Homebaker’s Cookbook: Cavatelli with broccoli and anchovies/ Il Ricettario di Homebaker: Cavatelli con broccoli e acciughe

I wanted to make orecchiette…and I came out with cavatelli! For today’s Homebaker‘s Cookbook recipe I studied a lot, watching several videos and discovering an inspiring woman…Nunzia! The problem is that despite my good manual skills that gesture that might seems so easy to do, dragging a dumpling of dough using the tip of a knife, proved to be very difficult and quite frustrating. So after the first ten orecchiette that believed themselves to be cavatelli, I gave in. But I intend to find a grandmother from Puglia willing to spend several hours with me to teach me all secrets that lay behind the famous pasta. I wonder if this site could be of any help (go and take a look, it is truly wonderful!). Ok, no more chatting…fasten your aprons!

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Rye Flour Grissini Breadsticks / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Grissini alla farina di segale

Rye flour, you name it I’ve baked it! Or have I? Well so far for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook? I baked an orange and thymian cake, gluttonous vegan cookies, blinis and many other recipes. But I forgot about grissini! Here then the recipe for Maroggia’s Mill rye grissinis! Crispy and fragrant… try out rolling the dough in cornmeal or breadcrumbs to make them more crunchy and irresistible.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Rye Flour Grissini Breadsticks / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Grissini alla farina di segale

 

Rye flour, you name it I’ve baked it! Or have I? Well so far for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook? I baked an orange and thymian cake, gluttonous vegan cookies, blinis and many other recipes. But I forgot about grissini! Here then the recipe for Maroggia’s Mill rye grissinis! Crispy and fragrant… try out rolling the dough in cornmeal or breadcrumbs to make them more crunchy and irresistible.

MTC Challenge: Indian Style Fried Chicken / MTC Challenge: Pollo fritto all’indiana

Another month, another MTChallenge. Last challenge, the macaron, literally brought me to my knees and made me regret having a willpower which is close zero. Friendships, relationships…working hard on myself I learned the salutary principle of “Letting go” and understand that everything, EVERYTHING, in this brief life simply comes to an end. Not with the MTChallenge, I simply can’t let go. Like in the most cliché relationships which are ruled by a strong, and constant, imbalance between love and hate it’s impossible for me to desist. Kathy Bates in “Misery” you name her…MTChallenge is far worse than her smashing Paul Sheldon’s legs, I simply can’t get out of it! Last challenge’s winner was Silvia, not a surprise if you go taking a look at the recipe with which she won. It was virtually impossible for her to lose. I immediately said to myself: “She will bash us, she will”. Indeed, a massive bash arrived. Silvia’s fried chicken! So you think that frying is easy don’t you? You couldn’t be more wrong. Being quite experienced with frying (I think my closest friends have heard me billion times instructing them on double frying) I took courage and decided to use an ingredient I’ve never used for frying before. Almonds. Scared about its humidity content and surely quite fearful of burning them I never, EVER, used nuts to coat anything that needed a good old frying session. Of course it took an MTChallenge to throw myself into the boiling cauldron and overcome anxiety. The inspiration for the recipe came from India, as soon as I read Valentina’s original recipe. Blame it on the marinade (spices and spicy!), or the idea of accompanying the chicken with a sauce (firstly my mind went to a yogurt based dip and then moved on to an inevitable chutney, which I decided to mix with yogurt :D), but for certain if chicken is involved, at least where I come from, you have to venture into indian cuisine.

Pistachios, Anchovies and Buffalo Mozzarella Arancini / Arancini ai pistacchi, acciughe e mozzarella di bufala

Summer is over. Fortunately the days of sweltering heat wave are only a distant memory. I do not know about you but this summer’s heat was reall unbearable to me. I stopped counting on the sleepless nights spent gasping for fresh air. Oh what a relief when the first rains came, finally, in late August. Finally the right climate to bake and experiment with doughs. July and August were particularly intense, with a lot of hard work to come up with a good recipe for croissants and different projects and works that popped out of the blue to both my surprise and delight. This year is ending definitely better than it started and I hope that 2016 will see a new chapter of my life unfold, hopefully one of many stimulating collaborations.

A Spring Menu nr 4 / Un menù primavera nr 4

This is the last appointment with my spring menus (you can check the first, the second and the third menu by clicking directly on them). Here are the four courses of my forth spring menu:

Kidney Bruschetta on Rocket and Hazelnut Spread
Gnocchi with nettles, butter and mint
Fried Lamb Chops with Mustard and Apple Compote
Frothy Custard with Saffron, Cardamom and Rose Water

A Spring Menu / Un menù di primavera

Spring arrived, at last! After a cold and rainy winter pleasant warm days have finally set in and thinner sweaters have replaced wool jumpers which have been stored in boxes for next year’s cold. To welcome spring I decided to dust off the drawer a small collection of recipes I put together last year, for a project that never came to life. The entire collection has been available for a few hours on the blog, then an opportunity made me decide to take it off in a hurry to see whether it was possible to have the work published. In the end, unfortunately, there was no further development but the recipes and photos are so beautiful that I decided to publish them on the blog this year,. I will post two menus a month, for a total of four, until the end of May. Without further ado I start with the first menu, which is composed by four recipes.

Oops I did it again! Almond, Candied Orange Peel and Aniseed Sweet Rice Cakes! / Oops I did it again! Tortine di riso alle mandorle, arancia candita e anice

Oops I did it again (didn’t I say I would no longer post sweet recipes?)! Well this is an old recipe, part of a menu I made up a few months ago for a project that never came to life. I kept those recipes aside for any emergency, a Plan B to keep the blog post flow constant. It was a smart choice.

Living On My Own, The Ultimate Comfort Food: Fried Polenta bites and Butternut Squash / Living On My Own, il cibo coccola per eccellenza: Cubetti di polenta fritta e zucca butternut

Autumn is finally here, with its warm colors and scent of damp earth, burnt wood and hot soups. Even though it is my favourite season I can’t deny its characteristic cold weather and leaden skies can have a melanchonic effect on the mood. Today’s recipe is mostly a remedy against autumnal melancholy, the ultimate comfort food for singles. Something you might want to eat on one of those lonely nights when you feel a bit down after a bad day at work, when its cold all around and inside your heart too. As a single woman sometimes I speculate about relationships, especially on those cold and lonely nights, envying a bit my friends who have a partner waiting for them at home.

My bread featured on Essen Magazine: “Fashion Food” Editorial + Recipes / Il mio pane su Essen Magazine: Editoriale per la rubrica “Fashion Food” + Ricette

Life is strange, it’s not much in my style to make certain statements but sometimes it seems to me that wishes can come true without too much effort and this is exactly what happened with this adventure with Essen – A Taste Magazine I’m about to tell you. I well remember that Sunday morning in August. My friend Chiara and I were in my kitchen, hands wrapped around our cups of black tea, fragrant freshly baked ciabatta and assorted jams for breakfast. We talked about possible collaborations, ideas of projects involving food and fashion (she works as a stylist in Milan). Chiara suddenly came up with an idea, why not propose an Autumn/Winter fashion editorial for Essen Magazine’s column Fashion Food, featuring my bread creations too? We started writing down ideas, but then as you well know the notes ended up in the middle of a thousand other paperwork scribbled with ideas, projects and recipes to try out. Until I got a phone call from Chiara, telling me that out of the blue she had been given by her boss a job for a fashion editorial for Essen Magazine!