Minestrina!!!!!

There are two events on the food-blog-sphere dedicated to some sort of comfort food these days: one is the 'Monthly Mingle', hosted by Meeta at 'What's for lunch, honey', themed in fact simply 'Comfort foods'; the other is the 'Click' event started by the Jugalbandi band, themed 'Liquid comfort'.
My decision is to present the food that has been the comfort food during all my youth, and still is. As it happens to be liquid, it goes greatly for both events. The thing is: it's really nothing fancy at all! But then again, otherwise it wouldn't be a true comfort food.. It's actually the fear of every Italian child, because it doesn't contain anything really super tasty, or sweet, or child appealing. But in my family, it has always been regarded as something really nice and comforting to have, and it reminds me of my mom and my grandma, who'd prepare it for all of us, especially when one was sick. I'm speaking of 'Minestrina' (lit. small minestra, which is kind of like a soup)! It's nothing but a very simple broth, with some small type of pasta in, and some olive oil and parmigiano cheese grated on top, if one needed to add some more nutrients to feel even better. It's been really hard to try to get a flattering picture of this really simple subject. This is the best I could come up with, and I'm going to present it to 'Click' in any case, although I realize it doesn't really compare to the other entries. :)

Minestrina
To make minestrina, you just need to have some vegetable broth (prepared with boiled onions and carrots and celeries, or simply with a vegetable bouillon), and boil some small pasta in it. The ratio of pasta to broth is all depending on your taste. I'm more for liquidy minestrina, but my dad likes more pasta, for example. Here you see stelline (little stars). Before serving, add some olive oil and parmigiano if you feel like. It needs to be eaten hot, and it will make you feel warmed up and comforted and loved!
It goes right to Meeta and Bee and Jai for their 'Monthly Mingle' and 'Click' events, respectively!

'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!

Zuppa giapponese con spaghettini 'somen'

Berkeley Bowl is an endless source of inspiration to try out new dishes. So recently I bought a few different types of noodles, just to experiment with different cuisines. Usually when I buy an ingredient I don't really know, I surf on the internet and find inspiration from various recipes that use it, and I either copy one or make up one.
This is my version of a Japanese Noodle Soup, using 'somen' noodles.
Somen are very thin wheat noodles:
(Image from wikipedia post on somen noodles).
My soup has an ingredient which I think is more Chinese than Japanese. It was another of the strange and inspiring things that I found at the Berkeley bowl and didn't really know how to use... mogua:
It's a sort of big cucumber, with a little hair on its skin. It looked like a squash, so I was going to use it in an Italian-style spaghetti dish. Luckily I tasted it before using it for the sauce. :) So I used part of it for a salad and part for this soup, after finding out that it's in fact used in soups cooked very slowly with meat. Of course there was no meat in my soup, but anyway, the taste was quite good :)
Zuppa di spaghetti in stile giapponese con mogua / Japanese-style noodle soup with mogua
Ingredients:
A packet of somen noodles (5 bundles)
10 shitake mushrooms
2 green bell peppers
3 sheets of nori
1/2 mogua
1 packet of tofu (1 lb)
Japanese 'soba' sauce (fish-based soy sauce)
Soy sauce
5 anchovies
Vegetable bouillon
Procedure:
Heat up water in a big pot (~1/2 gallon, I think). Add the nori sheets, cut into pieces, some soba sauce, soy sauce, the anchovies, the bouillon and salt to taste. This is going to be the broth base. Cut the peppers and the mogua into small pieces and add them to the broth. When the peppers and mogua are almost cooked (~20 min), add the mushrooms cut into pieces and the tofu, diced. Cook for another 10 minutes. In another pot, boil some water and throw the somen noodles in it. They'll be ready in 3 minutes. Drain them and add them to the soup.
Enjoy! It's a really good and Japanese-tasting soup. :)

Zuppa di cavolfiore verde

I wanted to make a soup to eat with the wonderful zucchini bread :) - so I improvised this:

Zuppa di cavolfiore verde e yogurt di latte di capra/ Green cauliflower and goat milk yogurt soup
It's a thick cream made mostly with cauliflower and goat milk yogurt. I've had this yogurt in the fridge for a while. It's good but you cannot really have it for breakfast, it's like eating goat cheese.. so I already used it in some very good dips, curries, or in this soup. It gives a little bit of a taste of goat cheese without adding the fat of the cheese to the dishes you make.
So to make this soup, saute half an onion in olive oil, add the green cauliflower in pieces, sautee them, and then add enough yogurt to almost cover all the pieces. Close the lid and cook for ~10 minutes. At this point I added 4 anchovies, to add a little bit more flavor to the soup. Continue to cook for another 20 min. Blend all the pieces of cauliflower and onion, and add hot water to the desired consistency. Serve with some good bread (like the zucchini bread!!). It's very good, it has an unusual, refreshing and comforting taste.

Pozole fatto da Luisa

A long time ago, when Lucas came to visit me in Raleigh, Luisa invited us for dinner in order to let us try this delicious Mexican soup, called Pozole. I have time only now to post a picture and the recipe Luisa gave me for it! Thanks Luisa!!!!!!!!! It's really delicious.

Pozole
Ingredients
3 pounds of Pork meat with bones (I use the Spine/back)
4 garlic cloves
1 white onion
1 can of crushed tomatoes (or 4-5 fresh red tomatoes)
1 medium size can of hominy (lime cooked corn kernels)
3 huajillo peppers (dried)
3 ancho o pasilla peppers (dried)
black pepper
salt
dried oregano
roman lettuce
red radishes
limes

The meat/broth:
In a pan, bring 3-4 liters of water to boil. Add Salt, 2 garlic cloves, half of the onion, black pepper and the pork, a dash of oregano. Cook the meat until is soft.
In another pot, boil the chilies (peppers) until they soften, then remove seeds and “pedicels” from peppers. Grind in blender with some of the meat broth, tomatoes, 2 garlic cloves and half the onion. And this salsa to the broth, keep boiling. Also add the hominy. Let it boil for 30 minutes.
I do the next separated, this way is easier to remove the bones, but in my home town we actually serve bones and meat together. Once the meat is cooked, remove it and transfer to another pot, add 1 liter water, add salt, and boil for another 30 minutes, until it separates from the bones. Remove bones and smash the meat. Remove the bone if you like…

To serve, serve the red broth with hominy, add meat. Add slices of lettuce and radishes, sprinkle some oregano and with onion cut in little squares. Also you may add some lime juice. Serve with the tostadas. In Guanajuato state, they also put some sour cream on the tostadas.
Buen provecho!

Della serie: cene italo/spagnole

Our italian/spanish dinner this week was hosted by Crissy, and a new nationality was represented: Peru, thanks to David :)
We're getting better and better and this time we spoke Spanish almost all the time, and Luisa tried to read the Italian cookbook that I brought. We exchanged sayings too .. for example: how do you say 'to be extremely tired' in a colorful way? Lucas, Crissy and I couldn't come out with an American or Italian saying, whereas we found out that in Mexico they say
'cansado como una cucaracha fumigada' (tired as a fumigated cockcroach, stanco come uno scarafaggio spruzzato con l'insetticida) :) :)
And in Peru they say
'cansado como el caballo de los bandidos' (tired as the horse of the bandits, stanco come il cavallo dei banditi) .
So if some readers want to help.. can you find an Italian/American saying for this?!?
The dinner had a 'Halloween' theme, since we are so close to October 31st. So here is our guest Crissy holding the bleeding skull:

More pictures and some recipes below.

For the dinner we were supposed to bring food typical of our countries. So I took the book that my Dad gave me: 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte, Ricettario a Fumetti' by Alberto Calosso and Piero Gallarino (e' bellissimo! Chiunque si interessa di cucina dovrebbe prendere questo libro, e' davveri simpatico, c'e' un pazzo cuoco-cartone che produce ottimi piatti e li illustra :) ). It's a book about cooking from Piemonte, my region. I took a recipe for a soup, because I thought there would be too much other food to make a pasta.
It was really good, so I share the recipe with you (slightly cut down on the butter).
Zuppa di cipolle (Onion soup)
Cut very finely 2 kg onions (~5 medium/big onions). In a pan, put 50g (1/4 stick) of butter and melt it, add the onions and cook very gently for ~20 min. In the meanwhile, melt 30 g (~2 tbs) butter in another pan, add a spoon of flour, and ~ 1 l vegetable broth (I added this much as the recipe said, but I think it's too much, so I had to cook it for a while later to evaporate some liquid) and salt. After the onions are done, blend them to obtain a sort of mousse. Add to the broth. Bring to boil and cook until it's of the thickness you like. Then, add 3 tbsp sour cream (panna da cucina, se ce l'avete a disposizione), mix, and serve hot with crostini (pieces of bread cut and toasted in a pan where some butter (~1/2 tbsp) was melted previously).

Also Lucas cooked! He made cornbread, the style that his grandmother used to make it:
Lucas's grandma's cornbread

Mix 1 lb cornmeal, 1 broccoli bunch cut into pieces, salt, 1 small onion sautee, 1/4 lb melted butter, 12 oz cottage cheese, 4 eggs beaten. Put in a pan, so that it's about 1 1/2 inch thick. Bake at 400 F for 30 min. It was very good!!!

Luisa made a chinese dish, which she explained is commonly cooked in Mexican households of her region, due to the strong influence of Chinese immigrants.
It was very good, but I can't remember the name!

Mariana made the 'Sopa de gato' (soup of the cat), which is neither a soup nor does it contain cat meat :) - but it's a stir fry of tortilla, chorizo and cream. Very yummy :)
(sorry, the picture is blurry).

And Crissy made a wonderful 'Italian roast', which was beef and vegetables slowly cooked in a crockpot with tomatoes and spices for 10 hours. It was delicious.


The dessert was a mixed cheesecake (we didn't make it though) :)
Very good, I couldn't resist trying transparent slices of 3 of the 4 flavors.

I also made another dessert, taken from the Piemontese cookbook, but since I transformed it into a Halloween dessert, I'll describe it in another post.

I just wanted to post a few pictures of the guests of this dinner:

Crissy and David
Luisa and Jorge
Mariana and Trino
Marta and Lucas