Hummingbirds

I forgot to show these pictures that we took when we went at Lucas's parents last time. Their house in this season is gorgeous, immersed in the green, and staying on the patio drinking tea and watching the birds is so relaxing.
They have this red bird feeder that attracts the hummingbirds. I never saw any in my life, before, and they're just amazing. They're so tiny, and they move their wings so fast that when they fly they make the same noise of a big bee.
They're super fast, but we managed to capture a few pictures of them.. so here they are:

I due dolci preparati per la festa di compleanno

I will write here the recipes for the two desserts that I made as surprise cakes for Crissy and Alison at my birthday party.

Crostata di frutta (hard-crust fruit cake)

You saw two versions of this dessert in the previous two posts. It's a wonderful summer dessert, when all the fresh fruit is available. To make it you need:
300 g flour (~2.5 cups)
200 g sugar (~1 cup)
100 g butter (1 stick) - must be at room temperature before you use it
At least, these are the 'original' ingredients. In my version, there is about half the sugar and a little less butter/flour ratio. Mix the flour and the sugar. Add the butter. Work it with your hands in the flour and sugar dough. Usually, I cannot get a dough that sticks together using just these ingredients (maybe because I cut a little bit on the butter?) so I add a little amount of milk in order to get to a workable dough. But don't add too much otherwise the crust will be too hard.
Spread the dough with your hand on the bottom of a baking pan (better if you have some antisticking foil or if you butter and flour the pan), and use some dough to make some borders a bit higher than the bottom of the crust. Before putting the crust in the oven, you need to add some dried beans on top of it. Now, I'm not crazy. :) They are necessary to prevent the dough to rise. It needs to stay flat.. so you put beans all over the dough and when the cake cooks, it will not rise. You can also use pasta, but if you do, then you have to throw away the pasta once the cake is cooked because it gets slightly burnt - instead, the beans are fine and you can reuse them in some soup later on :) :) So, cook the dough with beans on top for ~20 min at 400F. It should begin to show a golden color once you take it out. If the beans were spread correctly, the dough will be flat when you take it out. Let it cool down. Once it's cold, remove the beans from the top of the crust! They should not be stuck.
While the dough is cooking you can make the cream to spread on top. This cream can be very variable. If you're really lazy you can just use some jam. Strawberry is good :)
Otherwise you can make a custard - or custard-like cream. My favorite cream is this:
2 tbsp flour
3 tbsp sugar
lemon peel
~2.5 cups milk
1 egg
Mix the flour and the sugar in a pan. Add the egg and mix together. Slowly add the milk, keep stirring, until all the milk is added. If you do it slowly you don't get any clumps. Put it on the stove and bring to boil, slowly, stirring from time to time. It will begin to stick to the bottom if you don't stir, after a while. Add the lemon peel in big chunks when it begins to boil. After it boils, keep stirring for ~5 minutes or until it has the consistency of a spreadable cream or a little bit more fluid (it gets harder when it cools down, obviously). Then, let it cool down. When it's cold, take the chunks of lemon peel out, they gave enough flavor.
There are as many variations as you may think of for this cream. You can add vanilla flavor (strongly recommended), for example. Or, you can use some spicy tea instead of part of the milk :) I did this once, it turned out good and the cream had a nice orangy color :)
When both the crust and the cream are cold, spread the cream on the crust and decorate with fruit. I'd suggest to sprinkle some lemon juice on the fruit before, so it doesn't turn black. Or, you can prepare some unflavored gelatin, and throw it on top of the cake. This will make the cake look very professional, but I don't like its taste and consistency, so I never do that :) Have fun with the fruit decoration of the cake! And obviously, the cake can have any shape you want.. I showed some rectangular ones in this blog, but I used to make round ones.

Torta di cioccolato e nocciole (chocolate-hazelunt cake)

I love chocolate-hazelnut cakes, and I thought it would be good for Alison, since she likes chocolate too :)
120 g (~1 cup) roasted hazelnuts
200 g (~1.5 cups) flour
5 eggs
~2.5 tsp baking powder
~1/4 stick of butter, melted
~1 cup milk
2 tbsp sweetened cocoa powder
~0.5 cups sugar (use more if you use bitter cocoa powder)
whipped cream
Grind the hazelnuts in a food processor until they are as fine as a flour. Add this flour to the chocolate and mix it.
In a bowl, mix the baking powder to the (normal) flour and add a tiny bit of salt. In another bowl, mix the egg yolks with the sugar with a mixer until they become foamy and yellow. Add the egg yolk mixture to the flour/baking powder mixture. Add the melted butter to it, keep mixing. Add the hazelnut/cocoa mixture. Add the milk to this batter. It should now have a nice soft consistency. Whip the egg whites until very hard. Add them gently to the rest of the ingredients.
Pour the batter in a baking pan. Originally they suggested to bake the batter in two separate pans, half and half. I didn't have two pans of the same size, so I used only one pan deep enough to contain all the dough. Cook at 350F for ~35 min. Let it cool down in the oven semi-open.
When it's cold, cut the cake in two discs if you didn't bake it in two different pans. Add whipped cream on one of the discs and put the second disc on top. Decorate with more whipped cream on top and serve soon.

Feste di compleanno - 2 e 3

The next birthday party that I had was with Lucas and his parents.. they were really nice and came down to visit us on Friday night, and brought us out for dinner - and they also gave me a lot of wonderful gifts! Some glassware that you'll see in my blog soon :) We had a nice dinner at a Cuban restaurant (Carmen's, in Morrisville). I liked my spicy shrimp, and the fried small plantains were very good :) Although, their dulce de tres leches was not comparable to the one that Luisa made for Jorge's birthday party :)

On Saturday, we had a potluck birthday party (they forbid me to cook on my birthday) :) - it was really fun! People brought a lot of wonferful food from all over the world.. we had stuffed cabbage by Rich, Shish-Kabab by Lucas, broccoli salad by Alison, squash casserole by Crissy, Indian tomato rice by Selina, Russian salad by Alina, stuffed peppers and mango apricot by Yan Li.. it was wonderful :)
People talked a lot, which was the goal of the party.. :)
And in the end, we had three cakes! In fact, I made two since I wanted to celebrate also Alina's and Crissy's belated birthdays. So, I'll show here the pictures of the cakes:
My cake - a hummingbird cake, nicely bought by Lucas :), which was really good (nuts and cinnamon and cream)
Alison's cake - it was a chocolate-hazelnut cake that I'll give the recipe of shortly, because it turned out very good :)
Crissy's cake - another crostata di frutta, with a different fruit drawing :) - I'll give the recipe shortly

I received a lot of gifts, and the nicest thing was to see how many friends I know. If you want to see their pictures, go on my picture website.

Feste di compleanno - 1

Yes, if you can read Italian... :) you will understand that I had more than one birthday party!! In fact, so far I had three :)
The first party was a great open-air party at Gisela's house, meant to be a party for three birthday-girls! We all turned 28 in the same period, so we decided to get together and have a common party.
It was great!!!!! I had really a lot of fun. We had it on July 8th, right after Italy won the world cup.. so the other Italian girl who was having the birthday with us (Ross) was superexcited and happy!! I don't really care too much, to be honest :) - I tried to watch the match, but fell asleep, so I decided to keep cooking for the party :)
In fact, between Gisela, Ross and I, we brought a humongous amount of food to the party :) There were focaccia, with pesto/ricotta or with onions and tuna or with tomatoes, then I made eggplants under oil and garlic and parsley, a quiche, two rice salads, and Ross had two pasta salads, flatbread, and Gisela made a baked chicken, and we had spreads.. I will not write recipes here, also because I made most of the food for other parties, so you should be able to retrieve the recipes using the 'search' option of the blog, if you want.
We also had three wonderful home-made cakes:
This was my cake (crostata di frutta). I made it - I love it, and my mom used to make it for me for my birthday. It's not hard to make, and it's fun to decorate, and delicious..
This was Gisela's cake, made by chef Vlasta :) It's a great walnut/chocolate cake, it's so professional!
This was Ross's self-prepared dessert: two wonderful real tiramisu!
I was so happy that so many of my friends came, from different places. Joanna took the pictures of the party for me, and you can see them on my picture website.
I'll just post here this one of Lucas and I. I love this picture. Thanks Joanna!
To see more party pictures, click here.

Quattro luglio

I haven't posted again in a too long time -well, my life has been really busy recently. But I'll try to post some summaries about the main 'events' that could be interesting..

First of all, the wonderful party that we had for the 4th of July at Kelley's parents.

(per chi non lo sa: il 4 luglio e' la festa della liberazione americana, come il 25 aprile in Italia, ma con un numero di bandiere decisamente piu' elevato.. :) )

Kelley's hobby is fireworks.. and for July 4th, every year, she puts up a wonderful show for her family and friends.. this year Lucas and I had the privilege to be invited to attend it!!
We arrived on Saturday, and we stayed overnight at Jason and Kelley's place - and Jason prepared a wonderful dinner and breakfast for us! Then, we left to go to Kelley's parents. They have a house in north Virginia. I found out that I love that place. It reminds me so much of Italy! It's hilly, and full of vineyards, and trees, and farms. I really thought about where my grandparents live, close to Turin. So, this put me in a great mood. :)
We arrived there around 12, and we started munching on the appetizers a few hours later. They were delicious! Kelley and Erin made spinach/artichoke and crabe dips, and some deviled eggs.. it was impossible to resist.
But dinnertime was not too far! We grilled chicken drums, and we had wonderful ribs and potato salad, and other really nice side dishes.
To see the pictures of the party, please go visit my picture website.
We had a really nice time with all the people, during the dinner. At the end, we also had some wonderful desserts - tiramisu, cupcakes, and some lime cheesacake.. so wonderful!
But the climax of the party, that we were all waiting for were.. the fireworks!!
I was really impressed by Kelley. We could see her figure moving around with a torchlight at the bottom of the valley were she was starting the fireworks from.. in the sulphureous smoke.. while we could enjoy the amazing fireworks she was setting off for us!!
I managed to capture a few good images of them.






... But it was impossible to really capture with a camera the movement and the greatness of the fireworks!

On Sunday, Lucas and I went for some wineries that we found out are very common in Virgina.. we found some really good ones. The best was Hartwood Winery - strongly recommended if you happen to be around there.

Cook-cena

Sunday night we organized a cooking-together dinner. We were 7 people (Yanli, Dazhong, Alina, Lina, JJ, Lucas and I). Yanli hosted it very nicely at her place. We chose the recipes from a French cookbook that Alina had (Cuisine d'ete), and we brought the ingredients at her place.
Here are the recipes and the pictures of what we made!

Salade de melon vert aux crevettes (Melon salad with shrimp)
1 melon
2 avocados
1/2 pound shrimp
Lemon
green onion
6 radishes
4 teaspoons mayo
2 teaspoons mustard
Salt, pepper

Cut the melon in half, and scrape (or cut) the pulp out (supposedly in little spheres, we made some cubes instead). Cut the avocados (again, supposedly in spheres, but we went for some easier shape), and pour lemon juice on them. Slice the radish and the green onion.
Peel the shrimp and sautee it in some olive oil. Put together all the ingredients (shrimp, melon, radish, onion, avocado). Mix the mayo, the mustard, some sault and pepper and add it to the rest of the ingredients. Serve it using the halves of the melon as bowls.

Cake aux tomates confites (cake with sun-dried tomatoes)
1/2 pound flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp milk
3 eggs
1/3 lb sun-dried (or roasted) tomatoes
1/2 cup olives, unpitted
1/4 lb colby cheese
basil
1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat the oven at 380.
Mix flour and baking powder. Add oil, milk, salt, pepper, mix. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring. Cut the cheese, the olives and the tomatoes in small pieces and add them to the dough. Put some anti-sticking paper in a baking pan (eg one that you would use to make bread loaves), and cook for 40 minutes.

Cannelloni d'aubergines aux cepes at au chevre frais (Eggplant cannelloni with mushrooms and goat cheese)
3 eggplants
2 cups mushrooms
1 roll fresh goat cheese
olive oil
green onion
salt, pepper

Cut the onion, mix it to the goat cheese, add salt and pepper and 1 tbsp olive oil. Slice the mushrooms and saute them in some olive oil. Add to the cheese mix. Chill.
Slice the eggplants along the length, grill them, salt them. Put some cheese mix in each grilled slice, and roll them, making some 'cannelloni'. Keep refrigerated before serving.

Peches farcies aux amarettis et au cacao (Peaches stuffed with amarettis and cocoa)
6 yellow peaches
8 amaretti cookies
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar

Wash well the peaches, cut them in halves, scoop most of the pulp out. Crush the amaretti. Mix the peach pulp with the cookies, squish with a fork, add the egg, mix. Add the cocoa powder and the sugar. Fill the peach halves with this mixture, and bake at 350 F for 40 minutes. Serve warm.

In addition, Alina prepared some wonderful sushi, so I finally learnt how to make it! She cooked some sushi rice until it was very sticky, added some rice vinegar in it, then let it cool down. In the meanwhile, she cut some avocados, cucumbers, smoked salmon and eel. When the rice was cold, she spread it on both sides of the nori sheets, leaving an end of the 'shiny' side of the nori uncovered. Then, she put pieces of salmon, cream cheese, cucumbers, or eels, avocado and cucumbers across the nori/rice sheets, and rolled tightly with the help of a sushi mattress. She covered the salmon sushi with red caviar eggs. They were absolutely delicious! You can see the eel sushi here:


And at last, Dazhong (Yanli's husband) prepared some wonderful chinese catfish, that I have to ask the recipe for.. I really loved it.

In conclusion, it was a very nice evening. It was nice to cook together, everyone contributed at least a bit to the cooking.. and the food was very good!

Brighton beach

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know.. I was out of town for work! Again at the Synchrotron, in Brookhaven NY.
This time we didn't have a lot of time to do many fun things, since we were working an average of 13 hours per day. Still, on our way back, we stopped at Brighton Beach, NY. Alina suggested this stop, since she had been there already, and she wanted to show it to me and Crissy. It's a Little Russia in NY. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, but I found some pictures on webshots.com.
As you can see, everything is in Russian:
(picture taken by kurrte86)
We stayed there for about two hours, and we had a really good lunch at 'Tatiana grill'.. The most amazing thing, for me, was a chicken leg stuffed with rice, mushrooms, crusted with bread and covered with blackberry sauce. Unforgettable! Also, it was nice to enter one of the small shops on the road, and buy some typical Russian products, and get wonderful 'Piroski' from a bakery, as our dinner on the way back!
I guess not many people know what Piroski are.. so for your curiosity I found this picture online:
(from ruski-ekspres.com)
They are stuffed buttery breads, really good. We had three types: meat, cabbage and cherry (sweet). I loved the cabbage ones :)
You can see some interesting pictures of people and places at Brighton beach (included the front of the restaurant where we had) from giophoto.

Finalmente in spiaggia!

Two weekends ago (wow, again too much work!!!!!! Not even time to write about this...), Lucas and I went together with our friends Marco, Antonella and their children Simone and Luca to the beach! On Saturday, Lucas and I woke up very early, in order to be at Oriental in the early morning. Marco and Antonella share a sailing boat that is kept in Oriental and so we met them there. It's about 3.5 hours east from Raleigh, and even if it was Memorial day weekend, we didn't find a lot of traffic.
After a nice swim and playing in the water of a swimming pool, and a nice sandwich + home made guacamole&chips lunch, we began the sailing! The boat is called 'pepper'. Here is one of the sails in the wind:
And the Italian flag waving to show that Italians were on board:
Marco was our able captain. I loved it. It was exciting and relaxing at the same time. I had a wonderful time watching them manover the boat, feeling the wind, and sleeping in the sun :)

In the afternoon, we relaxed again on the porch, enjoying the peace of the landscape and the funny things done by Simone and Luca. Then, Lucas and I went to our hotel, 'The Inn at Oriental'. It's a wonderful place. Anyone who wants to spend a night in Oriental should consider this place. The rooms are really nice, as you can see on their website, and it's held by a couple of wonderful people. They offered us wine and food that they were sharing with some friends (they live in the same place), and after we came back from dinner, that night, we had an interesting political discussion.. I enjoyed it a lot - maybe because we shared similar opinions. :)
In the afternoon, I went to Mass - I always like to go to Mass in different places, it's a way to know a little of the place where I'm visiting. In this case, I went together with the lady of the hotel, she wanted to go to the same church, by chance. It was interesting - I liked the priest's homely and it was nice to see that they sang and said parts of the Mass in Spanish, due to the high level of Spanish population.

The day after, after a wonderful American breakfast at our hotel, we left for the Outerbanks. I was so excited! For the first time, I could see this part of North Carolina coast, which is a unique environment in the whole world. The Outerbanks are stripes of sand just a few miles away from NC coast, and they move, pushed by the wind and the waves.
So, from Oriental, we arrived at Minnesott Beach and we took a ferry. I love ferries, I never used them before coming to the US, and they are just fun. So I took a lot of pictures, and here are some:
The cars on the Ferry
Our twin, going in the opposite direction.
Then, we arrived in Harkers Island, where we left the cars and rode on a skiff to get to the Outerbanks. Also the skiff was exciting!
The plan was, from there, to get a little truck and arrive to Cape Lookout, but unfortunately, there were not trucks available, so we decided we would just stay on the beach and enjoy the ocean on one side, and the bay on the other side.
So, let me show you something:
The ocean side. In front you can see one of the cutest birds in the world, it's so tiny and fast, and it eats little seafood when the waves retire, then runs away and is never caught by them!
The dunes, with seagulls in front.
The bay side. The water is much calmer. It was more fun to play with the children in it. :)

After we left the beach, Lucas and I went to have a nice romantic dinner in Beaufort. It's a beautiful little town on the bay, with a nice walk. We ate in a restaurant on the bay, wonderful seafood that inspired one of my next dinners, that I'll describe soon. :)

So, it was a wonderful break, during this stressful work period. I really want to go back now! Next time, we'll camp on the beach, and hopefully see the point of the island (Cape Lookout), where there is what Marco thinks is the best beach in NC.

If you want to see more pictures of this trip, go to my picture website.

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 :)

Comments about listening

A few posts ago I quoted a passage of a book about listening. Two people who are very dear to me emailed me their thoughts about it, and I report them here:

"L'ascolto richiede silenzio, dare spazio. Ma come sono diversi i silenzi! Basta un sopracciglio sollevato per apparire sprezzanti. O un movimento degli occhi per esprimere disapprovazione o noia. Il silenzio può manifestare rifiuto, essere borioso o sarcastico. E poi qualche parola bisogna dirla, e ci vuole misura. E delicatezza. Tutto questo si otterrebbe facilissimamente con un solo ingrediente: l'amore! Nella cucina del mistico basta questo solo. E tutto risulta perfettamente cucinato! "

"Credo che alla fine sia questo l'essenziale: capire che cosa l'altro ti vuole comunicare, non che cosa cogli tu, soltatno, anche perché tutti abbiamo una certa "attenzione selettiva" che ci porta a prendere in considerazioni solo alcune parti di un discorso.
Poi certo, se vuoi dare il TUO punto di vista, puoi porre l'accento su alcune questioni, ma io sono più per l'importanza di vedere che cosa L'ALTRO considera rilevante, che cosa lo turba o lo emoziona o lo fa pensare... o smeplicemente che cosa ti vuole raccontare, a volte le persone hanno soltanto voglia di condividere un'esperienza, senza trarre alcuna conclusione -un discorso magari effimero ma che secondo me ha una buona funzione "rinsaldante" tra le persone, proprio come quando ci si trova a tavola e ognuno havoglia di raccontare, condividere."

It's nice how both of them somehow speak about cooking and sharing at a table. I'll translate these posts and add something to them tomorrow, now I'm too tired. Good night :)

Volterra e Miscianello

Volterra is famous for its Roman and Etruscan ruines. It's another wonderful town on top of a hill. I liked it better than San Gimignano, maybe because it was a little bit less turistic..
Here is the main square:
And this is a typical road:
Some of the doors of the towns still date to the Etruscan period (IV century BC):

And there is a very famous amphitheater that dates back to Roman period (I century BC):

It's absolutely amazing how well preserved this is.. you can imagine people go on the stage and play the comedies or tragedies, with that nice background made with columns, and all the audience listening, admired..

From Volterra, we headed towards our 'hotel' close to Siena. We decided not to stay in a real hotel, but in an 'Agriturismo', that is a sort of villa in the middle of the countryside, where people live and cultivate the land, and rent a few rooms to visitors. We chose our Agriturismo on-line. It was a really good choice. It was on top of a hill, and to go there, we passed through a little wood, then vineyards, and then olive trees. Our guest was super-nice to us, he let us stay in the whole 2-story cottage, with three bedrooms, and a kitchen, and gave us three bottles of the wine that he himself produced (one per night of our staying). It was all nicely furnished, in wood, and the dishes and everything were really nice. This was the view from our window that welcomed us when we arrived, at the sunset:
If you want to see more pictures of our Agriturismo, there are a few more in my picture website. Also, Miscianello has a website.
This place was very close to Siena, so we decided to go there both that night, and the day after to visit the town during the daylight.

San Gimignano

So, now that Lucas is back, I have again access to the computer where we have all the pictures from the trip to Toscana... and I can post again about it!

After leaving Pisa, we went south-east. The goal was to reach Siena by the end of the day, and visit San Gimignano and Volterra on our way.
The drive through the hills was gorgeous. A lot of hills are topped by Medieval villages, surrounded by walls, and on most of the hills there are vineyards.. This is an image of a medieval village named Certaldo.
We decided to visit San Gimignano because it's a very famous Medieval town, well known for the number of towers that were built in it.

The town was very crowded, because it was the 25th of April, which is a big holiday in Italy, when we remember the defeat of the Fascists. There was the band playing in the main square of the town:
Anf a place where they were selling wonderful paintings and wine and cookies, with this amazing glycine tree in front of it:

We left San Gimignano with two paintings, two types of cookies and wine, and drove towards Volterra.

Cucinare con la frutta

In the past two weeks I was in the mood of using fruit to cook savory dishes. So, I made up a few new dishes, and I also made some more traditional ones.

Maiale con barbabietole e pere (pork with beets and pears)
This was a pork chop, that I just cooked in olive oil for about ten minutes, turning it from time to time so that it was well roasted on both sides, and then, I added a puree of a beet, a pear and two tablespoons of yogurt. The beet had been previously roasted in the oven. I let the meat finish to cook in the sauce (about another 10-15 minutes), and in the end, I served it topped by the red sauce - in the picture, it's served together with steamed rice and sauteed cabbage and peas, spiced up by red pepper to contrast the sweetness of the meat. It was good! In fact, pork and fruit are well known to go well together.
And doesn't it look pretty, like a red heart? :)

Salsiccia di tacchino con peperoni e banane (turkey sausage with peppers and bananas)
In this case, I sauteed some onions, green peppers, and added turkey sausage, cut up into pieces. I let it cook for about 20 minutes, adding salt and pepper to spice it up a little bit, and then, in the last 5-10 minutes, I added some mushrooms and a banana cut into pieces. I added some rum, and let it evaporate. I really liked it. I think banana is great with this type of food! It made a sweet sauce, that went really well with the peppers and the sausage. In the picture, it's served together with a 'bruschetta' topped with freshly made guacamole (to make it, cut into pieces a ripe avocado, a small tomato, garlic and cilantro, add red pepper, salt and the juice of a lime, and mix everything up. Quick and delicious. Usually eaten with tortilla chips in Mexican restaurants).

Risotto con fragole (rice with strawberries)
This is a dish that is part of the 'new' Italian cuisine, in that it's become famous in the last few years. I never tried it in Italy, so I decided to make it for a dinner that we had on a girls'night at my place, when Lucas was away.
It was a great success. To make it, soak in white wine about 1 pound of strawberries cut into pieces. Then, sautee some onions in a little butter (1 tablespoon), add 8 handfuls of rice, sautee the rice. Then, add the wine where the strawberries had been soaked. The liquid should be enough to cover the rice, and about one finger more than that. If it's not enough, add a little water. Add salt and cover the lid. Let the rice cook for about 20 minutes. Open, make sure there's still a little bit of liquid, and add the pieces of strawberries. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, until rice is done. The rice is very good, the taste is very different from every type of rice I had before, and it's nicely colored.

This procedure is my mom's simplified version to make every possible type of risotto (the real recipe would make you add the water a little at at time, stirring continously. It's a lot more boring). We used the same procedure to make risotto agli asparagi (rice with asparagus), on that girls' night. Just, instead of adding the wine, add some water and a bouillon to give a nice taste to the rice, and at about 10 minutes from the end, add about a pound of asparagus cut into pieces. Before serving, stir in some pieces of cheese that can nicely melt (I used Italian pecorino di Pienza, which is delicious, but you can use colby or whatever you like).

Spiedini di frutta e formaggio (cheese and fruit skewers)
My aunt used to make something similar when she had nice dinners at her place. She used to use a grapefruit instead of a loaf of bread, to stick the skewers into, but I decided we had too many for a grapefruit and a loaf of bread would be better.
It makes a very nice centertable and it's easy and fun to prepare. Basically, you cut into pieces all sort of things that can come into your mind and put them onto the skewers. Since I was in this fruit mood, I decided to use different types of fruit and cheese, and a little ham and olives. The fruits we used were pineapple, papaja, apple, pear and avocado. The cheese was 'ricotta salata' and another Spanish cheese that I found in Whole Foods and I may look for the name if someone is interested, because I forgot it. When the skewers are ready, stick them on the bread loaf.

Mousse di frutta (fruit mousse)
At last, a sweet thing made with fruit :) - I prepared these two types of mousse for the girls'night. One was a simple strawberry mousse, because it's strawberry season! So, just blend strawberries, add whipped cream (make it!!!), and honey, cool down and add grated chocolate on top before serving. Nice and sweet, probably very good for children. For more 'adult' tastes, try the other type, though, because it was really delicious. I blended together two mangos, a quarter of papaja and two bananas, and then added some ginger powder to it and two tablespoons of whipping cream. After pouring it in the glasses, I added a strawberry sauce on top (just blend some strawberries) - this was to cut the sweetness of the banana and mango. All of the girls loved it.. it was very flavorful, and at first you could taste the banana, and in the end, you would have a taste of mango and papaja in your mouth, and a tickling due to the ginger. :) - you can also cut down on the banana, I think, if you want the mango taste show up more. Again, to be served chilled and with pieces of chocolate on top.