Category: Italian food

Grilled gnocchi

What’s that you’ll ask me! But it’s so simple and so delicious that it is worth trying.  Usually you boil your gnocchi I guess but actually you don’t have to! You can simply grill them in a frypan with a little of olive oil, and takes even less time to cook them. Which, these days is really useful because work is quite busy and we both come home late and starving!

This preparation makes them soft and tender inside and crispy golden outside. It works both with homemade gnocchi or the one you can buy in some supermarket. I love to serve them with salt, pepper and tomato sauce. And I have been lucky enough to receive some tomato sauce my mother has made at the end of summer this year. If you don’t have some delicious tomato sauce, just serve them with a bit of olive oil. Perfect for a very quick little snack while waiting for dinner to be ready!

Want a Japanese twist for your pasta salad?

Since I have bought some different types of miso at the miso shop in Kichijoji (see Saturday’s post), I am using quite extensively. Mainly with raw veggies as a dip but finally last night I decided to try an original mix: a pasta salad with a white miso dressing. And it was a real nice experience! And super simple to prepare. I boiled some farfalle, then cut some okra, tomato and cucumber in small dices and add them to the pasta. And for the dressing I used 2 tsp of white miso, 2 tsp of olive oil and 1 tsp of sesame seeds, stir well and add it on top of the salad, add a little more sesame seeds for the decoration. The white miso mixed with olive oil is perfectly creamy and almost cheesy and suits perfectly the vegetables in the salad and the farfalle! A very good wa-yo taste and texture! 

The perfect light lunch

I love this ring pasta from Sicily: anelli siciliani that I bought in Sicily last time we traveled there. There are so many different pasta in Italy that it is amazing the different reciepe one can imagine with pasta. And it is also so simple to cook. It’s a pity that except from Italy is not that easy to find so much variety and in Japan most Italian restaurants that serve pasta would serve spaghetti, and most of the pasta that one can find in supermarkets in Japan are spaghetti indeed, penne, fusilli and some macaroni. Tagliatelle, lasagne and trofie in more high scale supermarket where they have European imported food. So yes, when I go to Italy i pack on regional dry pasta!!!.
This ring pasta are really perfect when eaten with vegetables and simplyaccommodated with olive oil. For this plate I have opted for fresh tomatoes, fresh shiitake and parsley from the garden. I boiled the pasta al-dente, in the mean time in a pan heated with olive oil I added 2 large ripe tomatoes diced and 5 large shiitake sliced thinly. I reduced until almost dry. I drained the pasta and add them to the sauce, then add a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper and served. Topped with freshly cut parsley. Bon apetite!

Craving for fresh pasta al pesto

This weekend Sunday I was looking forward for swimming in the icean and body boarding. We first wanted to go really early in the morning between high and low tide but we over slept and when we woke up at 7:30 it was already to close to low tide, and there nothing more boring than low tide: the water is shallow and very little waves for body bording. So we had to wait fir the next high tide that was later in the afternoon. At 16:30 I was really excited to go but there was no wave… Well at least we could swim… But the 22deg announced on the surf report was not too accurate and it was rather a 17deg, with a little chilly wind blowing… Swimming ended up by trying up to the thights and resigning… Back home… Frustrated… Looking at magazines and suddenly craving for pasta al pesto. The problem is that A. doesn’t really like pesto: no parmegiano allowed and no pune nuts either… So the best option was to do a tomato based one and to rapidly prepare some fresh tagliatelle (yes, I know, most normal people will just open a box of dry tagliatelle…). Now that I know really how to use my pasta machine it’s really easy to make whatever pasta in a short time and without having to wash the kitchen floor to ceiling for the flour eveywhere. So I made the tagliatelle, went to cut fresh basil in the garden, and added really plenty of little cherry tomatoes, olive oil, and that’s it!!! I wish a very pkeasant week!!!

Ratatouille ravioli

Yes, I made ravioli again! I was too happy last week to finally masterize the pasta machine and the ravioli mold. So far I was using them but it was never perfect, but now I know how to do and it works really well. And because we love ravioli there is no excuse not to make some! The problem was to find the appropriate filling. Last week I used asparagus, but this time I wanted to challenge myself with something new, something more summer than spring. There was not too many option at the farmers market, so I decided to go for ratatouille since there was everything I needed to make a real ratatouille the way my grand mother would.

So first prepare the ratatouille: onion, zucchini, eggplant, capiscum, tomato. All cut in small pieces, a bit of olive oil, garlic for those who like I don’t), salt, black pepper and a leaf of fragant laurel. Cook at low heat under cover for 2 to three hours, check and stir every 30min. Since we want to use this as a filling it needs to be significantly dry, so remove the cover if needed in the end. Cool when ready, ravioli filling cannot be used warm. Then prepare the dough with the classic recipe: 100g flour, 1egg, salt, olive oil. I actually used half flour half semolina. Then roll your dough until the level of thinness you like (I used 8 out of 9 on my pasta machine). Then flour well one side of the dough and ise the ravioli mold to fill them and shape them. 

Now prepare a big pan with water to boil the ravioli, and add one big branch of fresh rosemary for the broth. Keep the water boiling 3min before adding the ravioli. The smell of rosemary should be quite strong before adding them. Cook until they come back to float on the surface. Serve immediately, just with olive oil and pepper. The rosemary broth slightly perfumes the ravioli to bring a perfect balance of taste with the ratatouille filling.

Asparagus and herbs ravioli

My ravioli before being boiled
My ravioli before being boiled

It’s been weeks I wanted to make ravioli and I totally felt in love with the IG picture of Zucchero e zenzero‘s ricotta and asparagus ravioli just before the golden week. The events during and after the golden week being what they’ve been I didn’t had a chance to make ravioli until last night, and because I found some nice local asparagus I decided to go for asparagus ravioli. Since A. doesn’t eat cheese I skipped the ricotta and used only basil and parsley in the filling. Super easy and really delicious.

For the pasta dough as usual 100 of flour or semolina, one egg, a bit of olive oil and salt. I rolled the dough up to number 8 on my Atlas 150. Thinner for ravioli is quite risky since the way I do it, my filling is not totally smooth. For the filling I blanched the asparagus (I kept the heads for later), drained them well, then add parsley and basil, and grinded all together manually. Then I just prepared the ravioli, boiled them and serve with olive oil, salt and pepper. Simple and too delicious we want to eat ravioli every day!!!!!!

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