briciole

cabbage, roasted salmon and persimmon salad / insalata di cavolo cappuccio, salmone arrosto e cachi mela

the salad looks nice in a Limoges tureen (zuppiera)1 (tablecloth by La FABBRICA del LINO) During winter months, usually soup is on the table more often than salad. This year, however, I am having an intense relationship with raw cabbage. It's not that I discovered it, but I've been reminded how much I like a salad of finely shredded cabbage, and how much I enjoy playing with it, adding various ingredients and tasting the results. One such ingredient recently has been pan-roasted salmon, prepared according to the recipe2 in Jessica Fechtor's memoir Stir3, the current selection of our Cook the Books... Read more →

gluten-free breaded baked cod bites / bocconcini di merluzzo impanati al forno (senza glutine)

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] sitting down to a nice lunch (table runner by La FABBRICA del LINO) As a child I didn't like fish, particularly fried fish (pesce fritto). On the other hand, I liked other fried food my mother made: breaded meat (cotoletta) or chicken breast, battered cauliflower florets, potato croquettes (crocchette di patate) and of course supplì (rice croquette). Later in life I learned to like fish. In general, I don't deep-fry in my kitchen, but I like the crisp crust (crosticina) foods acquire when breaded and fried. Baking breaded foods approximates the result... Read more →

Moroccan fish tagine / tagine di pesce marocchina

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] making and serving fish tagine The eighteenth country of our World Culinary ABC1 is Morocco (Marocco). Many years ago, I spent a summer working as a nurse at a Club Med in Morocco. Once a week, we had a Moroccan evening, with traditional Moroccan food served for dinner and a music and dance performance afterwards. That summer, I had my first taste of couscous, of vegetable tagine (or tajine)2 and of gazelle's horns (corna di gazzella), cookies with almond paste filling. My most memorable experience, however, was drinking mint tea (tè alla... Read more →

kokoda: marinated raw fish salad / kokoda: insalata di pesce crudo marinato

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] making kokoda fish The sixteenth country of our World Culinary ABC1 is Papua New Guinea (Papua Nuova Guinea). To celebrate this stop, I chose to make my version of kokoda, a marinated raw fish salad—the Pacific Islands' version of ceviche.2 Apart for lemon, lime and coconut milk, the ingredients I chose are local. This was the first I worked on a recipe using raw fish. The idea to look for a fish recipe came from the current selection of our Cook the Books Club, Yes, Chef, the autobiography of Chef Marcus Samuelsson.... Read more →

stufato di pesce stile brasiliano / Brazilian-style fish stew (moqueca de peixe)

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a layered fish stew in the pot The sixth stop of our World Culinary ABC1 is Brazil. The dish I chose to celebrate our virtual visit is called moqueca de peixe. This dish comes in two flavors moqueca bahiana from Bahia and moqueca capixaba from Espírito Santo. Most recipes online are for the former, characterized by the use of coconut milk (latte di cocco). I came up with a personal version of the latter, inspired by some readings and this recipe from the May 2007 edition of Gourmet. To make my rendition... Read more →

trota al forno per Mark Twain / roasted trout for Mark Twain

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a tavola! Mark Twain did not like the food he ate in the hotels where he lodged during his stay in Europe in 1879. He makes that quite clear in the autobiographical book, A Tramp Abroad, written during that trip. After negative reviews of pretty much everything he has tasted, Twain sees the light at the end of the tunnel, since he is getting ready to travel back home, where he is planning to eat: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream. Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream... He goes... 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 →

trota al vino rosso / trout in red wine

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] trout in red wine With this post, I am starting an exploration of traditional dishes from the various regions of Italy in the company of other bloggers. We start from the north-west corner of the country, a small region called Valle d'Aosta (Aosta Valley), whose capital is Aosta. I visited Aosta Valley twice, once with my high school class and more recently, with my husband. We stayed a few days in Courmayer, at the foot of Monte Bianco (Mont Blanc), and one day we took the funivia (cable car) to the Aiguille... Read more →

zucca "delicata" con sardine / delicata squash with sardines

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Rule 7: Don’t overlook the oily little fishes. If there’s one food you should be eating (and probably are not) it is the humble sardine. Sardines (Pacific, wild-caught) are one of the healthiest foods we can consume, according to health and environmental experts. These nutritional powerhouses are one of the best sources of omega-3 fats, with a whopping 1,950 mg/per 3 oz. (that’s more per serving than salmon, tuna or just about any other food) and they’re packed with vitamin D. [source] The paragraph above was clearly written for me: while rationally... Read more →

spaghetti col tonno / spaghetti with tuna sauce

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Spaghetti col tonno is a dish my mother prepared frequently for lunch on Friday and always for dinner on Christmas Eve, la vigilia di Natale. In the context of the Catholic tradition, fare vigilia means to abstain from eating meat the day before a particularly holy day, like Christmas. The inspiration to prepare my rendition of spaghetti col tonno came a number of years ago, when I encountered a special kind of canned tuna: Albacore by Katy’s Smokehouse. Katy’s albacore is hand packed with a little sea salt and nothing else. While... Read more →