Italian Recipes and Food – Page 6

Simple food rules: kale on toasts

Kale on toast: again a peasant dish, again we want to present you an Italian food-for-all-ages! This simple but really interesting recipe is really good, and reminds us the faboulous bruschetta recipe!

Kale on toast is also a really ancient food coming from Tuscan tradition. With four slices of bread and a pound of kale you could make a really good “antipasto”.

What we need to make our toasts?

We start with 500 g of Kale, a Tuscan-style bread, some garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper. Here is the directions: take about 500 g of black leaf kale, cut out the tough ribs of the leaves, and wash the remainings.

Remeber to boil the leaves in a slightly salted water just until they are done or just blenched it.

The kale will wilt; so use as little water as possible. Do not leave it, too much in the boiling water, but just the leaves are done and tender.

Once the kale is cooked well, you should drain it and put aside the liquid, and finally chop it.

Then, cut several slices of the Tuscan-style bread, toast them quickly, cut them in half.

And now it comes on the stage the secret: the garlic is the king! You should rub the slices of bread with a nicely cut clove of garlic! Have you done it? Now do not forget and dip them in the pot liquid, let the slices absorb the waterly mixture and arrange them onto the plates.

Finally, put the kale’s leaves on top of each slice, spread a good extra virgin olive oil, season with pepper and serve.

Eventually will be good also to put some chilly peppers: just a few slices to top it all and buon appettito!

Zuppa di Pancotto and the old bread has a new life

Do you want to eat a very basic and frugal dish coming from Italian tradition, but at the same time very, very tasty? Pleased to introduce you to Pancotto!

Water and old bread are the core elements of this great recipe: you could use chicken or meat broth instead of water, and add one or two cloves of crushed garlic inside, or adjusting the soup with grated Pecorino Romano.

You could stir a beaten egg into the broth but the idea is always the same all over Italy! We are going to show you two simple variations of this great peasant dish coming from the South of Italy, one from Basilicata and one from Campania.

Here we go with Pane Cotto lucano: set the water to heat, crumble the old bread slices into 4 bowls, beat the eggs, and chop the basil. Heat the oil in a pot with the water. Saute the garlic and hot pepper for a minute or two. Add the water, bring the mixture to a boil. Stir in two eggs and the basil; put the mixture over the bread.

Of course, you could use broth or stock to make it tastier or you could add some freshl Pecorino Romano to top it all!

The Campanian recipe was as well a way to eat leftover bread that was much too precious to be thrown away.

Bring the water to a boil, salt it, and put a bit of pepper, add some bay leaves (4-8). Let it boil for a few minutes, in the while crumble the pieces of bread and put them into the soup bowls. Spoon the quickly made broth over the bread, let it absorb it for a few minutes, and serve. Easy, and tasty!

The various worlds of alternative Pesto’s recipes

The Italian people as every foreigner know well, are really traditional when it comes to food. Pizza and lasagne have to be made so and so, the same for other delicious dishes coming from our great background. But the truth is that recipes are various and also the most sacred ones can be changed and still be tasty! In this kind of open-mind attitude, let’s talk about Pesto then!

A fresh pesto is not only the world-famous Pesto alla genovese! You can make it with a different choice of ingredients, starting for example with the herbs right from your garden! To make a delicious pesto and tossing with pasta or spreading it on bread, here is some of “alternative” recipes to the Genova’s “big brother” Pesto.

Let’s start with an herbs’ pesto! You will need:

1 cup fresh basil leaves
1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 cup fresh spinach leaves
12 garlic cloves
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 pinch salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh oregano

The directions is similar to the ones you follow for the “normal” pesto recipe: you need to blend the garlic, the basil, the parsley, the spinach and the oregano with the pine nuts, the Parmesan cheese, then season with salt, pepper and olive oil in a blender until the mixture will be smooth and similar to a pastry, a really thick one or a really waterly one.

It depends on the amount of olive oil you drop in the mixture and of course on your taste!

Try also to substitute the pine nuts with almond or with pecans! It will be worthy to try all the choices!

And also try to add lemon juice to make it smoother! Alternative pesto are all over the world: just go beyond the tradition and start to challenge yourself with these original and fantastic alternative ingredients.

Italian Risotto with mushroom: unforgetable!

The authentic Italian-style risotto is a very slow way of cooking rice! It should be slightly al dente, and it takes a lot to melt all the ingredients together but it is really worthy for your mouth to wait for such a masterpiece.

Let’s start to gather the ingredients on your kitchen table. You will need:

1 – 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
Chicken broth (a pan)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 pound mushrooms
1 pound white mushrooms
2 shallots
3 tablespoons finely chopped chives
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Is it everything on the table? Well we can now start! Here is your detailed directions:

In a saucepan, warm the broth you have already made over low heat.
You shoud warm up 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the chopped mushrooms, and cook until soft (ca. 3 minutes). Remove the mushrooms and their liquid, and put aside.
Add one tablespoon olive oil and stir in the shallots and after one minute add the rice, stirring with oil, ca. 2 minutes. When the rice has turned to a golden color, quickly pour in the wine.
Remeber to stirring constantly until the wine is fully absorbed by the rice!
Add slowly half a cup of broth to the rice; then stir until the broth is absorbed. You wll repeat this operation until the rice is al dente, ca. 15 -20 minutes max.
Now you can removeyour risotto from the heat, andyou will stir in the mushrooms together with their liquid. Add the butter, the chives, and to top it all a lovely spread of Parmesan cheese. Season abit with salt and pepper, and taste it!

Your tips to enjoy a real Lasagne

“W le lasagne!” Do you know how to make a real fantastic plate full of gourmet lasagne! Here is the recipe we collected from many sites and directly form the voice of lovely Italian grannies. What do you need to create this masterpiece and make everybody happy in your family? Here we go with the ingredients:

1 pound sweet Italian sausage
3/4 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup minced onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
2 (6.5 ounce) cans canned tomato sauce
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
12 lasagna noodles
16 ounces ricotta cheese
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

I know, it is a lot but still you need all of this to make a great lasagna! How do we work all together? No panic, it is easy!

In a pan, let’s cook the sausage, the ground beef, the onion, and the garlic over medium heat until well browned.
Stir in the right amount of crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and water. Do not forget to season the sauce with sugar, basil, fennel seeds, Italian seasoning, 1 tablespoon salt, pepper, 2 tablespoons parsley. Cover for about 1 hour.
Boil the water and cook the dried lasagna slices in the boiling water for 8- 10 minutes. Drain it, and rinse it with cold water. In a mixing bowl, put togheter ricotta cheese with egg, the remaining parsley, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Take a baking dish or pan and put first a cup of sacue, then put 4-6 lasagna slices lengthwise over the meat sauce. Spread on it one half of the ricotta cheese mixture and top with a third of mozzarella cheese. Again you will need to put a cup of meat sauce over the mozzarella with ca. 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Put on the lasagna layers (again 4 to 6, depending on the lenght of your baking dish), and top it all with the remaining mozzarella and some Parmesan cheese. Do another layer if possible; otherwise cover with some foil.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (ca. 190 degrees C).
Bake your fantastic lasagna for 25 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake it for 25 minutes more.
Cool about 20 minutes before serving and then…enjoy with a fantastic red wine from Umbria, Tuscany or Abruzzo (we love Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and we feel we can advice you this wine!).

Easter recipes: holy good food

Food Easter traditions vary greatly from place to place, and here are some of my favorite Italian Easter recipes.
Pani Pasquali (Easter Breads) are spread in all the Peninsula! These breads celebrate Eastzer time and contain cheese, sausage or salami, breads hard-boiled eggs like Casatiello.

The soups are also largely loved during Easter time. For example, the Schiacciata alla Fiorentina, meaning the most traditional recipes for this classic Florentine Easter cake made with lard. First, you make a basic loaf with the yeast, then the magic!
Brodetto Pasquale is a rich Roman soup. The stars in this dish are lamb and beef, and the stew is thickened with eggs. Strong and really nutrient, this comfort food for peasants is today a really refined recipe and really common in Rome.
Torta alla Pasqualina is a fab pie from Liguria made with spinach and many eggs, which were once a reminder of spring coming finally. Old traditional recipes advice to make the puff pastry with 33 layers. Another sign of Spring are fresh peas and no Easter table is ready without them. The preparation is quite simple, and quite old too if we can traced it back to the 1450s, when Maestro Martino gave the same recipe our mothers follow today.

Turning to meat, you should try if you are in Italy in holiday during Easter time Capretto Cacio e Uova: it is made with kid (or lamb) stewed with cheese, eggs, and peas and it comes from Neapolitan Easter tradition!
La Pastiera Napoletana is another amongst the finest dishes of
Neapolitan tradition!!! A centuries-old cake appears in countless versions.
Everybody just love it from generation to generation. Going more south, we will find the Black Easter Rice: Riso Nero di Pasqua, a Sicilian Easter recipe made of…chocolate, instead of squid ink. So it is not really a first course but a pudding dessert. You can find it in the province of Messina as a devotion offer to the Madonna Nera di Tindari.

From Naples the great Pastiera Napoletana

One of the most beloved and beautiful Italian Easter pastries is the famous Pastiera Napoletana, a wheat berry and ricotta pie andorange flower water, essential to this recipe. You can try to find it in “gourmet” food stores, Italian specialty food stores, middle eastern and north African stores.The wheat grains will be also in the Italian specialty food stores or in “whole” or natural foods stores. Better to get the hulled wheat; unhulled wheat requires a much longer soaking period. If you buy unhulled wheat, try to find a much softer”spring wheat”.

The canned wheat is available from Italian specialty food stores on Easter time.

The ingredients are the following:

Hulled wheat grains (or one-pound can of presoaked wheat)
1 1/2 lbs. of whole-milk ricotta
6 eggs ( 6 yolks and 4 whites)
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
One teaspoon salt

Then you will need:

1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons orange flower water
2 or more teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons oil of orange peel
About 1/2 cup finely diced candied orange rind
1/4 to 1/2 cup finely diced candied citron
About 1/4 cup finely diced candied lemon peel
A very small drop of oil of lemon peel

To make the crust is simple: you can make an easy pasta frolla. To do the filling: start preparing the wheat, boil the hulled wheat grains in water until the grains burst open. Add more water and a little salt and boil covered for about 45 minutes. Then set it aside for about two hours. Drain the soaked wheat. Use to measure about two cups and squeeze out excess liquid. You can also just open your one-pound can of pre-soaked wheat. Boil 1/2 cup of milk, add a little sugar, and cook the wheat in this for a few minutes. Add a little salt and the candied orange, citron and lemon peel and the orange peel oil to the wheat. Set aside and mix the ricotta with 1/2 cups sugar, add the orange flower water, vanilla extract and cinnamon.

Beat separately 6 egg yolks and 4 egg whites. Mix the yolks into the ricotta mixture. Mix the whites into the wheat mixture. Then mix together and blend. Put the filling on the crust and put in preheated 350 F. oven.

Sicilian Easter Marzipan Lambs: royal dessert

The Sicilian Easter Marzipan Lambs are important in the Sicilian Easter celebrations. Agneddu Pasquali (Agnellini Pasquali in Italian) is a tradition during the Sicilian Easter ritual. They are coming from the Jews tradition and the 4 kind we eat today are resembling the Agnus Dei: the bronze Byzantine figure is in Palermo’s National Museum.

Agneddu di Pasta di Zuccaru e Jarofulu is the first tipology we can find and it is a lamb-shaped figure made from a sugar-and-clove paste.

The paste is the same they use to make for All Saint’s Day the famous “Ossa di Mortu”, the Bones of the Dead. To make it, you should mix equal weights of sugar and unbleached all purpose flour. Then you add a half-ounce of ground cloves every 2 1/4 pounds of the previous mixture.

The ingredients has to be heated with a little water in a pot. As soon as they are all melted into a paste, you can fill the lambs’ molds, pressing it down firmly with your hands.

After a few days, you can moisten the undersides of the well shaped-lambs and bake them for a short while in a medium oven.

Lambs made from a sugar syrup put into special plaster molds, are made in Palermo and Caltanisetta.

Agneddu di Pasta Riali, meaning marzipan lambs, are a specialty of the towns of Erice and Acireale, where they are made to life size.

To make pasta reale, use:

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) blanched almonds
2 1/4 pounds (1 k) sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 cup cinnamon water (see above)

Mince the almonds, melt the sugar with the cinnamon water over a low flame, and as soon as the syrup starts to create threads, stir in the almonds and tartar. Cook over a low flame, and stir constantly, until it shape in a ball that comes off the sides of the pot. You can shape it now.

To paint the lambs: melt sugar in a pot with a little water, create a syrup, flavouring it with a little jasmine or vanilla extract. Pour the thickened syrup into containers and color them with food colorings.

You can fill the lambs or other marzipan sculpture shapes with candied dates, chopped nuts, diced candied fruit, citron jam, fig jam, quince jam, or rosolio, a sweet, mild liqueur.

Torta pasqualina, an Easter delikatessen

Torta Pasqualina is a Ligurian torta. Pasqualina means “of Easter“, but the recipe calls for a dozen eggs! More spring-like than ever, and the pastry was a clear sign of spring, because eggs were seasonal not like today! The eggs production was therefore much lower, and in fact a hen could produce only 80 eggs per year, while today 300 plus eggs is the standard in modern hatcheries. So a sign of the time!

For the dough you will need:
8 1/3 cups (1 k) flour
4 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil
Salt
Warm water

For the preparation:
Oil, for greasing the pan and the sheets
12 eggs
2/3 cup unsalted butter
Salt & freshly ground pepper

For the filling you will buy:
3 pounds (1.5 k) beet greens (chard)
1 3/4 cups freshly grated Parmigiano
1 tablespoon fresh marjoram, minced
1 1/8 pounds (500 g) prescinseua (a mild cheese; use well-drained ricotta if need be)
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil

The recipe of this torta can be traced back to the 1500s. Tradition indicates clearly that the puff pastry of the crust should be containing 33 tiny layers, to remind each year of Christ’s life. Modern recipes’ books generally quote only 8 to 6. The traditional recipe also indicates the cagliata or quagliata (prescinseua in Genova’s dialect), a soft cheese between yogurth and ricotta. Today we use ricotta instead.

How to make Torta Pasqualina?

Make a mound of the flour, pour in the oil and add 2 pinches of salt. Put in it enough warm water to work until you have a soft smooth dough. separate it into 33 small balls and let them rest, covered by a damp cloth.

Wash the beet greens, cut away the hard ribs, slice them into thin strips, and blanch the leaves in lightly salted water. Drain all well and stir in 1 1/2 cups of the grated cheese and marjoram.

In the meantime, put the ricotta or the cagliata on a sip to drain, or press it with a plate to remove the serum. When all has dried up, mix it into it with a bit of oil, flour and Parmigiano.

Preheat your oven to 400 F (200 C).

Take 13 of the dough balls and roll them out paper thin. Grease a pie pan and lay down the 13 sheets, brushing all except for the last one. Spread the filling over the dough, drizzle it with a little oil, and then spread the cheese mixture. Crack 12 eggs into them,season them with salt and pepper and a tablespoon of unsalted butter.

Take the remaining dough balls and roll them out, then lay them down over the pie, greasing them lightly top and bottom. Press the edges of the layers together and bake all for about 50 minutes. It’s good warm but much better when it has cooled.

Torta di cipolle from Liguria

Torta di Cipolle is a tasty Onion Pie, really spread in Liguria and used also as a variation on Easter time for the Torta Pasqualina.
The ingredients for the dough are basically the same and here is the list:

eight 1/3 cups (1 k) flour
four tablespoons extravirgin olive oil
Salt and Warm water

The filling will be the following:

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) sweet red onions
3/8 cup (75 g) unsalted butter
An ounce (30 g) dried porcini
1/2 cup Parmigiano Reggiano
Salt & Pepper to season

Preheat your oven to 400 F (200 C).

Make a mound of the flour, pour in the oil and add 2 pinches of salt. Put in it warm water and work it until you create a soft smooth dough. Separate it into 33 small balls and let them rest, covered by a damp cloth. Take for the base 13 small ball, and make some lovely pastry foils. Put a little oil on them but the last one.

For the filling:

Melt the butter, and sauté the red onions and the porcini you have soaked in hot water for about a half hour. Remove the mixture from theheat, put in the cheese, and once the filling has cooled put it onto the base. Then add the other pastry foils you have made and fold it on. The result has to be like in the image you see above! Put inside the oven for ca. 50-60 minutes, let it cool down and enjoy!