briciole

amo fare il formaggio / I ♥ making cheese

Just unwrapped: handle with care Last Sunday, I made cheese after a couple of weeks hiatus. The cheese in my hand was made with cow milk and drained in ricotta baskets. The imprint on the surface is due to the cheese netting I have been using recently instead of cloth. At this point, I have just unwrapped the cheese and I am about to put in back into the basket for additional draining. The cheese is soft, but compact enough to be handled — carefully. It smells fresh and slightly acidic: pure pleasure. Three years into my cheese adventures, I still... Read more →

cucinare in trasferta: fagioli pinto freschi al pomodoro / cooking while away: fresh pinto beans in tomato sauce

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] In my previous post, I talked about our trip to Milwaukee and visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum and Fondy Farmer's Market. At the market, among other items, we bought fresh shelled pinto beans. As you can see from the photo, they were sold next to borlotti (cranberry beans), and in both podded and shelled version (pinto in the pink buckets, borlotti in the purple ones). The plan was to prepare the beans with a tomato sauce and I could have bought some tomatoes at the market for that, but they were... Read more →

una visita a Milwaukee: il museo d'arte e il mercato / a visit to Milwaukee: museum and farmers' market

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] We recently went to Milwaukee and visited the famous Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Pavilion, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The gateway to the Museum is called Windhover Hall. Above it rises the spectacular Burke Brise Soleil, a moveable, wing-like sunscreen that rests on top of the Museum’s vaulted, glass-enclosed Windhover Hall. The “wings” open Monday–Sunday at 10 a.m. with the Museum, close/reopen at noon, and close again with the Museum at 5 p.m.; except on Thursdays when the... Read more →

verde bianco e rosso al mercato / green, white, and red at the farmers' market

Vegetable tricolore The photo started with a wish to capture the deep red cherry tomatoes. When I framed them, I observed how nicely the juxtaposition of cauliflowers and broccoli worked. Finally, I realized that the colors were those of the Italian flag, which is called tricolore. This is my submission to week #11 edition of Black and White Wednesday - A Culinary Photography Event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook. Savoring the weekly gallery is highly recommended: it's a very special mid-week treat. The photo was shot in color (at the Temescal Farmers' Market in Oakland, CA) and then converted... Read more →

noci pecan ricoperte di cioccolato / chocolate-covered pecans

For the current edition of Cook the Books, we are reading Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, an autobiography with recipes at the end of each chapter. One of the recipe pages is titled Bread and Chocolate and it starts thus: This is a simple trick familiar to every French child. There’s something surprisingly right about chocolate and bread together, all that dark, rich sweetness against the chewy, salty crumb. It’s one of my favorite snacks. I am Italian and grew up eating bread and chocolate (pane e cioccolato) as a snack. My home town,... Read more →

frittata con pesche arrosto e caciotta fatta in casa / frittata with roasted peaches and homemade caciotta

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] After the success of my gelato with roasted peaches, it was natural to try to use the same fruitful concept in a frittata, like I had done with strawberries (fragole). The result was just as excellent. The first couple of times I made it, I used the same cheese as before, my homemade French Neufchâtel cheese, a bloomy-rind cheese (formaggio a crosta fiorita). But then I tasted my homemade caciotta and I thought it would work great in the frittata: I was right. I am planning to write more about caciotta: for... Read more →

ricotta appena fatta (in casa) / fresh homemade ricotta

Ricotta money cannot buy (at least where I live) I made this ricotta with the whey left over from making Gouda according to this recipe (using two gallons of milk). The procedure I follow to make ricotta derives from the recipe for ricotta from whey1 on this page (without any milk added). I always use the traditional basket (now made of plastic) to drain my ricotta, because I respect the tradition. The photo was taken at the beginning of the draining phase. The yield was about 10.5 oz. On this page you can see what the ricotta looks like after I... Read more →

riepilogo del weekend di erbe aromatiche numero 300

Weekend Herb Blogging #300: the roundup [cliccare il link per andare direttamente al raccolto della edizione italiana di WHB] As the host of last week's edition of WHB, I have the honor of presenting an interesting set of posts submitted by bloggers from various corners of the world. For each contribution, I will give you the official information (author, blog name and post title) and a short quote or brief description that summarizes it, a teaser that invites you to follow the link to read the relevant post. Follow me: it will be a fun little trip. Janet of The Taste... Read more →

tagliatelle alla borragine / borage tagliatelle

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a brief thought I am writing these lines shortly before 6 am in California, 9 am in New York: 10 years after almost to the minute, a phone call from a family friend alerted me. I was up early, preparing for the day ahead. I turned on the computer, and saw the first images, an experience not very different from that of millions of other people, but quite different from that of others, like Susan. Anniversaries are important: they bring people together to remember and to give honor. But really, how can... Read more →

aglio appena colto / freshly dug garlic

garlic in the rough Garlic is beloved and photogenic, so it is no wonder that it has appeared in several photos of previous editions of Black and White Wednesday. The garlic in the photo above is dear to me, because it grew in my little garden. It was the first time I harvested garlic and it was great fun to dig up the bulbs, a sort of treasure hunt. This is my submission to week #9 edition of Black and White Wednesday - A Culinary Photography Event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook. Savoring the weekly gallery is highly recommended:... Read more →