Fig & Walnut Jam

INGREDIENTS:
1lb peeled black figs
3 tbsps granulated sugar
3 tbsps fresh lemon juice
Lemon peel
1/2 tsp grated ginger
4 tbsps walnuts, broken in pieces.

Figs


TOOLS:
1 knife and 1 bowl
Juicer
1 deep stainless steel saucepan
1 serving spoon to stir
2 sterilized glass jars with their lid
Clean towels to let the jar sit overnight

Figs ready to be cooked

STEPS:
. Mix all the ingredients, except the walnuts, in a bowl and let them sit the fridģe for a couple of hours.
. Put them in a deep stainless steel saucepan.
. Turn on the burner on low.
. Let it simmer for 40 minutes, stirring once in a while.
. Take out the lemon peel, add the walnuts, stir and  turn off.
. Pour immediately the hot jam in the 2 glass jars, close very well the cap and put the jars upside down among pieces of fabric to keep it warm and safe.
. After 24hrs, the jars are vacuumed and ready to be stored in a dark cabinet, for no longer than 2 months.
When you open a jar, keep it refrigerated and eat the jam within 10 days.
Enjoy it with buttered toasted bread or with soft cheese. It’s perfect for baking. .

Cooked Jam

Bass Filet Recipe

Sea Bass Filets

I prepared and cooked these two bass filets in 8 minutes. Here’s the recipe.


Ingredients – 2 servings
2 bass filets (fresh or frozen)
1/2 tbsp thinly chopped parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.

Cooking


Method:
In a large pan add 1 tablespoon of oil, lay on it the 2 filets.
Mix parsley, garlic, the oil left and breadcrumbs and put it on the filets.
Turn on the burner on medium and let them cook 3 minutes.
Flip them and cook other 4 minutes.
Flip them again, cover with a lid and let them cook another 1 minute before serving.

– Are you Gluten Free? Substitute breadcrumbs with cornmeal.

– Salmon fillet, trout fillet can be cooked in the same way.

– If you need to cook more than 2 fillets, I suggest you to bake them

Tunafish balls with Green Olive Pate and Ricotta Cheese

I experimented a new recipe and I madeTunafish balls with Green Olives Pate courtesy of Frantoio Bonamini

http://www.oliobonamini.com/

Tuna fish balls with Green olive pate

RECIPE

Ingredients: 4 tbsps canned tunafish in EVO, 4 tbsps Ricotta Cheese, 2 tbsps Green Olive Pate, 1 egg, 2 or 3 tbsps breadcrumbs in the mix, more breadcrumbs to roll the tubafish balls, Extra Virgin Olive Oil to spray on the balls before baking.
Mix very well all the ingredients with a spoon and then make balls as big as a wallnut.
Preheat at 200°C the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.
Enjoy!

Vegetable Broth

Veggie Broth

Here is the recipe of the basic vegetable broth I often cook for making  brodino con pastina – broth with little shape pasta –

Ingredients:

2 carrots, 1 onion, 1 potato

Wash, peel, cut the vegetable in quarters or big pieced and put them in a pot

Add about 4 liters – 1 gallon of water.

Add 1 teaspoon of salt – I use seasalt.

Put the pot on the stove, cover with a lid and turn on the burner on, setting it on high.

When it starts boiling, turn the burner on very low. The broth needs still to simmer. You cook it for about 1 hour.

Bouling broth
Burner on low

It’s ready after about 1 hour when al the vegetables are soft.

Ready Veggie Broth

You separate the liquid part from the vegetables. The liquid part is the broth. It’s ready to be used.

Filtered Broth, it’s ready to be used

The vegetables can be eaten in pieces

Cooked vegetables

or you can blend them with an immersion blender and eat them as a soup.

Blending
Ready blended vegetables

Enjoy the soup!

Yummy

Strawberry Jam

Sometimes we forget how easy are to make some recipes.

When I got married, my husband and I went to live in a little village called Polcenigo. It’s an old rural little town with two beautiful springs, with a lot of old buildings and with very fascinating views.

I’ve never made a jam before I moved to live in Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Yes, my grandma Teresa used to make her own jam when she had a lot of fruit, but I’ve never been interested in it and I really never helped her in the process.

One day one of my new neighbors gifted me some plums. Well, she gifted me tons of plums, so I decided to make jam for the first time. It was about 30 years ago.

The first thing I did was calling my grandma for asking her the ingredients. Her replies was very easy: for 1 kilo of fruit without seeds, you need 1/2 kilo of white sugar. Let it cook for a couple of hours, stirring once in while. That’s it.

Well, from that first experience, few things have changed.

Asking around and checking the ingredients written on the jars in the grocery stores, I found out that many people add artificial pectine to make their jam thicker in a shorter time. But I really don’t like to use chemicals, so, after researching on the web, I realized that adding the juice of one lemon or one peeled apple cut in pieces to the fruit I’m making the jam with, they both develop natural pectine.

Another thing I learned, after trying multiple times, is that we can reduce the amount of sugar up to 30% and that we can also use the brown sugar instead of the white one.

I still don’t make it very often, but my favorites are Raspberry Jam and Strawberry Jam. Here is the recipe:

STRAWBERRY JAM

Ingredients : 1 kilogram fresh red strawberries, cut in pieces; 300 grams sugar, one lemon juice.

Method: Put everything in a tall pot, possibly a stainless steel one, put on the stove at low heat until the sugar starts melting, then the heat can be at medium-high. Let everything boil for about 15 minutes, stirring once in while. Take the pot out of the burner and blend the fruit with an immersion blender. Put the pot back on the stove and let the jam boil for other 15 minutes. Pour the jam in a glass jar, close the lead and let it cool down. When it’s cold, put in the fridge. If you like a thick jam, mix all the ingredients in the pot, and let it sit in the fridge for 12 hours, then start cooking the mix.

EasyEasy Baked Rigatoni Pasta

#INGREDIENTS
For 4 people – 2/3 lb #rigatoni pasta:
. 2cps #heavycream
. 1 cp shredded #mozzarella #cheese
. 1/2 cp #breadcrumbs mixed with thinly cut #rosmary#marjoram, #thyme.
#METHOD
Cook rigatoni in salted-like-the-ocean boiling water.
Drain and mix with heavy cream and cheese.
Put ithe dressed pasta in a baking pan and spread thebreadcrumbs with the herbs.
Bake at 180°C preheated oven for 10 minutes.
#ENJOY!

BASIC TOMATO SAUCE

DSC_0794.JPG My mom calls it “the fake sauce”  ©

INGREDIENTS  for 6 servings

1 Onion, peeled and cut in 2 parts

4 cups of tomato puree or, if you prefer it less smooth,

1 teaspoon of salt,

1 tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 METHOD

. Put everything in a pot, except the EVOO, and turn on the stove at medium heat.

. The onion needs to be soaked in the tomato sauce.

. Stir here and there, so the sauce doesn’t stick at the bottom of the pot or it burns.

. When it starts boiling, low the heat at the minimum and let it simmer until the onion becomes soft.

. Turn off the heat, add the EVOO and check if you need extra salt.

. Your sauce is ready to be served with some pasta.

Enjoy!

SAGNETTE PASTA 

SAGNETTE PASTA 

** medium difficult

Kitchen tools you need

. 1 medium bowl

. 1 medium size wooden board

. 1 medium size cardboard tray or a tray with parchment paper on

. 1 machine for making pasta – a manual one is perfectly enough and much cheaper than attachment for electric mixers

. 1 stock pot for cooking the pasta

. 1 serving fork or 1 tongues to mix pasta while cooking

. 1 strainer
Ingredients for Sagnette, 4 servings

. 3 cups of Semolina Flour

. 1 and 1/2 cup of water

. 1 and 1/2 tsp of fine seasalt

. Extra semolina flour to work the dough and to help you cut and avoid Sagne from sticking one to the other.

Put everything in a bowl and mix quickly.

Your dough should be medium soft and not sticking. The amount of flour can lightly change according to the humidity in the flour and in the air. So, if you have a too soft pasta dough, add a teaspoon of flour at the time; if your pasta dough is too hard, dip your fingers in some water and add humidity at the dough, mixing it.

When your dough is ready, the easiest way to make SAGNETTE  is to flat it with a pasta machine at number 3 of thickness, cut it in fettuccine shape and then cut again in shorter pieces. Don’t forget to coat your dough with flour when you flat it and after you cut it, to avoid it sticks.   Put your Sagnette in the tray.

Your Sagne are ready to be cooked in salted-like-the-ocean boiling water for few minutes – 4 or 5 – and then added to the Soup.

Sagnette e Ceci – Sagnette Pasta w/ Chickpeas Soup

Sagnette e Ceci - Sagnette Pasta w/ Chickpeas
A recipe from Abruzzo Region, Italy

Sagnette are also called Sagne.

They are – this is a plural word in Italian –  a traditional type of pasta, typical of Abruzzo Region, where I was born.  These are home made by my mom, who still lives with my dad and the rest of the family in Lanciano, in the province of Chieti.

It’s one of her best recipes and I love this soup, even without pasta.

It’s a thick pasta in a sort of rectangular shape , made with Semolina Flour  ( Semola di grano duro ) and Water.

Central Italy Pasta dough is different from Northern Italy one, where Eggs and refined flour are used to make pasta from scratch.

Central and South Italy have always been poorer than the North of the country and so the ingredients, typically used in the past century for cooking, are less rich in proteins and nutrients but much more filling.

Sagnette are usually cooked in Winter, with Central Italy Pasta dough is different from Northern Italy one, where Eggs and refined flour are used to make pasta from scratch.

Central and South Italy have always been poorer than the North of the country and so the ingredients, typically used in the past century for cooking, are less rich in proteins and nutrients but much more filling.
Sagnette are usually cooked in Winter, with a Chickpeas or Beans & Tomato Soup.a Chickpeas or Beans & Tomato Soup.

This soup is never served with grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano Cheese or any other kind of cheese and it’s a main course as it contains carbs, of course, and proteins too, coming from the legumes used.

SAGNETTE   RECIPE

 Ingredients, 4 servings

. 3 cups of Semolina Flour

. 1 and 1/2 cups of water

. 1 and 1/2 tsps of fine seasalt

Put everything in a bowl and mix quickly.

Your dough should be medium soft and not sticking. The amount of flour can lightly change according to the humidity in the flour and in the air. So, if you have a too soft pasta dough, add a teaspoon of flour at the time; if your pasta dough is too hard, dip your fingers in some water and add humidity at the dough, mixing it.

When your dough is ready, the easiest way to make SAGNETTE  is to flat it with a pasta machine at number 3 of thickness, cut it in fettuccine shape and then cut again in shorter pieces. Your Sagne are ready to be cooked in salted-like-the-ocean boiling water for few minutes – 4 or 5 – and then added to the Soup.

Enjoy!