briciole

borș / crusca di frumento fermentata / fermented wheat bran

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] wheat bran My kitchen will never be featured in a fashion magazine and I am fine with that. Even on a good day, it's pretty chaotic. The top of the refrigerator is my fermentation department, where there is always something bubbling the fermentation department From the left: flaked barley for my husband's breakfast (see this post: I process barley the same way I process rye) borș kefir (which is light-sensitive so it is cloaked in a kitchen towel) I didn't know what borș was until I read this in the wikipedia entry... Read more →

Novel Food #18: the finale

Welcome to the roundup of the 18th edition of Novel Food, the literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I created in 2007 and that I continue to host with great pleasure. Novel Food is about literary works (prose or poetry) that inspire the preparation of dishes. The event brings together two of my passions: literature and food. Like all its predecessors, the current edition includes a lovely set of posts, each describing a literary work that the blogger read and the dish that the reading inspired. Please, follow me on a short literary/culinary tour. For each contribution, I will... Read more →

The Peg House sign

A must stop on Hwy 101 Two miles north of Leggett is a sight to experience. This cozy and historic Redwood Empire structure is held together in the Danish tradition entirely with wooden pegs. The hand hewn beams and Old World craftsmanship pleases visitors from around the world who come here to swim and fish the south fork of the Eel River and explore the magnificent towering redwood corridors. (source) follow me The Peg House 69501 Hwy 101, Leggett, CA. 95585 This is my contribution to edition #76 of Black and White Wednesday - A Culinary Photography Event created by Susan... Read more →

fasole bătută

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a creamy, flavorful spread Would you like something creamy to spread on bread or crackers that is flavorful, nutritious and healthy? Look no further than my rendition of fasole bătută, a Romanian dish made with mashed beans seasoned with various aromatics (source). I read a few recipes and then went my own way, using what I had available and adjusting the quantities to my taste. This recipe suggests to fry the onions, which gave me the idea to caramelize shallots and use them as topping. I really liked my version of fasole... Read more →

insalata di fagioli e tonno / bean and albacore tuna salad

the right company for kale pesto The first scene brings us to a large rapeseed field. Our eyes luxuriate in the saturated colors of tall yellow flowers under a blindingly blue sky. As our mind wonders where such a beautiful place is, a painful sense of foreboding starts to distort the idyllic image. The young woman in the middle of the yellow ocean is panicking and the middle-aged men trying to reach her is anxious. The tension builds up as the camera switches vintage point until the scene goes up in flames — literally. Sidetracked, the first episode of the BBC... Read more →

pesto di cavolo riccio novello con anacardi / baby kale pesto with cashews

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] baby kale, cashews and Parmigiano-Reggiano In my little vegetable garden (orto), kale grows easily and year round, a situation that encourages me to be creative about using such overabundance. As I mentioned previously, one nice thing I can do with extra kale is to bring a bag of it to our local food bank, which puts freshly harvested greens to excellent use. Right now, I have a raised bed with baby Red Russian kale and decided to try using the tender leaves to make a pesto. I considered cooking the leaves before... Read more →

impronte digitali e intervista / fingerprints and interview

my love affair with handmade pasta continues Making pasta by hand is a way to express my personality, as is cooking in general. In strascinati, my fingers leave their signature quite clearly. Every recipe I create, every dish I prepare reflects not only my taste but also my philosophy of life. I talk a little bit about myself with respect to my passion for cooking in an interview with Italian Reflections featured today on Italian Reflections Daily. You can read other interesting interviews here. And I am sure lovers of all things Italian will find interesting pages on Italian Reflections and... Read more →

strascinati alla semola tostata / toasted semolina flour strascinati

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] dressed with purple sprouting broccoli Imagine a pasta that smells like toasted hazelnuts (nocciole tostate). It's not a dream, but the result of my experiments following my experience with farina di grano arso. I don't (yet) know how they obtain the gray color and smoky flavor of that flour, but reading again Debra's post about it gave me the idea of trying to toast some semolina flour. I knew I would not get a gray, smoky flour, but I thought that maybe the result would be interesting. It certainly was. original and... Read more →

reginelle / sesame seed cookies

reginella à la Simona Sicily smells of sesame seeds. Not the actual island, but the Sicily of my memory. I close my eyes, I whisper "Sicilia" and I smell toasted sesame seeds. The same thing happens if I read about Sicily: I open one of my Montalbano books and my nose smiles. My first visit to Sicily, the summer before I turned 18, overloaded all of my senses in a joyous way: the beauty of churches and other buildings in Palermo, the sticky smell of the hot July days, the pleasant coolness of the sea, the sound of the dialect (of... Read more →

Weekend Herb Blogging #374: il riepilogo / 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 am pleased to present an interesting set of posts submitted by bloggers from various countries. 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 an interesting tour. Marija of Palachinka shares with us Homemade Soy Milk If "you do drink soy milk,... Read more →