Italian recipe Archives - Italy Advisor

Try in winter time the Spinach Balls with Ricotta and OrangeSauce

Are you looking for a great and simple “antipasto” or a light, vegetarian main course? The Italian recipes are full of this kind of delicious dishes, and what are we about to present today is indeed a wealthy example of Italian cuisine. If you are rushing away, you can use frozen spinach, but if you got time please consider to use fresh spinach! And a little mozzarella into each spinach ball before being fried will help too.
INGREDIENTS:

1 pound frozen spinach
1 egg
5 tablespoons grated Parmigiano
A sprig of marjoram
1/2 cup (60 g) breadcrumbs
A pinch freshly grated nutmeg
3 cups oil for frying
A little pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
The juice and the zest of an orange, grated
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
A pinch of salt

HOW TO MAKE THE BALLS:

Grate the orange peel and squeeze afterwards the orange. Put some ricotta in a bowl and add some milk to make it more creamy. Slowly work half of the juice into the ricotta. Work the orange zest and Tabasco sauce into the mixture, salt the sauce and taste it, and chill the sauce in the fridge.
Use fresh spinach, wash it well, cut away any roots, and put it into a pot. Add the salt, and cook over high heat for 5 minutes. Drain the spinach in a sip. Once the spinach are cooled enough, squeeze out most of the moisture. With frozen spinach, thaw it out completely.
Mince the marjoram with the spinach. Transfer all to a bowl, add the egg, beaten. Next, put in the cheese and a third of the breadcrumbs. Mix all well until stiff.
Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Put the remaining breadcrumbs in a bowl. Take the spinach mixture with a tablespoon, scoop it and shape it into small balls. Rolling them between the palms of your hands.
Heat the oil and when ready fry the spinach balls, turning them and pressing them down.
Spread about 3/4 of the ricotta based orange sauce over the bottom of a serving dish, put the spinach balls over it, and finishing with decorations made of the remaining sauce and some strips of zest.

Serve with white wine, like Vernaccia di San Gimignano.

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!

Passatelli in brodo: fab for the Winter

Passatelli in brodo: it is a treasure coming from the traditional recipes! This dish shows perfectly how Italian people can invent new recipes, changing the method you work the same ingredients.

In the Romagna region of Italy, this wonderful dish called “passatelli” (“to pass them through”). In fact the act of making them involves a kind of potato press designed for passatelli. You will eat them “in brodo” (with stock), but also dry with a “ragù di carne” (meaning meat sauce) or “ragu’ di pesce” (meaning a sauce made with fish).

The ingredients are: 200 g (7 oz) Breadcrumbs , 200 g (7 oz) Grated Parmesan cheese, 4 Eggs, 1 tsp Nutmeg, Lemon zest from a ¼ of the lemon, Salt and pepper to season, 3-4 litres of chicken stock.

Breadcrumbs has to come from stale bread that has become hard enough to be grated. Use bread made without olive oil! Chefs in restaurants add some flour to keep the passatelli mixture together. First, smash the bread in fine breadcrumbs and grate on it the Parmesan cheese. Break the eggs into a large bowl and season with salt and with pepper. Whisk the eggs for few seconds and set the bowl apart. Add the breadcrumbs into a second bowl. Add the nutmeg and stir to distribute better the nutmeg. Then it comes Parmesan cheese and lemon zest. Stir and add the dry mix to the whisked eggs.

Once all the eggs have been absorbed into it, start working the mixture with your hands. Work the dough for few minutes in a bal. Wrap the ball with cling film but don’t put the ball in the fridge; just leave it in a cool place. Use a kind of potato press with wider holes (4 mm diameter) to press all the ball and cut the passatelli when they are about 4 cm. Let them dry and then throw them into the boiling stock! Or press the pressed dough directly into the boiling stock. Try both methods and decide what you like most!

Frico: a gorgeous recipe from Udine

Frico is a fantastic recipe made from cheese and potatoes. In the North West corner of Italy, Frico is a typical dish originated from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy. In some parts of the region people like to add onions, some others like to put an egg into the mix. In the end adjusts the frico recipe, often to follow their family tradition.

The two fundamental ingredients for the frico recipe? Potatoes and cheese.The egg is required to increase the volume of the dish! Sometimes instead of boiling the potatoes, some people just grate the uncooked potatoes and carry on making the frico, like the Swiss potato rösti. For the frico recipe the cheese is really important; just use the type of cheese they made in Friuli region: Montasio cheese.

So Boil the potatoes, smashed with a fork and add half of the amount of fresh Montasio (about 2 months old) and half of a semi-aged Montasio (about 5 months old), otherwise use what you can get. A fresh cow’s milk cheese will be also good. You may find this type of cheese in an Italian deli shop or from a continental cheese importer.

Try not to go cheap on the cheese! And please, if it is impossible for you to get a lovely Montasio, whatever age you can find it, then look for Asiago cheese. It is really good indeed and it will work as good as the Montasio’s one!

If you are not kissed by the luck’s fairy, no panic at all! Just look for some good mild cow’s milk cheese. You can eat with rye bread (or German type bread) and a glass of red wine (Montepulciano).

Home made bread: yummy recipe

Make bread at home this winter! the “Pane fatto in casa”‘s recipe will explain how to make your own Italian country bread at home! In Italy there are lots of varieties of bread: the art of making this delicious food also gives a lot of different names to the results.

It depends on the region of Italy the recipe comes from. let`s try to make Altamura type of bread. it comes from Puglia, a region located in the South of Italy

Ingredients are: 500 g (1.1 lb) Durum wheat semolina, 10 g (a bit less than ½ oz) Fresh yeast, 10 g (1 tbs) Salt, 300 ml (½ pint) Warm water (1 part hot and 2 parts cold), 7.5 ml (½ tbs), ½ tsp of sugar

Ready for the directions?

Put 150 ml of warm water into a jug. Break the fresh yeast (you can buy from Jewish shops a really good one) into pieces and put it into a jug as well. Add the sugar and stir until the yeast is completely dissolved. Cover the jug with a towel and leave to rest (ca. 10 minutes). Put the semolina flour into the big bowl, add the salt and stir. After 10 minutes, whisk a bit. Work the dough and Put the remaining 150 ml of warm water into the jug. Add the semolina flour into the bucket. On the top of the flour add the remaining 150 ml of warm water.

Knead the dough and when it is ready, sprinkle some plain flour in the bottom of the bowl. Put the dough into the bowl and cover. Rise the dough inside the oven (you preheat it and leave it on off mode, then put the dough) to rise for 2 hours.

Now put the dough on a working surface, work it with your hands and make a rectangular layer (20×30 cm and 2-3 cm thick). Put on the tray, sprinkle some flour or olive oil and it is done!