Lesson n.5: red meat. Roasted beef with Treviso radicchio sauce

Hey, it's lesson n.5! And it's getting more and more difficult...The last three lessons of my cooking course are about meat and fish, and we started talking about red meat. We learnt the different cuts of meat and cooking methods,  and how to tie it (watch the video I took at the class...). We prepared a roasted beef with radicchio sauce, that I made  for my Grandma's birthday as well (I love radicchio!), a pork with curry sauce, some superb meatballs with tomato sauce and some veal escalopes with lemon and white wine sauce.

I'm not a big meat eater, however I must say these recipes are really good and quite simple (but be careful to use the right cut of meat!), so I look forward to try them all at home. In the meantime enjoy my first roasted beef with Treviso radicchio sauce, whose recipe I post here below. About the wine to match, you can use a red of medium structure, with a good smoothness to balance the bitter taste of red radicchio and a quite important alchool (and freshness) to contrast the fatness of the sauce. I would suggest a Merlot or Cabernet or Refosco dal peduncolo rosso, aged in wood.

Roasted beef with Treviso radicchio sauce

(the recipe is taken from my class cookbook written by Roberta Molani. Make 8 servings)

1 kg beef of first choice: rump or roast beef without bones

400 g Treviso radicchio (red radicchio)

Dijon mustard

50 g lard or bacon to lard

1 dl red wine

150 g fresh cream

salt

pepper

extravirgin olive oil

Lard the meat and tie it (watch  the video below). Spread with mustard and brown on the stove with 2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil. Deglaze the gravy with red wine, add radicchio slices, salt and pepper. Remove from stove and cook in the oven (place in a oven dish) at 180˚ C for about 40- 50 minutes (it depends from how much you want it cooked, more or less rare). When ready, place the meat in a plate and let it rest.  Add the cream to the radicchio and blend. Cut the meat into slices and serve with the radicchio sauce.

Celebrating a V.I.B. (Very Important Birthday): my Grandma is 90! Soft cake with ricotta and dark chocolate

We had a V.I.B. (Very Important Birthday) in my family: my Grandma just turned 90!

To celebrate this great goal we all gathered at my Auntie's house and had a wonderful lunch. My Aunt prepared her magnificient Cannelloni  in two flavours, one with ricotta and nuts and  the other with artichokes, and a mixed vegetable side dish, with spinach, stuffed zucchini and mashed potatoes. I made a roasted beef with red Radicchio from Treviso (I will give the recipe in my next post) and a soft cake with ricotta and dark chocolate. My Grandma also baked her incomparable "Torta della nonna" (Grandma's cake), a soft cake made with apples and nuts, that we all love. My Mom, instead,  made us all cry during her traditional poetic moment, when she read a very touching poem she wrote to Grandma. Well done, Mom!  It's the little things that made this day special and each of us found his own way to make the best wishes to our dearest Grandma Adele. Happy Birthday!

Before the recipe of the cake I made, I want to dedicate my Grandma a song I recently heard on the radio. This is my way to say how much I love her and above all, to say "thank you" for everything she gave me and she taught me. The singer is Adele (the same name  of my Grandma...) and the title of the song is Someone like you (prepare to cry...I did).

Soft cake with ricotta and dark chocolate

(the recipe is taken from the website http://www.ricettedalmondo.it/. Make 8 servings)

350 g ricotta

200 g sugar

300 g white flour

100 g butter

200 g dark chocolate

3 eggs

1 sachet baking powder

1 sachet vanillin

icing sugar

Work the ricotta with butter until you obtain a homogeneus compound without lumps. Add eggs (one by one), vanillin, baking powder (sift it with a strainer), and melted butter. Chop the chocolate coarsely and add it to the compound. Add flour at the end. Butter a 24-26 cm cake mold and bake at 160˚ C for about 50 minutes. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Rosemary Focaccia

Eccomi! (Here I am). As promised I post here the recipe of the "Focaccia" with rosemary that I served with my veggie meal. Focaccia is a flat bread made with olive oil and can be topped with herbs or other ingredients, like onion, cheese, bacon, potatoes and other vegetables. It can be used as a side dish, a base for pizza or a sandwich bread. The name comes from the latin word "panis focacius", where "focus" means "centre" and stands for "fireplace", as it was the centre of the house. "Panis focacius" was indeed a  flat bread baked in the ashes of the fireplace. Focaccia is a very traditional bread in the Ligurian cuisine, with many variations of the original recipe according to the town where it is produced. Very famous is the focaccia from Recco (near Genoa), made with cheese. Other well known versions from the South of Italy are the "focaccia barese"  from Bari (Puglia) and the "focaccia alla messinese" from Messina, Sicily.

Rosemary Focaccia

(the recipe was suggested by my cooking teacher Gabriella at the class. Makes 8-10 servings)

25 g fresh yeast

200 g manitoba flour

200 g wheat flour

200g durum wheat flour

1 glass lukewarm water

1/2 teaspoon sugar

rosemary

extravirgin olive oil

salt

Mix well the three flours in a large plastic bowl,  add a touch of salt in a little corner. Dissolve sugar and  yeast in a glass of lukewarm water, make a hole in the center of the flour and pour the liquid mixture in. Cover the bowl with a dry towel, place it in a plastic bag and close tightly. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Knead by hand or by machine, adding some water (about 150 g) little by little till you obtain a sticky dough (adjust with flour if too soft). Cover again with a dry towel and place it in a plastic bag as before. Let it rise for about 1 and 1/2 hour  at warm room temperature (about 25˚ C).  Knead briefly adding a touch of flour till the dough is soft and elastic. Preheat the oven to 180˚ C. Roll the dough into a baking sheet and place it on a low oven dish. Brush  with a mixture of water and extravirgin olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt and rosemary. Bake the focaccia for 25 minutes at 180˚ C.

Lesson n.4: veggie! Cauliflauers au gratin, Eggplant sandwiches and "Mattonella" (tile) with vegetables.

The forth lesson of my cooking course was all dedicated to vegetables and the several ways of cooking them. Beside being healthy, I like the way they "color" the table.  At home I decided to prepare three simple recipes we did at the class: Cauliflauers au gratin, Eggplant sandwiches and a "Mattonella" (tile) with vegetables. These dishes can stand as a side order or main course in a veggie "party". I served them with a delicious homemade "Focaccia" with rosmery (a flat bread made with olive oil), whose recipe I will explain in my next post.

To match my veggie meal I chose a  very good white wine from Friuli Venezia Giulia. The name is "Vecchia Contea Stara Grofija" (2007 vintage)  and it is produced by the winemaker Jermann. It is a melange of different grapes coming both from Italy and Slovenia, with a prevalence of Pinot Bianco. The elegant flowery and fruity notes and the fresh and mineral taste well match the delicate aromas of fresh vegetables, enriched by the tomato sauce  in the eggplants, the Mornay sauce and Ricotta cheese in the other two recipes. Buon appetito!

Cauliflauers au gratin, Eggplant sandwiches and  "Mattonella" (tile) with vegetables

(the recipes are taken by my class cookbook written by Roberta Molani. Makes 6 servings)

Califlauers au gratin

1 califlauer
80 g butter
40 g white flour
4 dl milk
40 g grated Parmigiano
extravirgin olive oil
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Steam the cauliflauer in boiling hot water. Add salt at the end. Put the sliced cauliflauer in a oiled oven dish. Prepare the mornay sauce with  40 g butter and the flour, toast lightly. Add milk, salt, pepper and a touch of grated nutmeg. Cook covered for ten minutes when it starts to thicken. Remove from fire and add the remaining 40 g butter and Parmigiano. Put the sauce on the cauliflauer, sprinkle with grated Parmigiano and a tablespoon of extravirgin olive oil.  Let it cook in oven at 180˚ C for about 15 minutes.  

Eggplant sandwiches

700g sliced eggplant (circles)
150 g ham steak
200 g Mozzarella cheese
tomato sauce (just about enough to dress the eggplants)
tomato paste
sugar
oregano
salt
pepper
hot pepper
garlic
extravirgin olive oil

Salt the eggplant slices and let them lose water for some hours. Rinse and dry with paper towels. Grill at high flame. Prepare the tomato sauce with the tomato paste (two tablespoons diluted with water or broth), one chopped garlic clove, salt, pepper, hot pepper and a pinch of sugar. In a oiled oven dish put the grilled eggplant circles, cover each one with some tomato sauce, a piece of Mozzarella and ham steak and close the "sandwich" with another eggplant slice. Cover again with tomato sauce and a piece of mozzarella, oregano, a touch of pepper and extravirgin olive oil. Cook in oven at 180˚ C for 15 minutes.

"Mattonella" (tile) with vegetables

200 g zucchini
150 g cooked peas
150 g green beans
200 g carrots
100 g chopped red onion (Tropea)
250 g Ricotta cheese
100 g grated Parmigiano
50 g bread crumbs
3 eggs
50 g butter
chopped parsley
salt
pepper

Wash vegetables and cut them into little pieces. Wilt the onion in a saucepan with butter and cook all vegetables for about 15 minutes. Add the cooked beans at the end with  the chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Remove from fire and let it cool down. Work the Ricotta in a bowl with the eggs (one by one), then add Parmigiano and bread crumbs. Mix the cooked vegetables with the Ricotta cream and put the compound in a buttered oven dish sprinkled with bread crumbs. Cook in oven at  180˚ C for 30-40 minutes.  

What a lovely day: Happy S.Valentine! Sweet treats with dark chocolate and peanut butter

I love my family. I love the sea. I love the mountains. Trees and flowers. Nature in general. All wildlife. Animals. Rocks, especially the red ones of the wild wild West. I love waves and the ocean. Rainbow, dawn & sunset. The moon and the stars. I love colors. Red, yellow, orange, light blue, salmon pink. I love Violet. I love music. Foreign sounds. I love writing. I love words, poetry, novels, the truth. I love the arts, drawings, lines, black and white photography, google themes, everything creative.  I love movies and stories. Geography and history.  I love smiles and hugs. I love children's directness and old age wisdom. I love people who try to understand, can say "I don't know" and "I'm sorry", and sometimes change their mind.  I love dreams. Desires. Fighting for your goals. Mistakes and imperfection. Second chances. I love life. I love love. I love flying, jumping, running, dancing and swimming. I love tasting and cooking. Food & wine. And my good little things...

To celebrate all my loves (sure I forgot something), I decided to bake these wonderful treats with dark chocolate and peanut butter that I found in my cooking class book.
Before the recipe, the love song I chose for this S. Valentine is "Tutto l'amore che ho" (All the love I have), a new song  from the Italian singer Jovanotti. The lyrics are really great. These are my favorite quotes (translated from Italian): "Considering that love is priceless, I'm willing to do everything to have some, considering that love is priceless, I will pay it with all the love I have"..."Without you everything would have been vain, like a sword that pierce a dead body, without love I would only be a charlatan, like a ship which never leaves the harbor".

Sweet treats with dark chocolate and peanut butter

The recipe is taken from my class cookbook written by Roberta Molani (section "I biscotti di Gabriella Pecchia"). Makes 8 servings.

125 g  butter at room temperature

90 g cane sugar

125 g peanut butter

1 sachet vanillin

125 g crushed dark chocolate

180 g white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

salt (not necessary if the peanut butter is already salted)

Mix the butter with sugar. Add peanut butter, vanillin and flour little by little. At the end add the crushed chocolate. Make little balls and put them on a baking tray ( I used little chocolate moulds). Bake at 190˚ C for about ten minutes. Let them cool down.

Orange Marmalade with Amaretto bottom

Rusks with jam or marmalade are the main  ingredient of my daily breakfast. Sometimes I add some cookies and I always have my beloved tea with milk or lemon. As I asked my cooking teacher Gabriella some information about the making of bread, I was happily surprised to find enclosed in her reply e mail the recipe of this orange marmalade, being one of my favourite, and my Mom's too. As a coincidence, I had just finished my  marmalade jar and  I was ready to buy a new one. So, I decided to try making it myself. How easy and how good! In few hours I had about 1 kg (or something more) of fresh homemade marmalade, and the taste is simply amazing! It's like a "minute made" orange juice, the only difference is that you don't drink it...you spread it! And my house was all filled by a natural orange air-freshener. It is also ideal to match with goat cheeses, "Pecorino" (sheep) cheese and Parmigiano.

In the recipe sent by my teacher ( "Wally's orange marmelade")  it was suggested to add some orange liqueur at the bottom of the jar. Not having it, but having instead my dear Amaretto liqueur,  I put two tablespoons of it with some crumbled Amaretto cookies. The idea turned out to be a real success. Provare per credere! (Try to believe).

Orange marmalade with Amaretto bottom

1 kg of whole oranges (I used organic ones)

1 kg white sugar

1 glass orange juice

a few Amaretto cookies

Amaretto liqueur (orange is ok too)

Put 1 kg of whole oranges in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Boil for about 15 minutes. Drain and place on a towel to dry for two hours. Cut the oranges into pieces or slices (with the skin) and put them in a pot with 1 kg of sugar and a glass of orange juice (add some water if necessary). Boil for 45 minutes. Blend everything with an immersion blender. Put two tablespoons of Amaretto liqueur and 2/3 crumbled Amaretto cookies  at the bottom of each jar, fill with marmelade  and seal. Put the jars in the oven at 100˚ C for 15 minutes. Before using the jars, wash them well and put them in the oven at 100˚ C for ten minutes.

Store in  a cool place, away from light, and consume within one year.

Lesson n.3: all about pasta! Maccheroni with Falsomagro

In the third lesson of my cooking course we talked about the most popular kinds of pasta and the different methods of cooking and preparation.  Above all, we learnt how to make pasta at home: we made Lasagne and Tagliatelle.  I'm looking forward to my first 100% homemade Lasagne as the marvellous ones my teacher Gabriella prepared at the class. To do that, I need to buy a pasta machine. In the meantime I did some practice making the ragu sauce (one of the main ingredient of Lasagne) and trying another great recipe Gabriella taught us: Maccheroni (a kind of pasta) with Falsomagro.

Falsomagro means "fake lean" and it's one of the most traditional meat dish from Sicily ("Farsumagru" in the Sicilian language). The etymology derives from "lean meat stuffed", as the meat outside is lean ("magro") and is stuffed ("farci" in French). The dish we prepared consisted mainly of stuffed beef rolls cooked in a tomato sauce, which was also used to dress Maccheroni (you can also try another type of pasta "rigata" (lined) like Mezzepenne, as I did). Anyway, you can serve the meat separately as a second course accompanied with mashed potatoes.  In this recipe the meat rolls are stuffed with mortadella, flavored ground beef and boiled eggs, but there are many other versions with ham or salami instead of mortadella, cheese instead of ground meat, and some added ingredients like raisins, pine kernels, pistachios etc. (as you can see the name is quite appropriate...). The ideal wine matching is a red with a good structure like a Nero d'Avola and Corvo Rosso,  to remain in Sicily. I chose a Merlot from the Colllio Doc area in Friuli, North east of Italy.

Maccheroni (or Mezzepenne) with Falsomagro

(the recipe is taken from my class cookbook  written by Roberta Molani, makes 6 servings)

320 g Maccheroni or another type of pasta "rigata" (lined)
5 beef minute steaks
80 g sliced mortadella
2 boiled eggs
150 g ground meat flavored with chopped garlic and parsley
30 g grated Parmigiano
600 g tomano puree
2 tablespoons tomato paste diluted in water or vegetable stock
1 chopped onion
1 chopped garlic clove
1 laurel leaf
1 hot pepper
oregano
salt
pepper
extravirgin olive oil

Divide the beef steaks in two pieces. Put a slice of  mortadella over each beef steak. Add salt and pepper in the ground meat; work it with grated Parmigiano, chopped garlic and parsley. Divide the compound in many little balls and add one on each beef steak over mortadella. Cut the boiled eggs into pieces and add a piece  next to the meat ball. Roll up and close with a toothpick.
In a deep pan brown softly the chopped garlic and onion with a leaf of laurel. Add tomato puree and tomato paste and flavor with salt, pepper, oregano and hot pepper. Put the meat rolls in the sauce and salt them a little. Cook for at least one hour on a low flame.

Amaretto Tiramisu

I'm not on facebook, not yet (but my blog yes, check it out!). Anyway, if I had to create my profile I would put "Amaretto" in my "I like" buttons. I am a real fan of this typical Italian almond cookie. In Italy, we have two types of Amaretti, one is hard and it is traditional of Saronno, a comune in province of Varese (North west of Italy) where the liqueur Amaretto is also produced (amaretto means "little bitter thing" referring to the taste of bitter almonds). The other type is crisp and crunchy on the outside and soft inside. The ingredients are the same: sugar, apricot kernels, bitter almonds and egg whites. The difference lies in the way egg whites are worked: if you want the soft version you don't have to beat the whites till stiff. This second type is traditionally made in many  municipalities of Piedmont, like Mombaruzzo (At), Valenza (Al), Acqui (Al), Gavi (Al) e Ovada (Al). Famous are also the soft amaretti from Sassello (SV) in Liguria, and other versions are also produced in the South of Italy, especially in Sardegna and Sicily, where the recipe is sometimes enriched with almond paste. 

To make you understand better my love for this type of cookies you must know that, when I was a child I always asked my Grandma to make a cake with Amaretti  for my birthday (and not only), which usually was a kind of Tiramisu, where the cream was added with crumbled cookies. 

I will never forget the first time I tasted Amaretto ice cream. Nowadays it is common to find Amaretto taste in ice cream parlors, but not so ten years or more ago, where the tastes were not so many and confined to the classical creams, like chocolate, vanilla etc. and fruit tastes. I remember I was with one of my friends when I found my beloved taste in a "gelateria" in my hometown. I was so happy! And, after finishing my cone, I forced my friend to go back to the ice cream parlor to have a bis, in case it was a tryout of the shop and they wouldn't have made it anymore...

As I was in Saronno last week I didn't lose the opportunity to make a good supply of Amaretti for my next sweets. So, inspired by a recipe I found stamped on the packaging and remembering my Grandma's cakes I decided to make a Tiramisu with Amaretti. It was a real success and I received a lot of compliments from my family, especially from my brother (who likes Tiramisu, but  was not so convinced of my Amaretto choice). He said it was "spettacolare"!  (extraordinary). Here the recipe.

Amaretto Tiramisu

(the recipe is adapted from the packaging of Amaretti di Saronno Lazzaroni - make 8 servings)

4 eggs
500 g Mascarpone cheese
100 g sugar
150 g hard Amaretti (Saronno type)
150 g Savoiardi (trifle sponges)
coffee just about enough for dipping Savoiardi and Amaretti
50 g coffee or Amaretto liqueur
bitter cocoa powder
 

Beat egg yolks with 3/4 sugar, then add mascarpone. Beat the egg whites until stiff  and mix the worked mascarpone until all ingredients are blended to a cream. Pour the liqueur and 1/4 sugar in the coffee. Dip Savoiardi and Amaretti.  In a large bowl place one layer of dipped Savoiardi, one layer of cream sprinkled with bitter cocoa powder, one layer of dipped Amaretti and a final layer of cream. Dust with cocoa powder and sprinkle with pre- crushed Amaretti. Refrigerate for at least two hours.