Cena piemontese

Tonight I have a little time to blog, finally. So after the pear cake, here is a post about a dinner party I threw a really really long time ago. It was a very nice one, in theme 'Piemontese cuisine', featuring homemade tajarin, rabbit 'al civet', and chocolate/amaretti-filled peaches. Many untranslatable words! So read more to find out what these things are. :)
(here you can see me cooking the sauce for the tajarin: my idea is to host more of these dinner parties in theme with a regional or national cuisine, and take pictures of each master chef. :) )
Tajarin
(this and most of the other pictures are Alice's courtesy!)
Tajarin (pronounciation 'taayareen') is a piemontese version of 'tagliatelle', which I believe everybody is more familiar with. The main difference is that tajarin have to be hand-cut. To make them, prepare a dough which is extremely similar to that of tagliatelle (except for the fact that you use more eggs/pound of flour: in particular, to make this, use 9 eggs and 2 egg yolks every two pounds of flour). Then, after you roll the dough very thin using a pasta machine, you have to flour it and cut it with a sharp knife: roll it up, and cut thin slices of it! Here you can see Matt's expert cutting hand.
We made a humongous amount of tajarin..
But they were ALL GONE very quickly! I served them with two sauces: one was mushrooms and parsley (simply sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and white wine towards the end: really easy and wonderfully delicious), and another was the simple and wonderful butter and sage (just melt some butter in a pot, and add a few leaves of sage to it. Serve with parmesan cheese grated on top). They were both really good.

NB: making tajarin for a large number of people is an effort that should be undertaken only with the help of many friends! This makes the process of pasta-making actually fun, whereas I don't think I would enjoy it as much if I had to do the whole thing by myself..

Coniglio al civet / Rabbit 'al civet'
As you know, I almost never cook meat. This was a special occasion. I really wanted to make rabbit for some of my Italian friends who were really happy about the idea. I bought the rabbit at the Berkeley Bowl, and it was delicious. In Piemonte, rabbit is a common dish. My grandma made it a lot, because she used to raise rabbits. So I still remember her really good 'coniglio al civet', which I tried to reproduce. Here is the recipe, if you want to try it:

Cut the rabbit into pieces and put it to marinate in one quart of red wine, with a stick of cinnamon, a few cloves, four garlic cloves, 2 onions, 8 juniper berries and a tad of marjoram. Marinate for at least 24h, then remove. In a pot, saute in butter one finely cut onion, two carrots cut into pieces, and some rosemary. After ~2 minutes, add the rabbit, salt, and some leaves of sage and bay. Saute the rabbit for ~5 minutes, turning the pieces, then add some red wine, enough to cover it. Cook it for ~40 minutes, making sure it's always covered in wine. Then let the wine evaporate and serve!

[Later addition: this recipe comes out quite well with chicken instead of rabbit, too. Just skin the chicken before marinating it. Also, I tried it again with my mom's trick, which is to reserve the marinate after you remove the meat from it, blend it, and add it to the meat pieces while they simmer. You'll have to add less wine to cover the meat and the result will be even more tasty!]

It's a delight. I served it together with some more carrots, cut into small pieces and sauteed in butter, served with parmesan grated on top, which is the way my grandma used to make her carrots. I strongly recommend trying this rabbit dish, if you're not vegetarian. The only problem I had with it was to cut the rabbit into pieces. It was really impressive for me, since I don't usually deal with meat.. Rather hypocritical since I eat meat from time to time.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the peaches before they were all gone. They were also wonderful, but I will post the recipe when I can find some good peaches again. Which unfortunately will mean next year!

So this is it for the Piemontese dinner. Here is a picture of almost everybody who was at the dinner:
As you can see, we were all in the kitchen, making food altogether, chatting and drinking before sitting down. This is what I love about throwing a dinner party with friends: being together and enjoying each other's company. I love to see everybody having a good time. There will be more 'regional/national' dinner parties to come!

Semplice e veloce (e pure sano)

This month's "Heart of the matter" event is devoted to making something quick and easy. Good idea, among all these too big and elaborate meals that we keep having.. So here is something that I like to make, and it's in fact quick and easy (and healthy too)!

Verdure, frutta, tofu e spaghettini giapponesi somen! / Veggies, fruit, tofu and somen noodle!
I make this low-fat stir fry with anything that I find in the fridge. I usually have a bunch of vegetables, in various amounts, and so I prepare this when I'm in a hurry and I don't have too much time to think about something too fancy. In this case there were:
2 broccoli stems and crowns
2 garlic cloves
2 green bell peppers
~1/2 lb white mushrooms
a handful of raw peanuts
a packet of tofu
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp low fat sour cream
1 orange
3 mandarins
1 packet somen noodles
soy sauce
To prepare it, cut all the vegetables, fruit and tofu into pieces. Saute the garlic finely minced in oil, then add the tofu and the broccoli stems. Saute on high heat for a few minutes, turning the pieces so that they get nicely browned. Add the peppers and after ~5 minutes, add the mushrooms and the broccoli crowns. Add salt and soy sauce to taste. When things are almost completely cooked, add the pieces of oranges, mandarins and the raw peanuts. Add pepper or other spicy sauce if you like. Cook for another 3 minutes. In the meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil and throw the somen in. The somen takes three minutes to be cooked. After that, drain and add the low fat sour cream, otherwise the noodles will be all stuck together, since we're not using them in the traditional way (in a soup). In a serving bowl, alternate layers of veggie/tofu mix with the somen.

Note: it's quite hard to mix the somen noodles with the rest, they still tend to stick together even after the sour cream.. so if you don't like this sticky thing, use rice instead, or regular noodles. I used the somen because they're so quick! And they did taste good :) If you want to see what somen noodles are, and another quick and healthy recipe with them, look up my previous post of a somen noodle soup.

So, this recipe is for sweet Ruth for her weekly 'Presto Pasta night' event! I haven't participated to her event in too long!

'Heart of the Matter' event

Michelle, Joanna and Ilva organize a monthly event called 'Heart of the Matter'. The idea is to try to prepare good and healthy food, so that also people with heart problems can enjoy them! This means, of course, no butter, fat, not too much sugar, and not even too much olive oil! Their challenge this month is to use these guidelines to prepare a holiday food - make one up, or modify a traditional one in a healthy way.
This challenge was inspiring to me, and I decided to participate for the first time to this event. I decided I'd make something that in Italy we usually eat on the first of the year: lentils. Eating lentils in this occasion is considered to bring good luck for all the year.. I love lentils, especially the simple way that we usually make them. The problem is that usually, they go together with a super-fatty-way-too-greasy sausage called 'cotechino'. Now, I must say: it is good, and if you have a small piece just in that occasion, it cannot harm you too much, but I decided I'd never make it again in my life when I saw what happened the first and only time I tried. When we were done eating, one of my guests decided that, to help me clean up, she would pour the fat that was left in the pan down the sink. The sink was so badly clogged that after everyone left I had to work with every sort of chemical and mechanical tool to try to unclog it, and it took hours of hard work surrounded by rancid fat smell.
Ok, now that I grossed everyone out, here is my healthy recipe. :) Instead of using cotechino, I mixed lentils with pasta. Pasta and lentils is another typical combination in Italian cuisine. Usually it's a delicious and thick soup where pasta and some lentils are mixed. Here I used as many lentils as pasta, and my 'innovation' was the addition of some lime juice. It gave it a really good twist, and it eliminated the need of adding any cheese at all.

Pasta e lenticchie con un tocco di lime / Lentil and pasta with a touch of lime

Warm up 1.5 tbsp olive oil in a pan and saute half an onion, finely cut. Add 1/2 lb dry lentils, after rinsing them. Stir to coat them with oil and onion pieces, and then add enough water to cover them and have ~1" more above them. Cover, bring to boil and lower the heat. Add ~1/2 tbsp salt and a few bay leaves. Keep simmering, covered, for ~20 minutes. Check once in a while and make sure the water has not completely evaporated, and add more if necessary. Taste to check the salt and the tenderness. When done, eliminate the bay leaves. There should be still some liquid in the pan with the lentils.
In the meanwhile, cook 1/2 lb pasta in boiling water (remember to add some salt to the water). When the pasta is al dente, drain it. Save some water if you want to make the final dish more soupy. Pour the pasta in the lentil pan, mix, and add the juice of half a lime to it. Serve with pepper, if you want, and a wedge of lime. It's super delicious and very healthy!

Tagliatelle ai funghi

I've been thinking about a both pretty and good noodle-dish to make for Bee and Jai's 'Click' event, and in the end I decided that 'Tagliatelle ai funghi' (Mushroom Tagliatelle) would do the trick! I still have to learn a lot about taking pictures, especially at home, where my ambiance lights are not the best at all, and I don't have any sort of small stand for the camera. In any case, this is the result!

Tagliatelle ai funghi/Mushroom tagliatelle
It's a very quick and simple and yet delicious dish to make. Buy some good mushrooms and you're basically done. I used these really good 'portabella' mushrooms:
To make enough sauce for a box of tagliatelle (1 lb), you'll need to double the amount you see in this picture (so about 4 big mushrooms). Then, you'll need a small bunch of parseley, two cloves of garlic and, if possible, some 'panna da cucina'. It's possible to find in the US, although not too easy. Here is how it looks like:
'Panna da cucina' means 'Cream for cooking'. It's indeed cream, but less fatty than heavy cream, and I don't think you could whip it. So, if you don't find it, substitute with half heavy cream and half low-fat sour cream.
To prepare the pasta: bring a large pot of water to boil, and in the meanwhile, wash and cut the mushrooms. Mince the garlic cloves and sautee them in 2 tbsp olive oil for ~30 sec, then add all the mushroom pieces. Add ~1 tbsp salt. Sautee, uncovered, for ~10 min, then cover and keep cooking. When the water boils, add salt (~1 tbsp coarse salt), 1 tsp olive oil, and then throw the pasta in. Mix up so it doesn't stick. Cover, making sure it keeps boiling but it doesn't overflow. Check the mushrooms. If they are tender (depends on how big your pieces were, it should take about 15 minutes total), add chopped parseley, sautee some more, and then add the panna. I used ~1/2 cup. You can add more or less depending on how creamy you like it. You can even go without and use more olive oil. Taste to check that the salt is ok. When the pasta is cooked, drain and pour into the mushroom mixture, sautee for 1 minute, add some black pepper grated on the spot and serve with a leave of parseley for decoration! If you want, you can add grated parmigiano cheese on top, but it doesn't need it.

So, this recipe and picture of course go to Jai and Bee for their 'Click' November event, and also to sweet Ruth for her weekly 'Presto Pasta Nights'!

Pasta con cavoletti di Bruxelles!

A few nights ago I tried to make something as an exploration for the 'Fresh produce of the month' themed on Brussel sprouts, that I'm hosting (click here for details!). So here is what I came up with:

Pasta ai cavoletti di Bruxelles / Brussel sprout pasta
Making it is quite easy. Sautee one small onion in ~2 tbsp olive oil, and add three cups of brussel sprouts cut in half. Sautee them on high heat for about 5 minutes, then add tomatoes (better fresh, otherwise canned, like I did - in the latter case, use whole tomatoes, and dice them in the pan as they become soft. I used a 1 lb can). Add salt to taste. Cook them for another 10-15 min, covered, until the brussel sprouts are soft. Add a few pieces (~1/2 cup) of cheese that can melt. I had some really good Italian cheese (asiago) that I brought from my trip, so that was perfect, but you could use any other meltable and possibly tasty cheese that you can find. Stir with the rest of the sauce for one more minute, then sprinkle some pepper, and mix with the pasta which you will have cooked al dente in the meanwhile. The ratio of vegetables/pasta depends on your taste. I tend to agree with an article that I remember being recently mentioned by Ruth at a 'Presto Pasta night', about the idea of using a lot of vegetable-based sauce for not a lot of pasta. So this amount of sauce would be ok for ~1/2 lb pasta, and would probably be enough for 4 people. But if you're more into pasta, you can have more pasta and less sauce, maybe just grate some more parmigiano cheese on top!
This is going to be one of my entries for the 'Fresh Produce of the Month', and also my entry for this week 'Presto Pasta nights' hosted by Ruth!

Pasta ai broccoli (versione piemontese)

Some time ago I posted a recipe for 'pasta with broccoli' - but it was a Sicilian recipe, and broccoli were actually the dialect name for cauliflower! So, now I'll give a recipe for pasta with the real broccoli. :) We can say it's a Piemontese version, because my mom taught me. :)
This recipe is dedicated to Amit, who asked me specifically for it, and promised he would link my recipe to his great post on broccoli - you can visit it if you want to know some nutritional information on this great vegetable! So, here you are, Amit:
Pasta con i broccoli 'alla Piemontese' / Pasta with broccoli 'Piemontese style'

For 1 lb of pasta, you'll need 3 broccoli. Start boiling the water. In the meanwhile, finely cut half a big yellow onion and sautee it in 2 tbsp olive oil. Cut the 3 broccoli stems into pieces, and add them to the onion. Add salt (~1 tbsp), sautee for ~10 min, then add the crowns cut into small pieces, sautee for another 5 min, then cover the pan and cook for another 5 min. Taste and adjust the salt. At this point, if you're not vegetarian, add 5 anchovies and cook, covered, for another 5 min. The anchovies will melt and give a delicious twist to the flavor of the dish, and won't be strong at all. If you're vegetarian, you can avoid the anchovies, maybe add some garlic to the sautee onion at the beginning, and you'll have a wonderful dish in any case.
When the water boils, add salt and then the pasta. Cook al dente, drain, and add to the pan with the broccoli. Sautee the pasta with the broccoli, add some pepper (red pepper flakes, or ground black pepper) and ~ 2 tbsp grated cheese (pecorino, or parmigiano). This time I decided to innovate a little and add also some sliced almonds to the dish, but this is not in my mom's traditional recipe.
When you serve, add on each plate some more fresh olive oil, and grate more cheese and add more pepper to taste. You'll be delighted!
There are a few 'traditional' variations to this dish:
1) An important variation to this recipe includes the addition of tomatoes (usually canned diced tomatoes, which I add after the onions, and cook for ~ 5 min by themselves before adding the broccoli stems). It's also very good, but this time I really wanted to have the broccoli as the main focus of the dish.
2) Another important variation concerns the way of cooking the broccoli. Some people cook the broccoli in the pasta water, instead of in a separate pan. So, they add the stems together with the pasta when the water boils and the crowns more towards the end of the cooking. So they have in a separate pan only the onions and the anchovies. Then they drain both pasta and broccoli and they sautee them with the pasta. Honestly, although this last version may be the most traditional, I prefer the one I described above. First, you have a better control over the cooking degree of the broccoli, and second, sauteeing the broccoli with the onions and the anchovies since the beginning gives them a nice taste.
This recipe is also my entry to Ruth's fabulous weekly event 'Presto pasta nights'

Pasta con melanzane (Norma e funghetto!)

I realized recently that there are a number of very traditional and very easy Italian pasta recipes that I make quite commonly and I never posted about... So I need to correct this lacking! I'll start here with the description of two versions of Pasta with Eggplants. My next similar post will be dedicated to Pasta with Broccoli, as per Amit's request.. so stay tuned. :)


Pasta alla Norma
This is the most traditional pasta with Eggplant recipe. It's from Sicily, and apparently it was made in honor of Bellini's masterpiece 'Norma' (hence the name). I made it recently at Ellif's, when I was asked to 'guest-chef' an Italian vegeterian dinner: I love eggplants and what's more Italian than pasta?
So, to make this dish, sautee half a big onion in olive oil, add 1 big diced eggplant, fry for ~10 min. Add salt, and one big can of diced canned tomatoes. Add ~1 tbsp salt and 1 tsp sugar if the tomatoes are acidic. Cook for another 20 min. Taste and add salt if necessary. Add ~1/2 cup crumbled ricotta salata (I had to use a mixture of regular soft ricotta and feta cheese, since we didn't find ricotta salata) and stir in the sauce for a few minutes. Then mix with the pasta, cooked 'al dente' (the sauce should be enough for 1 lb). Traditionally you'd use penne, like in the picture above, but other types work too! Sprinkle with basil leaves and serve with extra ricotta salata or pecorino cheese to grate on top, for the people who like extra cheese!

Pasta con melanzane al funghetto / Pasta with eggplant-mushroom style
This is the pasta I made tonight. I found these delicious small, cylindrical so-called 'Italian eggplants', that work perfectly for this type of eggplant dish, 'melanzane al funghetto' (mushroom-style eggplants). The name refers to the fact that if you cook these eggplants with these few tricks that I'm going to give below, they will taste (and smell) like mushrooms. It's true! I always loved 'melanzane al funghetto' and it's a typical way that Italian mothers make eggplants for children who think they don't like eggplants (or restaurant owners who want to cheat not-too-smart customers.. of course the price of mushrooms is not comparable to that of eggplants.. :)).
So to make 'melanzane al funghetto', saute 3 garlic cloves, finely diced, in 3 tbsp olive oil. Add 6 'Italian eggplants' cut into pieces and cook on high heat for ~20 min, adding salt to taste. Stir every once in a while. At the end, add 1/2 cup parseley leaves. That's it! If you try, let me know if you also think that they taste a bit like mushrooms.
For my pasta, I also added ~ 2 cups small Romanitas tomatoes cut in half and 3 tsp capers, cooked for 10 more minutes, and added 1/3 cup feta cheese and some more parseley at the end. Then I added it to my 'tricolor' pasta... it was very good. :)

These eggplants pasta dishes are my entry for the 'Presto Pasta nights' hosted by Ruth at Once Upon A Feast.. Also, I want to point out that Happy Cook just posted about a very similar recipe - I found out because she's using her recipe for my next 'Fresh produce of the month' tomato-centered event!

Pasta giapponese :)

I haven't written a pasta entry for the 'Presto Pasta nights' hosted by Ruth in a while.. lack of camera and of pasta made it happen. :)
But now, Lucas is back with the camera, and I'm back cooking pasta! Another thing I like to try at the Berkeley Bowl (other than strange vegetables and fruit) is Asian type of pasta. So, this time I bought this Japanese noodles that looked like thick and white tagliatelle. All the writings on the box were in Japanese except for a label with the ingredients. So I have no idea of how they would be really called.. but I know they were made of wheat flour.
So the dish I made up was
Tagliatelle giapponesi con peperoni, baby bok choy e tofu / Japanese tagliatelle with peppers, baby bok choy and tofu
To make the sauce, I sauteed half an onion in olive oil, and then added ~5 red small bell peppers, cut into medium-size pieces. Then, I diced 1/2 lb tofu and added it into the pan. Then I added ~1 lb of baby bok choy, cut into pieces. I added 1 tbsp soy sauce and 1 tsp soybean paste, together with lemon juice, to season. I cooked it for ~20 minutes and added salt to taste.
In the meanwhile, I boiled water and added salt and japanese noodles in it (~1 lb). The noodles tended to stick together, so I stirred them well during the cooking. It took ~13 minutes for them to be cooked (they were thick). I drained them and added them to the sauce, and sauteed them in it for a few more minutes..
They were really good! The soybean taste from the sauce and the paste, together with the sourness from the lemon juice, and the slight bitterness of bok choy, mixed deliciously with the sweetness of the red peppers! And the soft consistency of the noodles (softer than regular Italian tagliatelelle) was very nice.
So, check out the Presto Pasta Night summary to see all the nice pasta recipes of this week!

Ravioli e agnolotti fatti in casa

I haven't posted a recipe in a long time.. shame on me! So, I'll try to correct this by talking about something really great that Lucas and I made with Nicola recently: homemade ravioli and agnolotti! Making stuffed pasta is a little more time consuming than making tagliatelle, but it's fun if you're with friends... and you can be proud of the result: :)
We made Ravioli ai formaggi con crema di zucca (Cheese ravioli with butternut squash cream) and Agnolotti al salame con salsa di pomodoro (Salame agnolotti with tomato sauce)
Recipes and more pictures follow!

Pasta dough:
Prepare a dough similar to the one we used for tagliatelle. You can use less eggs and more water, since there's going to be a filling and the pasta doesn't need to be as rich: Nicola's (i.e. Luisa's :) ) recipe was 2 eggs and 2 half egg shells filled with water for 2 1/2 cups flour. Knead till elastic, then pass it through your pasta machine as shown here, till you get many layers of thin dough. For agnolotti you should get to the thinnest setting on the machine, whereas for ravioli, you should leave it a bit thicker.

Ravioli preparation:
Place one sheet of dough on the ravioli shaper, and add a small amount of filling to each hole:
>Humidify with some water the parts that will become ravioli borders, to make them sticky. Then, cover with another sheet of dough:
Pass a rolling pin on this whole thing. The pressure on the borders will cut the ravioli. At this point, you can remove them from the ravioli maker, and place them on a tray.

Agnolotti preparation:
Cut ~3*3 inches squares of pasta. Stuff them with a little filling. Fold the square over the filling, to make a triangle. Fold the upper corner on pasta over the filling, and fold the other two corners around one of your fingers. This will make the agnolotto shape. Sorry, no picture for an individual agnolotto, but you can see here a closeup of the shapes:


Ravioli ai formaggi con crema di zucca (Cheese ravioli with butternut squash cream)
Prepare ravioli as described above. The cheese filling is made by mixing approximately 1/2 lb ricotta, 1/2 cup gorgonzola cheese and 1/2 cup cream cheese (this should be enough for dough made with ~2 1/2 cups flour, very approximatively, sorry about this). To make the sauce, cut a butternut squash into small cubes. Finely cut half a big onion. Sautee the onion, and after ~ 2 min add the squash. Add salt. Cook for ~10 min, covered. Then, add ~2 cups vegetable broth (or water and a bouillon, like I did) and cook covered for ~40 min, until the squash is soft. Puree with a blender. Add ~2 tbsp heavy cream, and pepper to taste.

Agnolotti al salame con salsa di pomodoro (Salame agnolotti with tomato sauce)
Prepare agnolotti as described above, using a filling made with ~ 1 cup finely cut salame mixed with ~1/2 lb cream cheese (dose for ~2 1/2 cups flour, very approximatively, sorry about this again). Prepare the tomato sauce: sautee half a big vidalia onion in olive oil, add 1 lb canned tomatoes, ~2 tsp salt, ~1/2 tsp of sugar, cover with a lid. After ~30 min, blend, add finely cut basil and leaves of sage.

Once everything is ready, bring a large amount of water to boil, add salt and a bit of olive oil to the water, then add the ravioli and agnolotti in, a little bit at a time. They will be cooked in ~5 min. Mix with the sauces and serve immediately!!

This will be also my entry for this week Presto Pasta night! At last I have some pasta worth presenting. :)

Tagliatelle e trofie fatte in casa!

I've been super busy this past week, and I didn't even have time to post about this really cool 'event' that we organized last weekend! My friend Andrea who lives in Berkeley also loves to cook and we've been thinking about organizing something for a while. So last weekend we decided to invite a bunch of people over at his place and have a 'Pasta workshop'!
The idea was to make tagliatelle and trofie ourselves, and prepare three different sauces.. whoever wanted to come help was welcome. My Japanese friends Keisuke, Miako and their lovely son came from the very beginning and were some of the most supportive fans of our pasta!
Making pasta for 25 people turned out to be tiring but fun! And the result was really delicious. I was very happy, also because I never made any of that pasta before. Below is a little summary of what we did and the recipes.

We prepared two different types of tagliatelle - one with sapphron in the dough and one with mushroom water in it, because we wanted to give them a little flavor that would go well with the sauce we were planning on making.
Tagliatelle is an egg rich pasta, so don't be surprised for how many eggs you have to put in the dough! It's going to be enough for a lot of servings, anyway.
We also made trofie, which is a type of pasta typical of Liguria, always hand made, and mostly eaten with pesto.

Dough for tagliatelle:
2.6 lb flour
12 eggs
2 tbsp water
Make a 'volcano' with the flour on a big and clean working surface, break the eggs in the volcano hole and start mixing them together with the dough, kneading them in. You should add as little water as possible to this dough, to make it workable. Then you should work it for at least 10 minutes, until it becomes softer and elastic.
Note: to make the sapphron taqliatelle, dissolve 1/2 tsp sapphron in the water, and to make the mushroom flavored tagliatelle, use water where you boiled dry porcini mushrooms instead.
When you're done, wrap the dough in plastic foil and let it rest for one hour.

Dough for trofie:
2.4 lb flour
2 cups water more or less
2 tbsp salt
Mix all the ingredients and knead for at least ten minutes. Add water if necessary. When done, wrap in plastic foil and let it rest for one hour.

Preparation of tagliatelle:
You need a pasta machine like my wonderful 'La Novecento Torino', which belonged to my greatgrandmother, or a more modern and fancy one. :)
This machine can make very thin sheets of flour like this one:
You have to devide the dough into small flat 'squares', and then pass them through
the machine many times decreasing the width of the slit they go through every time.
You probably shouldn't get to the point of having such long pieces like the one I showed in the picture above, but that was for fun. :)
It's very helpful if you have someone like Luisa with you :)
She was passing me the pieces in the right order, so we could go much faster, and decrease the slit width only every few pieces of dough.
Once you have your dough sheets of the right thickness (i.e., for tagliatelle, the smallest setting I had on the machine), you can add the cutting attachment to the machine and start the real fun part: actually making the tagliatelle!
When you pass the dough through the sharp rolls, the tagliatelle come out.. it's such a wonderful view!
Suggestion: add some flour on the dough before cutting it, and sprinkle more flour on the tagliatelle just made. Set them on a large tray so they don't stack on each other, otherwise they will clump and they won't be as good.
This is how fast we were moving them around on the tray to avoid them clumping:
And this is the tray with the sapphron tagliatelle ready to be cooked:

Preparation of trofie:
Another group of us was making trofie. Trofie don't require and particular instrumentation, just a lot of patient friends. :)
(Elif and Vardha at work)
To make trofie, you have to take tiny pieces of dough and roll them either between your fingers or on the table, and obtain those funny little worms that you see in front of Elif above.

Of course now you're only half way done. Good pasta is nothing if you don't have a good sauce. For tagliatelle, we chose to make a zucchini sauce and a mushroom sauce, and trofie go traditionally with pesto. So here are the recipes for the sauces:

Zucchini sauce
10 small white zucchini
1 white onion
1/2 lb small tomatoes (romanitas)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sapphron
~3 tsp salt

Cut the onion and the zucchini in small pieces, heat up the olive oil. Sautee the zucchini for a while. Add the sapphron dissolved in water. Add salt. Cover with a lid and let it cook for ~15 min. At the end, add the tomatoes cut in half. Sautee for a few more minutes, add salt, and it's ready to pour on the pasta.

Porcini mushroom sauce
3 porcini mushrooms
1 lb brown mushrooms
6 small shallots
White wine and mushroom water to cook
Parseley

Gently scrape the mushroom surface to remove all the dirt. Remove the parts that are too soft. Cut the mushrooms in thin slices and cook them in a little olive oil, on low heat, adding some salt. Add the shallots finely cut, sautee them with the mushrooms for ~5 minutes, then add ~1/2 cup total white wine and mushroom water if you still have some from the dough and let it cook covered for 5-10 more minutes. Pour on the pasta and add some finely cut parseley before serving.

Traditional pesto sauce
This is the recipe for traditional pesto from Liguria. Anywhere else you won't find the green beans and potatoes with pesto. But it's a really nice addition, you should definitely try it.

1 lb green beans
6 small yellow potatoes
1 big bunch basil
1/2 cup pinenuts
4 cloves garlic
a chunk of pecorino (size depending on how much you like it)
Olive oil

Cut the green beans and the onions in small pieces. Cook them in salted boiling water for ~10 min. Drain and cool down with cold water and set aside. In a blender, finely chop basil, pinenuts, pecorino, garlic. Take out of the blender and add enough olive oil to cover well. If you didn't add much pecorino, you may have to add some salt. When the pasta is ready, mix the basil mix and the beans and potato mix with it. Serve hot with trofie for a real Liguria dish.

All the pasta must be cooked in a lot of salted boiling water, turning from time to time to avoid clumping. Tagliatelle take only ~ 3 minutes, whereas trofie take a bit longer. Trofie will start floating after a while, but they'll need to cook a little longer before they're done.

Nicola took care of this part:
When the pasta is cooked, mix with the sauce immediately and serve as soon as possible.
Here is Andrea serving the first pasta that came out:
And here are the final creations!
Tagliatelle con zafferano e zucchini (Sapphron and zucchini tagliatelle):

Tagliatelle ai funghi porcini (Porcini mushroom tagliatelle)

Trofie al pesto
Every time we brought one of these bowls out, they were completely finished in the first 5 minutes. Everyone was really impressed - it's not that common to have fresh pasta here! And to be honest, I was also really impressed. I never made it before, and it was absolutely delicious!
I'm submitting this entry to the "Presto pasta nights" hosted by my friend Ruth at Once Upon a Feast, although the whole pasta making wasn't presto at all: we started at 4.30 pm and we were eating at 8 pm.. but it was a meal for 25 people, starting from scratch! If you buy your pasta, making the sauces I described above is really fast indeed.

Insalata di pasta tiepida con verdure e ananas alla griglia

This is going to be my weekly pasta entry for 'Presto Pasta nights' hosted by Ruth at Once upon a feast. I made it tonight and it was really good, so I thought it would be the best one to share for the week.

Insalata di pasta tiepida con verdure e ananas alla griglia (Warm pasta salad with grilled vegetables and pineapple)
(The doses I will refer to are for 2 people). Prepare ~1/3 lb rotelle pasta, cooked al dente (remember to put salt in the boiling water before throwing the pasta!). Drain, add a little olive oil and mix up (to prevent sticking). Let cool down. In the meanwhile, cut one eggplant in slices and grill it. Cut 2 small green zucchinis in slices and grill them too. Cut three slices of pineapple and grill those too. Cut two small tomatoes in halves and grill the halves too. Once everything is grilled, cut in smaller pieces (the pineapple and the eggplant slices in quarters, the tomato halves and the zucchini slices in half). Mix up with the pasta. Add small cubes of a hard cheese (for example, I love ricotta salata) and mix again. Season with a sauce made with olive oil, lemon and finely cut garlic, then add salt, oregano and pepper to taste... serve warm or cold... DELICIOUS!

Pasta ai 'broccoli' alla siciliana!

A few days ago I talked to my friend Maia, who's from Sicily, and she showed me some pictures of food they cooked. I was very interested in some type of pasta that I saw, which had some white pieces in it, and some raisins and pinenuts clearly visible. I asked what it was, and she said it was pasta with broccoli Sicilian style. I couldn't see anything green in it, so I asked her where the broccoli were... and she explained to me that broccoli in Sicilian language are cauliflower! The problem is that 'broccoli' in Italian refers to the same vegetable that you know in English.. so, it's a bit confusing, but very intriguing. :) Thus, I looked for a recipe online for this pasta, and I prepared it for Giovanna, Vardha (and of course Lucas and I :) ) last Saturday.

Pasta con 'broccoli' alla siciliana ('Broccoli' pasta Sicilian style)
Ingredients
1 1/2 lb cauliflower
1 lb short pasta (e.g. maccheroni)
1/2 cup pinenuts
1/2 cup raisins
1 onion
1 tsp saffron
basil leaves and bread crumbs (optional)
pecorino (romano), grated
Procedure:
Soak raisins in warm water. Cut cauliflower in small pieces. Bring a large amount of water to boil. Add salt (N.B. I usually add ~ 1 tbsp for quart of water, more or less). Throw the pasta in the boiling water. In the meanwhile, sautee the onion, add the pinenuts and the raisins, drained from their water, and the saffron, previously dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water taken from the pasta water. Cook for a few minutes. Five minutes before the pasta is done, throw the cauliflower pieces in the water with the pasta. Drain the pasta and the cauliflower when the pasta is done (if you timed it right, the cauliflower should be done too). Stir the pasta and cauliflower in the pinenut/raisin sauce. Add grated cheese, ground black pepper before serving. You can also add basil leaves roughly cut and bread crumbs, quickly roasted in the oven, before serving. I didn't use almost any basil and no bread crumbs, this time. The pasta was wonderful!
Also, this was a vegeterian version. For non-vegetarian, add 6 anchovies to the raisin/pinenut sauce, let them cook with it before stirring the pasta in.
The day after, a great way to eat this pasta is to reheat it in the oven, after covering its surface with a bit more grated cheese and bread crumbs. When it's warm, just turn on the broil for 2 minutes. The pasta will have a wonderful crust on top!

I decided I will give this recipe as my first entry to 'Presto Pasta' night, that I recently found out. It's a weekly event hosted by nice Ruth at Once upon a Feast. That's such a nice idea! And I make some sort of pasta definitely every week, so I may contribute often :)

Ziti con pomodoro e pesto di ricotta

This is a variation on my grandma's sauce.
In a small pot, saute in ~1 tbsp olive oil 1 clove of garlic, finely cut. Add one small can of whole peeled tomatoes and a pinch of salt. Add a tsp sugar if acidic. Simmer for ~20 min and blend.
Blend 1 cup basil and 2 cloves garlic. Add salt and 1/4 cup olive oil. Add 1/2 lb ricotta cheese. This is going to be a very light pesto, with ricotta instead of pecorino, and no nuts.
Mix the tomato sauce with the ricotta pesto. Add to the ziti, cooked al dente (the sauce should be enough for ~1 lb ziti).

Frittata di pasta

I've been wanting to publish a post about this very simple dish in a while, and today I finally remembered after seeing Susan's post about Spanish Tortilla de Patatas (Frittata di pasta reminds me a lot of that dish, except for the fact that I use just the amount of oil strictly necessary for preventing the frittata from sticking to the pan). Frittata di pasta is a very easy and tasty way to use pasta leftovers. Frittata means 'omelette' in italian, although usually Italian frittate are thicker than French omelettes. Anyway, you can in principle put anything in a frittata, including pasta leftovers. It turns out really well and it usually impresses Americans who never had anything like that. You can eat it hot or cold, and is thus perfect either as main dish, or as appetizer, or as party finger food.
Frittata di pasta / Pasta omelette
Ingredients:
6 eggs (you can use more or less eggs depending on your taste. The more eggs you add, the easier it is to have it stick together)
~2 cup pasta leftover (whatever sauce you had is fine)
Cheese (either 2 tbsp parmigiano or 1/2 cup any other cheese that will melt, diced into small pieces)
Salt, pepper
Olive oil (2 tbsp)
Procedure:
Beat the eggs with 2 tsp salt. Mix with the leftover pasta. Add black pepper to taste, and the cheese. Heat up 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan, till quite hot (it should become less viscous than when it's cold). Spread on the bottom of the pan, then pour the pasta/egg/cheese mixture. The pan should be of a size such that the egg/pasta mixture fills it completely. Cover with a lid, and cook on medium heat for at least 7 minutes. Check, and if there's almost no more liquid egg left you're ready to flip it, otherwise let cook covered for a bit longer. If you're ready to flip, first make sure the frittata is not stuck to the bottom of the pan by passing a plastic spatula between the border of the frittata and the bottom of the pan. Then, while wearing a glove that protects your left hand from the heat, hold the lid upside down in your left hand, and with your right hand slide the frittata from the pan onto the lid, so that the uncooked side is still face up. Flip the pan and place upside down on top of the frittata. Now flip the whole pan with lid, and place back on the stove. So now you should have the uncooked side being cooked. Let cook on Med-low heat for another 5 minutes and serve hot (for example with some tomato sauce, or chutney, like in the picture below), or cold, sliced into small pieces to serve at a party (like in the picture on top).

Ravioli di magro al ragu'

The recipe for ravioli is a mixture of two recipes that I found on this nice cookbook that my father gave me: 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte, ricettario a fumetti' (I already cited this book a few other times). In particular, I used the dough for 'Agnolotti alla piemontese' and the filling for 'Cannelloni di magro'. When we say 'di magro' (lean) we mean that the pasta is filled with cheese and vegetables instead of meat (not sure if it's really leaner.. :) ). So instead of making cannelloni (sort of rolled lasagne) I made agnolotti filled with this non-meaty stuffing, and then I decided that to be really Piemontesi, there should be some meat somewhere, and thus the idea of serving them with ragu'.
So here is the recipe with pictures.

Pasta dough:
800 g (6 and 2/3 cups) white flour
3 eggs
2 tsp olive oil
warm water
Filling:
1 1/2 cups boiled spinach
1 lb ricotta
1 egg
1 tbsp heavy cream
1/2 cup parmesan
1 tsp nutmeg
For the pasta: mix the flour and the eggs and the oil, and add as much water as necessary to have a workable dough. Knead for at least 10 min. This was _very_ hard. No comparison with the bread dough.. there's no yeast here, and the dough stays hard. It becomes nicely elastic after a while, but it's a good workout, be aware. Let it rest for 10 minutes and then roll down the dough until it's _really_ thin. There's your second part of working out. It's supposed to be so thin that you should be able to read a newspaper through it. Mine wasn't _as_ thin, but it was pretty thin. It takes another pound of sweat..
For the filling: mix all the ingredients, add a little salt.
Place some filling on the dough..
...then fold the dough on top, and cut into squares.
Fold the borders so the filling doesn't come out during the cooking.
Bring some water to boil, add salt to it, and then throw the agnolotti in it. They take about 10 minutes to cook (mine were pretty big).
To serve, mix with ragu sauce (see previous post for recipe) and add some grated parmesan on top.
I'm telling you, they were _really_ good but _really_ laborious to prepare. I think if I make them next time, I'll have some tools like a pasta machine to mix and spread the dough and some ravioli machine to cut them :) - although, then I won't feel the same sense of accomplishment as I did this time :)

Note: after getting more experience with ravioli making, I understand I should not have folded the borders, but just stuck them together with some water. See here for a better description on how to shape ravioli.

I resti del tacchino - turkey leftovers

I will soon post a lot of new recipes prepared for my last dinner, but I first wanted to show you something that I made about one week ago... right after Thanksgiving.
Obviously everyone knows how much turkey is left after Thanksgiving. Well, we all like turkey sandwiches, but what after three days of them? Maybe we would like to change a bit... so here comes my idea:
Pad-Thai con tacchino e kale / Turkey and Kale 'Pad-Thai'
Pad-Thai noodles are rice noodles with eggs, vegetables, nuts and some type of meat (usually shrimp) in it. You can find a really good recipe for real Pad-Thai here. In my version, the rice noodles were sauteed with Kale, Almonds and Turkey!
To be more precise, if you want to try it next time you have turkey leftovers:
Risne about 1 lb kale and cut into pieces, without completely drying the leaves. Soak 1/2 package rice noodles in water for ~ 10 minutes. Saute 2 cloves of finely cut garlic in olive oil, and add the kale to it. Saute for one minute then close the pan with a lid and let steam adding 2 tbsp water (there should be some more water on the kale leaves from the rinsing) ~ 10 minutes. Add salt and red pepper. Add the rice noodles into the pan and ~1 tbsp fish sauce. Stir quickly and saute for a few minutes, then add the turkey pieces (as much as you like), some almonds (~ 1 cup), and then one egg and mix quickly. Serve hot. It's very good!

Cena con Crissy e David

Lucas and I wanted to have a more intimate dinner with Crissy and David so we could get to know David a little better, and also, so I could let him try a real 'Italian' dinner.
It was a very nice dinner. We enjoyed their company very much and I was very happy that David liked my cuisine :)
So here is the menu:
Farinata
Insalata di verdure e anacardi / Veggy and cashew salad
Tagliatelle con kale, ricotta, gorgo e pomodori / Tagliatelle with kale, ricotta, gorgonzola and tomatoes
Barchette dolci alla frutta / Sweet little boats with fruit
Note: this was not a complete Italian dinner. There wasn't a 'second course', including meat and vegetables, there wasn't a cheese platter, and there wasn't a fruit platter. But I really think that's too much for one dinner so very rarely I make a real complete dinner. I think this was a good amount of food for us :)
Recipes and pictures follow.

Farinata
Farinata is a typical dish from Liguria, which I really like and crave from time to time. It's a very thin 'pizza' made of chickpea flour. The only problem about it is that I can make it well only once in a while :) To make it, you have to mix chickpea flour and water in a ratio that varies a lot depending on who's explaining the recipe to you. I think 1:2 (flour:water) is about right, but that doesn't seem to work all the time (ok, I must admit, my ratio is not always the same :) ). Anyway, that's just it, then you add a bit of salt and you let it rest for a few hours before making the farinata. Place a non-sticking paper in a baking pan and add about 1-2 tbsps olive oil on it, then pour the liquid mixture on it and bake at 400F for ~15-20 minutes, until it solidifies and becomes crispy. Now, the problem is that my oven is not perfectly even, neither in temperature nor as flatness, so I always get one side thinner and that starts burning.. so I have to take out the farinata and slice out that part before it burns, then I put it back in the oven and so on. Although, sometimes it seemed to work better. So I'm not sure what's the trick. Anyway it usually turns out very good, even though you may waste part of it because it gets burnt. It's a really good food, so I'd recommend you to try it!
Serve it sprinkled with black pepper, hot.

Insalata di verdure e anacardi
This salad is made with cabbage, peppers, carrots and tomatoes, simply dressed with olive oil, garlic (finely cut) and balsamic vinegar (and salt obviously), and generously sprinkled with cashew nuts. Very good!
It's not a typical Italian salad but it's something in the same mindset of Italian dishes: simple and good ingredients and a light dressing.

Tagliatelle con kale, ricotta, gorgo e pomodori
This is not a traditional Italian recipe either (especially because Kale doesn't exist in Italy), but it's something that again reminds of Italian pasta dishes. We rarely use meat on the pasta (except in the ragu sauce, for example), whereas in the US a lot of pasta dishes have pieces of chicken, or something similar on top.. Italian pasta is very often with vegetables, cheese and if you want something more fancy, fish.
This was actually my invention, and it turned out really good. To make it, saute one onion with ~1 lb kale, cut, add salt. Let cook for ~15-20 minutes, then add a few pieces of gorgonzola - how much depends on how strong is your gorgonzola - and let it melt. Put it in a blender and blend. Then add ~1 cup of ricotta cheese and blend again. Taste. If the gorgonzola taste is too strong add a bit of honey or some more ricotta, if you like it. In a large pan, sautee slices of 2 ripe and fresh tomatoes in olive oil with 1 clove of garlic, minced, with some salt. After ~ 5 minutes it'll be done. Add the rest of the sauce to it and stir. In the meanwhile cook the tagliatelle (1 lb) in a large amount of hot and salted water, stirring frequently not to make them stick to each other, then drain and add the pasta in the large pan with the sauce and saute for a few minutes before serving, adding a bit of black pepper on top. Delicious. :)

Barchette dolci alla frutta
I took the idea for this recipe from cooker.net. I will explain how to make this dessert in a separate post. It was very good :)