Bugfest

Every year in Raleigh there is the 'Bugfest' around this time. I never went there before and I thought this may be my last (sigh) occasion to visit it. So, Luisa, Jorge and I went. It was held at the Natural Science Museum and surrounding square and roads. I really really enjoyed it and I recommend anyone (children and adults) to go visit it next year! There were many bugs, alive and not, from all over the world, and very nice and competent people explaining about their habits and life. You could also touch some of them..
and eat some others!!! Yeah, you wouldn't believe, but this is what I actually ATE:


Bean and worm salad, bean and cricket dip, ant-chillada, quiche with larvae and ants in amber... It was quite hard to start, then I decided that it wouldn't kill me if the other people were eating them.. I couldn't really taste the larvae and crickets, but the ants gave a sort of acidic addition to the chicken/cheese dish, and the worms had a very distinguished smokey flavor. The worms were the most difficult to eat - not for the consistency (they weren't soggy or too crunchy) , but just because it was a flavor that I never tasted before, and I didn't feel very well thinking that it came from the worm. :)
For the rest, I found out that the Natural Museum of Science is absolutely wonderful and I would like to go back there soon. They have a wonderful collection of plants, animals, dinosaurs, fossils... This guy is the most complete Acrocanthosaurus ever found:
When we went there, there was also a Seashell exposition, so I will finish this post with some more beautiful pictures than the ones of the bugs :)
You could buy those shells and many others.
Whereas this won the first prize for a seashell artistic composition.

Il decalogo

Lucas and I just finished to watch all the episodes of 'The Decalogue', by the Polish director Krystof Kyewloswki. I was really touched by it, and in particular by a few of the movies.
It was originally a TV series: ten movies as the ten commandments. The movies, according to the director, don't have a direct relationship with the commandments, although they do vaguely follow the order that they are expressed in the Catholic version. Still, most of them actually have many more than one theme. They are all provocative, and poetic at the same time. The theme that binds all of them is that they depict the lives of people who live in different apartments built in a few of those huge buildings omnipresent in the big town suburbs. In one of the movies it's explicitely said that it's amazing how many interesting stories develop in those buildings. So, in the end, it's a series about humans, their feelings, the relation between humans and God, the fundamental questions that we all face, issues that we all could have to deal with, if we were put in some contexts. I don't want to spoil the vision of the movies by writing exactly what they are about here, but if someone wants to know more or has already seen the movies and wants to read about some symbols and so, there are some very interesting descriptions on Wikipedia, both in English and in Italian (the latter much longer than the former). If you want to choose only a few movies to watch in order to decide if you'd like to see the whole series or not, I'd suggest watch 2, 4, 5 and/or 6.

Baby shower

Since I don't think my Italian readers know what a baby shower is, I'm going to explain it for them here.
Un 'baby shower' (lett. doccia del bambino) non ha in realta' niente a che vedere con acqua e lavaggi di bambini :). C'e' un tipo di festa in inglese che si definisce 'shower', e che in realta' si riferisce al fatto che il festeggiato viene coperto da una 'doccia' di regali. Un 'baby shower' e' una festa di questo tipo che viene offerta in onore di una donna che sta per partorire un bambino.. gli invitati portano dei regali per il bambino nascituro. Questo e' cio' che io sapevo prima di andare ad una reale baby shower..
Ok, so, I guess every American knows what a baby shower is. Still, what I had understood of a baby shower was not exactly what I saw. First of all, I didn't know that a baby shower was only for girls. Instead, it is. Also, I didn't know it was a tradition to have games.. and apparently, this is a fundamental part of the party!
Well, anyway, a few weeks ago we had this baby shower that I still didn't speak about for my dear friend Yan Li. She's actually going to give birth any time soon, now. It was a nice party, and she was indeed showered with gifts.
I had some problems during the games.. I really didn't know all the words related to the baby world in English, so.. but I actually managed to guess close enough how big the waste of Yan Li was, making a belt of toelet paper for her... ehm....such is life. :)

Un blog con foto e pensieri interessanti

I recently visited this 'blog of note': strangers among us.
I also do 'people watching' (NB per gli Italiani: non sono una guardona!! In inglese c'e' un termine per tutto.. people watching e' osservare le persone - suona simile a bird watching.. ma c'e' un interesse diverso nell'immaginare le vite delle persone rispetto a quelle degli uccelli, per quanto interessanti anche queste ultime possano essere :) ). I try to capture some pictures of interesting people here and there, but I never did it so systematically. I think it's a nice idea to share on a blog.

Hackosphere

I just found this wonderful blog, which will be very useful to all bloggers. He has really neat options to use if you want to improve your blog features.
I just put the peek-a-boo option for the labels. Try to click on my labels and you'll see it at work. I'm now going to label all my recipes. I hope sometime we can have a 'sublabel' option, so I can categorize them. :)

Due libri provenienti dall'Oriente

I really believe that knowledge brings to understanding, and that this should be sought in every aspect of our life. I was saddened when I read the words that the newspapers reported today about the Pope's mention of the bizantine emperor and Mohamad.. I am Catholic, and I feel unconfortable when I see something like that. I cannot understand very well, considering that so many efforts of the Church are spent towards improving the dialogue between countries and religions. Wasn't the dream of John-Paul II to have a meeting in Jerusalem with a Jewish Rabbi and a Muslim religious authority? Anyway, I hope that we will continue to promote dialogue and understanding, especially in this moment where so much hate is present in the world.

Anyway, long introduction to say that I just finished to read two very interesting books written by Oriental authors.
The first is called 'The White Castle: a novel', by Orham Pamuk (I actually read it in Italian. The Italian title is 'Il castello bianco').
This was one of my mom's gifts for my birthday. It's a very interesting novel, sometimes a bit hard to read, because the style of the author is very descriptive.. but probably very appropriate for the story. The novel is set in the XVII century. An Italian guy is made prisoner by the Turkish and is able to escape death by showing his knowledge in medicine (sometimes less real than what he pretends to have). He is taken as slave by a sort of scholar, acquainted with the sultan, who's fascinated by the books that he was bringing with himself, and by what he knows, not only as scientific knowledge, but also personally, as he lived in such a different country. They have a very strange relation, where it's not always clear who's the 'slave' and who's the 'master'. The 'master' decides that they have to find out the truth about men and themselves by writing together about everything that they did. This becomes an extremely defatiguating task, in the end, for both of them. At the same time, the sultan requires new ideas and books from the master, and he actually has the 'slave' write them for him. The two people, moreover, also look very much alike physically. So, one of the main themes is also the sense of identity/identification, and there is a very special ending that I'm not going to give away. In the end, I think the book had some extremely interesting ideas, and is worth reading it especially in this moment where the dialogue between Western/Eastern cultures (and Christian/Muslim in particular) seems to be so hard.

The second book that I just finished was a gift by my sister for my birthday. It was called 'The kite runner' by Khaled Osseini (Italian title: 'Il cacciatore di aquiloni' - and again I read it in Italian).
This book is absolutely amazing, and I would recommend it to everyone. It's not difficult to read at all, and it's actually hard to stop reading it. Although, it has some very rough scenes that can be disturbing. It's the story of a boy (Amir) that grows up in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is born in a well-off family, but his mother dyes giving birth to him. He loves and admires his father, but it's very difficult for him to gain his attention and esteem. He grows up with another boy (Hassan), who's an 'hazara', considered as an inferior race, and who's the son of the housekeeper. They are very close, but in his head, our protagonist is not completely sure he can call him 'friend', since he's from a lower class/race. On the contrary, his father treats him as a son, and is a very strong believer in people's equality, and he's a corageous man, never submitted to anyone, including the religious people who are slowly taking power in Afghanistan. The book goes throughout the history of Afghanistan, from the king to the occupation by Russians to the took of power by the Talebans. When the Talebans arrive and impose awfully strict and inhumane rules, the family escapes. But before this, some terrible thing occurs in the life of Amir and Hassan, that separates them abruptly, and burdens Amir with a huge sense of guilt. When the family escapes from Afghanistan, they go to California (close to San Francisco), and have to start a life from the beginning. The memory of Afghanistan tends to fade.
Amir grows up, gets married, and has almost forgotten Hassan until a phone call reaches him.. and he has to go back to Afghanistan. Read the book if you want to see how it ends. It's wonderful because it really makes you have a feeling for what the poor Afghan people have gone through in the last century of their history.. and also because it's a great description of human soul. We are forced to understand the reasons behind the characters' actions, and we don't know if we would have behaved differently in that context. And still, there are enough different characters to let you understand that actions are not simply driven by the cultural context. It's also a story of human growth, and it deals with the relation between man and God, and men and religion. I've been really touched by this book, and I really hope that at least someone who reads this post is going to read it.

Good bye to Marthalicia and Mariano

Before leaving to California, we met with Marthalicia and Mariano to say goodbye to them. We had a few nice evenings with them. One was at Fat Daddy's, where Trino was playing!
He and his band are really good! And we also had a good time playing pool. Here are the two sisters!

Then, we invited them at our place for some dessert. I made panna cotta and cannoli, and since they were very good, I'll share the recipe here.

Panna cotta ('cooked cream')
Italian version:
1/2 l di latte
1/2 di panna (da cucina va bene lo stesso)
1 bustina di vaniglia
1 bicchierino di rhum
100 g di zucchero
fogli di colla di pesce per 750 g liquido

Far caramellare 3 cucchiai di zucchero nel contenitore
Unire tutti gli ingredienti (tranne il rhum)
(la colla di pesce la devi fare ammollare un po’ prima, poi scolarla e rimetterla dentro)
Far bollire a fuoco lento sempre mescolando per 5 minuti. Aggiungere il rhum nell’ultimo minuto.
Versare sul caramello.
Variante al caffè: versare all’ultimo minuto ½ bicchierino di brandy, 1 tazzina di caffè (istantaneo anche) forte e un cucchiaino di caffè vero macinato fine.

English version:
Mix together 4 cups milk, 4 cups heavy cream (you can change the milk/cream ratio if you want it a bit less fat), 1 tsp vanilla syrup, 1/2 cup sugar, gelatine mix (I used an Italian version, so you should look on the American boxes how much you need for this amount of liquid). Bring to boil slowly and let cook for 5 min. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup rum to taste. In the meanwhile, caramelize some sugar on the bottom of a pan, and then pour the mixture on it. Let stand in the fridge overnight.
If you want to make a coffee version, add 2 shots of espresso together with the brandy.

Cannoli
I bought the shells. The stuffing is made by mixing with an electrical mixer ricotta, powdered sugar and some drops of orange blossom water. Ricotta/sugar ratio can vary according to taste. Then add some chocolate chips in it. And if you had some candied fruits, that'd be perfect.

Trip to California

I haven't posted in while, because we were out of town. I had some interviews in Berkeley, hopefully to get a post-doc there. I still don't know if I will get the position or not, but the trip has been really wonderful.
We had two free days, and on one of them we went to San Francisco. I loved it! It's one of the few towns that I've been in the US where I found some fascinating details in every place I walked... and we walked for many hours!
It's an amazing town, with so many different parts. I'll show a few pictures here, but please visit my picture website to see more.
Following our own visit.. here is the Market Square, and in particular, some strange Asian vegetables that I don't know the name of.
A lot of the stands sold Asian vegetables. In fact, in San Francisco there is the biggest China town outside China. Here is its entrance.
There is also a very large Italian community, so it's actually possible to drink a good caffe' or cappuccino.. But the nicest thing is the bay. And this is a view of North Hill (one of the many, many hills that San Francisco lays on).
We had a good lunch at a Chinese restaurant where they served 'Dim Sum', which I never had before: they pass around with carts full of steamed or fried little things, and you just choose what you want. It's quite nice :)... and our dinner was also wonderful.. if you want a really good Sushi, go to Sushi-Man (731 Bush Street). It was the best Sushi we ever had.
I really liked Berkeley too, and I think it would be nice to live there for a while. It's much smaller than San Francisco, obviously, but it has many nice residential areas, and a very nice downtown part. It's walkable everywhere, you can choose if you want to walk in smaller streets surrounded by small houses, with small gardens filled with amazing flowers, or on more busy streets closer to campus and downtown.. there are plenty of cafes and here and there you see people that seem like they just came out of the 70s. I loved it. I think I will fit there well. :)
This is just an example of one of the nice garden-houses:
And this is inside one of the cafes..
lost of really studious people!
Also the campus is very nice, there are lots of very old trees, such as in this eucaliptus grove:
There are also some quite impressive buildings:
So, let's keep our fingers crossed, and hope that the prof that I applied to finds some funding to hire me.. :)

Cena con Trino, Mariana, Marthalicia e Mariano

Mariana's sister Marhtalicia and her husband Mariano are going to leave soon, and go back to their wonderful country, Mexico. So I really wanted to have them try an Italian dinner before they left. They came over yesterday night, and it was a wonderful night. We had good wine, good food, good company, and all the time we wanted! I really needed this, after a very stressful work week.
So, Friday morning, I started the bread, before going to work, and we came back home not too late (around 5), so I managed to cook the rest. The night before, I prepared the dessert.
So, here is the menu, and the recipes, for my affectionate readers :)

Cena italiana con i cari amici messicani

Antipasto: Insalata Caprese
(Caprese Salad) e Insalata alla Marta (Insalata Marta's style)
Primo: Trecce dell'orto con il sugo della nonna (Garden braids with granny's sauce)
Secondo: Saltimbocca alla romana con zucchine gialle all'aceto balsamico(Saltimbocca roman style with yellow squash with balsamic vinegar)
Dessert: Melone bianco e mango con sorbetto di anguria (Honeydew Melon and mango with Watermelon sorbet)
Malaga Mangia-e-bevi (Malaga eat-and-drink)
Caffe' (coffee)
Pussacaffe': China (digestive: China)

Vini (wines): Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon (from Columbia Valleys) and Vina Rubican (from Navarra, Spain)

Insalata caprese
It's just a salad with tomatoes, mozzarella and olive oil. The secret is that you need to have good mozzarella (forget about the so-called mozzarella cheese that you find in the grocery stores usually and comes in squares! Mozzarella must come as balls, immersed in a milky liquid. Otherwise it's not mozzarella!!!!) - and a good olive oil (and we had some still from Tuscany, so that was very nice).
The name of the salad doesn't come from 'capra', i.e. goat, but from 'Capri', the island in front of Naples where supposedly this salad was first invented.

Insalata alla Marta
One of my invented salads. Just cabbage, olives, walnut pieces, and mango pieces. Dressed with vinegar and olive oil.

Both the salads needed some bread to go with:
I already posted the recipe for the bread. In this case, I made the bread in the morning and left it raise during the day, outside. When I came back home, I folded it, and left it raise longer, then made two 'balls' out of it, left them raise more, and cooked them before the guests arrived. It didn't raise as much as when I did all this in a row, but it was really good. It was really soft inside..

Trecce dell'orto con il sugo della nonna
This nicely colored pasta was given to me by Joanna for my birthday. The name 'trecce dell'orto' was on the package, and the colors of the pasta was due to tomato, basil, spinach, and squid ink (for the black ones) :) It looked really nice, and also the consistency and the taste was really good. The sauce was extremely simple: make a pesto, as usual, with garlic, pinenuts, parmigiano and basil. In a pan, saute' some garlic in olive oil, add canned diced tomatoes and sault, and cook for about half an hour. Add the pesto to it and cook for another five minutes. That's it! Serve it hot on hot pasta, cooked al dente! Everybody loved this pasta, whic is so simple to make :)

Saltimbocca alla romana
I had the idea for this dish from my mom. She likes to make these saltimbocca (literally, jump-in-the-mouth) because they're very quick both to prepare and to cook. In my case, they were a bit less quick.. because she can buy very thin veal meat, in Italy, whereas here, the veal meat is as expensive as gold ($20/lb.. come dire, 40 euro al kilo!!!!).. So I figured I would ask for very thin pork slices, which I once got in Whole Foods. Unfortunately, this time the Whole Food guy was not as good of a butcher, so he cut the slices quite thick. So, I hammered them down!! :) The taste was good, in the end, it was just a bit longer to prepare and to cook.
So, to make them, in the end: take some very thin slices of meat, cut them in squares (about 2 inches*1 inch), then put a little bit of cheese, and if you want, a piece of ham in it, then fold the meat, put a little leaf of sage and seal all this with a toothpick. I made three types: one with just queso cotija (a mexican cheese close to parmigiano, in texture, but stronger in flavor), one with asiago cheese and ham, and one with mozzarella cheese and ham. My mom makes them with parmigiano and prosciutto, but Whole Foods prosciutto was disgusting, so I didn't buy it (again, for $20/lb...). So I had Virginia ham, which is quite good.
You should cook them right before you eat them, just sautee them in a little bit of hot olive oil for about 5-10 minutes (depends on how thick you made them). They really want to jump in your mouth, afterwards! :)

Zucchine gialle all'aceto balsamico
Saute some onions in olive oil, then the squash cut into small pieces, add salt, paprika, pepper, and let cook for 10-15 minutes with covered lid, then open the lid, let evaporate some of the water that will have come out of the squash, and add vinegar (I had six small squashes and I added about 4 tablespoons of vinegar). Let cook for another 3 minutes, taste, and add a bit of honey to milden it, according to your taste. Serve warm.

Sorbetto di anguria con melone bianco e mango
To make the sorbet, puree in a blender one watermelon (after removing the seeds) with one cup of sugar and one eggwhite. Put in the ice-cream maker and let stir for about 45 minutes (mine didn't stop, but it was fine after that time). Leave it in the freezer for a few hours. If you serve it the day after, take it out of the freezer half an hour before serving it. I served it on top of pieces of honeydew melon and mango, topped with a tiny bit of whipped cream. It was very good and not too heavy, after the big dinner.


Malaga mangia-e-bevi
This drink was actually supposed to be one of the balls of the ice cream that I wanted to put as a dessert. Unfortunately, it didn't solidify, so I turned it into a refreshing drink (suggestion by Lucas - I was too disappointed and wasn't going to serve it). But it was actually very appreciated.
Malaga is an ice cream flavor that resembles cream, but has rum and raisin in it. I read somewhere that I had to substitute all the milk that I would put to make the ice-cream with rum! It did seem too much, so I substituted less than half of it (for the rest, I used a recipe similar to the vanilla ice-cream that I posted earlier, I just didn't put vanilla and used only 5 egg yolks instead of 8). But there was still too much alcohol!! Which, as you know, has a much lower freezing point than milk.. so it didn't really freeze. I tried to add some condensed milk to it, and more milk, hoping that the alcohol/milk proportion would decrease enough, but there was nothing to do.. so I just gave up. As a drink it was quite good. I baptized it Malaga mangia-e-bevi because you could eat and drink at the same time, because of the few raisins in it :)

Coffee was also served, from my new caffettiera (Italian coffee maker), and afterwards, we still had some china digestive from Tuscany. :) (it's a liquor made from a root of a plant)

The wine was also very good, and I will remember the name of the cabernet sauvignon, because it's the first Californian wine that I really liked.

I was so happy :) - I'm always happy when people enjoy the food, and everyone seemed enthusiastic about everything, which is very nice :) And it was nice to talk altogether, in this mixed Spanish/English/Italian language that we came up with :)

I will probably put a few more pictures of the dinner on my picture website, soon.

La fiesta dei Tacos!

I still didn't post about last Sunday Tacos Party at Trino and Mariana's. It was a wonderful party! There was a lot of food and nice people :)
Trino taught us the concept of tacos: take a tortilla and fill it up with some of the fillings displayed on the table, then if you want, add some salsa, roll it, and eat it! He explained that tacos are usually eaten standing, because of their nature that does not require fork and knife. I could not learn too well, because I was too curious and I wanted to try all the fillings! So in the end I had too much stuff on my tortillas and it was impossible to roll them :)
The fillings were in fact a lot and wonderful. There was green chicken, pork, potatoes, venison, beans, onions, mushrooms, peppers, cheese.. I'll post here only one example: the pork in a wonderful sauce with potatoes.. And the tortillas were bought just fresh from a factory that they discovered around here, that makes them a few days per week. Trino said the quality of the tortillas is fundamental for the well outcome of the tacos :)
The party started around 3 and went on till after nine.. so we had the opportunity of eat a lot of tacos :)
I really enjoyed this experience... I love Mexican food.. and all the Mexican and South American friends!

Un altro sito interessante

I found a very interesting website about food, written by a nutritionalist. I was curious about the name (The fanatic cook) so I looked at it. There are lots of interesting news about Food and Drug administration regulations, good and bad things that you can find in food, and some social/political issues related to food.

Altri due gusti di gelato

Today we went to a wonderful Tacos party!!! It was hosted at Trino's and Mariana's. I will put a post specifically on it. For now I wanted to describe only my small contribution to it: the ice cream, of course :) :) :)

In the picture you can see, left to right: Gelato al mango, alla vaniglia e ai mirtilli (Mango, Vanilla and Blueberry ice cream)
I gave you already the recipe for Vanilla Ice cream
Here are the other two:

Gelato al mango
Two ripe big mangoes
100 ml heavy cream (1/2 cup)
400 ml milk (2 cups)
250 ml yogurt (~1 cup)
Sugar as you like
Peel and puree the mangoes. Add the rest of the ingredients in the blender and blend. Stick into the ice cream maker. Mine got ready in 15 minutes! Suggestion from Lucas's mom: cool down the mixture before putting it in the ice cream maker (I will pay special attention to this next time I make a creamy flavor, that needs to be half cooked)

Sorbetto ai mirtilli
800 g blueberries (2 quarts)
200 g sugar (1 cup)
1 eggwhite
Stick everything in the blender and blend for a while, until all the blueberry seeds and the sugar are crushed. (the original recipe suggested to make a syrup out of the sugar, by dissolving it in some warm water. I decided not to bother with that).
Stick in the ice cream maker. Mine did not stop turning after one hour, so I looked at it and it looked fine, so I stopped it.

Results: Mango ice cream: very good, soft and not icey consistency. A bit too unsweet. Perfect eaten together with the blueberry icecream though, which was much sweeter.
Blueberry sorbet: delicious! This was so wonderfully fluffy! And it didn't get hard even in the freezer! I'm not sure if it was the eggwhite, or having stirred it for so long, but this was really one of the best sorbets I ever had :) :)

Molto meglio di ogni aspettativa

Yesterday night Lucas and I decided to watch a 'light' movie - we've been watching the wonderful 'Decalogue' by Kierwloswkiy, which I will talk about soon, and we wanted to break it with something less committing.
So, we had at home from Netflix 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. I thought I wanted to see the beautiful sceneries, but we also heard bad things about the movie by itself - just the ultimate 'chickflix'! (chickflix e' una parola di slang che indica un film 'da donne', sdolcinato e romantico) So, we had very low expectations about it.
Instead, it's a really nice movie! It's cute, but it's not super-sweet, excessive. It's actually really funny in a lot of parts! And it tries to show some of Italian and American culture stereotypes, in a hironic and light way. Most of the actors are Italians (except for the main characters - it's an American movie), and the scenery is in fact wonderful: Cortona and Positano are the main places. The story is simple: the main character divorced, and two friends get her to go to a tour of Tuscany to forget about her ex-husband. There, she buys an old villa and she begins to ristructurate it. She meets a number of wonderful people of all nationalities, and slowly opens herself to them (she starts cooking!), and finds out that she already built a new family over there without even knowing it.
So, I'd really recommend it for a night when you want to be cheered, relaxed, enjoy beautiful sceneries, and laugh!
Btw: this movie really made me feel like visiting Positano and the Costa Amalfitana! I'm now debating if my next tour to Italy will be Napoli and Costiera Amalfitana or Sicilia. We'll see :)

Un nuovo acquisto: la macchina del gelato!!!

I was thinking that it's really unfair that I can enjoy ice-cream that I like only when I am in Italy. So last Sunday Lucas and I went and bought.. an ice-cream machine!!!
It was a great deal - $25 at Target. It's huge, as all things in the US.
I tried it already to make vanilla ice-cream. I decided I will experiment many variations, since there are apparently thousands of different recipes, with cream/milk/sugar ratio compeletely different, even for the same flavor.
So, this is my first trial.. how exciting!!

Gelato alla vaniglia guarnito con mirtilli
Vanilla ice-cream decorated with blueberries

1 liter milk (~1 quart)
180 g sugar (a bit less than 1 cup)
200 ml heavy whipping cream (~ 1 cup)
8 egg yolks
vanilla extract or pieces
With a blender, mix the sugar and the yolks until they're fluffy. Warm up the milk with the vanilla in it, add the yolk/sugar mixture to it and keep warming up until the mixture lightly sticks to a spoon dipped in (a total of ~5 minutes since you start warming). The milk should not boil.
Remove from the stove (take out the pieces of vanilla, if you were using them) and add the cream. Let the mixture cool down and pour it in the ice-cream maker. In my case, it was done in about 40 minutes.
Put in the freezer for a few hours before serving.
Garnish with the blueberries when served.

This mixture didn't even fill half of my huge ice-cream maker but it seems to be enough for 8-10 people..

The flavor was absolutely delicious. The consistency needs to be slightly improved, since it was a bit icey, and if you left it outside it didn't become soft but it tended to become liquid. But it felt really light and refreshing. This recipe has about half the sugar of the original one, and is one of the lowest heavy cream/milk ratio that I found. I may need to stir it longer or to add more cream or sugar to have the right consistency. We'll see next time!

Alcuni libri molto interessanti

When I was in Italy (and mostly, when I was flying to and from Italy), I read a lot of books. My first book was 'La luna di carta' (the two women), by Andrea Camilleri. I read this one in Italian, obviously.
It was my first Camilleri, and I decided I really really like him! He wrote a lot of books, and in all of them the protagonist is a policeman ( il commissario Montalbano, i.e. detective Montalbano). Anyway, the beauty of the book is that he pictures the characters in such a deep way. In the end you think il commissario is a friend of yours and you'd like to have one of his long and gorgeous lunches together. It's a mixture of humor, a bit of philosphy, suspence, and wonderful prose that makes the book a really nice reading, especially on a plane, during the summer. I'd strongly recommend it to everyone! We all need some wit and humor.
I found a review about Camilleri in English. I also found that you can find English translations of Camilleri's books (e.g. look here), and I read that the translation is very good. So, go for it!!!

The second book I read was an American one: 'Sights unseen', by a North Carolinean author, Kaye Gibbons. I got it because I was curious about reading something from a local author, and also, the story seemed to be intriguing. As a matter of fact, it is. It's a story about a family where the mother is manic-depressive. The novel portrays all the people in the family, but is written by the viewpoint of the younger doughter. All the characters are wonderfully described, and again, the prose is vivid and it's hard to stop reading the book. Moreover, it really really touched me. I think both people who have had personal experiences of mental illness and people who haven't could have some benefits by reading it. It really shows with delicacy what it can be. Also, it shows how people around the sick one love her, with all the difficulties bound to such a hard relation. It's a really good book. It was also nice to know some of the places that are mentioned, since it takes place in Raleigh.
Purtroppo non credo esistano traduzioni in Italiano di questo libro. Se qualcuno conosce l'inglese e vuole leggerlo, me lo faccia sapere. Ne posso prendere qualche copia per supportare la libreria locale e portarle in Italia.. O si possono ordinare sul solito Amazon...

The third book I read was by an American author, John Fante, but I read the book in Italian since it was a gift from my mom for my birthday. So the Italian title was 'Chiedi alla polvere', i.e. Ask the Dust. This was also a very interesting book. I think it may be inspired by Fante's life, since it is the story of a very young man, of Italian origin, who leaves his family who lives in Colorado to go to Los Angeles, California, and become a writer. It's the story of his dreams and of the poor reality of his life, a mixture of generosity and pettiness, poetry and crudity. It's sometimes a hard book to read. The character is very realistic, and it's interesting to see how one can identify in him or not depending on how he's behaving - sometimes with real generosity, sometimes so selfishly that one doesn't want to even think about recognizing himself in him. Also, it's a very interesting description of American society in the Fourties, its huge social gaps, and how hard it could be for immigrants to be really part of it.
So, it's a very good book, and I was happy to read a book by John Fante. But you need to be in the right mood to read it. Anyway, once you begin it, it's hard to stop reading it.
In Italiano, ho letto la traduzione di Maria Giulia Castagnone. Mi sembra molto ben fatta. E' pubblicato da Einaudi.

Per Nathalie e Mariana

Both my friends Nathalie and Mariana asked me to put on line the recipe of
Bunet that I made for them in different occasions. So, here it is!
As a note: Bunet is a tipical Piemontese dessert, and bunet is a tipical Piemontese dialect word. Not sure what it means exactly. The main difference between a bunet and a regular budino (pudding) is that it contains amaretti. There are very aery cookies made of almonds.

Bunet (or Bonet)
(Nathalie, merci bien pour les roses!!! :) :) :) )

Ingredients
4 eggs
30 amaretti cookies
1/2 liter milk
6 tbsps sugar (+2 for the pan)
5 tbsps unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup espresso coffee
1/4 cup rum

Soak the amaretti in the milk. Separate the yolks from the whites. With a mixer, mix the yolks, the sugar, the cocoa, then the coffee and the rum. Then add this to the mixture of milk and cookies. Beat the eggwhites until firm (add a tiny amount of salt to help this). Gently fold the eggwhites in the rest of the liquid mixture.
Caramellize 2 spoons of sugar on the bottom of the baking pan (use the same you would use for bread loaves). Pour the mixture on top of the caramellized sugar in the pan. Put this inside a larger pan that you will have filled with hot water (at a level such that it arrives at about 3/4 of the height of the baking pan with the liquid mixture inside). Put this sort of 'double pan' in the oven that must be preheated at 400 F, for 40 minutes. This procedure of cooking would be called 'a bagno Maria' in Italian, which means 'in the Maria bathing way' :) :)
Let it cool in the fridge overnight. When ready, pass a knife along the borders of the pan so that the bunet detaches from the pan, then flip it on a dish. It should fall out of the pan very easily. Serve cold.
If it's well cooked, all the ingredients must have separated and created layers of different colors: on the bottom (ie on the top, while you're baking) there are the cookies, then layers of chocolate/milk, coffee and rum - not sure about which one is which.
But anyway, if you obtain somehting like this, you're good:
I like this dessert very much. It's really difficult to repeat the same result. Each time I get layers of different color and thickness.. but it's usually good, although not always as pretty as the one in the picture. A possible variation is to remove the coffee and put more rum, if you don't like the coffee taste very much.
This recipe was given to me by the Real and Only Bunet Master: zia Carla!!
Grazie mille, zia :)

Regali di compleanno

I don't know if I mentioned it already, but I received a huge amount of gifts for my birthday, both in the US and in Italy. The biggest one was by Lucas - he actually gave me the laptop that I'm using to type right now! It's amazingly fast, having two processors, and I really like it. It was a good idea because my other laptop was getting very slow. It's been a good friend for many years, it was my parents' gift for my bachelor graduation and it went through a lot of adventures with me, including surviving a Floridan storm that soaked it in water. :) But this new one has already proved to be really nice and useful and I've been using it intensively in these past few days, to write this proposal that I finally finished today.
I also received plenty of really nice books, some of which I already finished and I will review in later posts.
For now, I just wanted to show another gift that I recently used:
This nice red baking pan was given to me by my friend and choir mate Joanna. I used it to make a sort of quiche. I love quiches, they're so quick and easy to make. In this case, I used 'Fillo' dough to make the outside of the cake. I never saw this dough in Italy, and I bought it thinking it was pasta sfoglia. In reality, it's an amazing thing made of less than one millimiter sheets, that you can take out of the box, and choose how many to use on top of each other. They are thin but they don't break very easily, so you can also give them some shape and make nice borders for the quiche. The inside was a mixture of 4 eggs, cheddar cheese, milk, and sauteed onions and zucchini. Basically you can put whatever you want in it, keeping the eggs/cheese/mixture as a constant, and you can add all sort of richer stuff like butter or cream. It's usually baked in 20-30 minutes (longer if you exceeded in the amount of milk) and you should serve it hot!

Lezione di tamales

I have been wanting to publish this post for a long time, but I never had time. Tonight I'm taking a night off from writing the proposal that I have to write by next Friday.. but I think I really don't feel like working now!

So, about two weeks ago, Luisa and Jorge invited us to go to their place, so Luisa could teach me how to make tamales! She said they're usually a winter food, but we thought it would be nice to make them together whatever season it was :) - so, we made some tamales with meat and some sweet ones with pineapple.
To make them, you need to have some flour that is specifically prepared from corn for tamales (Maseca for Tamales). Supposedly you could make it yourself, like real cooks do, but it's much easier to buy it premade, and apparently, Mexicans do that too :) For the sweet tamales, mix 2 cups of flour with 2 cups of pineapple juice, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of vegetable shortening or butter and 1 tsp of salt. You then fluff the dough up in the mixer for a few minutes.
To make the meat filled ones, you need to prepare the pork in advance: boil two pounds of pork chops in 2 liters of water for one hour, with some salt, half an onion and 1 clove of garlic. Remove the meat, let it cool down and shred it. Then you need to prepare the salsa: boil 4 huajillo peppers and 4 ancho peppers, just to make them soft. Remove the veins and the seeds. Process them together with 2 garlic cloves, 8-10 peppercorns, 1 clove and 1 small piece of cinnamon in the food processors.
You can see all the spices together here:
. In a pan, melt 2 cups of pork lard, add the minced peppers and spices, the meat, 2 cups of pork broth and let it simmer for a while. The let it cool down and the meat will separate from the fat. Mix 1 cup of this fat with 4 cups of maseca flour and 1 tsp of salt.
To make the tamales, you need to take corn husks for the sweet ones, and banana-like tree leaves for the meat ones. These leaves are humongous! You can see a part of one of them hold by the tamales Master, Luisa :)
And Luisa told me that many people grow these trees in their gardens just to take the leaves to make tamales :) So, once you have the doughs ready, you can spread the sweet ones making small circles in the corn husks, then put some pieces of pineapple on them and them close and seal the husks. To make the meat ones, you put the dough on the banana-like leaf, then you add some of the meat, and then you seal the leaf. This is how it looks like before sealing:
The tamales are steamed for about 1 hour in a special steamer pan:
And finally they are ready to eat, after taking them out from their nice wraps:
Definitely not a 'diet' food, but so nice to see and full of flavor! Moreover, they keep for about one week in the fridge. In fact, as a curious note: Luisa explained to me that the Tamales were once made during the Holy Week (Eastertime), because people were so busy going to church every day that they didn't have time to prepare their food!!!

Ancora dall'Italia: Prali

One of the other nice things that we did when we were in Italy was going to visit my dear friend Cinzia and her family at the mountain, in Prali, which is quite close to Turin, but already high. It's very close to Sestriere, where they recently had the winter holympics, and for this reason, you can actually find it on google maps!!!. So, this place is really highly turistic in winter time, but not in summertime. Cinzia and her family rent an apartment there for the whole summer, and they have a wonderful relaxing time there. Not only so, but it's also really nicely cool, compared to Turin.
We had a few walks with them, and I loved it so much. Also, Cinzia and I had a lot of fun cooking together. We made a lot of nice things, for only two days that we were together! From calzoni, to crepes, to pasta salad.. the air of the mountains makes people hungry :)
So here is a bit of the mountains for you guys (the rest on my usual picture website).



Carissima Cinzia, e' stato cosi' bello venire da voi! Mi rimarra' un bellissimo ricordo per molto molto tempo :) E in effetti, cucinare insieme e' divertente, facile e produttivo :)

Tornati dall'Italia - matrimonio di Chiara

Again a long time has passed since I last posted here.. this time I was in Italy! It's been a very nice period, although very short (only ten days including the trip, which was quite long).

So we went to Italy mainly to attend my friend Chiara's wedding. It was Lucas's first time at an Italian wedding, and he enjoyed it! He was surprised by the length of the ceremony, although, in my opinion, it wasn't very long. Usually Catholic wedding ceremonies include a Mass (unless you specifically require a shortened version), and there are many songs and prayers, and so they last about one hour. Chiara's was about 1 hour 15 min, and it was co-celebrated by 6 priests, since both her and her husband have been very involved in the Church, and have many friends who became priests. The number of priests also surprised Lucas :)

In America le cerimonie per i matrimoni sono molto piu' brevi. Quella del fratello di Lucas, per esempio, e' durata solo 20 minuti. Immagino che questo sia il motivo per cui Lucas e' rimasto tanto stupito.. :)

Here are Chiara and Davide in a funny pose coming out from the church.

After the ceremony, there was a long, long, lunch, which lasted from 2 to 6.30 pm. The food was very good (a lot of fresh appetizers, risotto with mushrooms, tagliolini, pork with potatoes) and the cake was wonderful:

After the lunch, Lucas and I went for a short walk.. to prepare ourselves for the dinner! Chiara had organized also a dinner for the rest of the people who couldn't fit in the lunch room (total people: 250 :) ). I really enjoyed this second part. It was not traditional - the long lunch is, instead -. It was outside, in a garden, and we were all standing, or sitting on some chair scattered around. There was music and who wanted food could go grab food from some stands around. I met a lot of my friends there, and I thought I really liked this informal part of the party. I decided if I ever get married I'll have something like this second part, rather than the traditional long lunch :)

Here we are, Lucas and I, dressed up for the ceremony:
I put more pictures from the wedding on my picture website, as usual.