Franci

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

Believe it or not, if you spend some time in Italian cooking forums it seems that cream in general is a forbidden item, not to you mention the UHT cream! I found that in Emilia Romagna it more freely used. Where I am from, finding daily fresh cream could be a challange. For what I know Pontormo you are right, it's just a matter of high heat Here. I basically grew up with UHT milk. Hathor, I love mushroom ravioli! I finally managed to finish the last piece of Fugazza from Veneto (which I froze) and could try this Pizza dolce di Pasqua from Pesaro. Pretty easy to make, not bad, more a cake than a bread, strong hint of Marsala with walnuts and raising. I posted the recipe on my blog. I let it rest one day and opened this morning for breakfast

Kevin, sorry to hear that but with a controlled diet should be fine! Good luck, to you! I am going to check my glucose curve pretty soon

Stoccafisso it's dried merluzzo, but, just to make things more confusing, when it comes to Veneto they call baccala' stoccafisso and viceversa Stoccafisso is usually soaked and "beaten", in Italy often you can buy the product ready to cook.

No, it's very different than black chicken in Asian markets, those are very skinny black birds, my mother in law always buys live black chicken (she waits until it has been killed) it for a super nutritious stock, not a lot of meat in there. I usually buy Label Anglais but just for a change last week I decided to try the poulet from France. It's a black feather chicken raised under the program "label rouge" for certain quality standards, I just found the meat slightly darker. But in this house, except for stock, chicken is not really appreciated. I only cooked some sweet peas with a little bit of onion (frozen peas) Judith BEAUTIFUL!

Not the best picture but it tasted really good. I used a poulet noir for this pollo in potacchio. Some recipes call for tomato paste other I've seen with a couple tomatoes, in some I found just garlic, in others garlic and onions...I used some onion and garlic, rosemary, white whine and 2-3 peeled tomatoes crushed, a small peperoncino and parsley.

Yes, a lot of cheese and eggs, plus I brushed the top with egg yolk. Usually it's used a combination of grated parmigiano and aged pecorino and younger pecorino in cubes. Believe it or not, many recipe call, instead of fresh pecorino cubed, for emmental cheese no more religion I didn't have the right mold (I have my limits to supply!), it should be used a truncated conical (is it English?) tin mold, something like a charlotte mold would work...In many bakeries they sell in paper panettone molds. It can be eaten as appetizer on it's own or with salumi.

Since Easter is coming, I am all taken from sweet/savory pizze/torte etc. This was my first, pour attempt, to a Pizza al formaggio marchigiana. I am waiting for the recipe of a friend from Macerata (btw, I really hope she is going to join us)... Both Umbria and Marche have the tradition of this cheese bread for Easter. In Umbria it's generally called Torta al formaggio, in Marche it's known as Pizza al formaggio and it has also cubes of cheese in the dough. I asked around and I've been told that in Umbria is more common to find a "pasta da pane" or pasta da riporto (old dough) as a starter plus some cake yeast, in Marche they usually use more a direct dough with a massive quantity of yeast, sometimes in combination with baking powder..I am, as all modern snobbish bakers, trying ways to cut down on yeast and use a starter.... This was a mini pizza al formaggio. It needs improvements. I'll give it another shot next week and bring back results and a recipe if successful

Yes, when I used to buy clams or mussels in NY no juice

A nice bergamotto candito...or marmelade.

How do you know I have the tool I don't have the right passatelli tool but the ricer with bigger holes. My only problem is the bread, reason for which I have decided to give up also any attempt to bread gnocchi...Even if I use my own bread, no oil or added fats doesn't come out the same. Maybe, I will try to make a "pane comune" and let it stale...then see what happens.

Perhaps that has something to do with the stereotypical Italian trait of being argumentative? Maybe French cuisine is not as widespread in the US as Italian food and has not been mistreated as much. So they use no tomatoes, corn, artichokes, chocolate, peppers, potatoes, coffee . . . . I hasten to add, how many actual Italians do we have posting on this topic? ← Come on, those ingredients have been integrated in the local diet of Europe for centuries... i think this is missing the point. most people have no concept of food history. foods that were new to their parents are considered traditional if they themselves grew up eating them. i think the point is that most italians (save a few upper middle class housewives who read "silver spoon") have no interesting in "evolving" their cooking beyond where it is now (unless they happen to see something good at the store and it gives them an idea ... but you know how that goes). In the US, we are passionate about exploring and stretching. i just came back from my favorite ramen place. yesterday it was indian and the day before these killer tacos. in italy, in my experience, "foreign" means something 20 miles away. and while it may be fine for those other people, they just don't care for it themselves. eta: and when italians DO attempt to stretch, the results are usually extremely clunky--enough to make american fusion cuisines look inspired. nothing sends a chill down my spine like the phrase "italian hotel restaurant salmon." ← Don't you think you are a little unfair here. I've been spending years on Italian cooking forums and I can assure you there are a lot of Italians who are very well travelled and have a good culinary knowledge. And saying that in the US you are passionate about exploring...I am not sure. Yes, maybe in NY, New England or California but I remember travelling across country and that was so painful to think that the only food I could get was a fast food hamburger. Sure, in the US I can find every kind of food and ingredients but quality is kind of mediocre from my point of view. In Italy you'll find local ingredients and not much variety but the standards are higher. Yes you are right, we should forget fusion attempts... This I think is what a lot of people perceive as a very American attiude (rightly or wrongly). My father was born in Australia, therefore I am of Croatian descent, but I am not Croatian. .... I think that leaves Italian-Americans in a peculiar situation. By decent you might be 100, 50, 25 etc percent Italian and consider yourself culturally and Italian (-American), but in reference to the original country, I'm not sure that counts much to the people that remain there. In a country were much of the cuisine is intensely local, it must appear very odd for a group of people to say "this is an Italian recipe", with not reference to a particular region or custom. This isn't the same situation in some diversely spread populations, for instance colonies or ex-colonial cusines. It might be a useful (and I think that it is) intellectual framework to consider Italian-Americans as being a seperate Italian region, but in practice this just doesn't work. ← I do not consider Italian Americans to be Italians, I think of them as Americans. It really bothers me in the US to be corrected for my Italian pronunciation: it's not capicola (capocollo), guangiale (guanciale), rigotta (ricotta), bruscetta, g-nocci, but my favourite beeing sfoghliatelli (I cannot even say that). In my mind the knowledge of the language is a big point.

I enjoy baking breads and I decided it was a long time I didn't bake anything apart from my weekly bread. I wanted to give it a try to fugassa or fugazza, a brioche dough not as rich as the more famous Pandoro, it's not as complex but still requires a good day of work. This the recipe I followed if anybody is interested. It's a traditional Easter dough and could be baked also in a dove mold. Before baking Right out of the oven My breakfast this morning Not too sweet, not too buttery, overall a very nice dough. I think the general trend in pasticceria is making all the breads richer and sweeter than they used to be. The only mistake, if we want to call it so, is that I forgot before sliding it into the oven to make a deep cross on top. Edited to add this comment: I just been told by someone from veneto that the traditional shape is not the one I choose, it's rather a round brioche with a cross in the middle, basically something like this

Very diplomatic translation Kevin , let's say that if you call someone bigolo is not a compliment

Nice dinner Weinoo. Tonight, we had a simple riso e patate I would have liked to cook some seppie but it is not easy to find, sometimes at Billingsgate market (London's ichthyic market). So I ended up frying artichokes and calamari, served with radicchio tardivo marinato. I follow the recipe from kucinare I previously posted. the vinegar in the radicchio well balanced the fried food

I guess in my family we are just bad catholics. We eat meat also on Fridays and Lent is not different then other times of the year. I know some people like to eat baccala' on Fridays. This would be a good question for the Italian forums I attend, maybe I could be surprised by the number of people that still care, but if I have to judge by the type of recipes that are exchanged I don't think there is many left who still follow a tradition about this.

Ah. Tell a "son of an Italian immigrant" that he needs to feel better about himself and you will have quite an animated discussion on your hands. the meaning I wanted to give to the sentence is that a lot of people can recognize themselves in this picture. BTW, also my child will be a son of immigrants, with the only difference that his/her first languages are going to be italian and chinese. So, myself I am immigrant

Yes, you are right. She doesn't claim any authenticity. I was really thinking about this. To me this article is like a catchy tune, It's like a story where a lot of Americans can identify themselves. But reading from the Italian perspective still bothers me a little bit. I would be like the old man, saying: why don't you speak Italian? And what is doing oregano in your sauce????? Hathor, I was not joking, to me you are more Italian than many Italian-Americans. The author of the article had to go all the way to Italy to discover that her sauce was not to be found there...Everybody has its own evolution I guess, so maybe it was her time to look for something in her past. What it bothers me is that this happens all the times, if someone is looking for a recipe or suggestion in the cooking section for an Italian dinner, I always end up to keep my mouth shut because what people is looking for is a kind of american idea of Italian food. People is not interested to know how it should be. If a say that a proper Italian meal is not made only of two primi piatti, someone is going to come and tell me that is not true because her mother and her grandmother used to do so. So, this is the perfect article that makes all sons of immigrates feel better about themselves...

I haven't been cooking a lot of veneto food...I bought some radicchio tardivo Since it was pretty good, not bitter at all, it was almost a sacrilage to cook it, expecially given how much it costs. I sacrificed only the outer leaves of a couple bunches for a risotto. As you can see, I have been very stingy with the radicchio I used as a base a little bit of white onion and the guanciale I bought in Rome a couple weeks ago, saute' the radicchio in another pan at added at the end, I should have deglazed it with red wine but I didn't have any good handy at the moment. Is not this beautiful? This is the recipe from Kucinare, sorry in Italian If tomorrow I manage to go to Borough Mkt and buy some more there are other recipe from the same person I would like to try, as radicchio tardivo marinato Fried radicchio or even a spezzatino al radicchio con polenta And have you ever seen this broccolo, broccolo fiolaro? , also tipycal from around Vicenza.

Judith, I really think you are turning into a true Italian Now I am getting "a little bit" over it, but I can never foget my first time in the US, in 92, I was 18 years old. I've been served some horrifying bread with sprinkles on top which was called Italian bread. I tried to answer back that it was not an Italian bread, I was thinking of my crunky michetta with prosciutto. Now I am a little more flexible, but I have to admit that this kind of articles bothers me a little bit, my first thought is "basta", still the nonno and nonna around. Maybe because I am comfortable with who I am and I don't need to go to search my roots. I think it is a very interesting subject and now I can also compare US vs UK