briciole

cantucci al cioccolato speziati / almond and chocolate biscotti with a hint of spice

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] please have one, or two Biscotto is a word of Latin origin that means twice-baked: the dough is baked, cut into slices and baked again. (To be precise, cooked means cotto, but in Italian we don't have a specific verb for cooking in the oven; "to bake" is cuocere al forno, literally: to cook in the oven.) From describing a cooking procedure, the word biscotto came to indicate a baked product, crunchy and fairly dry in texture (see a photo in this post). Nowadays, biscotti are not necessarily twice-baked (though some of... Read more →

cucinare coi fiori / cooking with flowers

calendulas from the farmers' market and freshly picked from my garden Ever since I started reading Cooking With Flowers, Sweet and Savory Recipes with Rose Petals, Lilacs, Lavender, and Other Edible Flowers by Miche Bacher I look at flowers with different eyes. I knew that a number of flowers were edible (commestibili), from zucchini blossoms (fiori di zucca) to herb flowers (which I have used, for example, in rye bread) to roses (which I have used to flavor ice cream). But I did not know that orchids are edible and so are daylilies and lilacs, to name just a few. FTC... 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 →

intervista a Marisa Churchill / interview with Marisa Churchill

oatmeal-raisin cookies from Sweet & Skinny Prepare a cup of tea or coffee, grab a cookie (besides oatmeal and raisins, the cookies in the photo have pieces of chocolate and of walnuts), make yourself comfortable, and read on. On March 24, I attended the Women's PowerStrategy Conference in Marin County, CA. What I have to tell about that day won't fit into one post, so I'll start by talking about meeting Marisa Churchill, pastry chef and author of the dessert cookbook Sweet & Skinny, 100 recipes for enjoying life's sweeter side without tipping the scales. Readers of this blog know that... Read more →

croccanti / a family recipe for a special sweet treat

In the days leading up to the Holidays, my aunt Lucia would bake special cookies and apportion them among family members: my uncle, my father, my cousins. My father visited her before Christmas and brought back the package allocated to our family. I never saw my aunt making the content of that eagerly awaited package, but in my mind's eye I can reconstruct the scene: the kitchen, the table, the fireplace, my aunt and my father chatting. What came out at the receiving end were diamond-shaped torzetti and half-domed croccanti (croccante means crisp, crunchy). I regret that I did not ask... Read more →

granella di fave di cacao / cacao nibs

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] In the beginning there is the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, “a spindly understory tree” which, with very few exceptions, “refuses to bear fruit outside a band of 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the Equator.” (Sophie and Michael Coe, The True History of Chocolate) The fruit of the cacao tree is called a cacao pod (cabosse): It contains almond-shaped seeds, called beans (fave di cacao), surrounded by a juicy pulp. The Coes explain that once the pods are opened, and the beans and their surrounding pulp extracted, there are four... Read more →

un'enciclopedia "dolce" / a "sweet" encyclopedia

Italian biscuits, recipe from "The Cookiepedia" by Stacy Adimando With a title like The Cookiepedia this book intrigued me all'istante (instantly). Once I had it in my hands, I found a number of things to like about it: an appealing graphical layout, which includes nice icons and space allocated for notes after each recipe a binding that allows the book to open flat: I like it when a cookbook stays open on its own without clumsy arrangements variations for each recipe: variations send the message that it is acceptable to play with a recipe and so they stimulate one's creativity while... Read more →

frollino

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of What the Fruitcake?! Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking. The recipes Mandy provided for the different elements of the challenge can be found here. What I made looks different from what you see on the Daring Bakers web site due to our household's dietary needs. Before I move on to describe what I did and why, I'd like to say a few words about icing. The Italian expression that corresponds to the English "the icing on the... Read more →

biscotti Digestive e formaggio inglese / Digestives and English cheese

A series of events have kept me away from the blogosphere in recent weeks. Things will be hectic for at least another couple of weeks: c'est la vie. However, I managed to complete the assignment pertaining the current edition of Cook the Books. Reading Nigel Slater's Eating for England was quite pleasant. A number of his vignettes struck a chord with me, since I have many memories related to English foods, and I had fun comparing notes, so to speak, with him. For example, it looks like we share an appreciation for Bourbon biscuits, which I tasted the first time while... Read more →

gelato al biscotto / ice cream sandwich

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca. This challenge was interesting for me for two main reasons. One is that graham wafers (a.k.a. graham crackers) were on my list of to-try recipes. The second is that I had never tried to bake anything gluten-free. The recipes for the Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars are here. In our household, we cannot eat the Nanaimo Bars as described in the... Read more →