The Sunny Kitchen - An Italian cook in Amsterdam

Frittata di spaghetti

Spaghetti frittata is one of the most classic of Italian classics plus a classic in food recycling. Everybody in Italy loves it except, I guess, those who don’t like eggs.
It’s usually made with cooked left-over spaghetti that are left uneaten, mostly after lunch. Think of spaghetti without sauce, all sticky and practically useless… except for something like this.

I’ve always loved that blobby stuff made of cooked, unseasoned spaghetti all sticking to each other that remained in my Mom’s pasta colander after lunch and that I would go and steal after eating. One of my culinary perversions that nobody seems to understand, leave alone my Mother who was always wondering how I could like cold spaghetti and how I could keep on eating just after lunch. Well… yes, I can! :D

Anyway, the spaghetti in this frittata are very nice and not blobby at all, plus this dish is extremely tasty and easy to make.
The classic version is “white”, which means made only of spaghetti, eggs and cheese, but I like to enrich it with other ingredients too, also to give it a bit more colour. You can use peas, sun-dried tomatoes, little ham cubes, pancetta, whatever you fancy.

I cooked spaghetti directly for this dish because, I don’t know why, I never have left-overs. ;)
And I recycled the green parts of a bunch of Spring onions that I used for a cooking lessons a few days before.

 

Nicoletta’s spaghetti frittata

Serves 4

200 gr uncooked spaghetti (if you use them already cooked, about 350 grams)
4 medium-sized eggs
1 handful of grated parmigiano reggiano
the green leaves of 6 Spring onions, coarsely chopped in rings
a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley
salt and black pepper
e.v. olive oil

Fry the Spring onion rings with a bit of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan until soft.

Finely chop the parsley leaves and keep them aside.

Beat the eggs with a pinch of salt, some freshly ground black pepper, the parsley, a little cold water (about half a deciliter) and the parmigiano.

Cook the spaghetti very al dente in lots of salted boiling water and drain well.
Mix immediately with the Spring onion rings in the pan, flatten them a bit and pour the beaten eggs on top of them.

Spread the egg mixture evenly and cook the frittata well on one side on a medium-low fire.

Turn the frittata using a big enough dish or a lid, slide it carefully in the frying pan with the already cooked side up and fry it well on the other side too.
On the outer part of the frittata spaghetti has to be nice and crunchy.

Serve immediately but this dish is very good at room temperature too.

 

Gnocchi with herb pesto - gnocchi con pesto alle erbe

Summer plus cooking is not always a great combination, especially when it's as hot as the last few days here in Amsterdam. That's why sometimes it's great to prepare something easy, fast and tasty like this herb pesto with almost no effort and totally no "real" cooking involved.
The only thing that needs to be cooked is pasta or, like in this case, the gnocchi.

Fresh herbs are abundant in this period and it's a good idea to make some extra pesto to put in the freezer in small portions that can be defrosted when needed.

I've recently discovered this pesto recipe in the Italian magazine "Cucina Moderna" and had it prepared by some of my cooking "pupils" in combination with self made gnocchi. To see how you can prepare gnocchi take a look at my gnocchi video.

The classic pesto alla genovese contains just basil (see my video recipe here) while for this version you can use other types of herbs. You can of course choose different herbs than the ones I use here but don't mix too many tastes otherwise you'll overdo it. Good pesto - and all other types of good food, i.m.h.o. - are better if you follow the golden Italian "less is more" rule.

TIP: use a lot of flat-leaf parsley as a base, the other herbs can be added in smaller quantities.

 

 


Pesto alle erbe

Serves 4

 

1 little shallot
a big bunch of fresh herbs (flat-leaf parsley, thyme, mint and oregano)
60 gr. walnut kernels plus a handful of extra walnuts for garnishing purposes
60 gr. grated Parmesan cheese
2 dl extra vergine olive oil
salt and pepper

Peel the shallot and chop it coarsely.

Wash the herbs, dry them with kitchen paper ad remove stems and stalks (use only the leaves, thus).

Chop the herbs in the mixer together with the walnuts, the cheese, the olive oil and the shallot.

Season with salt and pepper to taste (most of the times it's not necessary to do so) and serve on pasta or gnocchi with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and garnished with a few walnut kernels.











 

Cooking video: linguine with pesto genovese

I grew up with pesto. The first time I ate it was practically with my baby food. I guess being born in Genoa from Genovesi parents helped.
Pesto is in the Top 10 of my comfort foods: easy to make, easy to keep - not longer than a week in a glass jar in the fridge, covered with a thin layer of olive oil extra vergine or a couple of months in the freezer. I put practically nothing in the freezer (in general I don't like frozen food, not even if I made it myself) but some pesto in one or two persons portions always comes in handy for a quick plate of pasta when the fridge is empty.
Well, quick... Maybe not. You're not supposed to warm up pesto since it is at its best when very fresh and uncooked, and especially not in the microwave! You would then end up with a ball of cheese tasting of garlic and basil. Particularly if you use lots of cheese as I do. So even if frozen, it will stay slow food 'cause you'll need the patience to let is thaw with no external heat involved.
Some people freeze pesto in ice-cubes holders. Clever! Like that you have small portions that can be used for pasta and soup AND thaw quite fast.

The original use of pesto as in Genoa is purely as a pasta sauce and extra taste maker in the minestrone soup. Here in Holland, and I guess in the rest of the world, pesto gets misused and abused on practically everything: sandwiches, meat, green salads, caprese, you name it. Not exactly classic uses but I guess that says how popular and loved pesto is.

Linguine al pesto (ENG) from Nicoletta Tavella on Vimeo.

The best way to make it is with classic marble mortar and wooden pestle since these two materials are "basil friendly"and that's how my mom always made it since the arrival of the kitchen robot. From that moment on, pesto making was not a lengthy and a bit tiring operation anymore but a breeze...

I always make it with the kitchen robot even if the purists insist it's no good. As long as you don't mix too long - the ingredients would get warmed up and that would damage the wonderful structure of this almost totally raw sauce (only the cheeses are not exactly raw) - you can make wonderful pesto also with a kitchen robot. And fast! A few minutes and you have a fragrant, creamy sauce so good you can eat it with a spoon. After self-made pesto there's no turning back. No more awful pesto in a jar bought at the supermarket!

This version of mine is quite "cheesy". I love strong, very well defined tastes and the saltiness of pecorino cheese but of course you can experiment and choose to use less of it, if you like. The very classic recipe says you should use Sardinian pecorino but here I used romano and the result was quite good anyway.
I would definitely avoid using more garlic because it has a dominant character. In my family we also use a handful of walnuts to give extra "zest" to the pesto and a dollop of butter to smoothen it up even further. I love it like this.

Good pesto should have just a hint of garlic. So feel free to cut down on my six (reasonably little) cloves, also if you prefer less comments on your breath. ;)

This is the first video I made all by myself. Long live the tripod!
The song I chose as a "soundtrack" is possibly my favourite Italian song ever, "Mediterraneo" from Gino Paoli, another Genovese I'm very proud of (like all of the other fantastic cantautori that my beautiful city gave birth to). Every time I hear it I get tears in my eyes.
"Son nato in Mediterraneo", I was born on the Mediterranean... and that's how I feel, even after 24 years of living far from it.

Enjoy!

Another pasta??? Linguine with slightly hot tomato & tuna sauce

                                     

Yes, another pasta.
It seems like I'm eating only pasta, recently, and that's pretty much true. It's summer, I'm going out a lot in the evenings and I don't really feel like making complicated dishes, so a plate of pasta is always good, fast and easy.
Yesterday evening it was time for yet another classic, a pasta al sugo di pomodoro con tonno, peperoncino e olive nere.

I have cravings, from time to time. Like everybody else, methinks.
Sometimes it's chocolate, sometimes meat, sometimes a certain type of vegetable. A clear sign that my body needs specific nutrients, I guess.
Recently I have a real craving for canned tuna (preserved in oil, I usually find the one in water too flaky and dry) and so I'm using it in salads with tomato and chickpeas, in sandwiches with basil and self made mayonnaise and of course in pasta dishes like this one, which is easy to make and a classic year-round recipe.
I like it a bit hot - but not too hot - and so I add a couple of dried chili peppers (the tiny, very mean ones from southern Italy). The special note is given by a generous splash of red wine where you probably would expect white, and that gives the sauce a nice, sturdy and slightly unexpected twist, supported by the flavour of the small taggiasche olives used instead of normal black olives.
To make the preparation even faster I use passata di pomodoro (strained crushed tomatoes) instead of peeled tomatoes because this speeds up the whole cooking process a lot.
I like to eat this with long, thick pasta (linguine, bavette, spaghettoni) but short pasta is perfectly OK too.
The music today is from Fiorella Mannoia and Tiziano Ferro.

Oh, a little lingui-ne-stic note for some of my English speaking friends: the right spelling is linguinE and not linguini.  ;)

Linguine al sugo di pomodoro con tonno, peperoncino e olive nere

Serves 3-4

300 gr. linguine
500 gr. passata di pomodoro (strained crushed tomatoes)
1 medium-sized onion
1 clove of garlic
200 gr. canned tuna
2-3 dried chili peppers
1 handful of black olives
a big pinch of dried oregano
1/2 dl. red wine
olive oil extra vergine
sea salt

Chop the onion and fry it in olive oil with the crushed chili peppers until soft and golden brown.
Add the garlic clove, the passata di pomodoro, the dried oregano and the olives and let everything cook for at least 10 minutes.
Remove the garlic clove and add the tuna in little chunks and the red wine. Mix well and let the sauce cook for another 2-3 minutes.
Add some salt if necessary and mix with the pasta cooked very al dente.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
       

 

Insalata estiva di pasta ai gamberetti (Summer pasta salad with shrimp)

What do you do when you just made pasta with shrimp and zucchini and you cooked far too many shrimps? Well... you can use the extra shrimp for pasta salad the day after, for example.

Not just the regular pasta salad with regular pasta, though. For this recipe I used rice pasta which I really like to eat because of its special texture. It's quite different from the usual durum wheat stuff because it's slightly gluey but in a very pleasant way. In the past I used to take it with me every time I came back from Italy but now I can find it here in Amsterdam too, lucky me. :)

This is a summer salad because of the green beans and the ripe tomatoes (even though nowadays you can find both 364 days a year...). I used the little pomodori that here in Holland are sold with the dubious commercial name of San Mazzo - dubious because the Dutch clearly do NOT know what mazzo in Italian can mean, guess they wanted something that sounded like San Marzano, the original name of plum tomatoes, but had no intention of spending a few euros to ask a native speaker if there were any "hidden tricks" in the name they had chosen.
Just like Mitsubishi did, by the way, when they wanted to sell their Pajero in Spanish speaking countries and somebody made them notice that the name had negative associations. I guess that's what you deserve for being a cheap *BLEEP* and thinking you can do it all by yourself without asking a language professional. Believe me, as an ex translator and interpreter I know what I'm talking about and this is still a very sensitive issue for me. ;)

Back to the salad: the fresh note is given by the lime juice. Lots of it. I'm a big lime lover and I tend to overdo it so start with the juice of 1 lime, see if it's not too acid for you and then proceed with the second one  if you think you can handle the extra tartness.
The other very Italian taste in this salad besides that of the plum tomatoes is given by the Taggiasche olives from Liguria. They're little, dark purple olives with a very peculiar and unique flavour. Extremely yummy, I find, and if used with moderation - their taste is quite strong -  they add a very original note to your dishes.
I usually steam the green beans to keep them nice and al dente.
This salad is much nicer if made a lot in advance so all the flavours can combine properly.

Insalata estiva di pasta ai gamberetti

Serves 3-4

250 gr. short rice pasta (fusilli, penne etc)
200 gr. cooked shrimp
150 gr. steamed green beans
150 gr. plum tomatoes
a couple of spoons of taggiasche olives
juice of 2 limes
2 spring onions
1 big bunch of flat-leaf parsley
olive oil extra vergine
salt and black pepper

Cook the pasta very al dente in salted boiling water. Drain and rinse immediately under the tap with cold water. Set aside in a big bowl and mix with a little olive oil to avoid sticking.

Slice the spring onions, chop the tomatoes and cut the green beans in two. 
Finely chop a lot of flat-leaf parsley and add it to the pasta.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the pasta, season with salt and pepper and mix well.

 

Puglia in your plate: pasta alla crudaiola (with salted ricotta, fresh tomato and basil)

If there's ONE pasta dish I couldn't do without and that I find very, very addictive that's the crudaiola.
For me it's THE summer pasta and on top of all it represents the full, intense flavours of Puglia - the region where I grew up - at their very best.

It's the simplest thing to make, really. Well, if you can find ricotta salata, that is.
A few days ago I finished the last piece I brought with me from a recent trip to Bari and I'm still inconsolable. I just LOVE the cheese. I love it. No, better: I ADORE it. Period.
It's a dry, salted ricotta cheese that can be grated over your pasta or used for all sorts of other recipes. It's usually made (with slightly different results, more or less salty, harder or softer) in several southern Italian regions, particularly in Sicily and Puglia, basically in those areas where sheep are kept since it's made with sheep's milk.
In Bari it's called ricotta marzotica and its name comes from the period of the year it's being made, around March-April ("marzo" in Italian means March) when there's an abundant production of milk, but since it's a ripened cheese you can luckily buy it all year long.
The crudaiola is my absolutely favourite summer pasta because it smells and tastes like summer: fresh, ripe and juicy tomatoes, sweet and intense basil and good raw extra vergine olive oil.
Crudaiola comes from crudo, raw, to indicate that most ingredients are raw.
That's why it's so easy to make.
Just chop some good tomatoes (I used small, sweet Cupido ones), shred some basil, grate the ricotta, drizzle with good olive oil and season with salt (go easy on it since the ricotta is already quite salty) and pepper. That's it. Some people add a hint of garlic but I think it's perfect just like this, no need to add any other flavours.
I usually exaggerate with the quantity of ricotta I use but by now you should know why.
Like for the previous recipe, crudaiola is usually made with short pasta.
Just don't ask me why and enjoy.

Pasta alla crudaiola

Serves 2

200 gr. short pasta (penne, tortiglioni etc)
250 gr. ripe tomatoes
a piece of ricotta marzotica or any other salted ricotta, at least 150 gr.
a little bunch of basil
good extra vergine olive oil
salt and black pepper

Cook the pasta very al dente in boiling salted water while preparing the other ingredients as indicated above and drain.

Mix chopped tomatoes, basil and grated cheese with a good drizzle of olive oil, season with salt and pepper if you like, add the hot pasta, toss and serve.

An Italian classic: pasta with zucchini, shrimp and cream (zucchine, gamberetti e panna)

Definitely an Italian classic.
A bit démodé, if you like (soooo old fashioned), but still one of the classiest Italian comfort foods ever: pasta with courgette, shrimp and cream.
With a hint of basil, to celebrate the summer (and because basil goes so friggin' well with courgettes).
Delicate and yet tasty. To be eaten again, and again, and again...

Tips: choose a short pasta like tortiglioni, rigatoni or penne. According to the unwritten and unspoken "Italian pasta sauce rules" this sauce doesn't go well with long pasta...
And do not, I repeat, do NOT, use Parmesan cheese. Any Italian would punch you right in the face for doing something like that when pasta with fish or seafood is involved.
If you still decide to do it, at least make sure there's no Italians around.

Pasta con panna, zucchine e gamberetti

Serves 2

200 gr. short pasta
1 small onion
1 big courgette or 2-3 small ones
200 gr small shrimps (frozen is OK)
1 dl cooking cream
a bunch of fresh basil
olive oil extra vergine
salt and black pepper

Fry the finely chopped onion gently in olive oil until soft and golden brown.

Add the sliced courgette and let is cook until soft and slightly browned stirring regularly.
Add the cream and the defrosted shrimps and let everything cook for 2 minutes.
Add some fresh shredded basil leaves, season with some salt and mix everything well.

Cook the pasta very al dente in boiling salted water while making the sauce and drain.

Add the pasta to the sauce, toss gently and serve with a generous sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.

Summer lunch on the balcony - courgette flowers stuffed with lemon tagliolini

My mum is the BEST cook in the world, no doubt about it.
Don't ALL Italians say that? Well, I can assure you, in my case it's true. :)

Yesterday we had lunch on her balcony overlooking the lungomare (the beautiful promenade along the coast) of Bari to enjoy the little bit of available cool air and make the hot day more bearable.

She prepared a great primo piatto, delicate and yet very savoury: lovely zucchini flowers stuffed with lemon-flavoured tagliolini (the thinner version of the classic tagliatelle). An absolutely fantastic dish, perfect for that one-day-to-summer day.

After eating something like that we didn't need much more and had just a fresh caprese with oregano accompanied by some great porcini mushrooms in oil.

The wannabe sommelier chose a bottle of citrusy and bubbly Verduzzo-Prosecco frizzante delle Venezie IGT 2008 from Giordano that went perfectly well with the lemony taste of the tagliolini.
Ahem, "chose" is a big word. To tell the truth, nothing but the truth, it was the only bottle of wine my mum had in the fridge so it HAD to go perfectly well with the lemon pasta. ;)
The thing is... it actually did!

Here's the recipe, to be enjoyed as long as courgette flowers are available (which hopefully is going to be all summer long!).

Fiori di zucchina ripieni di tagliolini al limone

Serves 4

300 gr thin tagliolini
4-5 courgette flowers per person
40 gr. butter
2 big organic lemons
160 gr cream cheese or cooking cream
salt and black pepper

Wash the zucchini flowers briefly under the tap, open them delicately on one side so that they become strip-like, remove the fleshy pistils and lay the flowers on a clean kitchen cloth.

Melt the butter in a saucepan on a low fire but don't let it fry and get all golden brown.
Grate the lemon rind and mix it gently with the warm butter and the cream cheese in the saucepan. Set aside.

Cook the tagliolini in salted boiling water till only half cooked and drain.
Transfer the pasta in the saucepan and toss with the sauce. If you like, season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Take a forkful of tagliolini and roll it well on the fork. Use this little "nest" to stuff a courgette flower and proceed in the same way until all the flowers have been filled.
Enclose the little tagliolini rolls within each flower wrapping the flowers around the pasta. Lay the stuffed flowers in an oven dish and scatter a few pieces of butter all over them.

Cook for about 5 minutes in the pre-heated oven at 250°C and for 2 extra minutes under the grill.
Serve immediately.

 

 

Before going into the oven

 

  

Beautiful flowers

 

  

Miami or Bari? ;)

 

 

Me in my favourite type of mirror ;)