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The Cooking and Cuisine of Liguria

Kevin72

By Kevin72
in Italy: Cooking & Baking

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Shaya

Shaya

Posted
Posted
I'll send a PM w/ the published recipe if you don't have access to this book.  I forget how I cooked the artichoke since I prepped it over the weekend & didn't follow the recipe there, but I believe I used white white, a little lemon and Ligurian olive oil.  I trimmed the heck out of the thing and processed it twice, first alone and then last night with the leeks.  Yes, there was a little--as in teeny tiny bit of--fibrous content, but that would not not be an issue if smaller (or admittedly, squeaky new, just picked globes) varieties of artichokes were used. 

The leeks, thyme, butter, nuts--just everything together, along with a very light white wine--honored the artichoke with more subtle elegance than I am showing now.

And yes, your love of artichokes is quite evident. :wink:

I just found the book at my library, thanks!

I guess I love artichokes so much because I've discovered how amazing they can be with a little work. Growing up, at my father's request, we had them on the table almost every night, simply boiled with lemony water. Nothing else. Now that I've been preparing them so many ways, my family has become even more excited. If only my father were still here to see how my preparation of his favorite vegetable has evolved... :sad:

mrbigjas

mrbigjas

Posted
Posted

The filling consists of artichokes and leeks that are stewed and dumped into a food processor.  I cooked the vegetables separately on different days and would like to think that made a difference.  I also added a little fresh thyme to the leeks as they softened.  Egg, a couple of spoonfuls of ricotta, Parm, S & P.

After the ravioli are done, they are sauced with crushed pinenuts that are sauteed in butter until warm and slightly colored, along with plenty of fresh thyme.

wow, i had almost this exact dish at a restaurant here in philadelphia on friday evening. had no idea it was ligurian. it was fantastic.

Pontormo

Pontormo

Posted
Posted

:biggrin:

I wonder if the chef traveled, read the same recipe or was simply inspired.

BTW, Shaya, the fibrous content I mentioned was visible when I scraped out the processor "bowl." It was not at all tactile. The texture, as filling, was soft, not at all stringy.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

mrbigjas

mrbigjas

Posted
Posted
Ooh, I almost like that idea better!  It's getting too hot to futz around with stuffed pastas!

not up here. tonight i'm making a sardinian chard/ricotta stuffed saffron pasta that is over on about.com. wish me luck--i only made stuffed pasta once before and it wasn't... that good.

Kevin72

Kevin72

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted

Let me offer this right off the bat: drain and dry your filling ingredients as thoroughly as possible. Drain the ricotta. Don't put warm ingredients in the filling (steam and condensation). Don't let the pasta sit too long after it's been stuffed, in fact toss 'em in the freezer on sheet pans as you finish batches. I don't put egg in my pasta fillings: gets them too wet again.

A Year of Italian Cooking 2005 Thread Index
Kevin72

Kevin72

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted (edited)

I agree, though they do pull the "add enough water to bring the dough together" bit in the instructions. And I'd be leary of doing a stuffed pasta with a semolina dough at all.

And why the flour in the filling?

And saffron in the filling and the dough?

Kevin's Kall: Eliminate the egg, flour, and saffron in the filling, use AP flour only for the dough (but do add the saffron to the dough), and use 2 or even 3 eggs, not water (except the bit you dissolved the saffron in).

Apologies to Sardinia!

ETA: And you're making this on a weeknight?!

Edited by Kevin72 (log)
A Year of Italian Cooking 2005 Thread Index
Pontormo

Pontormo

Posted
Posted

Shouldn't this discussion be in the Sardinian thread?

I agree about flour to egg. 1 cup to one egg, says Queen Marcella. Add about 1 t of milk to every cup of flour when stuffing pasta.

I did that, but added an additional egg yolk which helped enormously.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

mrbigjas

mrbigjas

Posted
Posted
C'mon, hathor, let's help bigjas out here. What was wrong with them before?

well, it was kind of a long time ago, but the problem was the edges. they were thick, and dry, although the rest of the pasta and filling were cooked.

as i said, i don't have a pasta machine, so i'm rolling them out by hand. that's what's made me nervous about making homemade pasta ever since.

i did buy semolina flour a couple of weeks ago on a whim, not sure what i was going to do with it. you think it'll be screwy with this? what's the difference, when it comes to cooking these things?

i may just follow kevin's kall there.

actually the other day i found a recipe for this that had fiore sardo in the filling, and grated pecorino on top, and of course i can't find it today.

leaving work now to go start SOMETHING....

Pontormo

Pontormo

Posted
Posted (edited)
ETA: And you're making this on a weeknight?!

Agreed. I did mine in stages and after making enough artichoke ones to eat for the night, I went back to kitchen and finished up the Sardinian ones at around 1:30 am...so took me about 2 1/2 hours to form them, place them on trays in freezer in shifts, box them....

On other hand, I also have to say I also don't like recipe all that much. Ada Boni and one other cookbook I took out from library have a recipe for something that begins "cu..." that is much like stuffed pasta Chufi prepped earlier in this Ligurian thread: heavy on greens, fair amount of cheese, and 2 eggs...which I cut back to a little less than 1 out of necessity...just enough to bind. Shaped with a round cookie cutter (or glass), the process is also much, much quicker than ravioli.

Edited by Pontormo (log)

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

  • 2 weeks later...
hathor

hathor

Posted
Posted

A house guest of mine just gave me a vaccum packed "Il testarola". It looks like a large, maybe 18" diameter buckwheat, thick, crepe. Its not buckwheat, though, the only listed ingredient is durum wheat.

Does anybody have any idea what I'm supposed to do with it? :huh: She got it on her travels through Cinque Terre, if that helps.

grazie mille!

-Judith Klinger
World-Eats.org

Aroma Cucina's Cooking Simply: The Italian Way

hathor

hathor

Posted
Posted

Il Testarola Con Baccala`, based on the About.com recipe.

To be honest, I kept making up excuses why I couldn't make the testarola. I'm not a big fan of 'wraps', and the whole concept of a thick, boiled, crepe just wasn't making me run into the kitchen.

So, I left it until the night before market, when there wasn't anything else in the house to eat.

The hand feel of the testarola, when I opened the vaccum package, was like a slick oilcloth tablecloth. I cut it up into nice diamonds, all the while wondering why a traditional dish, that is round, gets cut up into diamond shapes. Too much wastage, ok, I was feeling a little cranky about the whole project.

I prepped the baccala sauce, but added some tomatoes to it, and sauted the onions along with some pancetta, just because the recipe seemed a little barren.

The bits of cut-up-tablecloth-testarola then got thrown into a pot of boiling water for about a minute, then sauteed in a pan with garlic and pepperoncino.

My husband came down, and he's always a very good sport about what's for dinner, looked into the pan of frying testarola, and asked, "Are we eating that?".

Plated, it didn't look too bad, and the baccala` tasted very good with tons of onions, shallots and some garlic.

My first impression when I ate it was, "Well, its not too bad. If I was starving on a desert island, and had already eaten my shoes, it would be ok." By the second or third bite, it started to grow on me. It was amazing how much of the pepperoncino flavor was absorbed, so I guess with pesto it would be the same thing, almost a magnification of the flavors. All in all, it was pretty good, but it may be something that you need to have grown up with. In any event, we finished the whole plate of them, along with some friggere peppers.

But thank god there is the market this morning!

-Judith Klinger
World-Eats.org

Aroma Cucina's Cooking Simply: The Italian Way

Pontormo

Pontormo

Posted
Posted

Vivid report, Hathor. Planning on posting link in the Crepes Cook-Off?

Sounds like we need a new "Look What I Got at the Market" thread here in the Italian forum.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

JasonZ

JasonZ

Posted
Posted
Anyone know of a good used online bookstore?  Looks like Enchanted Liguria is out of print.  Best I've found so far is an italian copy on Abebooks.

-Mike

My favorite source for used books is Alibris -- if they don't have it, they will let you leave it on a wish list or even run a search through a consortium of used book dealers. They have a "commercial" section used by libraries and college reference services.

For new copies, you might want to try Jessica's Biscuit, which, I find, typically has lower prices than Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. It specializes in cookbooks and has a far more extensive selection than the others.

Regards,

Jason

JasonZ

Philadelphia, PA, USA and Sandwich, Kent, UK

  • 4 weeks later...
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