PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

This recipe I made quite often this winter when comfort food was all I wanted to think about when planning dinners. Made with chestnut flour, rolled out by hand and cut into long thin stripes (tagliolini) or wider ones (tagliatelle), takes about an hour from start to yummy.


Here's how to:

Prepare the dough with 200 gr chestnut flour (keep any remaining flour tightly closed in the fridge as it tends to go rancid very fast once opened), 200 gr all purpose flour, 100 gr semolina flour, 5 eggs and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Let rest for about half an hour.

Once rested, roll the dough as thick or thin as you like (I made mine 1 mm thick), dust heavily with flour, roll the dough as you would a cream roll, cut as desired (around 1 cm thick for tagliatelle), unroll the scrolls to stripesand let them rest under a towel while you prepare the sauce.

For the sauce, heat some butter in a pan, add 200 gr of sliced mushrooms (champignons are fine), 200 gr of pancetta or very thinly sliced bacon and 100 g of walnuts. Let brown. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cook the pasta , drain, add to the pan with mushrooms and pancetta, let mix the flavours for some seonds, serve with freshly grinded black pepper.

When life gives you walnuts, make walnut-bread pops


After seeing the recipe for Seeded Flatbread on 101 Cookbooks, my all-times favourite blog, and seeing virtually kilos of walnuts in the pantry, I decided I wanted to try it with walnuts and rosemary, baking the plops of bread inside the empty shells. It worked out just fine, resulting in a nice "head" to tear off and munch right away, and then crack the shell to get at the crunchy inside part. Quite an "interactive" eating!


Walnut-Rosemary Bread Pops
(adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

• 2 1/4 cups Whole Wheat Flour

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup walnuts
  
• 1 tbs rosemary needles
  
• 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 cup water, ice cold

This weekend was dedicated to pre-Christmas baking. Gingerbread-baking, to be exact. Coming from Germany, I am completely spoiled when it comes to gingerbread, as in Germany (like in most Nordic countries) gingerbread for Christmas is really a BIG hit, and there are thousands of different styles. Virtually each city has got its own recipe, and the supermarkets offer further temptations, like chocolate-covered jam-filled gingerbread hearts. I decided to try a recipe for soft molded gingerbread that I've cut out of a magazine years ago, wanting to use once again my new shortbread pan.

Like most gingerbreads, also this one calls for baking soda and for an overnight refrigeration before baking, so plan ahead accordingly. The results are well worth waiting - the resulting gingerbread is soft and kind of fudgy in the middle, with a nice spiciness from ginger, nutmeg and cloves, but not overly so. The glaze gives it a nice touch, but according to me is more of a visual addition than a taste-wise one.

All in all, definitively a keeper. And a beautiful one, too.




Soft Molded Gingerbread Recipe

1 cup butter
3/4 cup + 2 tbs sugar
1 gg
1/2 cup molasses
2 tbs honey

3 3/4 cup AP flour
1 tbs cocoa
4 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
a dash a freshly ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda

Cream butter with sugar, add the egg, the molasses and the honey, beat well until fully incorporated.

Mix together the dry ingredients, add to the egg mixture, mix well first with a spoon, then with hands until a dough pulls together.

Wrap dough in clingfilm, refigirate overnight.

Take out of the fridge and let sit at room temp for 15 min. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease the gingerbread pan, put the dough into pan and pat with your fingers until distributed evenly. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the top appears dry (not overbake it! It should be still soft inside!)

Let rest in the pan for 5 - 10 min, in the meanwhie mix 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar with about 2 tbs of water to make a glaze. Take the ready gingerbread out of the pan, brush with glaze, cut into slices and let cool. Enjoy!

You can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it, as well. Adjust the baking time accordingly to about 10-15 min.

I love cooking, but I don't have a lot of cookbooks. Usually, I prefer internet as a source of inspiration instead of spending 20-30 euros for a collection of recipes, most of which I never come around recreating. With Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson it was a different story altogether. I first discovered her wonderful blog and loved virtually any recipe I tried. From there, it was only one step to buying Heidi's book that is chock-full not only with gorgeous pictures and tasty dishes, but also a ton of useful information on healthy cooking. Till then, I had only a very blurred idea about what "Healthy cooking" was about, and considered health food stores as the reign of people wearing Birkenstock sandals throughout the year (WITH socks, if the weather conditions should require it) and feeding their children sugar-free dusty muesli for breakfast. After reading Super Natural Cooking, the things have changed. I'm no more afraid of buying whole grains and flours, trying different kinds of browns sugars (and yes, they ARE all different!) and turn to the book and to the blog anytime I need inspiration or am in doubt about some "healthy" stuff.
The following recipe for Gingery Shortbread is from Heidi's book, though there are variations to it on her blog, too. I changed the original recipe a bit, using buckwheat flour instead of the amaranth one, and adjusting baking time and temperature as i was dieing to try my new shortbread pan and figured that freezing the dough inside the pan and then putting it straight into hot oven, as instructed, would do the ceramic pan no good.

Was I satisfied with the results? Well, given the fact that I've never had any shortbread before, this one was delicious, with a hot spiciness from the ginger and a tenderness from the butter that I've never met in a cookie :) I will definitively try all the variations of the recipe (rosemary and pine nuts seem so good!), hoping that a less chunky dough (due to minced candied ginger) will result in a more defined pattern.

Enjoy!



Gingery Shortbread Recipe

(adapted from "Super Natural Cooking" by Heidi Swanson - I give full dose here, though I halved the recipe to fit my pan)

1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbs ground ginger
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
2/3 cup natural cane sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1/3 cup minced crystallized ginger


Mix flours, salt and ground ginger in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, cream butter with sugar, then add the dry ingredients and the minced ginger and mix until just combined and crumbly. Gather together and wrap tightly into cling film, refrigerate for 20 min.
Preheat oven to 160 ° C. Spay the shortbread pan with non-stick spray and pat the dough into the pan. Prick entire surface with a fork and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before releasing the gingerbread from the pan. Eat.

Alternatively, you can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it. In this case, I would follow Heidi's suggestion to freeze the cut cookies for 10 minutes before baking, and reduce the baking time to about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Living in Italy, one would suppose that I'm surrounded by innumerate occasions to eat good pizza. Unfortunately, Rome is full of mediocre pizza, and finding a really good one is quite an challenge. You're best off buying it at the small standing-in pizzerias where they sell lot of types by weight. Spending around 8 euro, you can sample around 4 pieces with different toppings.
But when I'm not into eating out, I like making pizza at home. It's cheap and tasty, and good girl as I am I will even share my treasured never-fail pizza recipe with you.

You start with this:
325 ml water
4 Tbsp olive oil
500 g bread flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 packet dry yeast

Dump it all into the bread machine choosing the pizza-sycle (1,5 hours). (of course you can make it without bread machine, too. Dissolve yeast in a bit if warm water knead all the ingredient for about 10 min, until you've a smooth elastic dough. Put into a lightly oiled bowl, cower with a towel and let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour)

Go on to prepare the toppings and the sauce.
For the sauce, you will need about half a liter of plain tomato sauce, in Italy it's called "passata di pomodoro", basically it's just pureed canned tomatoes with a bit of salt. Add some olive oil, salt, a bit of sugar and a bit of dry oregano. Done.

Now shred your mozarella. You don't want to waste your good stuff on the pizza - it will be too watery. Use the dryest kind you can find, and pat the moisture with a paper towel. Shred it or cut into little cubes.

Preheat your skillet.

By now your dough shouldbe ready. Pour it onto your well floured working surface and divide it into 5 pieces (makes medium-sized pizza).



Roll out the dough to fit your skillet. Dust the skillet with flour, put the dough disk inside, smear with the sauce, top with mozarella.

It will look like this:




Put lid on top and lower the flame:


Cook for about 5-7 minutes, taking care not to burn the undreside too much (a bit charred is ok, though, it gives it the "real" pizza touch.

When it's ready, put other toppings - here I used basilikum and prosciutto - and enjoy :)

I love breakfast. I would happily skip lunch and dinner for having breakfast 3 times a day. It's been only recently though that I have discovered granola. The good, homemade type of it, not the store-bought chock full of sugar and fat. Today, I will share with you my favorite granola recipe with olive oil, honey and pistacchios. Topped with some milk or homemade yogurt (thanks to my new yogurt-maker!) it's the best way for me to start the day :)

Olive Oil Granola Recipe
(adopted from The Kitchn)

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup salted roasted pistachios, hulled
1 cup roasted pumpkin seeds
1 cup dry grated coconut
3/4 cup honey
1/2 cup mild extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
Dried fruit like cherries or cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, combine oats, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, coconut, honey, olive oil, salt, cinnamon and cardamom. Spread mixture on a rimmed baking sheet in an even layer and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until golden brown and well toasted.

2. Transfer granola to a large bowl and add dry berrries, tossing to combine. Serve with cold milk or yogurt.

Yield: About 9 cups.