The Sunny Kitchen - An Italian cook in Amsterdam

Italian sushi workshops

Italian sushi?
I can already hear you think: WHAT'S THAT???

For those who did not know yet: Italy is the largest European producer of rice.

We grow many kinds of rice and even fantastic sushi rice.

 

During this workshop we use this beautiful Italian product together with other surprising ingredients that provide distinct flavour combinations. Pure, tasty and very original.

 

Come and discover the secrets of a perfect sushi prepared the Italian way!

 

Only during this summer offer (book between June 22 and July 30th) this workshop includes a goodie bag to make Italian sushi at home.

To book please send me an e-mail.

This workshop is being held in Amsterdam, at my Italian cooking school La Cucina del Sole.

Date: Saturday 1 August 2015, Saturday 29 August 2015 
Price: € 79,00 p.p. 
Time: 10.30 - 14.30 hrs

Photo: cookbook paradise

@Frankfurt's Book Fair

 

My 2nd cookbook is coming!

After almost 1 year of preparation and hard work (in August it will be one year exactly since we started working at this project) my 2nd cookbook will be a reality, at last! :)
In Holland and Belgium it will be available from half September and I can hardly wait!

It's called "Cucina di casa mia - recepten van een Italiaanse familie" (as you probably understand I wrote it in Dutch ;D), it contains 85 great family recipes, lots of anecdotes and cooking tips.

Moreover, it's illustrated with the wonderful photographs of Jan Bartelsman, one of Holland's most appreciated and famous food photographers. 

The styling - yes, I even had a stylist! - has been done by Jan-Willem van Riel, also very well known in the Dutch food world.

 

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My Mum, Gabriella Formigoni, has been fundamental is the making of this book: lots of the dishes in it are hers or from her parents, Nonna Isa and Nonno Angelo, and she helped me to "interpret" their handwritten recipes and, most of all, to cook all of them!
We worked 6 very intense days in the kitchen of my cooking school which had been transformed in a professional photo studio by Jan Bartelsman. Here you can see a few "action" pics taken by me during those days, last May.

There's also a little "making of" video made by my friend Francesco Cavaliere in which you can see the whole Cucina di casa mia team at work!
And for this occasion my pubisher made me a wonderful present: a song written expressely for the video by Italian-Dutch singer Veronique Sodano! Look, listen and enjoy! :)
And don't forget to pre-order the book at one of Holland's book sites like www.kookboek.nl, www.bruna.nl or boekenvoorjou.nl!
(under the video you can see some screen dumps from the latest version of the book, still to be corrected)


P.S. If there's any non-Dutch publisher interested in translating the book in other languages, please contact my publisher Willem Warbout at Choizes. Grazie!

 

 

 

Handy tool for wine lovers

Seen yesterday at a wine tasting organized by Dutch importer Vinites: "My Wine Record", a cute and handy little wanna-have for everybody who wants to keep a journal of the good wines tasted during parties, meals at restaurants, drinks at wine bars et cetera.

It's a little black book with a cool and beautiful design (Dutch design!) and it contains special so-called Record Labels that allow you to remove bottle labels without having to soak them or steam them off.

You stick a transparent Record Label to the bottle label and after a short while both can be taken off the bottle together without tearing the wine label.
Then you can stick everything onto your "My Wine Record" booklet and have your "wine souvenir" for ever and ever!

With your "My Wine Record" you can record all details about your favourite wines: red, white or rosé, where and when, with whom, the dish you enjoyed it with, types of grape, year, price and so forth.
Like this you'll always be able to remember those easy-to-forget details and keep a good record of your tastings.

It sounds like pure genius! It would be, if it always worked fine... I've tried it once with a bottle of Pinot Noir from Framingham's and it tore off only part of the label.
I guess it has to do with the different types of glue used for the labels. Hopefully the makers - Rogier van Camp en Mark van Elk - will find a good solution for that shortly.

In any case, I find this little gadget quite nice. If you don't have the whole label you can at least write down your own personal tasting notes on a stylish little notebook.

Visit the "My Wine Record" site here.

Beautiful street photography

Vivian Maier, a French street photographer who lived in Chicago, left thousands of marvelous pictures full of beauty and intensity taken during her whole life, a life dedicated to photography.

Look at some of her work on this beautiful blog. 


 

Organic wine not better? I chirp to differ

For those who can read the Italian language and love beautiful natural images here is a very moving photo series shot in an Italian vineyard (Cascina Corte of Alessandro Barosi in Dogliani, Piemonte) where blackbirds have returned to make their nests after years that they were not appearing anymore. It seems like in the old times this was a very common thing to see, sigh...

Nowadays this is very rare due to the modern cultivation and harvesting methodes that disturb these beautiful birds in their daily routines.

So long live natural and organic wine making!

Tonight, playing in Montecatini: The Vegetable Orchestra!

The most original orchestra in the world, the Vegetable Orchestra, is playing tonight in Montecatini Terme (Tuscany) at the Nuovo Teatro Verdi, starting at 21.30 hrs.

"The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberphones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetable sound universe." (from their site)

I won't be able to go to the concert since tonight I'm cooking and hosting the farewell dinner for my cooking students but here's a fantastic video on how they make their instruments and play their incredible music clapping aubergines, blowing into carrots and beating up pumpkins!

The best panna cotta ever with raspberry-lime coulis and a spiritual flavour :)

When my friends Claudia and Cristina gave me these for my birthday last year I had to smile my biggest smile. What a wonderful idea! Little pudding molds in the shape of a laughing Buddha as a symbol of earthly pleasures, happiness and abundance. Absolutely perfect to represent the joys of cooking and of sharing the food you prepare with your loved ones!

And what about the name? Buddino in Italian means 'little Buddha' but it also recalls "budino", the Italian word for pudding. If the copywriter who invented it is not a genius I don't know who is! :)

After forgetting the little Buddhas in a closet - still unused - for too long I rediscovered them while "space clearing" my kitchen - a very necessary operation seen the limited room in my cupboards and drawers and the huge quantity of culinary attributes and gadgets I own - too many!

Seeing the four happy little fellas smiling at me inspired me to experiment with cream and other ingredients so that I would find the great panna cotta recipe that I was looking for since a couple of years but was too lazy to concoct. Up to now I used a relatively satisfactory recipe with cornstarch instead of gelatin as thickening agent (I never liked gelatin since it's made with bones, skins, cartilage and other by-products of the meat industry) but I wasn't completely convinced about the fact that this combination of ingredients was the "final" one. I decided to substitute cornstarch with agar agar, made with tiny seaweed and thus perfectly suitable for my vegetarian clients and friends. Yes, this is a vegetarian panna cotta and now it's simply divine!

To tell you the truth, my first experiment was NOT a success. I used too much agar agar and the panna cotta had a pleasant taste but was too hard, not as nice and wobbly as it's supposed to be and with that lovely, smooth texture this dessert HAS to have.
A second try with a lot less agar agar (a little sachet goes a long way!) gave far better results and now I can definitely say I've found the panna cotta of my life.
Eating the little Buddha's head made me feel a little guilty (just a little!) but then I found THE perfect excuse for keeping on gobbling down the dessert: I thought that with every bite I would take in a tiny bit of the great Buddha's wisdom. Clever, huh? ;)

So here's the recipe. The combination of honey-sweet - but not too sweet - panna cotta and luscious, slightly tart and verrrry sexy raspberry-lime coulis is definitely a winning one. Try it and then you tell me.

Panna cotta with raspberry-lime coulis

For 4 big or 6 small portions

Ingredients for the panna cotta:
6 dl. whipping cream
40 gr. granulated sugar
1 teaspoon of powdered agar agar (3 gr.)
1 tablespoon of honey
1 little pinch of vanilla powder or 1 tablespoons of vanilla essence

Ingredients for the coulis:
250 gr. raspberries
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
2 tablespoons of lime juice
blueberries and raspberries to garnish


Pour cream and sugar in a medium-size saucepan and mix well with a whip or a wooden spoon.
Bring the mixture to a simmer and keep on stirring without letting it boil. The cream has to simmer for about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the flame and add the powdered agar agar stirring well until it's completely incorporated into the cream. Leave to rest for about 5 minutes.
Reheat the cream once again and let it gently simmer for a few more minutes stirring from time to time. Make sure the cream does not reach a boil.

Turn off the heat and wait until the cream is lukewarm. At this point you can add honey and vanilla powder and mix well.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve using a wooden spoon to push down the agar agar that didn’t dissolve properly and mix again. If you use powdered agar agar instead of flakes you'll have less to sieve. I have tried both types and can definitely recommend the powdered version.

Pour the cream into four-six wet panna cotta molds (they have to be really wet so that the pudding will not stick to the mold), cover with cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
Serve with the coulis prepared blending together raspberries, sugar and lime juice and then passing this mixture through a fine sieve to smoothen it.
Garnish with a few fresh, plump berries.

************** ************** Music for cool little Buddhas (click) ************** **************




Isn't he cute?

Edible landscapes: Carl Warner

Photographer Carl Warner creates wonderful landscapes with all sorts of edible stuff, from lovely wavy pink salmon to bright green broccoli.

I've spent quite some time looking at the details of some of his pictures to discover what he used. Take for example the home curtains made with pappardelle pasta and the little bowls made with mushroom caps and green olives: pure genius. :)

Warner's portraits remind me of the beautiful creations of Italian Reinassance painter Arcimboldo.

It's great to see how this guy transforms everything he uses into fabulous settings in which I'd definitely like to stroll like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz!

   

Umami, the new taste

Since the beginning of the 20th century there is a name for a specific new taste that is still quite unfamiliar to most people. This peculiar taste can be perceived while eating ingredients such as Parmesan cheese, kombu seaweed, ripe tomatoes, some sorts of fish and meat, potatoes and certain vegetables.

This fifth taste (salty, sweet, sour and bitter are the other four official tastes known and recognised by everybody) is very subtle and is often perceived as salty. According to a research made in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, this perception is wrong because umami, that’s how the “new” taste is called, is a legitimate taste.

The tongue perceives umami thanks to an important substance called glutamic acid or glutamate. Nowadays glutamate is used quite a lot (sometimes too much) to enhance natural flavours by making them more intense (it’s the food additive that we come across so often when reading the ingredients of all sorts of ready-made food preparations). Glutamate actually tricks the taste buds making them believe that the flavours they perceive are much more intense than they actually are.

Natural (not synthesised) glutamate can be found in several ingredients such as ripe cheeses, dried tuna flakes and shiitake mushrooms.

I can perceive glutamate in some products very clearly (what I mean is that I can taste it even if it doesn’t have an easily recognizable flavour), and I don't always find that pleasurable. I’m talking about some stock cubes and other products in which glutamate is used a lot. But OK, my taste buds are, just like my nose, exceptionally sharp. And yet I think that it would be a good idea if more and more people would “train” their taste buds to become more sensitive and perceive the difference between natural and artificial flavours. That would allow them to enjoy even more the pure, simple and genuine tastes and products that don’t trick the taste buds and – and that’s the bottom line - don’t trick the consumer.

INFO

If you wish to read more about umami:

http://www.umamiinfo.com/what_exactly_is_umami?/

Foto courtesy of  the Umami Information Center