Risotto with radichio and Italian sausage

Continuing our Sicilan food exploration, we bought in Castelvetrano some beautiful round radichio and decided to use it for a risotto. Cooking 6 hands now with the TPS and their mother, this recipe is really simple and delicious, always taking advantage of the quality of the ingredients. So, for that recipe for 8 people we used 2 onions, 1 round radichio, 6 cup of riso for risotto, 1 Italian sausage (chicken and parsley sausage), a good amount of olive oil, salt, pepper and some freshly gratted Parmegiano for those who like.

December 23, 2015

Gnocchi

Here we are in Sicily and the first dinner I cooked for the family wath plain gnocchi. We’ve found these beautiful potatoes in Menfi and some greens (something they said was between spinach and rucolla) so it was just simply boil and mixed with some olive oil. Of course served with some delicious Parmegiano. It was fun actually preparing gnocchi for 8 persons, usually my sizing is 2, eventually 4, so it took quite an other dimension!

December 21, 2015

The TPS in Menfi, Sicily

On Saturday the Tokyo-Paris sisters flew to Roma and then straight to Palermo where they are spending some time with their families in a big villa in the south of Sicily, in Menfi. The weather is amazing, the landscape is just as expected, and so are the people. The Mediterranean sea is beautiful and swimming in December is really nice without going to a tropical destination! A lot of time spent outside, walking and visiting. The food is also amazing: cauliflowers, artichokes, fennels, oranges, tangerines, olives… So far it’s perfect.

So let’s start with a perfect “Sicilian” salad with fresh fennels, tomatoes, lettuce, artichokes in vinegar and oil, and a bit of olive oil, served with Italian sesame bread, and eventually speck, and topped with fresh parmegiano.

December 17, 2015

Gnocchi di zucca

I love Italy and Italian food and I’m very excited that we will spend xmas in Sicily and my birthday in Roma!!! So to get ready I working on my classics and some different variations, one I love particularly is gnocchi! So I made pumpkin gnocchi, or rather kabocha gnocchi! And because the skin of kabocha is very soft I kept it, adding a nice greenish color. I also added a potato to make the orange less vivid and more subtle and it gave something really nice, perfect with just a little of olive oil and pepper.

For 2 portions of gnocchi as main dish I used 1/2 kabocha, 2 small potatoes, as little flour as possible, 1 egg (so you’d rather make a huge amount of gnocchi so that the egg don’t moisten to much the preparation). I steamed both potatoes and kabocha, but I recommend to grill the kabocha to avoid also large quantities of moist. Then you just mix sll the ingredients and shape the gnocchi. Finally boil them in salted water, or fry them in a bit of olive oil!

November 16, 2015

Jumbo ravioli

I’ve been craving for ravioli recently but I wanted something different than the ravioli al raggu, and I can’t make cheese ravioli (remember, my husband don’t eat cheese). Hopefully I’m very resourceful (no kidding!) when it comes to inventing some new recipes and I thought that some fish ravioli would be great. Unfortunately, there has been a few typhoon coming and going, a lot of wind too, so the choice in fish was quite limited, and I ended up with a beautiful piece of salmon. I didn’t want to serve it wigh spinach (too winter-like) so I picked some fresh celery. And here’s what I did:

I prepared a dough with half white flour half buckwheat flour, pass it in the pasta machine a few times, then diced quite finely the fish and the celery (both leaves and stick), add some salt and pepper snd prepared the ravioli. I cut the dough in 5cmx5cm to be able to put a lot of filling in. Then I boiled some water with some of the remaining celery leaves and boiled my ravioli. I just served with olive oil and lemon juice.

July 30, 2015

Italian taralli

A few years ago I received this amazing book for my birthday. It is a real jewel to cook Italian with the very basic pasta and classic recipes in the first half and some more elaborated recipes presented by chefs and by regions, that utilize the classic ingredients of the first half. I like that book very much and it’s been of great help when preparing pasta, gnocchi but it is so thick that Even if I have tested and noted a few recipes there’s a lot more to do. And each time I open it I find a new recipe I want to try.

With all this rain I had the time to browse this massive book and test a few recipes. The first one is taralli from Puglia. It’s a simple recipe a bit like gressini but much simpler and really delicious.

To prepare 6 little taralli, which is a good number for 2 people snacks, I used 100g of flour, 25ml of water and 25ml of olive oil, and a bit of salt. Originally taralli seem to be flavored with fennel seeds, black pepper, olives… Since I had none of these I used caraway (carvi) seeds and that was working real well. I have the impression that just salt might be good too. So, in a bowl you mix all the ingredients well. Then wait about 30min.

Prepare a saucer with boiling water, and preheat your oven at 220deg. Roll the dough in a long and thin lace shape of about 1cm diameter. Cut the lace each 6cm and have the two extremities overlap to make like a ribbon shape. Lightly squeeze the overlapping to close the shape. Dip them in the boiling water form 1min. Dry them on a clothe, line them on a cooking paper sheet or on a oven dish greased with olive oil and bake until golden (15min~). It’s ready to eat, warm or cold.

July 6, 2015

Trofie

A few years ago while traveling to Milan I was shopping ｃooking ingredients and gears to bring back to Japan with me to extend my Italian experience. I may be French in Japan, Italian cuisine is, I think, what I love best. Useless to say that I came back with about a full suitcase of pasta, rice, semolina, dry porcini, olive oil and other magic ingredients. So during this Milanese grocery shopping spree I discovered Trofie. This rolled little pasta is just so good that it has been our favorite since then. I haven’t try yet to make my own, but I soon will for sure. In the mean time dry trofie are my favorite pick for a rapid fix, and they suit very well any time of pesto sauce or vegetables based sauce, or just with olive oil and salt and pepper it’s also perfect. I usually use Barilla trofie Liguri http://www.barilla.it/prodotto-barilla/trofie-liguri, and luckily recently trofie can be found in any good grocery stores worldwide, and Japan is no exception!

This time I just cut a small zucchini and half of a yellow sweet pepper that I cook a few minutes in a pan and finish with some delicious olive oil. That’s all it takes to prepare a delicious and colorful plate.

June 26, 2015

Gâche bread and Italian cheese

On Saturday evening I often prepare bread to have something fresh and delicious for breakfast on Sunday morning. This time it’s a bread called gâche. I used half whole wheat flour (83g) half white flour (83g) to prepare it, then the usual 8g of sourdough, 2g of yeast, 3g of salt, 100g of water. It takes about 90min for the first rise, 60 for the second, and in between plan about 45min. Baking time is about 18min. If you’r in Japan I would recommend to prepare your bread right before being eaten because the weather is so humid that the crust gets soft very quickly, and originaly the crust of that bread is quite soft.

Well, if this bread was just perfect for breakfast, I then went to Eataly (I mentioned it in an earlier post) . Eataly is my best provider for delicious fresh Italian products, in particular San Daniele ham, pancetta and fresh cheese. They use to have fresh ravioli, but it didn’t last long. This gâche bread with a little La Tur cheese was just stunning!

June 15, 2015

La vie en rose

As I was telling you, I’m completely in love with these purple sweet potatoes. They are so nice with other colorful vegetables such as carrots, cabbage, bricoli etc… And they have a powerful coloring effect: remember my u no hana that I stirred a little too well?

Using this powerful coloring effect I decided to make “pink gnocchi”. It is often that gnocchi are colored: spinach fir green, tomato for red, pumpkin for orange… Now pink with purple sweet potato. It was really intuitively easy. I boiled two potatoes with their peal and a 1/3 of a purple sweet potato. Then I pealed them and mixed them together in a bowl. The mixture was a perfect pink!!

Then it’s just like making regular gnocchi. Adding flour little by little until you can shape the dough. Honestly I don’t like gnocchi that taste flour so my dough is always on the sticky side rather than the firm one, which make it a little more complicated to shape.

Then just before eating I boiled them. And I served them with a piece of thyme-grilled breadt chicken and some olive oil. I believe cream could make a more beautiful effect, but we don’t eat cream.., I leave it to you to show me yours!

February 13, 2015