Tag: homemade

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

Basil Pesto

Home made #basil #pesto time! Pesto alla #Genovese is a sauce originating in Genoa, the capital city of #Liguria Region, #Italy. The main ingredient is BASIL from #Genoa which has small oval leaves and a very intense smell. It traditionally consists of crushed #garlic, European #pine nuts, coarse #salt, basil leaves, and hard cheese such as #parmigianoreggiano and/or #pecorinoromano or #pecorinosardo (cheese made from sheep’s milk), all blended with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

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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.