibiona for Italy. They sell very good flours, but also cereals, spices etc. Thanks

Hello. I've recently moved to Monaco and the area is still very new to me. I'd be really grateful if somebody could suggest some food shopping places around Monaco, small producers and farmers, good bakeries. And also online shopping possibilities. In the last couple months I've been living in Ventimiglia, so I know of the markets on the Italian side and about the Menton market on Saturday but that's about it. Thanks

Dry fava beans in Puglia is ALWAYS served hot. The rule is never stir during cooking, just when is soft and the water completely gone. I asked my father, in dialect 'ncapriata referres to the mix, to combine the fava with the cicorie. When I think of 'ncapriata it's much thicker, not as runny as the one I've seen in the pictures here. Sometimes pane casereccio in chunks is added to the fava and cicoria mix. It is usually served along witha an onion and tomato salad (with oil and vinegar!) and deep fried small sweet green peppers (in other parts of Italy called friggitelli, we call it diavulicchi in dialect) This is the classic pignata used to cook fave on the fireplace, that is the best way, when they are done they are vigorously beaten with a long wooden spoon oil is added to make a thick homogeneous mash.

No Hathor, they just boil it in salted water, add the pasta, and strain it. I took notice of the size of the flower head, and it seemed to be more developed than what I'm used to seeing. What they do is trim off the big leaves, which, I guess hold alot of bitterness. The yield is much less, but I had success doing it this way. Another trick I've tried with rapi is soaking it in salted wated BEFORE cooking it, which also seemed to do the trick in drawing out bitterness. That way, you don't lose all that love down the drain. ← Cime di rape pugliesi have more flowers and less leaves than the rapini you buy in the States, and of course are more bitter. We leave out the outer leaves because they are tough and will require more cooking time. Hathor, some peole like to precook the cime di rape especially if they are very bitter. I love that bitterness. Cime di rapa are better with very cold weather, like other cabbages. The taste of cime di rapa or other wild herbs is very particular in puglia because of the chalkiness of the soil. Shaya, it'd be durum flour, something a little less coarse than semolina flour and warm water. No resting time. I think it requires long training to get it right, they should be all of the same thickness and the outside should not be too thick, what you don't want basically is ending up eating raw and overcooked pasta. It's not easy to get it right. Hathor, I did not see a rotisseria (?) while there. I was expecting to, but it didn't happen. One night out, at the pizzeria in Giovinazzo, someone in the group brought in gnumerelli for us to try. They were awesome. These are little pieces of the lamb offal, wrapped with a lamb casing, then grilled. They were very good, and I ate a bunch of them. I guess they are pretty labor intensive to make. In my Culinaria Italy book, they show a butcher shop in Martina Franca, that cooks meat on big skewers inside a wood fired oven. One week wasn't enough, but a good start. ← Rosticcerie are actually called by locals also "fornello", the meat on the spit takes the name of carne al fornello. Almost every butcher have a brick oven next to the shop where at night meat is cooked. It's our take out food! Not bad...... Offal rolls, "gnumeridd" means little balls of thread there should be some pictures of mine around of step to step instruction on how to make the bigger versions of them: marretti. My town is basically the next town to Martina Franca

Stevarino, great report! I am so glad to hear that you appreciated so much the food from my region. I couldn't refrain to add some comments. And I am taking advantage of this post to say hi to the affezionati of the italian subsection! I hope everybody is fine. Yes, puntarelle belongs to the family of chicory, there are different varieties, this in the picture and another kind where you have a "smaller" head and long leaves of greens, looking like dandelion, we call it "catalogna" and the head of catalogna is also served with other crudita' (celery, radishes, carrots, pagnottelle or caroselli a kind of very sweat round cucumber resemling a small green melon), this plate is called also spingituro (something similar is served in middleastern restaurants), spingituro means "that pushes", helps you eating more..... If you walk around in small towns you will often see bunches of tomatoes hanging from the celings, those are called "winter tomatoes" because you could keep for very long time, they are not good for salads but used for cooking or spreading on friselle or bread. Gallinella di mare "hen" which I never seen in the US is pretty popular in the UK, known also as gurnard fish. Very good for soups. The shrimp on top is called "cicala" or elsewhere in Italy pannocchia or canocchia, it's very cheap and we only buy live cicale, I prefer those to scampi for a quick linguine dish. I have only seen those in the US once at Chinatown in Brooklyn. The evidence continues to mount against that old dictum. Perhaps I react strongly to it since I grew up with it. ← Although when we were dining in a restaurant in Rome we saw a couple ask for cheese for their pasta with shrimp, and were firmly and pointedly denied said cheese! ← Of course, but there is a difference. We'd never add cheese to a pasta dish with shrimps but sometimes, example when we do gratins, we often use a little pecorino to add to bread, It's just a matter of balancing flavors..... Sometimes you can find in markets in NY, Astoria. I am sure it grows wild in the US, look for the scientific name.

This is another dish in common, here is how it is done capuzzelle

Grano is wheat berries. Yes, a ragu' with grano is cooked in the same way in Puglia too. Grana means something different.

MrBig, I tried to google for you because I never had this polenta. I found out that: * there is a polenta fair in Nemoli, Potenza, where the polenta is served with a sauce made with sausage, pancetta and the crumbled red peppers *there is a dish called "carchiola", try to google that. The recipe in English call for rape, in the Italian recipes I see that is mainly referred to a corn focaccia served with savoy cabbage. Now, I cannot tell you if some lucani who moved to the States changed the recipe or there is a village where actually this polenta and rape is cooked. *I found out looking in the Proloco web site of Comune di Picerno (famous for lucanica) that they do a corn focaccia with lard, cracklings, raisins, cheese and horseradish! I'll look between my books if I can find something else

It took me a while to find out. Here in this blog you can roughly see how these pastries are shaped. But I found out that the same tool is used in Sicily for another sweet, from Delia, Caltanissetta: la cuddrireddra

Ah, and about parmigiana beeing calabrese, I think some campani would not agree, there is a huge disagreement about it.

Beeing Basilicata my neighbouring region I have been there quite often. It's pretty isolated, a lot of small villages on top of mountains, traditions there are still quite strong. I remember going there especially for religious fairs, la festa della madonna di Viggiano is pretty famous, or some other festivities, for ex. in San Mauro Forte, in January, there is the festa del campanaccio where fires are build all around the village and the villagers go around with huge bells for two days , this marks the starting of Carnival. They use to go from one cantina to the other drinking robut red wine and eating even more robust food, I rememeber a sheep stew in particular. Really delicious their salumi: salami piccanti, capocollo and cheese. Manteca is a specialty around the area: it looks like a caciocavallo but it has a heart of butter. Bread is truly really good, think of the tradition of pane di Matera, as famous as Altamura bread in the South. The food of Basilicata is not very different than the pugliese food from the inside. Same kind of pasta (orecchiette, strascinati, maccheroni col ferretto), a lot of lamb and vegetables, but beeing in the mountain they have also a lot of mushrooms (a lot of porcini in Calabria), a lot of wild board hunting and wild herbs. Here I have some pictures of things my parents brought back for me on the last trip to Calabria. They have been to Altomonte, a very nice village around the Pollino, maybe the closest destination for skiing for pugliesi. The Barbieri hotel and restaurantwas a very good experience for my father These dry peppers are not spicy, they are called peperoni kruski, these actually were from Altomonte but the most famous with IGP (Indicazione geografica protetta) are the Kruski from Senise in Lucania. You open them, take out the seeds and put in a pan with oil for seconds until they pop up, it should be done very quickly, if the pepper burns turns out bitter. They are eaten as chips as appetizer. Could be sweet or spicy. I know there is a very popular dish with these pepper and scrumble eggs. These, still from Altomonte, were called seccatini, if I rememeber correctly Sorry, bad picture. They are dried strips of gourd, to be cooked they need to soaked in water. There is a huge tradition of preserved vegetables: dry tomatoes, tomato paste and underoils in genaral (spicy eggplants, stuffed peperoncini, mushrooms and so on). Have you ever heard of bomba? A spicy calabrese veg paste? Or 'nduja? it is a salame spread very, very spicy. I also got from my mom this tool to add to my collection it looks almost like the "comb" they use in Emilia Romagna for garganelli, in Calabria it is used for a fried sweet dipped in honey, similar concept than cartellate in Puglia but different shape.

Thanks, FoodMan. The scrippelle are made using a batter of one egg per person, flour and water. A little research has taught me that they are also known as scrippelle ’mbuse (which means soaked - which might explain Hathor's question above). From what I gather they are really crespelle which, when rolled with cheese and served with broth take on the regional name of scrippelle. That said, I have made Batali's so-called crespelle many times, and they use a small number of eggs, milk and flour. Perhaps the use of milk is his more elevated improvisation of a poor-man's dish? ← I have only seen fully covered with broth and the crepe with no milk, at least all the recipes I have encountered.

Hi guys, how are you? So sorry I disappeared. First, congratulations to Kevin for his new baby! One thing I want to add to the chitarra. One side is called chitarra and the other chitarrina. The side with wider strings is use to make short pasta for fagioli soups or similars, for what I been told, the strip of pasta to cut on the chitarra should be double the lenght of the chitarra, I usually don't bother but I heard that is the tradition. Pontormo, of course, I have a chitarra in my cupboard

Shaya, nice pictures as usual! How are you guys? I hope I can contribute this month, now that my Easter bread frenzy is almost over

I have some internet connection problem, so it's too painful to load pictures on egullet This chocolate torrone is very, very easy to make Torrone al cioccolato 200 g sugar, 50 g glucose (or light corn syrup), 200 g of honey (mild), 500 bittersweet chocolate, 400 g slightly toasted hazelnuts (peeled), 2 egg whites. Put in a stainless steel pot the sugar, the syrup and little water (just to wet it). Bring it to 125 C. Bring the honey to the same temperature and let it cool slightly, add the whipped eggs whites, the sugar and the warm hazelnut, the melted chocolate. Bring back to a bainmarie and stir until gets pretty stiff, without schorcing the chocolate (the stiffer it gets the harder the torrone but because of chocolate remains anyway pretty tender). Pour on a rectangular "wafer", level and cover with another sheet of water, ostia in Italian. You can find it in German stores, like Schaller and Weber, look for oblaten. Or a tray of mixed cookies: amaretti, daci di dama, zaletti, wine tarallini dipped in sugar, etc.

Really nice soup, the only thing that sounds a little odd to me is pairing farro and pasta in the same dish Thanks for the compliments for the bread, I am very happy with it, also today it was really good. Pontormo, FT is the same guy you copied the reciped of pizza al formaggio for me? If so, Elie, I think you need to watch out for that recipe, I had the impression that the liquid was really off, too many eggs. I met recipes with almost a batter dough but they didn't require the dough to pull away from the mixing bowl when kneaded If useful, as a comparison, This is the recipe I followed.

I finally succeed in making a decent pizza al formaggio, not the ugly "frittata" of a couple week ago

Elie, really love your zucchini! Since I tried a cold rice stuffed zucchini recipe one time (could that have been lebanese? maybe) I converted to vertical zucchini. Kevin, your soup looks really good, and I agree, fish soup is the only one I don't like reheated. I am getting so lazy that I don't feel like getting up at 6 to go to the fish market