Bella made this very delicious dessert for us tonight! She did all the work: scooped out the cantaloupe, mashed it up and mixed in a little water with miele di girasole. Then put it in the freezer, examining it every hour.
The pizzas also turned out fabulous.
Tonight we are making pizza… yay!!! I think we’ll make three kinds:
1. Quattroformaggio: we have local pecorino, gorgonzola, fresh mozzarella, and parmesan.
2. “Gourmet Garlic Chicken”: David’s favorite! I have one more chicken breast that needs to be eaten, and lots of garlic & rosemary, along with a bit of chopped red onion and mozzarella.
3. Prosciutto [...]
is an ancient grain…
This NY Times article gives a good background to it. Most of Italy’s farro is grown in Garfagnana, where we are now! But I’d hardly call this a ‘relatively poor’ region… Just walking down to our village you pass through amazing villas and plantations of olive trees and [...]
It worked! My friend Mike from work, who’s also a chef, suggested I make sun dried tomatoes with the half-kilo I had left from Bagni di Lucca… First I put them in the sun today, then finished them in the oven after baking the torta…
Last week, I bought a kilo of peaches in Bagni di Lucca. Last night I still had over half of them and I thought.. mmmm pie. And then I said, ugh… I hate making pie crust. And my pie crust maker friends aren’t here… What to do with all these peaches? David Lebovitz saves the [...]
Bella loved the other night’s chicken so much we did it again. This time I wanted to keep it simpler: we took one breast, pounded it out a little, and filled it with mozzarella di bufala, garlic and fresh basil. Rolled it in beaten egg, then bread crumbs from Bella’s focaccia, mixed [...]
Pasta: 100 g white flour
1 egg
olive oil, water
Bella’s filling:
Pecorino
Mascarpone
Pepper
Garlic
Basil
Mine:
Garlic
Beets
Sage
Apple
Red Onion
Parmesan
Pecorino
Mascarpone
Pepper
Salsiccia Toscana
Pomodori
Vino rosso nostrale
Green salad with beets, almonds, sage, peaches, tomatoes
Granita di cocomero
I finally broke down and got some bug spray, a citronella candle, and a thing that plugs into the wall with a bottle of some sort of liquid. The store also had the big blue tablet things that go into a plug-in device, but they didn’t have the device for them. That’s [...]
The italian yeast I bought turned out to be not exactly what I thought it would be… It’s supposed to be just mixed with the flour and sugar, not with warm water first. So I wasn’t sure what to do. Bakeries in Europe must have some special line on yeast and baking powder because what [...]
Bella and I each stuffed our chicken breasts: hers with fresh mozzarella, basil and garlic; mine with beets, almonds, garlic and sage.
Then we breaded them with leftover whole wheat breadcrumbs, rosemary and polenta, and baked them in lemon juice and broth.
We also revitalized the rice pudding from the other night with a bit more egg [...]
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