Insalata capricciosa

The first thing I have to post is the recipe for a salad, for the XIV weekend cookbook challenge, the deadline for it being tomorrow!!
My salad recipe is taken from my beloved 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte n.2' , i.e. the second of my Piemontese comic-style cookbooks. The name of this salad is 'Insalata capricciosa', which literally means 'fickle salad'. My imagination is that this salad was made to please some lady who was never happy about any food, and this salad was the only thing that she liked :)

Insalata capricciosa
Ingredients
sedano rapa (celery root?) - half of the big root
peppers, pickles
ham - half pound
mayonnaise - 3 tbsp

The main ingredient of this salad is sedano rapa, which I think is celery root. I found a picture of it on the internet:
Isn't it called celery root in English? Anyway, given the fact that I couldn't find this specific ingredient at Raleigh's farmers' market, I decided to use daikon radish, which is in the same family (look on this website), and has a similar taste, just a bit stronger than the celery root.
Anyway, to make the salad, cut all the ingredients in small rectangles or sticks. The Piemontese recipe requires peppers and mushrooms, pickled under oil and vinegar, which don't really exist in Raleigh. So I opted for fresh peppers and pickled cucumbers made by Lucas's mom, which are good :)
Once you cut all the ingredients, mix the mayonnaise with them. Last time I made it, I used half mayo and half fat free plain yogurt, to make it lighter, and it was very good.
Serve on lettuce leaves (in my case, I opted for cabbage leaves).
It's really good and tasty. In this last version, I added a bit of finely cut parseley. This mayonnaisey salad is typical of Piemonte, and it's the sister of 'Insalata russa', which I already posted about here.

Berkeley in fiore

Berkeley has welcomed me with an amazingly beautiful weather. Trees are blooming
and walking here is such a pleasure.
Our house is in a wonderful neighborhood, with small shops, restaurants, caffes, and even butcheries, bakeries, flower shops.. it makes me feel a little bit like in Turin, although, with less of the stressfulness of Turin. There are less cars, less people, less smog. And still, it's full of events, of colors, of activities. I'm so excited. The campus is pretty. Right now, I don't have the camera, so I'll put pictures of everything later on.
Lucas welcomed me with a really nice dinner that he cooked for me:
It was rice with sautee chicken, mushrooms and peppers, with white wine. I was so happy :)
Now he left for Colorado, and so I have some time to post about all the events and some recipes of the past two weeks :)

SONO ARRIVATA A BERKELEY!!!!!!

Yes, at last, I moved to Berkeley!!!!!!! The past two weeks have been some of the most stressful in my life, so, that's why unfortunately I wasn't able to post anything on this blog. But two days ago, I finally arrived!
I'm SO happy, this place is amazingly beautiful. I was so excited when I was going to land in San Francisco airport that I decided I had to take a picture of this:
eheh :)
The flight was beautiful, the air was so clear I got some amazing pictures of the Sierra Nevada:
And of the land right before coming into San Francisco:The red of some of these fields was absolutely amazing. I am not sure what makes them so red.

Sessantesimo anniversario di matrimonio dei nonni di Lucas

Lucas's grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last Saturday! We all met close to Roanoke, Virginia, where they live, and we had a lunch altogether at a nice restaurant over there. It was organized by Debbie as a surprise to her parents, and it turned out really well! After lunch we had some cakes, that I actually prepared. I was very honored to be asked to make the cake! I decided to make three, because some people in the family are diabetic, and I thought it would be nice to have some cake made without any sugar just for them.
So here are some pictures of the cakes and of the family reunion and I will put the recipes for the cakes in some separate posts.
The cakes: Harold and Jacqueline have been married for 60 years! The 'H' cake was a sort of Sacher torte (chocolate and apricot jam cake), the heart was an invention of mine with a yogurt-cake bread and a filling of ricotta and dried fruit, and the 'J' cake was a layered cake with 'pan di Spagna' and yellow cream and fruit inside, made with no sugar. I was happy of the 'H' and of the heart, whereas I tried the 'J', and it wasn't very good, unfortunately. I noticed that it didn't raise as much as it should have, evidently because I used the artificial dulcifier ('Splenda') instead of regular sugar.. funny, I wouldn't have imagined such a big difference, but it was very reproducible..I made the bread twice, and twice it didn't raise..
Read more for some pictures of the people!

Here is Debbie, the organizer of this nice surprise party!
And here are Harold and Jackie and their children, Chris, Debbie and Gerry
With Chris' family: Christy, Cassie and Carolyn
With Debbie's family: Marta, Lucas, Jim, Debbie, Jason, Kelley, Alison
And at last: Harold and Jackie the day of their engagement, 61 years ago:

Orecchini per celebrare..

I never mentioned explicitely on this blog that I actually got the position I was looking for in Berkeley! I am very happy and excited.. many things will change again in my life and in particular in about two weeks I'll move and leave dear North Carolina and Raleigh!
I've been saying for a while that I would cut my hair and put earrings on when I really knew I had the new job.. so, in the end, in a courageous moment, I went and got my ears pierced!! I have to put here a pictuer of myself with the new earrings to satisfy the curiosity of my family and friends :)
They're tiny!! But I like them and I'll put some other types in a few months :)
When I had that picture taken I was also particularly happy because Lucas was there with me, and we were having a really nice walk in Umstead Park. It's fascinating in every season. I'm trying to treasure every moment I have left in North Carolina, who knows when I'll see these wonderful parks again. So here are a few pictures from our walk.

Dia de la candelaria

A few evenings ago, Luisa invited us and a lot of other people at dinner at her place, to celebrate the 'dia de la candelaria', which is Feb. 2nd. (lit: day of the candels)! This day is celebrated in Mexico as part of the catholic tradition, taken from a more ancient Roman tradition:
"Candlemas, feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin from the "pollution" of childbirth. Following the Jewish custom, as a poor woman she sacrificed two doves to be rendered pure and permitted to be touched by her husband. Candles are blessed. This holiday was appropriated from the Roman feast of Juno-Februa (Goddess of marriage), when girls decorated their pillows with 5 bay leaves to dream of their husbands. Candles were lit in honor of Februa to scare away evil spirits".
In Mexico, this celebration is related to another special tradition: on Jan 6th, people have a dessert which contains little Baby Jesus dolls inside. Whoever gets the dolls, needs to prepare food 40 days later, on Feb.2nd. Usually people prepare tamales.. and Luisa and Mariana produced really a lot of wonderful tamales with every type of fillings! I already explained how to make tamales here, because Luisa once taught me how to do that.
There were pork, cheese, and sweet tamales, with lemon and strawberries. Here is how the inside of the tamales with filled with pork looked like (and in front, a cheese tamales):
And at last just a picture of Lucas and I with Luisa and Jorge, just before leaving:

Ricette Piemontesi / Piemontese recipes

I decided that Piemontese recipes deserved a link all for themselves.. so here is the list that I will update! Most of these recipes come from the cookbooks 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte, Ricettario a Fumetti' Vol. 1 and 2.

Agnolotti di magro al ragu' / Lean agnolotti with ragu

Bagna caoda

Biova / biova bread

Bunet / Bunet pudding

Dolce di ricotta / Ricotta dessert

Gonfiotti al formaggio / Fluffy cheese fritters

Insalata capricciosa / Capricciosa salad

Insalata russa / Russian salad

Pess-coj / 'Fish-cabbage'

Sformato di spinaci / Spinach sformato

Tacchino tonnato / 'Tuned' turkey

Torta di mele con zabaione / Apple cake with zabaione

Torta di nocciole / Hazelnut cake

Zabaione / Zabaione cream

Zuppa di cipolle / Onion soup

Weekend Coobook Challenge Roundup

The roundup for the Weekend Coobook Challenge n.13 has been posted! Check here to see many interesting and various recipes from all over the blog-sphere! Mm... now I need to decide which one I want to try :)
A picture of spinach sformato has been posted, I'm very proud :)
Thanks to Sara at I like to cook!

Sformato di spinaci e dolce di ricotta

I mentioned I tried a few recipes from 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte n.2' for the weekend cookbook challenge. So I took the occasion of a Sunday get-together with many friends to prepare two more recipes taken from that book: a spinach 'sformato' (sformato is something that you bake and it's not sweet, and has some sort of self sustaining shape (forma=shape, in Italian) and a ricotta dessert.

Sformato di spinaci / Spinach sformato

1 lb spinach
1/2 lb besciamella
2 tbsp grated parmigiano
2 tbsp salt
4 eggs
Prepare a spinach puree: boil the spinach, puree them, and mix the besciamella with them. Besciamella is the white sauce I already gave the recipe for here. Add the parmigiano, salt, and the eggs, beaten. Pour in a buttered and floured pan and cook in the oven in a double boiler at 350 F for ~45 min (until a knife comes out dry from it). When cold you can 'sformarlo' (take it out of its baking pan) on a serving dish. Serve it warm. It's really good! I'd suggest it also for people who don't usually like vegetables very much.

If you 'read more' you'll find the ricotta dessert.

Dolce di ricotta / Ricotta dessert / Torta 'd seirass (Piemontese!)

I was quite curious about how this dessert would come out. Even if it's in this traditional Piemontese cookbook, I never had it before.
8 eggs
1/2 lb ricotta
1/2 lb powder sugar
rum
1 1/2 cup almond flour
1 3/4 cup butter
Separate the yolks from the eggs. Beat the yolks with the sugar, add the ricotta, the butter, softened, and the almond flour. Beat the whites till stiff and mix together with the other ingriedents. Pour some rum in the serving pan, and the mixture of all the ingredients on top. Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving.

It turned out to have a good flavor but a funny consistency. I refrigerated it for ~6 hours, and it was half kind of solid and half liquid (the bottom part). So we when served it, in cups, it was a little bit like an 'ile flotant'. I must admit that I cut quite a bit on the butter, and most of all, the recipe didn't specify how much rum to put - and since I like it, I may have put too much (~1/2 cup?).. this was probably the reason for the fact that not all the dessert was dense.. but the taste was very good. A friend of mine added some coffee liquor to it, and it was a nice idea too :)

Torta di mele con zabaione

The 'Weekend cookbook challenge' theme this month is to make a recipe from the newest cookbook we received. Last time I went to Italy, my father gave me two really interesting cookbooks, both about Piemontese cuisine. So I decided I will try to make a few recipes from one of them, which is called 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte 2, secondo ricettario a fumetti' ('Traditional Piemontese cuisine n.2, second cooking book - comic stripes'). It's the continuation of that book of Piemontese cuisine that I took so many wonderful recipes from.. And it's made in a comic strip format. For example:Isn't it cute?!?! Doesn't it make you want to try the recipe!??
So I decided that in order to welcome Lucas coming to visit me this week, I would make a nice cake for him, and I chose the apple cake that's described above. English version with pictures follow. It turned out to be the best apple cake I ever had..

Torta di mele servita con zabaione / Apple cake served with zabaione cream
Ingredients (btw: my cake was made with only 3/4 of these doses and 1/2 of the butter):
4 eggs
3/4 cups + 2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla flavor
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 sticks of butter
2 lb apples (if you find the 'rusty' ones that's the best)
Soften the butter, by leaving it out of the fridge for a while. Peel and cut the apples. Beat the eggs in a bowl and add slowly the sugar, keep beating. Add vanilla, flour (previously mixed with baking powder), and butter. Add the apples to this batter. Butter and flour a pan, flatten the cake dough with your fingers, and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 330 F for 40 minutes.
When I made it I was very curious to see how it would come out, because it's a really 'dense' batter (you can see that there's no milk or other liquid except than the yolks). But after you make it, it turns out to be the softest cake ever!

At the end, the recipe suggests to serve it warm together with zabaione. This was the real reason why I wanter to try the recipe, because I just had zabaione in Turin and I loved it so much.



Zabaione
It's a traditional torinese cream, served warm or cold, usually with small cookies to dip into. It's made of eggs, sugar, and an alcoholic beverage. The traditional one is made with Marsala (a liquor-like white wine, very strong). Otherwise you can use another strong white wine, or I just found out (in this same cookbook) that you can use even red wines.
The apple cake recipe suggested to serve with 'zabaione al moscato', so I prepared the zabaione with moscato d'Asti, a white sparkling delicious wine from Piemonte (which I found here in Harris Teeter).
To make it, for example for 2 people, mix very well 2 egg yolks and 2 tbsp sugar. Put on the stove, and cook at _very_ low power until you have a smooth cream. You can use a double boiler if you you want to be sure not to burn it. Add slowly 1/4 cup wine, and keep mixing and slowly cooking, until the cream is smooth, dense, and kind of fluffy. If you're using the double boiler, the water in it shouldn't boil.
It's absolutely delicious.

Il farmers market non smette mai di stupirmi

Raleigh Farmers' market can always surprise me. Last Saturday I was so amazed when I saw this:
Orange and purple cauliflowers!!!!! I never ever saw anything like that in my life so I couldn't avoid buying them.
Here is a zoom-in on the flowers:
The guy at the market suggested either eating them raw or steaming them if I didn't want them to lose their color. So I tried them both raw and steamed, and I made some quite colorful salads with them which you can look at if you 'read more'.
As for the taste, to be really honest, they didn't taste like much. When I tried them with my American friends, they told me that they tasted like normal cauliflower does. This is pretty sad: in Italy, cauliflower has a strong taste, and I don't understand why American cauliflower shouldn't taste like much.
As for the color: I found out that these colored cauliflower are well-known, they have more nutrients than regular white cauliflower, and actually, the purple one is supposed to be original from Souther Italy! You can read a lot about it on Wikipedia.

This is an example of basically the same salad that I made, just two different styles of presentation (I like them both).
Insalata di quinoa e cavolfiori colorati /Quinoa and colored cauliflower salad

I steamed the cauliflowers for ~20 minutes, and at the same time, cooked some quinoa. This is the first time I made quinoa in a while, and I never talked about it on this blog. Quinoa is a 'wonder-grain': you can prepare it and eat it like rice, but it has a lot more proteins than normal rice. It has also a specific taste, which I like very much. So, this time, I mixed 2 cups of quinoa and 4 cups of water, added some salt, and brought to boil, and let cooked (covered) until the water was adsorbed (~20 min). You should rinse the quinoa before cooking it, because it releases a soapy liquid that's a bit bitter (I forgot to do it but I still liked it a lot). To complete the salad, I added tomatoes, and seasoned with olive oil, garlic and parsley, to eat cold (first version), or I warmed it up, added just olive oil, salt and pepper, and some cottage cheese (second version).

Cena di donne italiane - a casa mia!

This month I decided that our Italian women dinner would be a little different. Instead of going to the restaurant, I wanted to host the dinner at my place, and I asked everyone to bring a dish typical of their region, or some wine in case they didn't like to cook.
I already mentioned how varied Italian cuisine is, and so, I though it would have been a pretty nice experience for all of us! In fact, it turned out to be a very good and fun dinner.. and we had plenty of wine :) :) :)
This is a picture of all the people who attended, and if you read more you can have a look at our menu.
Left to right, top to bottom: Marta, Angela, Danila, Giovanna, Ross, Cindy (top); Donnaliz, Julie, Ross, Antonella (bottom).

Appetizers
French cheese and crackers
Eh-ehm - this was brought by Antonella.. not really typical of Rome.. but this diversion was very appreciated :)
San Francisco salad
One of our friends is American, from San Francisco - our group welcomes anyone who speaks Italian, and so we have a few people who are either married to Italians, or lived in Italy for a while, without being born there. So, the San Francisco salad was a mixture of green, boiled shrimp, avocado with a 'Thousand Islands' sauce, and Cindy also brought the typical bread from San Francisco, i.e. sourdough.
Peperoni con la bagna cauda
This is a real Italian dish, and to be more precise, it's a Piemontese dish! So it comes from my same region, but it wasn't made by me. Luisa prepared it and it was delicious. It's roasted peppers served with a sauce made with a lot of garlic, anchovies and olive oil, which has boiled for a long time, until everything is dissolved like a delicate mousse. I love it. :)
Entrees
Risotto alla Milanese
This was made by Ross. It's 'rice Milano style'. It's basically just rice, saffron, butter and parmisan. I'm not sure if it's baked, and not only cooked in a pan like a usual risotto.
Melanzane alla parmigiana
I must have had already quite a lot of all the wine, at this point, considering how bad of a picture I took :)
Anyway, these are 'eggplants parmigiana style', and are typical from Sicily. They were made by Maia, and they were delicious. She explained to us that she sliced the eggplants, put some salt on them for ~30 min to remove the bitterness, rinsed them, then fried them in olive oil. Then, she made different layers of eggplants, tomato sauce, parmigiano cheese, ending with parmigiano as the last layer, and she passed them in the oven for a few minutes to make the cheese melt. They were really good!
Desserts
Dulce de tres leches and Bunet
'Dulce de tres leches' (on the left) is a typical South american/Mexican dessert, and it was brought by Julie. It was really good. The name means 'cake of the three milks', due to the fact that you use three kinds of milk to soak it into (condensed, evaporated and cream). It's a soft and sweet dessert, which I already tried in the Mexican version made by Luisa, and it's really good. 'Bunet' (on the right) was the Piemontese chocolate/amaretti pudding that I already gave the recipe for - I made it, and I was pretty happy of how nicely it layered. I also made some of my good biova bread to go with the dinner.. and the two big loaves were all gone in the end!!

Fiori per il nostro anniversario

I still didn't post about this wonderful thought that Lucas had about two weeks ago.. Two days after I got back from Italy, i.e. Jan 18th, I was all alone.. and it was not only my sister's birthday (Tanti auguri di nuovo, Elena!!) but also Lucas's and mine fourth anniversary!! So, I was a little bit depressed, a lot of nasty stuff at work, the uncertainty of my future, and being separated on our anniversary...
But.. when I came home, there was a wonderful bouquet for me at the door :)

I decided I wanted to post about this beacuse I want to keep the memory of such a sweet thought. The flowers made me smile every day I came home for more than a week. Now I'm trying to keep a rose and make it dry. :)

Una cena salutare con Crissy - zuppa di ceci

Crissy and I have been having at least one 'healthy dinner' together per week. We make something simple, just for the fun of being together, without any stress.
So last week, I thought that we could make a chickpea, potato and pasta soup, and a salad, because it was all stuff that I had at home. I already described my typical salads, with finely cut cabbage, tomatoes, tuna and capers, dressed with vinegar and olive oil and salt. I will explain a little bit more about the soup, because it was very good.
Zuppa di ceci (Chickpea soup)
Finely cut one small onion, and saute it in a little olive oil. Cut 3 potatoes into cubes and add them in the pan. Add salt to taste. Saute for 5 minutes. Add 2 cans of chickpeas with their water, and add ~2 cups water. Let cook for 10 minutes. With the water boiling, add pasta (in this case, I added 1/2 pound lasagna pasta, which I broke roughly into pieces, to simulate 'maltagliati', a type of Italian pasta, the name of which means 'badly cut'). Add some salt for the pasta. Cook until pasta is done, add one more tbsp olive oil and some pepper, and if you like, grate some parmigiano cheese on it.
Eat hot.. delicious!
Note: you can add more or less water depending on how thick you want your soup to be.

Nevica!

It's our second day of snow! Not in a row, but since the starting of 2007. This time the snow actually continued to fall for a little longer..
I like snow, I miss it a bit.. and here, it's the occasion for a day at home! Even if the snow melts really quickly, the traffic is paralyzed and all the schools are preentively closed for that inch of snow :)
So, here is one picture for everyone to enjoy: that's what I could see from my patio this morning.

Un blog di chimica fatto da una mia amica!!

My friend Caroline has a really nice weblog on Chemistry in everyday life. Go check it out! I hope she keeps it up.

Verdure / Vegetables

Asparagi olio e limone / Olive oil and lemon asparagus

Bruschette con verdure e tofu grigliati e salsa al mango e tomatillo / Bruschette with grilled veggies and tofu and mango and tomatillo salsa

Carciofi ancora piu' semplici / Even simpler artchokes

Cavolfiori al gratin / Gratin cauliflower

Curry vegetariano multietnico / Multi-ethnical vegetarian curry

Imam Bayildi / Turkish stuffed eggplants

Insalata di quinoa e cavolfiori colorati / Quinoa and colored cauliflower salad

Kale al vapore fatto in padella / Steamed kale in a pan

Martatouille

Verdure alla griglia / grilled vegetables

Sformato di spinaci / Spinach 'sformato'

Tofu con melanzane cinesi e long choy in fiore / Tofu with chinese eggplant and blooming long choy

Pess-coj

I was inspired to make this recipe because I happened to have at the same time in my fridge some cabbage and some ground meat, and I had just read the recipe on my favorite traditional Piemontese cookbook.
Pess-coj is piemontese dialect. I never spoke about dialects in this blog, but in Italy, not only every region, but every town and village has its own dialogue. Honestly I struggle to understand Piemontese (my region's dialect), I cannot speak it, and if I go to Milan or to Genova (1h 1/2 from Turin) I just don't understand anything. Just imagine how I feel if I go to Naples or Sicily and people speak in dialect. It's like being in a foreign country!
So, here you have an example in the title of this recipe: 'pess-coj' means, in Italian, 'pesce-cavolo', i.e. 'fish-cabbage'. Now, do you see any resemblance between 'cavolo' and 'coj' (cabbage for both of them)? Honestly they're not very similar.. so, that's the same for every word. Dialects are different languages, in Italian. If for example you are interested in Piemontese, I even found a dictionary Piemontese-Italiano on- line :)
Anyway, given this small introduction, here is the recipe for 'Pess-coj', taken from the Piemontese cookbook.

Pess-coj
Boil ~8 leaves of cabbage for ~5 min in salted water. Let them dry and cool down on a towel.
In the meanwhile cut finely a handful of leaves of some greens (I used kale, which doesn't exist in Piemonte, so the original recipe would call for spinach), and mix it with 1 lb ground meat (you can mix beef and sausage, I used only beef). Add 2 eggs, ~2 tsp salt, a pinch of pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, 3 minced garlic cloves, and ~2 tbsp grated parmigiano cheese.
Set this mixture at the center of the cabbage leaves and fold them. Then, the original recipe suggests either baking, to eat this as a hot dish, or frying and then soak in a mixture of vinegar, wine and sage, to eat this cold. I chose to saute them in a bit of olive oil, and add some red wine to them while they were cooking, and eat them hot. They were very good! They are called 'fish-cabbage' because they do really look a bit like fish, when they're done!
I ate them with rice and some kale, which I cooked in the same pan where I cooked the cabbage rolls, so there was a tiny bit of olive oil and wine on the bottom of it, and I just added ~ 4 tbsp water and ~1 tbsp salt to it, so it was kind of like steamed but with some more taste to it. It was really good!!

Cene da single per tutta la settimana - pesce azzurro con capperi e pomodorini

I haven't learnt how to cook for a single person yet. Anytime I make dinner for myself it ends up being enough for almost all the meals of the week.. which is good and bad at the same time.. luckily though so far I managed to make pretty good one-week-long-dinners so I'll show you some of them in the next few posts.
Let's start with one week ago, when I made some bluefish with capers and tomatoes
Pesce azzurro con capperi e pomodorini
I bought a one-pound piece of bluefish at Whole Foods Market. It wasn't too expensive, I guess because it had a few bones in it and Americans don't like fish with bones in?? :) Anyway, then I covered it with some flour on each side, heated up a little bit of olive oil, and I cooked the fish in it for ~5 minutes on each side. In the last 2-3 minutes I added some capers with their vinegar and some small tomatoes, cut in half, on top.
It was really good, I was quite happy, and it's really fast to make. Serve with steamed rice and enjoy!

Il mio blog ha compiuto un anno!!

Yesterday I forgot to write that.. it was my blog's first birthday!!!! :)
Happy birthday to 'An Italian in the US' !! :) And thank you to all the readers who stop by! It's been a really nice experience and I hope I'll be able to keep it up for a long time :)