briciole

cracker / Lavash crackers

In Italian, we use the English word cracker. The singular and plural forms are identical1. Another month without tragic tales of disaster to tell: does it mean that I am getting better at handling the challenges? It it probably too early to tell. I liked this month's challenge as it asked us to make something I had been wanting to try for a while, i.e., crackers. And I like that the recipe was light, more in the style of a flatbreads than of crackers I am familiar with. Once again, I read the recipe, followed it, and things worked out fine.... Read more →

Riepilogo della Verdura Fresca del Mese: melanzana / Fresh Produce of the Month's Roundup: eggplant

A month chock-full of delicious recipes all featuring eggplant: what a delight! Srimathi of Few Minute Wonders starts the series of Indian dishes (there will be several more in this roundup) with a "side dish that is spicy and tangy and can be eaten with rice." The dish is Enna/ Oil Kathrika/ Eggplant Kozhambu/Gravy. To make it, Srimathi uses an appam pan, though a regular wok can also be used. Jayashree of My Experiments With Food "decided to stick the eggplant in the microwave. The rest, as they say, is history." Note that you still need to make slits on the... Read more →

fagioli all'uccelletto / beans "little bird" style

If you are thinking the name of this dish sounds cute, you are not the only one. There is actually no bird in this Tuscan dish, which I had never cooked before. The inspiration to try came from finding fresh beans still in their pods (fagioli da sgranare, literally: beans to be shelled) at the farmers' market: somehow that sight evoked in my mind the name of the dish heard of old, and it became imperative to make it come alive in my kitchen. There is a good dose of irony in my getting excited about fresh shelling beans. As a... Read more →

Novel Food #5: the finale (one serving)

The summer solstice brought us a thunderstorm, a calm ocean and some amazing skies. Thus started my portion of the roundup for the previous edition of Novel Food, the literary/culinary event Lisa of Champaign Taste and I started last year. I read it as I started to write the roundup for the current edition and thought I would add a bit of follow-up. That evening, the thunderstorms ignited wildfires in the county where I live and throughout California, kicking off a very early fire season. The fight against fire raged on for weeks. When I wrote that sentence I had no... Read more →

Novel Food #5: soufflé di ricotta al limone / lemony ricotta soufflé

I remember the dinner well - soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in white wine sauce, a caneton à la presse, a lemon soufflé. At the last minute, fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviare aux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clode de Bère of 1904. Living was easy in France then... Charles Ryder is having dinner with Rex Mottram at a restaurant in Paris called Paillard's. He has chosen both the place and the... Read more →

mascarpone fatto in casa / homemade mascarpone

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Nobody that I know makes mascarpone at home in Italy. The reason, I believe, is that you can go to the grocery store around the corner and get some, so there is no real incentive to learn to do-it-yourself. Finding good quality mascarpone became less obvious once I moved to California. At some point, I read that one could make it at home. Still, things did not click in my mind, also because by then I could find imported Italian mascarpone to make tiramisù. The inspiration to make mascarpone at home came... Read more →

melanzana arrosto / roasted eggplant

I love melanzane and I liked them also as a child (when most vegetables were on my black list), maybe because my mother did not cook melanzane, so they had an aura of mystery around them. Such love was not affected by the worst kitchen disaster that ever happened to me the first time I tried to roast a whole eggplant (una melanzana intera). One day, I decided to make baba ganoush, first tasted some years before in a Lebanese restaurant in Tangier, Morocco. I bought a big eggplant and put it in the hot oven. The recipe made it clear... Read more →

risotto alle more / blackberry risotto

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Another season of blackberry picking has started in my neighborhood and it found me ready to explore uncharted territory. After using more mostly to make sorbetto (sorbet), this year I have expanded my repertoire to include plum and blackberry spread (sweetened with honey), and risotto alle more. About a month ago, I wrote about risotto ai lamponi and the combination of ingredients I devised for raspberries works also very well for blackberries. I actually tried varying a couple of components, but comparison tasting favored the shallot and thyme base. The one variation... Read more →