At least it is in several countries. Canada kicks off with Canada Day, then the United States celebrates the Fourth of July, or Independence Day. Shortly France will celebrate Bastille Day, too.
Who else celebrates in July? I am probably missing a whole list.
Having passed a week sewing, which is just misery if you aren’t good at it, and I am not, I now commence a week of cooking Italian, dancing whatever, and cooking American. It’s fruit cobbler, crumble and crisp time.
So get out there and enjoy the heat and the sun, hope for a spot of shade or a cool stretch of water in which to plunge, and celebrate!
You can get lucky and buy hotdog and hamburger buns as good as anything you are used to. Or you can buy an innocent looking package of buns and they will be as sweet as Italian breakfast brioche. That really bothered me. So I wandered around the internet and found a recipe to make them at home, then of course had to alter the recipe to be made with Italian ingredients.
I made these miniature. I had just found packets of tiny hotdogs that were 25 grams each, four to a 100 gram package. I thought they were really cute, so making the buns for them was even more apt. This recipe made twelve each of tiny buns. If you made them normal sized, I think you could make sixteen of them. Naturally, most people will want to make all one kind, not both kinds.
These are a bit firmer and breadier than buns I bought in USA supermarkets. I would not hesitate to use them for any sandwich for which a soft bun is all right. That would include lobster rolls (oh sigh) or crab or shrimp rolls (which we can do here depending on if crab meat is available. It’s real bread, just a soft bread without a crunch crust.
I have always preferred the style of hotdog buns with smooth top and bottom and rough sides. Before making these I had no idea I had any sentiments about hotdog buns, but I apparently do. Anyway, I put them close together so they would come out that way.
Hotdog or hamburger buns
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (250 ml) milk
1/4 cup (125 ml) water or you may need a bit more
1/4 cup (50 g) butter
2-1/4 cups (300 g) 00 flour, farina di grano tenero
1-1/2 cups (200 g) bread flour, farina di grano duro, or farina di Manitoba
1 (.25 ounce) package instant yeast which is also, handily, 7 g just as you find it in Italy
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoons salt
1 egg
1 egg for egg washing
DIRECTIONS:
In a small saucepan, heat milk, water and butter until very warm, 120 degrees F (50 degrees C).
In a large bowl, mix together 1 3/4 cup (230 g) flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Mix milk mixture into flour mixture, and then mix in egg. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. You might need a bit more water if the weather is dry or the flour is. I use the dough hooks on my Braun multi-mixer. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes, or you can do most of it with dough hooks and just do the last bit by hand.
Divide dough into 16 equal pieces. Shape into smooth balls, and place on an oven paper covered baking sheet. Flatten slightly. Cover, and let rise for 30 to 45 minutes. It may be the difference between all purpose US flour and the mix of two Italian flours, but mine definitely needed more rising time that that predicted by the recipe.
Make an egg wash of an egg and a bit of cold water, then brush it over the surfaces before putting them into the oven. That’s how you get that shiny, golden crust.
Bake at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown.
For Hot Dog Buns: Shape each piece into a 6×4 inch (10 X 15 cm) rectangle. Starting with the longer side, roll up tightly, and pinch edges and ends to seal. Let rise about 30 to 45 minutes. Bake as above. You could also make Philly steak sub rolls, but I think it would make about 6 and take from 12-15 minutes to bake. Try and tell me what you get—- I am on a DIET and cannot do it.
It takes less than 1.5 hours, and for most of that you are doing nothing. This is a worthy project! At my market prices, it costs about one euro, too. Stick them into a plastic sack and tie it tightly with a twistie and in the freezer they’ll stay fresh at least a month.
Gnam gnam!
In Italiano:
Questi sono i panini per hamburger e wurstel come sono dalla vera cucina americana. Non somigliano tanto quelli venduti nel supermercato. Provateli!
Panini per hotdog e hamburger
ingredienti:
250 ml latte
125 ml acqua (o possibilmente di più)
50 g burro
300 g farina 00 di grano tenero
200 g farina di grano duro
una bustina (7 g) lievita di birra in polvere
2 cucchiai di zucchero
1 cucchiaino di sale
1 uovo
1 uovo per la glassa
Preperazione: circa 15 minute e poi 40 lievitazione e poi 12 minute di cottura. Meno di 1.5 ore per un pane buono, morbido e sano!
Riscalda in una piccola padella il latte, l’acqua e il burro fino a 50 gradi.
In una ciottola grande, mette 230 g di farina e aggiunge il liquido, battendo fortamente. Aggiunge l’uovo and mescolare bene. Man mano, aggiunge il resto della farina, battendo ogni volta di incorporarla bene. Poi, su una superficie spargata di farina, lavorate la pasta fino a è lisce e elastica.
Per panini di hamburger, dividete la pasta in 16 pezzi, facendo palle. Distribuiscete i panini sulla carta da forno su una placca. Copriteli e lasciateli a lievitare 30-45 minuti.
Quando sono pronti, riscalda il forno a 200° C.
Mescolate l’uovo che rimane con un po’ di acqua con una forchetta per fare una glassa e poi con un pennelino aplicatela su i panini. Infornateli per 10-12 minute, fino al sono dorati.
Per fare i panini do hotdog, dividete la pasta in 16 pezzi, e fa un rettangolo di 10X15 cm. Iniziando da lato più lungo, rottolarli stretti e poi sigillarli bene gli estremità sotto il panino. Finite e infornateli come di sopra.
Sono ottimi per il congelatore, metteteli in un sacco di plastica, siggilatela con i twistie, e i panini rimangono freschi per almeno un mese. La ricetta costa circa un euro qui in Umbria.
Mary of Abruzzo Flavors was to have published our Made in America recipe this Friday, but she went off and delivered a little boy instead. That would be Luigi and I know he is a very welcome new little Italian, and also a very welcome new little American!
So Friday, the Made in America recipe will be right here. It’s perfect timing, because it is something you can use for the 4th of July.
This is anything but a brag shot situation, because the weeks of rain have left so many damages and weeds, I had to really hunt for shots that I could gulp and show, but having gone out with camera as well as tools, this is what there is.
That’s how you just came into the garden and onto the terrace. I am calling the part on the right “Mint Madness” this year.
Look who’s peeking down at us from on high. It’s the gufo, otherwise known as Tilda.
She has re-entered the kitchen at least twice now by climbing this rose. She won’t come out now because Bear is there and she trusts no cat.
If we look across the terrace and squint a bit, we can see a sea of hemerocallis just starting to toss flowers at us.
We would go down there using these stairs if the roses hadn’t completely closed them off.
A few of the potted things really need to be pulled out to share some of the sun.
And when we go inside we find Tilda has found amusement in picking cherries up by their stems through the net covering the flat. Once they were opened, she tossed them onto the floor and chased them for a bit. I found and washed all of them, except the two I later stepped on. I thought Guinness might be interested in a cat that doesn’t like chicken but likes cherries, but I suppose all cats like to chase cherries.
I promised someone in a food group to publish pictures of my oven. It’s not at its best because the entry has been used to quickly get garden supplies out of the rain, but the oven itself isn’t going to change much, so here it is, with explanations.
This is how it sits in the garden, attached on one side to my garage and what was once the granary. I wonder if they kept the milled flour in the granary and this was the most convenient place for an oven? There is another one at the other end of the borgo, but it is built below the house, which makes me think that either there was no danger from fire or they didn’t think there was. Since all these villas were part of one family complex, I thought it was interesting that there were two ovens.
This is what can be seen from the door. The long pieces of wood are about 4 feet long and that’s so you can heat the whole oven at once, evenly, by burning these sticks. These happen to be Bay Laurel that I kept when I pruned to flavor the smoke when I cook meat in this oven. The wood used to heat it will be a mixture of those that burn very hot and those that burn a long time. All that remains to be done now is repairs to the shelf in front of the oven opening, which seems more cosmetic than anything else. I waited to find out whether that plaster also needed to be heatproof or not, and the answer I got was, “Couldn’t hurt.”
This is a closer view of the oven itself. I realize now that I have neglected to take a picture of the two iron doors that can be put in place to keep it closed. I have no idea why I have two identical doors and one opening. Maybe whoever stole the oven tools left the extra door in payment? The little pile of ashes remains from the fire we lit to sterilize the oven. We all suspected that spiders, which are the curse of central Italy, would have built nests and webs inside the various passages, but in reality, nothing left any traces inside the oven or anything that connects to it. Inside the little building, yes. In the wood storage area, yes. All over the roof structure and beams was covered with dirt and webs that fell into my eyes and gave me allergic attacks I thought would fell me, but the oven itself was pristine. There must be something about wood ashes.
This is looking into the hemispherical oven itself. It’s really big in there! It’s all coated with heatproof cement, quite smooth. The temperature of the surface, I am told, can reach 1750° F, which is hot enough to destroy even Mad Cow virus– although the meat it was in would have disappeared long before the virus died. This is only the surface of an enormous mass of masonry which takes about eight hours to heat. Once it is hot you stop feeding the fire and begin to use the heat by cooking first things that want high heat, like pizza and bread, then flasks of beans, various casseroles and chunks of meat. We have flip-over stainless steel grilling grates on little legs that allow us to pull some of the coals out for grilling things, too.
If summer really comes this year, I’m planning on a big oven day when the friendly neighbors will invite family and others to come and we’ll cook all day just like the old timers used to. It will be a day that starts at 4:30 in the morning with cooking beginning about 12:30 and continuing into the evening. That’s just like it used to be once a week, every week, for hundreds of years.
This is an approved Ascot ensemble.
Not so very many of us will attend Ascot Week and even fewer of us will attend in the Royal Enclosure. Apparently, however, enough uninitiated types have been invited in the past that the overseeing officials had to introduce new dress rules. If you are to be in the same place as the queen, there are things you cannot do.
I thought the article was mildly interesting, but I thought the Ascot don’ts were hilarious. It made me wonder what these people thought they were attending. Certainly they weren’t at any horse race I ever attended!
If you go to the races and stay in a private box, inside, I don’t suppose it matters what you wear to anyone except the box owner, but if you go to point to point races or stay at course side, you are walking on grass or even mud, there’s little if any shade available. It doesn’t take a queen in attendance to make those clothes funny!
PS/ I didn’t really like any of the clothes shown, but I loved some of the hats.
If you are all really good and leave nice (or rotten) comments, I’ll translate that recipe. The title says it is a side dish that will make you lick your mustache. Let’s see if they speak truth.
Potatoes in packets with aged Gorgonzola
4 large potatoes
100 g (3.5 oz.) aged Gorgonzola
the meats of 8 walnuts
8 sage leaves
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
Preparation:
Scrub very clean the potatoes, then rinse and dry them.
Put the potatoes each on a square piece of parchment/oven paper, which is on a larger square of aluminum foil. It doesn’t say how big, but you are going to be wrapping this up, so pretty big. According to the size of the potatoes, make three or four incisions on the top of the potato. OK, folks, right here we vary from the original, because that potato with all the many incisions is beautiful and there are a lot more than three to four! Why should ours be less beautiful? Salt the potato well and close the wrapping according to the classic manner for items cooked al cartoccio. If you don’t know what this is, we can look it up, but the way I was taught you started with a heart-shaped piece of paper, anyway.
Having preheated the oven to 200° C, put the potato packets in it and cook for an hour. It says to unwrap and poke a potato with a toothpick to test it for tenderness. Is that how you test them?
Lightly mash, as in with a mortar and pestle or the like, the nut meats and cut the Gorgonzola in slices. When the potatoes are cooked, open the packets without damaging the potato and gently enlarge the incisions you made. Insert in each one some nut meats and a slice of Gorgonzola.
Put two sage leaves along the long sides of each potato, sprinkle with some pepper and add a lick of oil. Put the potatoes back into the oven to reheat under a hot broiler and leave until the cheese starts to melt.
Plate and eat them hot.
OK, now, I want to see a photo of that mustache I was promised for doing this translation.
This is the kind of photo that a mother recognizes immediately. That’s my kid!
Tilda does not drink from the stainless steel bowl from which Other Guy drinks, but races into the bathroom whenever anyone goes in just in case they’ll turn the faucet on very slightly so she can sip like a princess.
Now, isn’t she just a great poster child for distance adoption?
We haven’t had any music for a long time. Last night in bed I had the radio playing a French station, very softly, when this old song came on. I’d never translated it for myself, so I have translated it for all of us. It’s not a word for word translation — those never work and especially not for poetry or songs– but my best effort to provide the sense of the lyrics. Spagna can sing also in English, but not this song.
This still shot is recent. Ms Spagna has not yet seen a reason to alter her look, although she’s 54 years old now. When I hear her interviewed, she seems such a nice person that I do wish I didn’t feel so uneasy about this “branding” like the ancient Elvis. Let us not quibble, however, about her big, emotion-packed voice and the songs she wrote for it.
How many times words are said
That you would take back immediately
And how many barriers hide and never fall
Hurting the one who loves us like you have done?
How many times too the greatest loves
Suffer the price of these errors
And how many times you lose yourself this way
In stupid anger and then find yourself alone.
People like us who don’t stay together anymore
But who like us still love
Unique loves, but so fragile
True and endless love stories.
It’s so hard to forgive
One who has made you cry and feel bad
But there’s only one life and I’d want it with you
With all its problems, everything there is.
People like us who don’t stay together anymore
But who like us still love
Unique loves, but so fragile
True and endless love stories.
To everyone who believes in love
But often like us are lonely people
In the heart embrace memories and shivers
People like us who still dream.
The drifting apart is worse than an sickness
If you love someone who isn’t there
In the name of love don’t throw it away
Someone will die if they don’t find you again.
People like us who don’t stay together anymore
But who like us still love
Unique loves, but so fragile
True and endless love stories.
