The Sunny Kitchen - An Italian cook in Amsterdam

Panzerotti

Panzerotti baresi (a typical dish from Bari) are a great pleasure to eat. When they’re hot, just out of the frying pan, they’re lightly crunchy (the fried golden dough on the outside) and moist and savoury inside (the tomato-mozzarella filling). You’ll have to pay attention to the volcanic temperatures of the filling when you bite into them, though!
They're a traditional, unmissable dish during New Year's Eve so make them tonight! (happy new year, btw! :D)
The ingredients are quite easy to find and you won't regret the little bit of effort they require. 

It had been months that my friend Claudio Varone and I where planning to make panzerotti. Claudio is an architect, an artist and a wonderful non-professional cook and he’s always ready to experiment in the kitchen with me. Frying is not my favourite thing to do – I can’t stand the smell! – but in my professional kitchen it’s a piece of cake thanks to the huge extractor hood that removes all the not so pleasant smells. So at last we decided it was time to prepare our very first panzerotti.

The experiment was definitely a success, we were really happy of the end result and so where the friends that shared the panzerotti with us.

Making panzerotti is not that difficult, you need a bit of patience and a few - practice makes perfect! - manual skills. This video recipe is a good visual help that complements the written recipe.

 

  

 

Panzerotti

Ingredients for A LOT OF PANZEROTTI:

1 kg. type ’00’ flour or plain flour
350 cl. milk
350 cl. bubbly mineral water
14  gr. dry yeast
5 tablespoons e.v. olive oil
1,5 spoons of salt dissolved in a bit of water
4 tins of canned chopped tomatoes (1 kg)
4 mozzarella’s of about 125 gr. each
oregano, salt and black pepper
a lot of sunflower oil for frying

Mound the flour on the table and slowly add olive oil and mineral water mixed with milk.
Kneed well.
Dissolve the yeast in 3 tablespoons of water and add it to the flour too.
Kneed until you obtain a relatively soft dough and then add the salt dissolved in a bit of water.

Kneed further until the dough becomes soft and elastic.
Make a dough ball, grease it well with olive oil to avoid drying and leave it to rest in a bowl covered with plastic foil after cutting a cross on it to ease the rising phase.

In the meantime you can strain the peeled tomatoes and the diced mozzarellas to eliminate the excess liquids.

Dust the table with flour and cut the dough in chunks. Make little dough balls and leave to rest on a kitchen cloth, covered with another kitchen cloth.

Mix peeled tomatoes and mozzarella chunks and season with salt, pepper and oregano.

Flatten the dough balls giving them a rounded shape and fill with some mozzarella-tomato mixture.

Seal each panzerotto well pressing the rim with your fingers and remove the excess dough with a pastry wheel.
Seal further using a fork and fry in abundant hot (180°C) sunflower oil, draining on kitchen paper once they’re golden brown.
Serve very hot.

 

Creamy sabayon with macaroons and mixed berries

 

This is a nice and easy dessert, perfect for a festive dinner at the end of the year (or for Christmas!). You can make it a day in advance. It will taste better and have a firmer texture.
You do not need to use pasteurized egg yolks as for the tiramisu because you're actually pasteurizing the fresh yolks during the au bain marie cooking phase.

Use the best ingredients such as organic eggs and cream AND some real Italian amaretti (macaroons). Amaretti are much crispier - and tastier - than the Dutch version we're used to in this beautiful country - Holland, thus :) - and provide a much better result. You can find them at good Italian specialty stores and you may also want to order them online like many other Italian products.
For a sweeter touch you can use sweet dessert wine instead of dry white wine.

 

Zabaione con amaretti e frutti di bosco
(sabayon with amaretti and mixed berries)

 

Serves 4-6:

4-6 egg yolks
4-6 tablespoons of castor sugar
1 dl dry white wine or sweet dessert wine
4 dl whipping cream
2 vanilla sugar sachets
50 gr. amaretti (Italian macaroons) plus 4-6 to garnish
1 cup mixed berries
fresh mint leaves

Put the egg yolks with the sugar in a heatproof bowl (preferably made of Pyrex glass).

Stir and beat the eggs with the aid of an (electric) whisk until you they're light and fluffy. The mixture is supposed to become lighter in color and very creamy.

Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water so that the mixture can get thicker. The bowl should not directly touch the hot water otherwise you get scrambled eggs!

Stir in the wine, little by little, and keep on stirring until the mixture starts to bind.
It is important that the mixture doesn't get too hot because then the proteins in the yolks would coagulate and the zabaione would no longer be creamy.

When the zabaione is creamy and thicker put it aside and let it cool.

Whip the cream with the vanilla sugar. Don't whip it too long otherwise the cream gets all lumpy and actually becomes butter.

Add the whipped cream to the cooled zabaione and stir that in till you obtain a smooth and creamy mixture.

Crumble a few amaretti in every single serving bowl to create a thin layer of crumbs.
Distribute the creamy zabaione between all the bowls and store in the refrigerator until serving.

Before serving, garnish each bowl with 1 cookie, a few berries and a mint leaf.

 

 

Related articles

The perfect tiramisù

 

Not exactly Italian: Oliver's paella (with video)

A classic traditional Spanish dish, paella is originally from Valencia, a city on the East coast of the country. The original version called paella valenciana involves the use of flat green beans, meat (mainly chicken and rabbit), white beans and snails, but there are many variations that include only fish, crustaceans and molluscs (paella marinera) or meat and fish together (paella mixta).
The wide, shallow pan used to prepare this recipe is the paella, also called paellera. Spaniards are quite divided about the right name for this beautiful cooking instrument: some prefer paella and some others argue that the correct name is paellera. The Real Academia Española, the official institution that takes care of setting the rules for the Spanish language, accepts both. For clarity in the recipe we use the term paella for the dish and paellera for the pan.
When looking for one to buy, select it possibly with a thick enough bottom to promote uniform cooking of the rice without burning it. This has to happen in such an way that the rice is no longer stirred after a first, initial stir so as to form that delicious crust on the bottom of the pan that, together with the perfect cooking of all the ingredients, characterizes a really well done paella.
This version by Oliver, a friend from the Spanish Canary Islands, is a paella mixta, with meat and fish together. The chorizo ​​used here is the classic Spanish pork sausage characterized by a uniform red colour even in the fat parts since the meat and fat mixture has been flavoured and “coloured” with pimentón, red smoked pepper powder, or more or less spicy paprika.

Oliver :)

The use of fish, crustaceans and molluscs makes the preparation a little more delicate than a paella with just meat as it is necessary to avoid overcooking the prawns that would otherwise become unpleasantly flaky. Add them when the rice is almost cooked calculating about three more minutes on the stove. Also for cod and squid it is preferable to avoid too long a cooking time (4 to 5 minutes maximum). Oliver cooks the mussels long enough to ensure that the rice absorbs their juices and flavour even better.
The video has Italian subtitles only but you’ll get what we mean by looking at the images and following the written recipe you find here.

 

Oliver’s paella

Serves 4-6:

250 g rice for paella or risotto
20 raw mussels in their shells
250 gr. fresh clean prawns (without head, shell and intestines)
3-4 large cleaned squid
150 gr. cod fillet
100 gr. bacon or pancetta
100 gr. chorizo ​​(Spanish sausage)
150 gr. fresh shelled peas
4 medium tomatoes
2 red peppers
1 green pepper
2 red onions
4-5 cloves of garlic
extra virgin olive oil
salt
2 pinches of saffron stigmas or powder
1 pinch of Cayenne pepper
2,5 dl. dry white wine
2,5 l. chicken stock
two lemons and flat-leaf parsley for garnishing

Heat plenty of oil in the paellera and fry the chopped onions in it. Add the diced peppers and the finely chopped garlic and fry for a few more minutes.
Add the chorizo, the bacon or pancetta and the blanched, peeled and diced tomatoes together with the Cayenne pepper. Stir and cook for about 5-10 minutes on a medium heat.
Add the rice, raise the heat a little and stir well.
Pour the white wine, stir and allow the alcohol to evaporate.
Season with saffron, stirring well to give the rice a beautiful, uniform yellow colour.
Place the mussels on top of the rice and stir gently.
Add the peas and, immediately after, 4-5 ladles of hot stock which will have to cover the rice completely.
Cook the rice on a medium / high flame until almost cooked, adding stock from time to time if it gets too dry.
Add the squid cut into rings and the fish fillet into large pieces and push them gently into the rice without moving it too much. Add more stock if necessary.
Add the prawns to the paella about three minutes before the rice is ready. Lay them on the rice and turn them so that they evenly cook on both sides. If you don’t want to risk overcooking you can also briefly sauté them in a pan with a little olive oil and then add them to the paella once you take it from the fire. Season with a little salt if necessary.
Turn off the heat and let the paella rest for 5 minutes.
Serve garnished with chopped parsley and lemon slices.

 

La paella di Oliver from Nicoletta Tavella on Vimeo.

 

 

Video: spelt and chestnut corzetti with walnut/pine nut sauce

Corzetti or croxetti are a beautiful type of pasta from the Italian region Liguria that many Liguri do not even know since it's  being consumed mainly in the Eastern side of the region. My Mum, for example, - a real Genovese - had never seen them or even heard their name.
They are made with wonderful carved wooden stamps with lovely symbols embossed on both sides (I have 5 types of stamps engraved with stars, suns, laurel branches, trees and flowers). Yesterday I enjoyed myself a lot preparing the corzetti with my friend Claudio Varone.
You can find some more information about corzetti on this Wikipedia page.

We made them mixing spelt flour and chestnut flour and then served them with a traditional Ligurian walnut sauce, the one my Mum always makes at home. We slightly modified it by adding pine nuts because we did not have enough walnuts. A truly scrumptious sauce. I advise you to add, as we did, a lot more marjoram than the amount you see next to the food processor (I love this herb, for me it represents the true smell of Liguria, much more than basil) and serve WITHOUT Parmesan or pepper.
On our first plate we put both cheese and black pepper but on the second one (the dish was too good, we both had ​​THREE servings each!!!) we avoided them and the corzetti tasted a lot better. Parmesan or grated grana and pepper, in fact, distract you a bit from the delicate intensity of the sauce that is already very rich in flavour (and cheese). If you want a bit more flavour add a little salt to the sauce.
The procedure, the ingredients and the quantities can be found in the almost-video. Enjoy!

 

 

Almost-video recipe: Italian lettuce wraps

This very easy recipe, also published on my English-Italian blog, is perfect for feasting together on a Summer bank holiday like the Italian "Ferragosto" (mid-August bank holiday): it's really simple to make, fast and - bonus! - it doesn't involve any cooking. Perfect for a hot August day!
To tell you the truth it doesn't even involve a lot of work from the "cook" since you will just have to prepare and chop all the ingredients, put them in nice bowls of all sizes and let your guests prepare their own wraps by stuffing some nice and crunchy iceberg lettuce leaves with just anything they like!
Easy, right?

I've used all the ingredients you see in my almost-video made with photos and you can, of course, use a lot more, for example capers, anchovies, pre-cooked fruits de mer (in my mind I can already taste octopus salad wraps, yummmm...), olives, artichoke hearts in oil, egg salad, potato or Russian salad, fresh herbs, crunchy Italian dried peppers (peperoni cruschi), smoked salmon, raw and cooked ham, julienne carrot and celery sticks, Granny Smith apples with mustard and thickly sliced Prague ham, etcetera etcetera etcetera (I don't go any further because I'm already salivating too much, it's lunch time and I haven't eaten yet!) :D

So I'd say: put together all the ingredients you fancy the most and wrap it, baby!
I wish you a great Ferragosto and buon appetito! :)))

 

Almost-video recipe: carpaccio di zucchine

This is an almost-videorecipe because the video is made of photographs.

It's a very quick 'n' easy dish to make, perfect and refreshing for the hot Summer days.

The recipe in a simplified version is originally from Davide Varone, Claudio's brother (you can see Claudio cooking with me in the almost-video).

We made it a bit more elaborated and changed the marinating procedure. The end result was really, really to our liking!

The video has no subtitles, so read the recipe too to understand how to make this simple and yet wonderful dish.

 

 

Carpaccio di zucchine

Ingredients:

1 big courgette or 2-3 small ones
1 fresh chilli pepper
juice of 1,5 lemon
grated rind of 1/2 organic lemon
4 little twigs of fresh mint
6-8 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 tbs pink peppercorns
salt and black pepper
30 gr. grana or parmigiano shavings

Remove the courgette ends. Cut the courgette in very thin round slices using a mandolin slicer (see video). If you use sall courgettes cut them in the length.
Prepare the marinade mixing lemon juice, olive oil, salt and black pepper.
Add the chilli pepper after removing almost all its seeds and slicing it thinly, the finely chopped mint leaves, the crushed pink peppercorns (you can crush them using your knife like I do in the video) and the lemon rind.
Mix well and distribute over the zucchini slices.
Leave to rest in the fridge for at least one hour and add the parmesan or grana shavings just before serving.

Roses cake (torta delle rose)

(Per questo post in ITALIANO fare click qui.)

 
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.

 

 

Torta delle rose/Roses cake from Nicoletta Tavella on Vimeo.

 

ROSES CAKE

Ingredients:

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.

 

No the Generals didn't eat it, we did... :)

 

Cooking video: oven dish with porcini mushrooms and potatoes

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.

 

Porcini mushrooms and potatoes in the oven from Amici in video on Vimeo.

 

 

 

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!

Cooking video: tarte Tatin

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 Pascal Plissonneau, the first to appear on Spigoloso with his famous Tarte 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.

Tarte Tatin (ENGLISH VERSION) from Nicoletta Tavella on Vimeo.

Tarte Tatin

Ingredients

Dough:
200 g flour
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.