This is a beautiful, very tasty and yet delicate specialty from my sister Francesca who loves everything that is sweet (she even has a great blog dedicated to sweets). And yet... the cake on this page was made by my Mum, Gabriella, as you can see in the video.
It's based on a recipe (in Italian) that Francy originally found on the Italian site Gennarino.org.
It's a very simple and very attractive cake, also easy to serve because you just have to detach a single "rose" for every portion you need.
Making the cake, typical from Mantua, is not that difficult (you can see how it's done in the video). The final result is quite spectacular and really, really good.
fresh yeast (about 25 gr.) or dry yeast (about 7 gr.) 1 glass of lukewarm milk 2 whole eggs 3 tablespoons of olive oil 3 tablespoons of sugar grated zest of 1 lemon 500 gr flour a pinch of salt
PLUS 100 gr soft butter at room temperature 100 gr sugar icing sugar to garnish
Mix all the ingredients well, by hand or with a mixer, and leave the dough to rest in a bowl for one and a half hour, covered with a clean kitchen cloth and away from draught.
Roll out the dough with the rolling pin on a surface that you have first dusted with flour to avoid sticking. The sheet has to be not too thin neither too thick, and rectangular in shape.
Mix butter and sugar and spread this cream evenly on the rolled out dough.
Roll up the dough like a cigar and cut it in thick slices (see pictures).
Lay the dough cylinders next to each other in a high, round oven dish (about 26/28 cm diameter) leaving some space between them because they'll rise and become larger, filling all the gaps. Leave to rise again protecting from draught until the dough has doubled its volume. If you used a spring-release tin lay it on top of a flat oven dish because the butter will melt and leak a bit. Put in the pre-heated oven (170°C) for about 45 minutes (30 with a ventilated oven) or until nice and golden (I usually ignore the time indicated in recipes because all ovens are different and check from time to time how things are going).
Remove from the tin after it's cooled off a bit and serve dusted with icing sugar.
I’ve been on holiday, AT LAST. In spite of the fact that I adore my job I was totally fed up with working – I’ve been working hard all Summer – and, horror of horrors, I hadn’t had a REAL holiday in the last four years.
So the REAL holiday I long dreamed finally became a reality at the end of October. I spent it in a lovely B&B in Pontassieve (Florence) doing nothing but eating, drinking, sleeping, going to visit nice places and nice people and sitting in front of the fireplace with my belly full of wonderful stuff that I can only dream of when I’m home (in Amsterdam, that is). :) Something like the twohundredfiftyfivemillions different types of Tuscan pecorino cheese (OMG they make so many here and they’re all wonderful!!!). Or the little wild boar salamis made in small-scale and free from additives unlike the mainstream ones. And really fresh porcini mushrooms. And what about fried artichokes the way my mum makes them? (I’m sooooo lucky, she’s was sharing this holiday with me so I was able to eat them again!).
Talking of my mum and of porcini mushrooms, , I thought of filming her during one of her cooking sessions here in Tuscany. In this video she’s making one of her many classics, porcini mushrooms and potatoes in the oven.
We found some wonderful porcini – this is the perfect season – and we decided to prepare this yummy side dish. Red potatoes are amazing and stay perfectly firm so I really advise using them for this dish. If you like, you can also slice them a bit thicker and cook them a bit longer. If you’re a millionaire or related to a millionaire – porcini are quite pricey -you can build even more layers to make this dish even more luscious and sinful. Mmmm, what a great taste, and with so little ingredients. Just porcini, potatoes, olive oil, salt and oregano. A bit of black pepper wouldn’t be bad idea at all, if you like it.
For the recipe and the video in Italian, click here.
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.
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.
For the Italian culinary blog Spigoloso
I put my friend from the whole world in front of the camera to prepare some of their favourite recipes. One of the many beautiful things about Amsterdam is that you easily make friends with people who have the most different backgrounds and from all countries. My friends all love good food and many of them can also cook pretty well, sometimes professionally and sometimes not. The results are always excellent and that's why I decided to share their cooking talents on video.
Take for example PascalPlissonneau, the first to appearon Spigoloso with his famousTarte Tatin.
Here you can see him making it just like that, with ease and French souplesse (he's made hundreds of them!). Pascal was born and raised in Nantes, lived in Paris for a long time and now resides in Amsterdam since an even longer time. He's a translator and loves to cook. As a hobby he's even been working at one of Amsterdam's finest bakeries, the Gebroeders
Niemeijer. Some of his other specialties are the crumble,
the mousse au chocolat and his fantastic Thai curries.
Dough: 200 gflour 125 g soft butter 4 tablespoons sugar 1 snuf sea salt 1/4 glas cold water Filling and caramel: 4-5 firm apples 10 tablespoons sugar 4 tablespoons water
TIPS:
-
Don't kneed the dough too long or it will get hard instead of crunchy once baked.
- Always keep a couple of extra apples handy to make sure you have enough to cover the oven dish.
- Use a high oven dish (5 cm high and 25 cm diameter) that can be put directly on the flame.
- Pay attention: the caramel gets incredibly hot so never touch it with your hands when still liquid!
- Always keep an eye on the caramel because it can burn very fast. Keep the peeled and cored apple quarters close to it so that you can use them immediately to stop the caramel's browning process if this goes too fast.
- When the caramel starts to get golden brown move the oven dish carefully a couple of times to make sure that the sugar caramelizes evenly and to avoid burning it. If the caramel is too dark it will be bitter.
- If you prefer apples that are very well coked and soft you can bake them in the oven for about half an hour at 200°C. Lay them in the oven dish together with the caramel.
- The rolled out dough has to be quite thick (about 5 mm) and with a broader diameter than that of the oven dish.
-
Don't forget to dust the rolled out dough with some flour to avoid sticking during folding.
- The tarte Tatin goes in the oven at 200°C for about 45 minutes. The actual baking time depends on the oven you use. Check from time to time to make sure the pastry doesn't burn or get too dark.
- It's possible that the caramel flows out of the dish while in the oven. Use a flat tray or dish under the one containing the tarte Tatin to protect the bottom of your oven.
- Once the tarte Tatin is ready, let is rest for 20 – 30
minutes.
- Use oven gloves to flip the dessert onto a plate. The caramel can still be very hot and the gloves will also protect you from the steam that comes out of the dish while turning the tarte Tatin onto the plate.
- Pascal advises to eat the tarte Tatin lukewarm together with some vanilla ice-cream or a bit of quark or crème
fraîche,
both with no sugar since the tarte is already quite sweet.
My friend Claudio Varone, architect and artist, loves to cook.
No wonder, practically all of my friends love to cook, otherwise they wouldn't be my friends. ;)
You might remember Claudio as the author of my favourite spritz cocktail. He's also a great cook who loves to reproduce the dishes of his birth region, Puglia. He's a Barese (native of Bari), to be precise, and it's funny that we grew up in the same city having common friends but we never met until a lot later, when we were both already living in Amsterdam. In Bari we grew up with the typical focaccia with tomatoes that every school kid in Bari eats when coming out of school, hungry like a wolf. Some of the best panifici (bakeries) in town are strategically placed close to schools and I guess that's not by chance: the quantity of focaccia sold to young students is MASSIVE.
We had already been experimenting with focaccia al pomodoro twice, with growing satisfaction but not completely happy about the end results. A few days ago we gave it another try with a recipe from the book "Pane, pizze e focacce" written by Laura Ginapri changing only the type of flour used (half durum wheat and half "00" type instead of 100% "00" flour as in the original recipe) and the result really made us happy. Worth an immediate "memory lane" flash. You can see the product of our efforts here in my newest video. Long-time French friend Pascal helped Claudio in preparing the focaccia. We actually made two types of focaccia, one of which - the one Pascal worked at more intensively, with a mashed potato in it, a common ingredient in Bari's home-made focaccia's - ended up in a bit of a drama, as you can see on the right. Very tasty but still a sticky drama.
So from now on we prefer to stick to this one, an AMAZINGLY tasty focaccia with crunchy bits (usually the sides) and a softer center. Make sure you spread the dough quite thinly in the oven dish, it's important that it doesn't get too thick. All in all this focaccia comes out quite crunchy thanks to the abundant use of olive oil, something that characterizes the Apulian cuisine (just look at my Mom's tiella!).
Focaccia al pomodoro barese
Serves... just a few happy few, it's too good to eat with moderation :D
Ingredients:
200 gr. / 7 oz durum wheat flour 200 gr. / 7 oz type "00" flour 25 gr. / 0.8 oz. fresh brewer's yeast 300 ml/10.14 fl. oz lukewarm water 2 teaspoons of sea salt 1 tablespoon of milk a can of good quality peeled tomatoes(we used Mutti) a handful of black olives dried oregano salt coarse sea salt extra virgin olive oil
Mix the two types of flour in a big bowl. Dilute the yeast completely in part of the lukewarm water and add it to the two flours mixing well. After a while - wait for about 4-5 minutes so that the yeast can do its work properly, salt inhibits its effects - add the salt, also diluted, and then the rest of the water. Mix and add the milk, mixing a bit further. The dough has to be very soft and sticky. Cover it with plastic foil and leave to raise for about an hour on a warm place.
Chop the canned tomatoes coarsely.
Spread the dough on a well-oiled oven dish (grease your fingers too to avoid sticking) and spread the chopped tomatoes on top of it. Add the olives and season with oregano, a bit of coarse sea salt and plenty of olive oil.
Put in the pre-heated oven at 200°C /392°F for about 30-35 minutes and bake until golden brown.
My first culinary video as a "director" is one of the most typical dishes from Bari, in Puglia, and it's called tiella di riso, patate e cozze.
This is my Mum's version - the hands you see are hers :) - and she changes the original recipe a bit using shelled raw mussels instead of half shells (filled with mussels, of course) because the end result is then easier to cut (no hard stuff in between rice and potatoes to make cutting difficult).The positive aspect of using shells is that they fill with cooked rice grains that soak up the wonderful juices of the mussels and make it more fun to eat.
Use potatoes that stay nice and firm. Cut them with a mandoline to ensure very thin slices. You'll have to check from time to time if they are cooked inserting a knife to feel their texture. When they're ready it will be very easy to pierce them.
Gabriella uses about a kilo of shelled mussels but if you use the de-shelled ones one and a half kilo will do perfectly fine (they take more space inside the oven dish). The type of rice is Vialone Nano but Carnaroli is great too.
Use two handsful of grated pecorino romano cheese that will be mixed with a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves and a bunch of flat leaf parsley, also chopped. Some freshly ground black pepper is also nice. Use the mixture of cheese, garlic and parsley twice (two layers, also on top of the mussels) in between layers of other ingredients. The water you add before putting the dish in the oven has to be salted and very hot (almost boiling). Cover the tiella up to the rim and put in the pre-heated oven at 240°C - 464° F for about 20-25 minutes until well cooked and golden brown.
If you have just one week of holidays and yet you love to cook so much that you think your work is great fun and that it's even more fun if done with your friends, you might want to shoot a cooking video.
That's one of the things I did during my short Apulian holiday at the end of January. My friend Valentina and I decided it was time for another video recipe - and for some serious laughing during the shoots which, lucky you, we're going to spare you. It all resulted in the filming of a classic Apulian dish, the calzone di cipolla, made by a Genovese who grew up in Puglia. :)
I'm not going to tell you HOW MANY onions I had to peel, cut and fry to make this dish (if you ever decide to shoot a cooking video make sure you always have at least three times the necessary ingredients just in case something goes wrong and you have to do a shot all over again...), I'll just say that after the shooting I smelled like I had spent four days in a row frying onion rings in a fast-food restaurant (brrrr!). Not pleasant AT ALL. So now you know that, in case you were thinking of making 3 calzoni next weekend. :) Oh, and don't forget to put a wet cloth under your chopping board while cutting the ingredients otherwise everything will inexorably slide away while you're working! ;D And serve on beautiful dinnerware. Although this is a simple dish, it deserves the very best!
Here the video and the recipe. My thanks to Valentina of Nikolaus Produzioni for filming, (and for the good laugh), to Arno at helderfilm.nl for editing the video and adding all those cool special effects and to Gianni Ciardo for the beautiful jazz music!
250 gr. of plain flour (possibly of the 00 type) 250 gr. of
durum wheat flour 25 gr. of fresh yeast (or two teaspoons of dry granulated yeast) 1 teaspoon of sugar 2 teaspoons of
salt for the dough 2 dl of
lukewarm water 8 small sweet white onions (or 4 big
ones) 5 anchovy fillets in oil 2 tablespoons of raisins 100 gr. of pitted green or black
olives 50 gr of
grated pecorino cheese (Sardinian, Roman or Sicilian) 1 ½ dl. of olive oil extravergine coarse sea salt black pepper
Mix the yeast
with 2 dl. of lukewarm water and a teaspoon of sugar. Dissolve yeast and sugar properly. The sugar is going to boost the activation of the yeast.
Mix together the two types of flour (you can sieve the plain
flour first to make sure you get no lumps). Add 2 teaspoons of salt and
mix further. Add the water with sugar and
yeast and then the the olive oil, mixing everything well. Transfer the mixture on the
table and kneed until the dough is compact and yet very elastic. Use
some extra olive oil if the dough feels too dry and some extra flour if the
dough sticks to the working top.
Divide the dough in 2 balls, one
of which a bit bigger than the other one. Cut a cross on top of each ball
of dough using a knife and leave to rise under a wet kitchen
cloth on a warm place for about 15 to 20 minutes (this calzone dough doesn’t really
have to rise for a long time).
Soak the
raisins in warm water, rinse them and pat them dry with kitchen paper.
Cut the pitted olives in rings and
put them aside in a small bowl.
Peel the sweet onions and cut them
in rings. Fry the onions in olive oil until
soft and glazy, and do that preferably on a low fire and with the lid on the
pan so that they can get all soft in their own steam and caramelise a bit.
Season the onions with salt and pepper and leave them to cool off.
Mix well the onions with the
soaked raisins, the grated pecorino cheese, and the anchovies cut in small
pieces.
Flatten the two dough balls with a
rolling pin. Lay the bigger piece of dough on
a previously greased oven dish. Fill with the onion mixture.Cover with the smaller piece of
flattened dough and seal the borders.
Grease the top side of the
calzone with some olive oil, sprinkle with coarse sea
salt and put in the pre-heated oven at
200°C for about 30 minutes.
Serve lukewarm with a good glass
of wine, for example a good Locorotondo from Puglia, and buon appetito! :)
A classic dish, gnocchi di patatecon burro e salvia (potato dumplings with butter and sage), easy to make and even easier to eat (I love gnocchi and tend to overeat them...).
Maybe the biggest fun was going to the wonderful market right behind my mom's block and buying all the stuff we needed for this and for the next - yes, there's gonna be a next - recipe, filming among the people who looked at us and commented in their witty and direct barese dialect (the only Italian dialect I speak almost fluently - almost).
The quality and abundance of produce of the markets in Bari are legendary. And the prices! Take a look at the price tags and be jealous of those who live there like I was while doing my shopping. 6 euros for a kilo of fresh red mullet (nientenada frozen, only the freshest stuff!), 1,30 for a kilo of bananas and 1 euro for a kilo of oranges! Plus I bought the most wonderful artichokes, 10 (10!!!) pieces for 3 euros! Thinking that here in Amsterdam they can cost about 1,25 A PIECE and they're not even remotely as good looking and tasting as the pugliesi I was almost moved to tears. ;)
Well, here's my video blog of a great a day with my friends, cooking and having lunch together. Hope you enjoy it! :)
P.S. My heartfelt thank to Valentina and Daniela for the "direction", our friend Antonio Bellino of Nikolaus Produzioni for his
wonderful knowledge and our friend Teresa for joyfully sharing the shooting, the fun and the meal with us!
P.S. nr. 2: we're looking for sponsors to make many more videos! :)
1,5 kg. starchy potatoes, for ex. Doré or Red Star* 300 gr. flour 1 egg a pinch of salt
Ingredients
for the sauce:
250 gr. butter a
bunch of fresh sage leaves
PLUS: some freshly
grated parmesan cheese
GNOCCHI:Wash the potatoes and boil them (with their skin so that they don’t absorb too much water) in plenty of salted
water until thoroughly cooked. It's important that while cooking they're completely under water.
Drain the potatoes, peel them and mash them with a potato ricer while still very warm. Make sure the purée is quite smooth, with no big potato
chunks in it, and leave it cool off a bit.
Add egg,
flour and a pinch of salt to the puree. Kneed the potato dough gently on the
working table (dust it first with some flour). Don’t kneed too energetically
otherwise the dough will get sticky. It has to become soft and quite elastic.
Take
a piece of dough, dust it with a bit of flour and roll it with your hands to
make a little long “sausage”, about 2 cm thick. Cut this roll in little chunks
a couple of centimeters long. Repeat this until all the dough has been rolled
and cut in bite-size pieces.
Use a
gnocchi board to shape each one of the gnocchi rolling them on the ribbed
surface (you can also use a fork and press each gnocco gently against the tines
of the fork). The grooves are important because they "catch" the sauce, just as the track left by your thumb on the other side does.Lay the gnocchi on a clean kitchen towel so
that they don’t stick to the working surface.
SAUCE:Melt the butter in a little pan on a low flame. Let it gently simmer until it becomes transparent and add the sage leaves, cut in thin strips or whole. Leave them for one more minute to simmer and remove from the fire. Pour on the cooked gnocchi and garnish with some fresh sage. Serve immediately.
COOKING THE
GNOCCHI: cook the gnocchi in boiling salted water. When they’re ready, they’ll
come drifting to the surface (this usually takes just a couple of minutes).
Remove the
gnocchi from the water with a skimmer and put them in a big bowl. Cover with the sauce, mix well
and serve with grated Parmigiano cheese.
Added on Nov. 2nd, 08:
1)
as my sister Francy suggested in the comments, the potatoes don't
actually even need to be peeled. Putting them still piping hot in the
ricer and mashing them will give you a wonderful fluffy puree while the
skins stay in the ricer! Grazie sister! :)
2) *as the kind cooks at We Are Never Full
suggested in the comments, the best potatoes for gnocchi in the States
are the Yukon Gold ones. Thanks guys, I've never tried them but now I
surely know what to use next time I'll make gnocchi in your beautiful
country! :)
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