Pizza alla zucca?!?!?

I mentioned that for the 'bagna caoda' party I prepared some pizza just in case someone didn't like the bagna caoda. I prepared three types: one was my favorite ricotta and pesto focaccia, another was a traditional grilled eggplant/cheese pizza, and the last one was an experiment (again inspired by the 'San Francisco flavor' cookbook!). I decided to try it as it involves my ingredient of the month - squash. No one would ever make pureed squash pizza or focaccia in Italy (at least not that I'm aware of), but I decided to give it a shot anyway!

Focaccia con zucca / Squash focaccia
The recipe in the 'San Francisco cookbook' suggests using delicata or butternut squash for this focaccia. Instead, I used turban squash. I bought it at the Berkeley Bowl intrigued by its beautiful shape and color, and it turned out to be absolutely delicious. I think it's now in the list of my favorite squashes. It tastes a little like pumpkin, and the yield is really high. It smells delicious after baking.

The preparation of this focaccia is quite straightforward: prepare pizza dough (recipe here). When ready, spread on a baking pan, previously greased with olive oil. Bake the squash of your choice, until soft. Scoop the flesh out and puree with a spoon. Add olive oil, salt and oregano (amounts to your taste) and mix. Spread on the pizza dough, and add pieces of cheese on top (suggested by the recipe: cheddar cheese. I used Vermont farmer's cheese). Bake at 400 F for ~10 min, or till the crust starts becoming golden in color. Serve hot.

This squash focaccia turned out quite good - in my opinion not as good as the ricotta and pesto one, but definitely worth trying. I believe homemade pizza or focaccia is one of the best foods for a party: tasty and easy to pick up with your fingers without being too messy. So, I'll send this focaccia recipe as my entry for the 'Game night party' event hosted by Mansi at Fun and Food just for this month! - If you want different pizza/focaccia recipes, look here!

And I hope this recipe also inspires you to send me a contribution to the event I host, the 'Fresh Produce of the Month', centered on squash.. Still a few days open for submissions!

Due torte salate

I've been wanting to write this post about savory tarts in a while. I like to make savory tarts. They're super easy and usually impress the guests for how good they taste. They also make a wonderful party food, not messy, and which can be eaten warm or cold.. you may want to think about making one for the next party you're invited!!
I have a few pictures of savory tarts I recently made and I wanted to put them all together for a special issue on the subject.. and just now, Jeanne announced the new theme for 'Waiter, there's something in my..' as being.. Topless tarts! What could be a better occasion to share the recipes and pictures of two 'topless' savory tarts I made? So, here we are: Asparagus and Goat Cheese Tart, and Green Beans, Gorgonzola and Cheddar Cheese Tart.

Torta salata con asparagi e formaggio di capra / Asparagus and Goat Cheese Tart
This recipe was taken by the great 'San Francisco Flavors' cookbook I love. To make it, you need to have some puff pastry ready. I usually buy the frozen one and thaw it a few hours before I need it. Then I roll it down on a floured surface and I cut enough to cover the baking pan all the way up to the borders, and a little bit more, and I place it on the the buttered and floured baking pan. For this recipe, then, you have to spread 8 oz fresh goat cheese on the dough (or you can finely cut some feta cheese, like I did). On top, add 12 asparagus stalks, cut into 1" pieces (I bought the very thin asparagus you can see in the picture), and small stripes from one bell pepper, previously roasted. Toss one tbsp olive oil on it, add salt and pepper. Fold the borders of the pastry over the topping, and brush them with a mixture of 1 egg yolk beaten with 1/2 tsp water. Bake at 450F for 20 min. The original recipe says to scatter pieces of prosciutto on the tart once cooled down, but due to my semi-vegetarianism, I avoided this part. It was super delicious!

Torta salata con fagiolini, gorgonzola e cheddar / Green beans, gorgonzola and cheddar cheese tart
This is a tart that I made up, according to my mom taught me when I was a child. To make torte salate (savory tarts), in Italy we usually simply beat 2-3 eggs (depending on how eggy you like it) with vegetables or meat of choice (in this case, I had previously cooked some green beans in a pan with olive oil, salt and garlic) and with add whatever type of cheese in the amount we like. This is why I'm saying it's simple to make savory tarts.. In this case, I put a total of 1/2 cup of a mixture of pieces of gorgonzola and cheddar cheese (these were the cheeses I had in the fridge). If you don't like cheese, you can also avoid them at all. Then, you'll need to add some salt (~2 tsp) and pepper to taste. And if you're really into cheese, grate some more parmigiano on top. Pour this mixture in the pastry dough, set in the pan as discussed above, and fold borders on top. My mom used to make her tarts covered (the dough would go on top of the whole tart), but I kind of like to show some of the filling, to tempt the guests. When you're done with this simple preparation, bake at 400F for ~20-30 min (until borders are golden and the stuffing seems firm). Everyone was a big fan of this tart and of its companion which I prepared with zucchini instead of green beans.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge 'Show and Tell'

I was really sorry I couldn't participate to the previous edition of the Weekend Cookbook Challenge. The theme was intriguing (DVD and dinner), but I didn't have enough time to seriously think about it. But this time, it's really easy for me: the theme is 'Show and Tell' , and the idea is to choose a recipe from a cookbook you particularly like or you have some special reason to show it. And I do have at least three cookbooks I'd love to show (my new Mexican cookbook given by Romelia, the 'San Francisco flavors' cookbook given by Stefano, and 'In Nonna's kitchen' given by Giovanna). I already posted recipes for the first two, so maybe someone already saw how glad I am to have them. I decided to use 'In Nonna's kitchen' for this event, because the idea behind this cookbook is definitely worth speaking about.
The author, Carol Field, went for a trip to Italy and interviewed many 'nonne', i.e. grandmas. They talked to her about their lives, their food traditions, and they gave her a few recipes they really loved. I really like this idea, and that's what I'm going to do next time I go to Italy and meet my grandmothers. In the book, there are pictures and interviews with 16 grandmas. The stories are really interesting - the women come from different regions of Italy, and their age varies between 60 and more than 80! So both the lives and the recipes are quite different.
What makes this book also unique, is that one of the grandmas interviewed is Giovanna's! She told me when she gave me the book. So, I feel like this book is very precious, and I enjoy reading it. I'd recommend it to every American who wants to know some of really traditional Italian cuisine. For me, some recipes are so 'obvious' that I don't even need to read them, it's just the way my own mom taught me. So, I'm sure someone who hasn't been trained by an Italian mother would find this book really helpful.
I'll post here about two recipes I prepared: 'Torta di porri e zucca' (Leek and Butternut squash tart) , and 'Crostini con le fave' (Crostini with pureed fava beans) .

Torta di porri e zucca (Leek and Butternut squash tart)
This recipe is given by Rina Ramponi, and is from the Norther Tuscany. It's very good and it was eaten too quickly for me to take a picture of the whole tart. :)
Ingredients
Dough
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil
10 tbsp cold water
Filling
3 tbsp olive oil
4 medium leaks
3/4 lb butternut squash (cut into 3/4 inch cubes) - total ~2 cups
1/2 cup Parmigiano cheese (I used pecorino romano)
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pepper
Procedure
For the dough: mix flour, salt, olive oil and slowly add the water, till the dough is smooth. Make a ball out of it and leave it wrapped in plastic wrap for 30 min at room temperature.
For the filling: heat olive oil and add the leeks, cut into thin slices. Cook for ~ 10 minutes. Add the butternut squash (there were also ~8 oz chard leaves that I didn't have, to add at this point). Cook for another 5 minutes (I cooked it longer, at least 10 min), then add the cheese, salt and pepper.
Divide the dough in two parts (one slightly larger). Spread the larger one in a ~13 inch circle with a rolling pin. Place in a 9 inch baking pan (previously oiled), covering the bottom and the borders. Then add the vegetable filling. Spread in a circle the other piece of dough, and place on top. Fold the borders from the bottom circle on top of the upper circle of dough, and cut extra dough away. Add olive oil on top, pierce the crust to allow steam to escape, and bake at 375 F for ~50 min, making sure it's baked evenly all around.
Serve as appetizer or main dish, depending on how many people you have at dinner! It's very good and quite unusual.

Crostini con le fave (Crostini with pureed fava beans)
This recipe was given by Nella Galletti, and it's an Umbrian variation on the traditional Tuscan Bruschetta.
To prepare it, she uses dried fava beans, but I had some fresh ones, so instead of 1 1/2 cups dried beans, I used ~10 big fava beans, and I cooked both the beans and the skins, cut into pieces. The skin part has some strings in it, so if you want to serve the crostini to guests that you think may be bothered by them, just stick to the beans. But in my opinion, though, the skin part has even more taste than the beans..
Roughly cut 1 medium onion, and saute it in 2 tbsp olive oil. Add the beans (previously soaked overnight if they were dried), and the skins, if you're using them. Add 1 1/2 tsp salt, and enough water to cover the beans. Cook for ~ 30 minutes. The water should not be all consumed, so add more if necessary, so you have some left when done.
When done, drain the beans, reserve the extra water, and puree the beans with 2 more tbsp of olive oil.
Grill slices of bread, then spread garlic on them and sprinkle olive oil on top. Add a few tsp of the cooking water, and then spoon some of the bean mixture. Serve warm.. They are very good, and again, a taste quite different from usual bruschetta :)

Torta di Pomodori!

This month's theme for the 'Fresh Produce of the Month' event, hosted by myself, is 'Tomatoes'.. As you can imagine given the fact that I chose the theme, I absolutely love tomatoes. Coming to Berkeley was a great surprise at this regard. I found so many varieties of tomatoes, with colors ranging from yellow to orange to red, which I had never seen in my whole life. You can look here for pictures of a few of the tomatoes I see every week at the Berkeley Bowl.
So to celebrate such a local and great variety of tomatoes, I chose to use a recipe from a book called 'San Francisco flavors'. I received this book for my birthday, and I already tried a few recipes from it, and they were all a great success. This time I chose an 'Artichoke and cherry tomato tart'- it was so simple and quick to make, that I decided it could be our regular dinner for tonight, instead of waiting for a special occasion with guests in order to make it..

Torta di pomodori e carciofini / Artichoke and tomato tart
Ingredients
1 sheet pastry dough (I used a frozen one)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 spoon dried thyme (I used oregano)
1 1/2 cups marinated artichoke hearts
1 small red onion (I used half a yellow one)
20 cherry tomatoes (I used the hairloom variety)
Procedure
Roll the pastry dough enough so that it covers a 12-inch tart pan. Butter and flour the pan and place the dough in it. Prepare a mixture by whisking the eggs, the sour cream, the thyme (oregano), salt and pepper (I used ~1 1/2 teaspoons each). Spread 1/4 of this mixture on the dough. Add the artichoke hearts and the onion, finely cut. Then place the tomatoes cut in half, and spoon the rest of the mixture on top.
Bake at 450 F for ~15-20 min. Cool down before serving.
The tart is very good, and you really taste the flavor from the tomatoes a lot. I didn't care for the artichoke hearts. Maybe I didn't have a really good brand for them, but in any case, they didn't seem to add much to the tart. Moreover, they didn't help making the tart less moist (it's quite soft and moist from the tomatoes).. so next time I will devote this cake just to the celebration of the tomato flavor!
Now.. doesn't this recipe inspire you to take part to the 'Tomato' event this month?!? The deadline is September 2nd, and you can find the rules here!

Lahmacun - pizza turca

I recently found Meeta's wonderful blog 'What's for lunch honey', and her monthly event 'Monthly mingle'. Too bad I didn't see the past mingle.. it was 'savory cakes'! How many wonderful savory cakes we have in Italy!! Well, I'll post some recipes for savory cakes later on anyway.. And this monthly mingle's theme is as intriguing: 'Arabian nights'! So the goal is to make some food coming from 'Arabian' countries, very broadly defined. I recently met Elif, one of Lucas's coworker, a very nice girl of Turkish origin, and so I asked her what would be a good original turkish recipe for me to try for this event. She suggested 'Lahmacun', aka 'turkish pizza'. Apparently some people say pizza was invented by Turkish.. so I thought it was actually a nice thing for me to try, since I love making pizza. I found a few recipes online, and the one I finally followed can be found here. I'll report here what I did.

Lahmacun
Make pizza dough (see here) using ~2 cups flour, ~1 tsp yeast and 1 1/2 cup water. Oil the surface of the pizza dough while it raises. Prepare the topping: 1) sautee one small onion and 2 garlic cloves in some butter; 2) Grind some lamb meat (supposedly 8 oz). Add 1 tomato, the juice of one lemon, 1/2 cup mint leaves, 1/2 cup parseley leaves, 2 tsp paprika, pepper, salt, and mince everything with the meat. Add the onion and garlic to the mixture. This is the traditional topping. I decided to try also the vegetarian version, which is made with 1 cup feta cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 cup parseley, all blended together. After the dough doubles in volume (~1 hour), devide it into three pieces. Let them rest for another 30 min. Then, roll them down until very thin. Spread a thin layer of meat or of cheese mixture. Cook in the oven at 450 for ~12 min for the meat pizza and ~7 min for the cheese pizza.
I read different ways of serving Lahmacun. Most of the recipes suggested to sprinkle lemon juice, especially on the meat version. Some of them suggested also yogurt. I tried them both and I liked them! It's a very nice dish. I liked the meat version in particular.. definitely not suited for a vegeterian, but the blend of spices, herbs and lemon made it very particular and 'oriental-style'! So, go Lahmacun! Go Turkish pizza! And notice, this is said by an Italian who hates fake American pizza. :)
Visit Meeta's blog for the Monthly mingle roundup.

Focaccia con formaggio e cipolla, pizza con capperi (e acciughe), e focaccia con patate dolci e brie

Here are the recipes for the three different pizzas that I prepared for my goodbye parties.

Basic dough
I found out that letting the dough rest longer makes nicer pizzas/focaccias.
Mix 2 tsp yeast in ~2 cup warm water. Add 1 tsp sugar, and mix until yeast is dissolved and bubbles. Start adding flour to the mixture, until the dough becomes workable (it should be a total of about 2 lbs, but I really go by eye!!). At this point, kneed the dough on a floured surface, and add salt during this operation. Add little by little, while kneeding. In the end you probably have added 3 tbsp salt. I usually taste the dough to see how salty it is. Keep working the dough and add flour if necessary, for about 10 minutes. Then cover and let it rest for at least two hours (the longer the better especially for focaccia). Then, deflate the dough, and flatten with a rolling pin. There should be enough for ~ 3 pizzas/focaccias. Spread olive oil on your baking pans and put the dough on it. Let the dough rest while you prepare all the ingredients (another 30 min at least), then add the ingredients, and cook at 400 F for ~10 minutes, depending on where in the oven the pizzas are and how much topping you have.


Focaccia con cipolle rosse e formaggio / Red onion and cheese focaccia
Sautee 1 red onion finely cut in a little bit of olive oil, add salt to it. Spread on the focaccia and add small pieces of cheese (ricotta and brie in this case). Do not overdo with the cheese. The same focaccia can be transformed into a pizza by adding tomato sauce to the onions. Cook at 400 F for ~10 min.

Focaccia con patate dolci, brie e rosmarino / Sweet potato, brie and rosemary focaccia
Finely slice two small sweet potatoes and place slices on the dough. Pour some olive oil on top, and sprinkle with salt (better if you have salt in large grains). Add pieces of brie cheese and in the end rosemary. Cook at 400 F for ~15 min.
Note: focaccia with potatoes is a very typical Italian thing. Why not try sweet potatoes, I wondered? And it was a good try :)

Pizza con capperi e acciughe / Capers and anchovie pizza
(there are no anchovies in this picture, sorry). Prepare a tomato sauce by sauteeing 2 cloves of garlic, finely cut, in olive oil, and adding diced canned tomatoes and salt. Cook for ~20 min and blend to eliminate pieces. Spread the sauce on the pizza. Add pieces of cheese (cheddar in this case), capers and anchovies. Cook at 400 F for ~10 min. It's delicious. It's called 'Napoletana', in Italy.

Festa per il Dr. Lucas :)

Last Sunday we threw a party in honor of Dr. Lucas! (Or Dr. Baby as Vlasta calls him :) ). It was really nice, most of the people we invited came, and we all talked and had fun for a long time. In the end, we remained sitting in a circle we our closest friends, and it was really nice. As always, the end of the parties is the best time :)
This is Dr. Lucas with his balloon :)
People brought some food, and we also made some.
This is an example of the wonderful food that our guests brought:
It was a layer of cream cheese with some very good tomato/spiced sauce on top, and pieces of shrimp. There were also breaded mushrooms, little cakes, and Lucas made some very good beef fajitas.
But.. the new edition of Weekend Cookbook challenge is on Party food, and so I decided that I'm going to partecipate to it for the first time, and I'm going to present the food I prepared for this party! I found out about the Weekend Cookbook challenge by chance, while I was looking at some blog I don't remember. It's a really nice idea and I was looking forward to participate to it. Every month, a theme is issued, and the theme of this month is Party food, as I mentioned.
So, this is the list of food I made:
Focaccia alla ricotta e pesto (Focaccia with pesto and ricotta)
Focaccia al formaggio, pomodori e olive (Focaccia with cheese, tomatoes and olives)
Bigne' alle olive e ricotta salata e bigne' al tonno (Puffs with olives and ricotta salata and puffs with tuna)
And on the sweet side:
Crostata alla ricotta (Ricotta tart)
Bigne' al cioccolato (Chocolate puffs)
Bigne' al mango (Mango puffs)
So if you're curious to see pictures and if you want the recipes, read more!! :)

What are the main characteristics of a good party food? It must be easy to eat, and it must be appetizing, so just the little bit you pick each time must be so good that you will want more of it :)
On the savory side, one of things I like best to make for parties is focaccia.
For people who don't know, focaccia is the 'white' version of pizza. White because it doesn't have tomato sauce, like all pizza usually has. Moreover, focaccia is thicker and softer than pizza. It's better for parties than pizza, because it's easier to eat. It's best when hot but it's good also cold. It usually doesn't have time to get cold, though, because it gets eaten very quickly :)
So this time I made focaccia con ricotta e pesto:
And focaccia con pomodori, formaggio e olive:
I wrote how to make focaccia on another post, but I'll repeat the recipe here, also because I slightly modified the doses and the timing (I'm getting a lot of experience with baking and bread lately).
So, for the dough:
Warm up 1 cup of water until about body temperature, dissolve 2 tsps yeast in it, stir, add 1 tsp sugar, stir and check that bubbles are produced. Leave on a side for ~ 5 min. In a big bowl, pour ~5 cups flour (you can use white, whole or a mixture of the two). Add the water and yeast mixture and mix. Add 2 tbsps olive oil. Then keep adding warm water and work the dough until it's elastic. It usually doesn't take more than a total of 1.5-2 cups of water but it depends on the flour you're using. Add ~1 tbsp salt and knead well the dough in order to incorporate it. Let rest for 1 to 2 hours. I usually spread the dough after this passage, and the pizza came out always good, but if you want a _really_ good focaccia you should be more patient and knead the dough a little bit after this time, and let it rise again for another hour or two. Then, spread the dough, usually you can do it with your hands but if you can't, use a rolling pin. I usually spread it on some foil with a bit of olive oil on it so it doesn't stick. You can add the ingredients you want on this dough, and then you should let the dough rest for at least another 10 min (in the quick version), up to 1 hour (in the long version). Warm up the oven to 400F, and cook for about 20-30 min (it depends on how thick you made it). Serve hot.

For the focaccia con pesto e ricotta, to make the topping, prepare some pesto without cheese: just blend together a bunch of basil, 2 cloves of garlic, and nuts. I used walnuts for this focaccia and it was delicious. In real pesto you should use pinenuts. Add ~2-3 tbsp olive oil and then add ~1/2-1 cup of ricotta. The doses depend on how much pesto/ricotta taste you want and how big is your focaccia surface :)
For the focaccia con pomodori, olive e formaggio.. well, obviously: slice 2 tomatoes, place them on the focaccia, cut some cheese that melts well (e.g. Munster is good, or Colby. I don't like Cheddar because it gives an orange color to the pizza!!. Use 1/2 cup to 1 cup depending on how cheesy you want it), and some olives, and place everything on the focaccia.

Bigne' con olive e ricotta salata and bigne' al tonno
The focaccia was really good, but these puffs are the things I was the most proud of, so if I had to pick only one of the things I made for the Weekend Challenge, I would choose these, and in particular, those with olives and ricotta salata.
To make the dough, I followed the recipe I already posted earlier for bigne'. Just, since I found they were too rich last time, I cut a little bit on the butter (which was already cut compared to the Southern Cooking cookbook I took them from..).
I invented the two stuffings, which I was very happy with.
For bigne' al tonno, I mixed some tuna (2 cans) with yogurt (~1/2 cup, very much approximatively), olive oil (1 tbsp), 1 apple cut into pieces, salt, ~1/2 cup ricotta and fennel seeds.
For bigne' alle olive, I mixed 1/2 cup spicy olives, cut into pieces, salt, 1/2 cup ricotta salata (it's a salty and hard ricotta cheese that I can find at Whole Foods), ~1/2 cup yogurt, and ~1/2 cup cottage cheese. These were really delicious. You can watch a close-up here:
On the dessert side, the crostata for Dr. Lucas was very good.
I didn't take a good picture of it, though, so you can half-see it in this picture where Dr. Lucas is cutting it :)
To make it, you should prepare a sort of crostata dough, like I explained in previous posts. In this case though I put a little less butter since there was going to be ricotta on top, and I added an egg and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. But you could use the same dough for crostata and it would be good. Spread the dough on the bottom of the baking pan (on a baking sheet), and around the borders (~1" high). Then, mix 2 cups of ricotta with 4 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 egg, beat very well, and make a nice smooth cream with it. In the most typical Italian crostata di ricotta there are also raisins in this cream, but I didn't want them because I wanted to add some chocolate on top for the decoration. Spread the ricotta cream on the dough, bake in the oven at 400F for ~20 min or until the crust that you see on the borders is golden brown. Decorate with chocolate on top.

But the best desserts were the bigne'.
Bigne' are a wonderful thing you buy in pastry stores in Italy, and they can be filled with just whipped cream, or with chocolate sauce, or with egg creams. They are wonderful and I was really happy I found out I could make them at home.
Again, the dough was the same as I posted earlier, just I didn't add any salt in this case. I prepared two fillings which I made up and were really delicious.
For the mango filling: blend 1/2 mango with 2 tbsp milk, 4 tbsp sugar (to taste), and ~ 1 cup ricotta. For the chocolate filling: melt two cubes of baker's chocolate with ~1 tbsp milk and 1 tbsp sugar. Let cool down. Beat ~1 cup heavy cream with ~4 tbsp sugar, until firm. Add the chocolate sauce to it and mix together gently. This sauce was so delicious. Eating it inside the bigne' it was a gastric orgasm :)

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 :)

Cena - lezione sui calzoni (con dessert di tiramisu estivo)

I haven't blogged in a while.. I miss it! I was way too busy at work. But at least, I managed to have some nice dinners, and even a weekend trip, during these past ten days.
Let's start with one of the dinners: with Jorge and Luisa, a dinner-lesson about how to make calzoni.

I make calzoni using the same dough that I make for pizza:
About 5-6 cups of flour
3 teaspoons of yiest, dissolved in warm (body temperature) water (about 1 and 1/2 cups), activated by adding a little bit of sugar in it and checking if it makes bubbles
1-2 tablespoons of oil
three pinches of salt
I work all these ingredients together until I have an elastic nice dough, then I leave it covered for about one hour, until it doubles its volume. At this point, I spread the dough.
If I make pizza (or focaccia, like we made that night), I put a ball of dough on the pan that I want to use, then I spread it with my hands, 'walking' with my fingers on it until it's spread all over. Over this dough, you can add whatever you want. If you make pizza, add a tomato sauce (made by cooking finely cut garlic in olive oil and adding diced canned tomatoes, and salt to it) as a base, and then whatever type of cheese, ham, olives, meat, fish, veggies you like. If you make a focaccia (ie white pizza), spread some oil with your fingers on top of it, and then add either pieces of onions, or olives, or tuna, or just some plain grains of salt.
Cook it in the oven at ~400C for ~15 minutes or until it's golden-brown.
(here you see half a white focaccia and an onion focaccia).
The focaccie were served with some beet salad and cheese under oil:
I found out that I love beet salads, and I made up a few of them already. This was prepared by baking some beets and some red potatoes, then after skinning them, I cut them, and I added some capers, olive oil, vinegar and finely cut garlic. It was really good. The cheese under oil is similar to what I already described, although I couldn't find the usual cheese from the farmers market, so I bought a similar goat cheese that tasted good with oil, garlic and parsley too.

To make calzoni, take the same dough and spread it with a rolling pin until quite thin. Make it in oval shapes, about 20 cm long. On a half of it, add the ingredients you want. We made some with pecorino and ham, some with mozzarella and tuna, some with tuna, onions and olives, some with gorgonzola and mozzarella, some with chilorio (a mexican spicy pork meat that Mexicans use on their pizza) and cheddar cheese... Then, fold the dough, so that the empty half covers the half with all the ingredients, and seal by refolding the borders. Cook in the oven at 400F for about 15-20 minutes.
Here you see an example of a whole calzone, some that we cut to share, and a small pizza with gorgonzola and pears that I made because Lucas loves it (and yeah, it is good) :)
The calzoni should be served with a bowl of sauce (finely cut garlic or onions sauteed in some olive oil, plus diced tomatoes and salt, cooked until the tomatoes are nearly dissolved) and I also add a bowl of pesto on a side. Everyone can put on top of their calzoni the sauce that they prefer.

For dessert, I made my completely modified version of tiramisu.
To make it, you need to have
About 15 Ladyfingers (or savoiardi) cookies
One pound ricotta
2 Eggs
half a cup of sugar
About two cups of strawberries
To make the sauce: beat the egg yolks with the sugar until you get a nice whitish cream. Add ricotta to it. Beat the whites until they get a very firm 'snowy' consistency. Add them to the rest of the cream.
Blend about half of the strawberries, add some water (about three tablespoons), and use this liquid to dip the cookies in. Cut into pieces the rest of the strawberries.
Make a first layer of cookies that you have soaked in the strawberry sauce (flip them at least twice in the sauce). Spread a layer of egg/ricotta cream on top. Then add half of the cut strawberries. Pour a little bit of strawberry sauce on top of everything. Then make a second layer of soaked cookies, add the cheese/egg cream, add the rest of the strawberries on top. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

The original recipe for tiramisu has mascarpone instead of ricotta, and doesn't have strawberries at all. Instead of soaking the cookies in strawberry sauce, soak them in a mixture of strong coffee and a little water. Add cookies, cheese sauce, cookies, cheese sauce and at the end sprinkle some cocoa powder on top before serving.

For the strawberry season, though, I prefer my strawberry version :)