Dreamy pasta

Pasta is only a dream right now, although tomorrow marks one month on this diet and the possibility to take one day off it. It could mean having a pasta. The problem is not the food but the fact that I had a clothing breakthrough Saturday and feel more like plowing ahead than eating anything. Well, okay, a lobster would convince me.

Anyway, I made this pasta the last time for my friends in Civitacastellana, and I invite them to do the review. I will tell you I love it. Really love it. It’s fast, easy, uses only four ingredients and tastes like munchers’ heaven to me.

Your only problem will be that you didn’t make my O foods battuta of olives. It’s not to late to make it. I used some yesterday to perk up two different dishes at two different meals! Another cheap and easy clue to my character. So, for this dish you must make that for a start, but believe me, you won’t be sorry.

Pasta con olive e carciofi Pasta with olives and artichokes

to serve 2

130 grams or 4 1/2 ounces of short pasta, such as penne
1 small bottle of marinated artichoke hearts (or 1/2 of the larger 285 g jars sold here)
4 tablespoons (or more) battuta di olive piquante
30 g 1 ounce pecorino stagionato (aged pecorino cheese) grated

Heat the water for the pasta and when it boils add salt and the pasta.

While the pasta cooks, make the sauce in a frying pan large enough to hold the pasta. Cut the artichoke hearts into slivers. Put marinade and the battuta of olives into the heated frying pan. It has olive oil in it, so it will sautè. In a minute or two, add the artichoke slivers, and as soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it and throw it into the frying pan. Toss it around to coat it, then add the cheese and toss some more. Serve immediately, smoking hot.

I like this pasta enough to try it on the Presto Pasta Night audience, this week on Friday at Once Upon a Feast. Join me there to see what the noodlers have cooked up this week!

31 January, 2010

The imponderables of January

At first I didn’t understand why practically every payment and tax is due in January in Italy, or so it has been for me. Then I discovered that Italian workers get 13 months of pay. That last one probably goes on all these payments, although it was probably meant to give them some dough for Christmas gifts, vacations, New Year’s. So that is not imponderable, although it takes me all month to swallow how much money goes out this month even though I only get 12 checks a year.

What nibbles at my mind right now is this; is the lead singer of Tokyo Hotel female or male? Has Shakira had all boney parts replaced with nylon? If you haven’t guessed, I’ll tell you that MTV suddenly went from a noisy fog to as clear as Raidue. Not great, but watchable. It’s strange enough to hear Ozzie Osbourne speak Italian of about the same quality as his English.

It’s also strange, but explicable, to hear Colin Firth speak really good Italian. He lives here with his long-term Italian companion, so it’s normal, but considering that there loads of non-moviestar foreigners who never bother, I was impressed.

It’s still cold where the computer is and there’s nowhere warmer to move it, but I hear that next week we will have a booster station down the road and I will be able to use it to get much faster internet connections. It means I can freeze half to death for 15 minutes instead of 2 hours. I didn’t really understand the entirety of the decision to use only wood this winter. Sure, it’s decent exercise I can’t skip, but it’s a matter of hot spots and icy ones, and the phone and electricity situation the computer needs gives me two choices, both cold.

I got a lot of English language entertainment for Christmas and as a loan. It wiles away the hours. Grey’s Anatomy tops the list at this point, and I have watched all of the three seasons I have three times. Season four is still selling for too much money.

I will be going back to that beautiful apartment shortly, and I hope it will be when I celebrate my monthly diet free day so I can cook. I am thinking pasta, wine and maybe an apple so far. My mind can hardly stretch beyond that.

Eat a fish.

Thai curried shrimp

I made this back when I could eat rice, and it was really good; hotter than a firecracker, but good.

eg sent me some tubs of thai curry pastes, and although there was a long learning curve and delays caused by needing to train to Florence to get tinned coconut milk, I feel that with this I finally conquered the refinements of making pre-prepared Thai food. It was harder than I thought!

The directions said to put a certain amount of the paste into a pan, then a certain amount of coconut milk, melting it all together and bringing it to a simmer. I then added the shrimp (it works with any cut up meat, too) and simmered them until they were almost cooked, then I added the broccoli and did the same. I thought it looked pretty ugly, so when I served it I arranged the parts separately on top of the rice, which was dressed with the “gravy” or sauce.

I wish I could say I wept because it was so good, but in reality although it was very good indeed, I wept because my mouth was on fire.

More cold weather coming your way?

You probably don’t have windows that look like this one, but it may be cold where you are. Here’s something I made during the last pre-diet cold snap. I remembered it as a cold weather specialty when I was growing up in Maine, but I hadn’t made it here because you cannot buy creamed corn in Italy. So I made some, and it wasn’t even difficult.

Corn Chowder expatriate style

Serves 2-3

2 potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 onion, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons of butter
salt to taste (start with 1/2 teaspoon)
1 can of corn niblets
3/4 liter milk
butter for serving
freshly ground pepper

You will need to remove half the corn before using your stick blender to crush the rest. Then do the other half.

Heat the butter in a heavy soup pan, then sauté the onions until transparent. Add the potatoes, some salt and water to cover. Simmer until both the onions and the potatoes are done. Add the crunched up corn, including the small amount of juice that was in the can. Simmer a few minutes. Add the milk and heat. Taste and correct for salt.

Ladle soup into bowls, then top with a pat of butter and a grind of pepper. Eat smoking hot.

Those of you who live in places where creamed corn exists, just use that and your soup will taste even cornier, which in this case is a good thing.

Snow and cold

This isn’t even a respectable cold snap by many USA standards, but it’s managed to keep me 2 feet from the fire.

Here are some shots of Christmas at my friend Alison’s home. I find her apartment elegantissimo.

No kidding, this was all of the Christmas mess.

The breathtaking living room ceiling

A nighttime view from the living room of the cathedral

I am envious, too.

Tasty news! Spaghetti profumatissimi

Spaghetti are plural

I’m back. I have been adventuring and will later post some photos of vignettes of what I’ve been doing, and not all of it was in kitchens.

This dish, however, is how I want to close this year. It’s almost a translation rather than an original, but I ended up changing it quite a lot, so I will call it my own. The title means very tasty, and so they were. Many of you will have the ingredients at hand, and the rest of you, what are you waiting for? Get to the supermarkets before they close! The colored spaghetti isn’t required; it happened to be all I had in the house, but it’s cute, isn’t it?

The recipe is not vegetarian, but it is pescetarian and that’s close. If, like eg, you leave out the anchovy it’s even vegan. Most of all it is deeeee-licious. There are lots of little surprises for the tongue in every forkful. It takes the time to heat the water and boil the pasta to make it. That’s not just fast food, that’s nearly instant.

This recipe is for one big serving, but you can easily multiply it to feed masses.

Spaghetti Profumatissimi

for 1

100 g/3.5 ounces spaghetti

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 fillet of anchovy
1 tiny hot pepper, crushed or cut small
1 tablespoon pinenuts
1 handful raisins (mine are kept in a jar with Marsala)
1 tablespoon capers, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons green olives coarsely chopped (or of the battuta of olives I publshed before)
2 tablespoons dry-cured black olives, coarsely chopped
more oil as needed

Heat the water for the pasta and when it boils add salt then the spaghetti.
While the spaghetti cooks, in a frying pan heat the oil with the garlic, the anchovy, the hot pepper and the pinenuts. Watch so they don’t catch and burn, but a little browning of the garlic and pinenuts is desirable. When you reach that point, add the raisins, the capers and the olives. Stir about.

As soon as the spaghetti are al dente, drain the and put them instantly, still a bit wet, into that frying pan and toss them around to get them all coated and the bits distributed. Serve them immediately while still smoking hot.

Do not serve cheese with this as it does NOT go. If you did, they might take your pasta license.

Since this is the next to last pasta I am making before the BIG DIET, I will send it off the Presto Pasta Night, which is being hosted January 8, 2010, at Once Upon a Feast, home pastures to Ruth. I admit I never even dreamed of 2010, let alone that I would spend it in Italy as an Italian chef. Makes me feel rather tickled, you know.

Connection Problems

I am having great difficulty getting a speed which makes photos possible.

Pretty striped rice: includes besciamella

It has taken me some time to write up and publish this recipe, although the photos were ready over a week ago. Why is that, I wondered? It’s because it is so rich. It’s simply one of the richest dishes I have ever eaten in Italy. It swims in cheeses, bubbles up with besciamella and is topped with a crusty layer of cheese and besciamella combined.

People are different. This is too rich for me. Even though I made only one-third of the recipe, and I reheated some two more days after eating it the first time, I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Maybe you are the kind of cook who loves macaroni and cheese and the richer the better? Then you’ll love this. Go for it. Goodness knows it’s pretty! As the first course to a dinner party it would look wonderful on the plate. As a main course for a vegetarian meal, everyone will feel well-fed. But for me, 23 ounces of cheese on 14 ounces of rice is just too much.

Riso a strisce al forno
1 hour
oven 180°C/360°F
Serves 4-6

400 g/14 ounces raw rice, cooked
1.5 liters/quarts of very liquid besciamella
250 g/9 ounces Swiss cheese in slices
250 g/9 ounces mozzarella in slices
150 g/5 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano grated
8 tablespoons tomato sauce

Cook the rice and then work with it while it is warm, so it won’t become stuck together. You can use ordinary white rice or parboiled rice, because the richness of the cheeses will overcome any of the delicate rice flavors.

Separate one-third of the rice and use the tomato sauce to tint it pink.

In a baking dish, arrange some of the besciamella in a layer, then add half of the remaining white rice, a sprinkling of the Parmigiano, all the Swiss cheese slices, then the pink rice, followed by more Parmigiano, more besciamella, the mozzarella. Finish with the last of the white rice, the rest of the besciamella and some Parmigiano.

Slide it into the preheated oven and cook about 15 minutes, and serve it hot.

This recipe comes from my new Pugliese cookbook, Cucina Salentina by Lucia Lazari and all I did was translate it and cook it for you. I’ve made some really good things from that book, but this one might be too good.

I have already burned all that wood

Hot cocoa, hot fire