Franci

I did live in different States in the US, now I moved back to Europe. Every time my husband asks: Don't you miss NY? (he is from there and would like to go back ) I promtly reply: NO! Mainly one reason. My food!!! No comparison. Even NY. The quality here is so much better. Only two things I miss from the States: beef and sushi restaurants

Just posted also in the Dinner! thread. This is a soup that almost anybody cooks anymore but I was in the mood for it. My grandmother, from Bergamo, used to cook capelli d'angelo in milk. Now Italians seems to despise pasta in this format, maybe it's considered out of fashion. My mother still breaks left over polenta in cold milk for breakfast . The look might not seem appealing but I like it The yellow that you see it a little bit of butter added to the dish before pouring the soup. Let rest until a skin forms. No cheese.

Totally agree with you Chufi! In our house we are just two of us. My way is: 1. except when we are on vacation we generally don't eat out. I prefer homecooking to restaurants. I always think that with 80 pounds, that's how much you'd spend in London for a decent meal, I can have a damn good dinner 2. I make my husband lunch every day, I don't like him eating cheap fast food. I know what he is eating. 3. I don't like to buy in bulk, you alway buy too much. My refrigerator is alway almost empty, I go and buy everyday what I need. Now I am not working, so I have more time at hand, but up to last year in NY I'd stop 15 minutes at the supermarket on my way home from work. 4. Only to the market I go once a week. I usually don't have a list, just look what's there, I normally don't think of buying what's cheaper, rather I think of what is that vegetable going to become and how many meals I can get from what I buy. 5. I am very good at "food in process" For example. If on friday at the market I bought meat, I would debone it. The meat becomes dinner. The bones are turned into stock and I freeze in portions. If I have too much of one vegetable, usually I will blanch part of it and freeze, then I want to make a soup or a side dish, I go and look for the small bags of different veggies. 5. Beans I alway buy dry. I will cook one box at the time, drain and freeze up in many bags. It's cheaper and better quality than cans. It's really rare I will waste food.

Marlena, we answered at the same time

Thanks Judith! The person who gave me the recipe omitted this passage...I took the liberty myself. I am still a girl from the French Culinary Institute and comes natural to me using this method, as Pomtorno correctly said, it is called cooking a blanc or cuisson dans un blanc.

I used to live in North Beach, now 5 years have past since I left. Being Italian I can say that the Italian food there is pretty mediocre. The only place I had some decent food, at least pizza, is at Maurizio's place: Ideale. On Grant at the cross with Vallejo. But I don't have any clue now, very far away from Italian standards anyway.

Thanks, it came out good. The recipe is here

Yes, this was made by someone from Sardinia

And I almost forgot. For i morti in part of puglia vincotto is used to dress a wheat berries dessert with pomegranate seeds, chocolate and spices: grano dei morti. I cannot find the picture of last year

I am guessing your have a mosto syrup = vincotto. In Sardinia and Emilia they also add quinces to the mosto reduction to get sapa or saba. In Emilia, if it is thick as a jam, it is called mostarda bolognese and savor, it's used to make a fruit cake for Christmas: il certosino, or cakes as Pinza, le raviole (with dry chestnuts). In piemonte they use the mosto for cogna'=mostarda d'uva (also with quinces, figs, pears, nuts, sometimes squash). With vincotto you could make : cartellate, pettole, mostaccioli, sassanelli, su pan e saba, etc.

Kevin, thanks for the nice introduction. Your soup looks very nice. This is a region I am not very comfortable with, for a very unreasonable and shameful reason...but there are good recipes anyway. This need to be fixed a little. Barbotta I love these rustic savory tarts. With variations they are similar in Emilia/Liguria and Toscana. For this barbotta I followed the recipe from the link above, it is made with polenta, some milk and onions slowly saute' in oil. At home I had only polenta bramata and thinking it would be more suitable a finer ground, like fioretto, I tried to ground the bramata. A coarse polenta is trickier to manage in relation to the liquid needed. I felt I should have kept the mixture more runny, it was missing water... Once I made a similar torta from Liguria called Baciocca, for which I used a very fine indian cornmeal, it came out so much nicer than this Barbotta.

That is the thing I miss most about NY: the public library!

Tonight, before it was too late, I had to use the cardoon I bought at the market (and I have still left over for tomorrow ) . I remembered someone from Abruzzo gave me this recipe of Brodo alla Celestina (the name rang a bell, there is a consomme' celestine in French cooking) In the stock, along with cardoons and polpettine, there are also little square of a baked frittata (same thing is done for zuppa imperiale in Emilia), my friend called it pizzetta. Without the pizzetta the soup is similar to the pugliese recipe of cardoncelli in brodo I posted on the puglia thread.

Thanks Pontormo. I'd like to write more (and better) but sometimes writing in English could be painful for me. About the nut filling... What you do mean? That you planned to use the filling in the crostata (closed on top I immagine) and you didn't because the filling came out a syrupy jam or because you thought it would might come out like that? I didn't think it had a jam thickness

Since we are talking about Umbria on the Italian forum I made Rocciata di Assisi A strudel shaped in a coil with a rich dry fruit filling

Kevin, I never heard of this method for cooking quails! So, what do you think? Go straight with the simple grilling? And maybe sacrifice an extra quail to make the sauce? I love quails but my difficult other half not much Yesterday I was invited for a lovely Austrian lunch: spaetzle , so I thought of bringing Rocciata di Assisi

On traditional Umbrian, I had something saved from the Cucina Italian forum. Valentina Barbanera from Palazzo di Assisi talks about maccheroni or pasta dolce. It is traditionally served the night before Ognisanti, so on October 31. This dish along with baccala', no meat. Usually the pasta is tagliatelle with no egg (there is a sweet pasta also in puglia, dress with vincotto). The sauce would be -1 kg di walnuts (I guess she referres to the total weight with the shell...) -5 hg of breadcrumbs -5 hg sugar -1 lemon zest sweetened cocoa powder. Chop walnuts and mix with the other ingredients. Cook the tagliatelle and make layers of tagliatelle and the mixture above. Optional sprinkling with a little Alchermes. Valentina said that one of her grandmothers used sedani rigati instead of tagliatelle and she liked it more. Also the Alchermes makes the dish less dry. I usually have a bottle of Alchermes...but this time with all the liquid restriction coming to London I didn't bother. For Toscana, instead for i morti, traditional is Pan co' santi Maybe we should open a thread....

Torta di ricotta Serves 8 as Dessert. For this recipe I have to thank Silvia Ferrari from the forum of La Cucina Italiana. It's a wonderful moist cake. 500 g ricotta 100 g chocolate in chunks 150 g sugar 4 T flour 4 eggs 1 T currants 1 pinch of salt vanilla extract optional 1 lemon zest Preheat over at 170 celsius. Butter and flour a 24 cm ring mold. Whip the yolk with the sugar until pale, add the flour, the ricotta, sifted, the chocolate chunks, lemon zest and currants. Whip the egg whites and incorporate to the mixture. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until set and nicely golden. Notes: This time a use a buffalo ricotta but I used in the past any kind of ricotta I had handy. Make sure its well drained. I also bake individually rings, I would say could make about 8 rings, 7.5 cm. If deflates a little won't worry, it's normal for this cake, the taste is alway absolutely great. Keywords: Cake, Italian, Dessert ( RG1846 )

So I can blame this on my heritage? My grandfather is from Bari and my grandmother is from a tiny town called Baranello in the Campobasso Province of Molise. This makes me feel a little better... ← I am Italian and I pretty much keep my food separated, especially salad I serve in an other bowl (that is written in any etiquette book) Also antipasti, in Puglia for example, an Bari is there, is known for its variety of antipasti. In a restaurant they will bring maybe 10 if not more. But all on separeted plates, it's up to you try one at a time or put more kinds on your plate. My husband, chinese, is far more extreme than me: he would never mix the taste of his steak or fish with salad or any other side dish. So, he will eat the steak and then the other stuff. And he doesn't eat thinks that look messy to him: no lasagne in our house, or thinks like mapo dofu, he needs to see the food in discernible form, already stuff like dumplings and ravioli are not his favourites. Sometimes could be painful.

Sometimes I use the meat of the breast, no skin, for a quick saute' sauce for pumpkin gnocchi or spaetzle. It is also good finely chopped to make a ragu' with dry porcini and walnuts and use it to dress pasta such as pici or other fresh egg pasta. Or you can cook the breast and use it as filling for ravioli or for spring rolls.

It is a common believe that good squashes in Italy can be found only in North. If you want a mantovana variety, the more floury, it's very hard to find in the South...

Marroni are not exactly the same as castagne. The castagno three is wild and in each husk there are about 3 chestnuts, the marrone is cultivated and in they are bigger than chestnuts, that's why they are preferred in making marron glace' . In the poster they talk about marzapane of chestnuts, never heard, but I know chestnusts made with marzapane , frittelle di castagne, dolce del drago (I never heard), panzerotti (probably they are some cookies with a chestnut filling (there are different kind and names all over Italy). Castagnaccio is easy to find in many regions, I discoverd that in Emilia Romagna, in Modena area, with that name they mean a ciambella.

Elie, I wish I had a neighbour like you Your torta al testo looks great!

When in Italy you talk about zeppole you mean zeppole di san giuseppe. First time I saw "zeppole" in the States I got upset...another "liberty" of the italian-american kitchen. Then I discovered that in some dialects with zeppole is meant a fry dough. But nowadays if you ask to any Italian what is a zeppola, it would be zeppole di San Giuseppe as lapasterie said. Although Crisco is a product will never enter my kitchen. It's just a choux dough, in a ring shape, fried. Decorated with pastry creams and sour black cherries in syrup zeppole In Milan the same dough, fried, is called tortelli and made for Carnival (French make also the same dessert)

Judith, I think I will start dreaming about parm rinds , no need to cut the waxy part of it, just scape it with a knife (with theet, like a steak knife). Or -I just tried- you could use a microplane but knife works better.