Budino di riso al vino e cardamomo

Unfortunately we didn't have internet connection at home last week, so I couldn't finish to post my story about Germany. I will do so soon, but first, I want to write at least a few posts with some recipes, as I realize I'm missing almost all the food blog events I usually love to take part to! I guess I'm still readjusting from the move+trip.. So, let's not waste any more time, and let's start with a cardamom-centered invention of mine, prepared for the 'Think Spice' event, started by Sunita, and hosted this month at 'Simple Indian Food'! I love the smell and flavor of cardamom, and I thought I could use it in a special rice pudding that I prepared. It was ready before the deadline of the event, but now I'm past it.. we'll see if it's still accepted. :)
I prepared this pudding based on a Mexican recipe, although in the original there's no cardamom or wine, and raisins are added at the end.

Budino di riso al vino con cardamomo, in tre vesti diverse / Rice pudding with wine and cardamom, three styles
To make the basic version, cook one cup of long grain rice in 3 cups of water, with 1 stick of cinnamon, grated zest of one lemon, and a pinch of salt. Cook covered until almost all the water has been absorbed. Then, remove the cinnamon stick, and add 2 cups of milk and 2 cups of red wine, and ~1 cup of sugar (more or less, to taste). Add 2 tsp ground cardamom, and cook until it thickens. This little amount of rice produced a huge volume of pudding, as it absorbs all the liquid you add. So, there is enough to divide into three parts for fun! To one part, I just added strawberries (when it was cold). To a second part, I added dark, bitter, chocolate pieces. To a third part, I added a teaspoon of heavy cream. I struggled to decide which taste I preferred. I think the one with strawberries, but all of them were an absolute delight. Highly recommended!

Looking forward to reading all the other entries for the 'Think spice, think cardamom' event!

Interessante minestra vietnamita

When Sunita launched 'Star Anise' as the theme of her 'Think Spice' event, I was really happy. In fact, I bought a little bag with this wonderfully-looking spice, and still didn't get to try it. I had no exact idea about what to do with it. It seems like an anise-tasting spice would go well in a dessert, but it's Lent, and I decided I wouldn't eat desserts for this time of the year (ehm, I'm not that strict, but I didn't want to make one myself, at least, unless there was a really super special occasion). So, looking for savory recipes involving star anise online, I found out that the Vietnamese soup 'Pho' is intensively flavored with this spice. Traditionally, it is made with beef. Still, I managed to find a vegetarian version that I preferred to try. What inspired me a lot about this dish was the use of spices like star anise and cloves, and also, the fact that it's served with a lot of 'complementary items' such as bean sprouts, green onions, lots of herbs, sauces, which everyone can add at his/her own taste. I thought it was a really neat idea.. so here it is, if you want to give it a shot too!

Pho vegetariano / Vegetarian Pho
The original version is here. I didn't change much of it, but I'll report it here for easiness.

Prepare the broth: quarter a small onion (do not peel it), halve 2 shallots, unpeeled, mince 8 garlic cloves (I peeled this), and roast them in a pot together with 4 cloves and 2 star anise pods (I added a little more), one 1" piece of fresh ginger, finely cut, and 2 small sticks of cinnamon. Mix every once in a while and keep roasting till the onions start to brown. Then, add 3 tbsp soy sauce and 8 cups of vegetable broth (I used 2 bouillons and 8 cups of water). Simmer over low heat for ~25 min. Then, filter and discard the solids. I think the pieces of onions and shallots were still quite good, so I kept those. Taste the broth and add salt if you'd like to. In the meanwhile, boil ~3/4 lb rice noodles in a large amount of water. According to the recipe, one needs 20 minutes to cook them, but 10 were enough for me. Drain. Stir fry 8 oz of pieces of tofu in another pan.
When ready, place ~1/4 of noodles in a bowl, add 1/4 of the tofu, and ladle 1/4 of broth on top. Repeat for 3 other bowls. Serve together with finely cut scallions, bean sprouts, Hoisin sauce, chilli sauce, lime wedges, whole leaves of fresh mint, cilantro and/or basil leaves (mint is the best, in my opinion).

This soup is an absolute delight. The taste of the anise and cloves is wonderful in the broth. Pay attention not to add to much hoisin or chilli sauce, or you'll cover it. The mint, scallions and bean sprouts are so refreshing. It's a feast, and it's so pretty that it deserves to be shown again.
Of course this recipe goes to Suganya for her 'Think Spice' event, thanking her for pushing me to find a good use for such a wonderful spice.

Bagna caoda

When Sunita launched garlic as her 'Think Spice' theme, I felt immediately excited and involved: garlic is definitely the Italian spice, the only one that we really use a lot (together with a few other ones). So, for once, I felt perfectly at ease with a spice theme! But then I started wondering: garlic is so widespread in Italian cuisine, which dish doesn't contain it? There are some dishes that definitely would not exist without garlic, which everybody knows and loves: pesto, tomato sauce (here called 'marinara'), bruschetta. But for this event, I wanted to present something that was an 'ode' to garlic, and if possible, not too well known outside Italy. That's how I thought about 'bagna caoda'. Literally, the name of this dish means 'hot bath': and it is, in fact, a hot, extremely garlicky bath, for vegetables! It's a dish traditional from Piemonte, my region, and it's eaten in winter time. So, what could be more perfect for the 'Think Spice' event? I prepared it yesterday, and we threw a large party in its honor. It was a lot of fun! And to my surprise, everybody loved bagna caoda: I had prepared some back-up pizzas, just in case, but they didn't seem to be necessary..
So here is the recipe for bagna caoda. As you will see, it requires a huge amount of garlic and olive oil, and anchovies. I prepared also a vegetarian version, without anchovies, with chili peppers instead, which was also quite good, and appreciated by vegetarians and people who didn't like anchovies. The whole bagna caoda experience involves a few particular vegetables to dip in, together with some more common ones. Luckily enough, Berkeley Bowl provided also the 'particular' ones!

Bagna caoda

Ingredients for about 15 people, or a few cans:
8 heads of garlic (not cloves, heads!!)
1 lb anchovies under salt (I found them imported from Italy, in a huge 1 kg can, again at the Berkeley Bowl - they should be whole, preserved only under salt and nothing else)
~3/4 liter olive oil

Vegetables: potatoes, onions, peppers, celery, beets, fennels, Jerusalem artichokes, cardoons, cabbage, turnips are traditional. We also added mushrooms, parsnips, carrots, zucchini, celery roots, broccoli, brocco-flowers.

To make the sauce, peel all the garlic, and cut it into thin slices. Clean the anchovies by removing the central bone and interior parts, and then wash them from the salt. Put all the garlic pieces and anchovies in a pot, and cover with oil. You should use about 3/4 liter. Cook on very low heat for about two hours, until the garlic is very soft, and then squish all the pieces with a spoon, till a sort of olive oil/garlic/anchovie paste is obtained. You should add a generous piece of butter to this sauce before serving it, but I forgot to do it, and I must say, it was delicious also in my 'healthier' version.

For the vegetarian version, cut the garlic into slices, and cover with oil and cook in a similar way. Add pieces of chili peppers and salt to taste while cooking. The problem of this version is that the garlic tends to clump separately from the oil (apparently the anchovies have also a 'surfactant'-like function...). It's good in any case. If you want, you can add some cream (the famous 'panna da cucina' which I already mentioned in this post), to help the formation of a paste. This will make it a little less traditional, but the most 'modern' versions of bagna caoda add this cream in any case, to smooth the taste of the garlic.

In the meanwhile, prepare the vegetables: bake the potatoes, onions, beets, turnips, parsnips and peppers. Slice all the vegetables that need to be (the baked ones and the raw ones), or simply cut into 'handy' pieces the veggies such as carrots or celery or cardoons. The goal is to have pieces that one can dip in the sauce and eat conveniently.

The best way to serve bagna caoda is having it on the table on top of the traditional burners, such as those used for fondue, with a candle in it: the bagna needs to remain caoda (=calda, i.e. hot, in Piemontese dialect), while you eat it. Our arrangement was a little less elegant, but still worked..:
The bagna caoda was set on an oven rack, with a candle below it.. :)

At this point, you're set: start dipping the veggies in the sauce, and eat them! The most fun part is to try the taste of the sauce with all the different vegetables. Here is only a small portion of the vegetables we had:
Everybody brought some veggies, according to what I suggested, and we ended up with a real feast for the eyes and the stomach. I baked also some bread, which is also delicious to dip in the sauce, of course.

I'm sure someone is curious about those weird vegetables that I named above. So here they are:

Jerusalem Artichokes
These are apparently also known as 'sunchokes' in English. Their Italian/Piemontese name is 'tobinambur', 'topinabo', and variations on this theme. They look like potatoes, but they are much crispier. You can eat them raw, baked, or in casseroles. We baked them for the bagna caoda, and they acquire a very delicate and nutty taste, this way.

Cardoons
(picture from 'The seasonal chef', as I forgot to take mine).
These are called 'cardi' in Italy, and there is actually a special variety that one should use for bagna caoda, called 'cardo gobbo', which is 'hunchback' (='gobbo') compared to the straight one that you see in this picture. It's a really strange vegetable. Bitter and tough, better to eat it raw to avoid the bitterness become intolerable. Forget about eating the leaves, too, they are super bitter. In any case, they go nicely with the strong contrasting taste of bagna caoda.

Well, so here is my (late) entry to Sunita's event, and I hope everybody enjoyed reading about this traditional dish from the 'cuisine for the poor' of Piemonte! Check the roundup here!

Mele con vino, cannella e noci

I've been wanting to participate to Sunita's event 'Think Spice' in a while. I love spices, but I'm not used to cooking with them. Spices are not part of Italian cuisine much. We simply use olive oil, garlic, basil, parsley and oregano in most of our dishes.. I really want to learn how to cook Indian food, and how to master the use of more spices. So I love reading Sunita's rich roundups and thinking about making some of that gorgeous food.
But - there are actually very few extra spices that show up in some Italian recipes here and there, and cinnamon is one of them! So this time I can confidently present a truly Italian recipe (well, with my twists, of course), to Sunita's 'Think Spice' event centered on cinnamon this month.
The traditional name for this recipe would be 'Mele cotte', or cooked apples. It can actually be made with either apples or pears, provided they are firm, and if possible, small. They are cooked in wine, and cinnamon is added to it. My twists consist in using honey instead of sugar to make the syrup, and adding honey roasted walnuts.

Mele al vino e cannella con noci al miele / Apples with wine and cinnamon and honey roasted walnuts
Sorry if my doses are very lousy. I did this mostly by eye. In any case, take ~10 small apples, wash them, don't bother peeling them or coring them. Place them in a pot and add ~1.5 /2 cups wine. You can choose whatever you want. Red wine is recommended, as it gives the syrup a nice color, but in this case I used a mixture of white and red. In my opinion you don't need to use really super good wine. I had a few bottles open, leftover from parties, and so I mixed them up to cook this. Add ~2 tbsp honey (more or less, depending on how sweet you like your desserts). Add 2 cinnamon sticks. Cook, cover, until the apples are soft and the wine sauce is reduced to a syrup. If the apples are already done and the sauce is not dense enough yet, cook on high heat uncovered for a few minutes. If vice versa the wine is getting low and the apples are not done yet, add more wine. It took about 1h to cook my apples.
In the meanwhile, add ~1 tbsp butter in another pot, and 1 tbsp honey. Add ~15 walnuts broken into pieces. Cook for ~5-10 minutes, until the walnuts are deliciously covered by the butter/honey mixture.
Serve the apples warm or cold, covered by syrup, and sprinkled with the walnuts. They are a delicious and light dessert.
This recipe will also be one of my entries for my own event, the Fresh Produce of the Month, centered on Apples. If you haven't sent me your entry yet, please do so! It'll be a fun roundup. :)