Two houses, lots of rain but with comfort food

There is nothing that a good plate of pasta with the ragu’ can’t fix and the past weekend my new flatmates and me we proved how much this is true.

More than Easter holidays for me these 4 days were real nightmare: I came and go from my old house to the new one with lots of stuff, fighting with the space and the cleaning to do. The weather was horrible and yesterday was raining a lot. All my muscles were hurting but my food and my friends were there for me to spend the Easter lunch together… or better a brunch!

I decided to use my new kitchen straight away preparing something absolutely new for me: a classic Easter English recipe and a classic Italian one: hot cross buns and Mafaldine with ragu' of lamb. Of course we had eggs, salami, cheese, wine, salad, the classic colomba too, but the main attractions of the day were my two dishes.

The ragu’ was so reach and the Mafaldine pasta so delicious and consistent that we could not finish 500 gr of pasta in five. It grew a  lot and the brunch was a real feast. I cooked the lamb with parsley, rosemary a bit of chilli, mint and a little sprinkle of lemon zest and I served it with pecorino cheese.

Here a little pic of my hot cross buns too and finally a sneak pic of my moving. Do you notice anything in this bag? Pastificio dei Campi boxes are great to keep in order your kitchen cupboard, and are great to move your kitchen stuff too.

What I did on Easter Monday? My flatmates and me were thinking to bake the pasta from the day before with some mozzarella and parmesan, but finally we simply hot them up in the microwave. All of us were really impressed: the pasta was still al dente even after the microwave! This is the real pasta test!

I hope you enjoyed the break too and if you didn’t eat any pasta in those days, here is the recipe for your next dish!

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But also with lots of families and cute children

As you may know i spend the last saturday at Massimo’s Restaurant and Oyster bar where took place a really nice event organized by Slow Food UK. The purpose was to let the children experiment with food and get curious, open towards new ingredients and to know them a bit better.

Massimo Riccioli was there to explain and to let the family try the classic roman dishes created with simple and good ingredients like Rigatoni with bolognese sauce, panzanella, focaccia with Parma ham , arancini,  suppli and some great fried prawn and calamars. These were absolutely amazing!

Then Slow Food prepared a long table with 5 tasting experience for all the children to get involved with the food, using all their senses. As you can see from the pictures they had great fun and they seems to be amazed by it. 

Pastificio dei Campi was there too with Food in the city, ready to explain a bit more about pasta, such a simple ingredient but so full of interesting stories: from the ingredients used to make it, to the roughness, from the drying process to the different shapes and their pairing with sauces.

For me it was really funny to play with the children, explaining them all about it, let them touch the pasta and show them the different shapes.

But I also had the chance to know much more about the Slow food educational projects like Slow food baby that has the aim to show how to introduce a varied healthy range of first foods and flavours to babies, or Slow food on Campus that brings the enjoyment of food to University students across the UK and lots more. You can check all the projects here: slowfood.org.uk

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Old english sausages ragu'

It’s again the time of the year when it’s tradition to cook and eat sausages all around UK: from the 31^st of October to the 6^th of November it was “the sausage week”. If you have been out on the 5^th of November for the bonfire night, you probably know that the traditional dish of the day is bangers and mash, but lots are the recipe you can find with sausages… even in the italian cuisine.

So for my weekend I decide to treat me with a new pasta recipe: Penne a candela with sausages ragu’.

For the occasion I went in a specialized butcher near Marylebone: The Ginger Pig… no other name could be more right for the product I was looking top buy. The shop was full of costumers and the smell of the sausages I bought it was irresistible. I choose the Old English Sausage, just made with english pork and herbs.

Here is the recipe for 3-4 people:

- 350/400 gr of  pasta: we hardly recommend Penne a Candela Pastificio dei Campi

- 3 sausages

- A jar of peeled tomatoes

- Half onion

- olive oil

- A glass of red wine

- Salt and pepper

- Fresh rosemary

Place some oil on the bottom of a pot, and soon after the finely chopped onion. Let it cook a bit and then add the sausage. Take off the skin and mince it in the pot. Let it get brown and then add the wine slowly. Then add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Let simmer, stirring occasionally for about half an hour.

Prepare the pasta al dente then drain it and toss it in the sauce for a few minutes before serving. Add some Parmesan if you like but I can tell you that without is divine anyway!

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A new socially-oriented platform for creating, sharing and comparing lists of things.

Today are exactly five years since the first tweet was posted on Twitter. How many of us could have think in this massive success? From breaking news to celebrity tweets, to the bloggers, sportive and simple people interested in saying their own thoughts, Twitter grew up so much that, for a good number of people, is now totally part of their day by day life.

What about instead Listgeeks, a funny platform I just discovered today? Basically if you are one of this people that loves to do lists or just someone curious about the fab five of other people, you can’t miss this website www.Listgeeks.com

Listgeeks Introduction from listgeeks on Vimeo.

Still in beta, this platform could be a new interactive tool we won’t be able to avoid in the next years, but for the moment is interesting to see the charts created by other people, comparing those with yours and maybe looking also for some idea or suggestion. You can search by terms, like cities, beers, restaurant, hobbies and discover what the people have in their favorites. You can even find places to go, things to do, restaurants never tried before and … recipes of course.

This morning in fact I had a little tour and what do you think I search there in first instance? "Pasta" of course! The only lists coming up were about people’s favorite food: pizza, pasta, dumplings etc... Then looking for recipes I didn’t see anything , so I decided to create my own list with my favorite five recipes until now! I was thinking it could be good to keep them handy for when needed. So here they are. 

I hope you will enjoy the charts and my chart.

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... tradition doesn't mean immobility!

But they also said: "and yet, to define ‘traditional’ in Italy is not simple. Within Italy too, there are so many regional influences to the cuisine. In southern Italy, for instance, there is an abundance of olive oil near the coast. Naturally, it forms an important ingredient in the cuisine. However, as you travel north and it becomes colder, olive oil is replaced by butter."

What about the recipes instead? To be able to experiment with a recipe, you have to know and understand what the traditional recipe is, he says. “Once you learn what each ingredient brings to a recipe, you can try innovating."

Strangely this discussion is the same going on in the italian blog too this week. "Tradition is not immobility but the contrary: the local traditions comes from the combination and influences and everything in the time is influences by the contest, the people and the historical moment. Everything is in evolution."

So for instance, I was surprised when yesterday, having a dinner at Roscioli, a very nice restaurant in the centre of Rome, I found very innovative dishes, near very traditional recipes, but all with a common point: the best italian ingredients, PGI or PDO, sometimes revisited in new combinations or just proposed following the most classic recipes.

The most classic white pizza or focaccia VS suppli with pork ragu'

Amatriciana or Carbonara VS Paccheri with peppers sauce, ricotta and bits of dried cod

Tiramisu' VS Cold chocolate cream with anise ice cream and croccante biscuits

And even the place is a mix between tradition and innovation: it's a classic old grocery, transformed in an little but very peculiar restaurant, with wine, homemade products and specialities everywhere and a great service.

As chef Macchia says : “I’ve learned that diners don’t always want foie gras or black truffle to get a good dining experience. Even a simple dish prepared differently will give them that feeling.” After my experience in Roscioli I can definitely agree ... the Paccheri were amazing!

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A quick and easy recipe to start 2011 in the best way

This is the moment of the year when everyone it's fed up to  cook for a big number of people. After all the festivities and the good food served, it's hard to think about the menu' for New Year's Eve.

Everyone would like just to enjoy the party with their friends and family, have fun and cheers to the 2011. So this is what we normally cook in Italy for parties, when you have a good number of people to feed, adult and children too, but you don't want to spend time in the kitchen: Pasta al forno (in the oven).

I'm sure you have cooked it before, maybe with some pasta leftovers or just to prepare some quick and delicious meal for children. This time instead I will give you the classic recipe of the pasta al forno made with béchamel and tomato sauce. Do you know how to prepare "besciamella"? Have you ever try it? It's quick, easy and far better than the ready made!

For the pasta I have chosen this time the Fusilli corti con il buco (short fusilli with the hole) because they can catch the sauce in a fantastic way, creating this amazing full structure, that when biten it's just heaven.

It's instead traditional in Gragnano to use "pasta rigata" for the oven recipes , this more or less for the same reason: in the oven in fact the pasta cooks with the sauce and the starch coming out from the stripes help to bind everything. Anyway you are free to use any shape of pasta you like.

Here the recipe for 4 people:

350gr Fusilli corti con il buco Pastificio dei Campi

1  mozzarella (and for a special twist use some Mozzarella di Bufala Campana PDO)

50 gr Parmesan

500-600 gr  Passata (if you want to make it special just add Ragu' bolognese instead of Passata)

Onion, celery, 1 carrot, salt , pepper

For the béchamel:

50gr flour,

50gr butter,

500ml milk

Salt and a pinch of nutmeg

Clean and finely cut the celery, onion and the carrot. Put them in a sauce pan with some olive oil. Let it cook a bit and when the onion get transparent add the passata and some salt. Put the water for the pasta on the fire, add some salt  and wait for it to boil.

In the meantime put some butter in a pan on a low fire and while this is melting, add some flour little by little. As soon as the first clots will start to appear, add the milk and mix until creating a cream. Add the other flour and the other milk until the end of the ingredients, and let it cook always stirring to eliminate all the clots. Don't forget to add some salt and nutmeg because they will give an amazing taste to the béchamel.

When the water is boiling, it's time to put the pasta. For this dish i normally mix béchamel with the tomato sauce so all the pasta take some of the béchamel, but if you want you can leave them a part and create layers after. When the pasta is ready, some minute before the final time, when is still a little bit hard,  toss it in the tomato sauce. Then cover a baking pan with some butter and place in it a first layer of tomato pasta, then the béchamel, some pieces of mozzarella and Parmesan. Then  a second layer of pasta and all the rest until the end of the pasta. On the top layer put just the béchamel, lots of Parmesan and some little pieces of butter.

When your guests arrive place it in the oven for 1o-15 minutes just the time to finish to cook the pasta , to melt the mozzarella and to create a delicious crust on top.

From Pastificio dei Campi we wish a wonderful 2011 to everyone!

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A classic italian sunday lunch.

Often on Sunday here in London the weather is not very good: gray, rainy, maybe not too cold but quite sad anyways.

This is a traditional Sunday dish in Italy, mainly because the ragu’ o bolognese sauce as you call it here, takes several hours to prepare, i.e. not something you prepare after a long day at work. It's normally made on Saturday and served together with pasta on Sundays. But there are also those who starts preparing it on Saturdays and finish it off on Sundays right before it’s served! In fact the truth is that the more the sauce will simmer on a low fire the better it will taste.  

The origin of this recipe seems to be in Bologna, but of course there are 2000 different recipes and variations also in each region. The only sure things about this dish are the main ingredients which will always be onion carrot, celery, tomatoes (fresh, passata or concentrate) olive oil and minced meat!

It's often served with fresh pasta, or long pasta types, but this time I wanted to try it with a short and wider type of pasta: I Paccheri! Being short and consistent all the sauce was incorporated by the pasta and each bite was a true explosion of Italian taste.



The result was exceptional, so here I will give you an easy recipe I use often, not too elaborated but truly italian. The ingredients for a good quantity are:

-        250gr beef minced meat,

-        250gr pork minced meat,

-        1 carrot,

-        1 onion,

-        1 celery

-        some extravirgin olive oil,

-        salt,

-        pepper,

-        a bit of nutmeg and  fresh parsley if you like

-        tomato sauce 800gr (I used 2 cans of passata)

-        2 glasses of red wine

Then of course Paccheri Pastificio dei Campi.

First cut the carrot, the celery and the onion in the smallest pieces you can, then put them in a sauce pan with some oil and let everything fry for a couple of minutes. When they are ready and more or less cooked, put the 2 types of meat in the saucepan and fry until the meat gets a bit of color. Add 2 glasses of red wine, mix and wait until the wine is evaporated.

Let the meat cook for a while and then add the tomato sauce. For this specific recipe I use the tomato passata with chopped tomatoes. Add some salt and pepper and then put the pan on low heat, the lowest there is. Stir the sauce every once in a while and add water when it becomes too dense. The sauce needs to simmer for at least one hour but remember the longer you leave it to simmer the better the result.

After an hour or so, taste and add salt, pepper or nutmeg if needed. Wait for the sauce to get dark and thick and after some hours on extremely low heat, the ragu’ will be ready and the taste will be absolutely different from any bolognese or ragu’ you have ever tried before.  
I hope you will enjoy this recipe and a truly Italian Sunday lunch.

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