Elegance, traditions and great italian food

I know italians who come here every single sunday to enjoy their italian sunday lunch! I loved their traditional menu and I'm happy to say that between all the good products they use, they have also our trofie and orecchiette.

Do you want to know a bit more about its history and why Cecconi is a name in London?

“Enzo Cecconi – the youngest ever general manager of the famous Cipriani restaurant in Venice – came to London in 1978 and opened Cecconi’s. It became an overnight success and in the 80s it was a Mecca for the rich and the royal (one lunchtime, during Ascot week, one waiter remembers serving members of four different royal families on four different tables). Enzo Cecconi believed in spectacular food and spectacular service. He brought theatre in to the restaurant, finishing guests’ dishes in front of their eyes and showing them the magic of the food, which until that point had been kept behind the closed doors of the kitchen.”

At the moment Simone Serafini is head chef and Giacomo Maccioni, who has been at Cecconi’s since 1990, continues to look after the restaurant as manager.

I went there for the first time some weeks ago and I was impressed by its beautiful  salon, the massive bar and the refined atmosphere and service. Here are my personal choices that I suggest to you all, in case you are planning to go there soon:

 I would start with one of our pasta dishes: Trofie, tomato sauce & smoked ricotta or Orecchiette, cime di rapa & walnuts. In this case I asked for a mixed recipe: Orecchiette with tomato sauce and smoked ricotta. Delicious!

As a main there is no doubt you need to try the veal milanese asking for a side order of zucchini fritti, but I can tell you that even the beef tagliata is fabulous.

And for dessert there is really a difficult choice to make:

Vanilla cheesecake & Italian strawberries that is great, or Chocolate fondant, pistachio ice cream that required 12 minutes but it’s absolutely worth the waiting time or even the Pear tart with vanilla anglaise, a fantastic cream that gives the final touch to the reach pear cake.

Any other question about traditional Italian places in London? One more on your list especially for a traditional Sunday lunch.

Comment (0)

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.

Comment (0)

Joining the worldwide ola of Homemade Pesto Genovese

Today, 17th of January is International Day of Italian Cuisines again, and this time is all dedicated to the Pesto Genovese.

As in the past editions, the IDIC is a worldwide celebration of authentic and quality Italian Cuisine, to defend it from bogus and counterfeiting. Hundreds of chefs and restaurateurs all around the world will prepare simultaneously on today Pesto Genovese with pasta, according to an authentic recipe. 

All the food lovers too where invited to join the ola and cook some Pesto, and i couldn't miss this international call to action.

The International Day of Italian Cuisines is born from a mission: "we certainly aim at educating worldwide consumers, but more than anything else, we want to protect their right to get what they pay for when going to eateries labeled as "Italian", that is: authentic and quality Italian cuisine." says Rosario Scarpato, GVCI Honorary President, and IDIC 2011 Director.

With this in mind,  today i won't  just give you here the most classic and official recipe for the real pesto, but i will also tell you about the best combination of pasta you can have with this sauce.

But let's start from the recipe as written by the cooperative of the Pesto Genovese:

- 50 gr of fresh young basil leaves.

- 1 big spoon of pine nuts

- 6 spoons of Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese freshly grated.

- 2 spoons of Pecorino cheese

- 2 garlic cloves

- 10 gr of  gritty salt

- Half a glass of  Extra Virgin Olive Oil (better if it's from “Ligurian Riviera” d.o.p.)

- and finally 600 gr Trofie Pastificio dei Campi (the name comes from the genoese dialect and the way to call the manual movement necessary to create the shape).

The procedure is quite easy, but to be traditional, you will need a marble mortar and a wooden pestle. This because instead to chop the leaves you will need to crush them to have the leaves' oil necessary for the sauce.

Wash the basil leaves in cold water and dry them on a paper towel. Don't squeeze them.
Then crush in the mortar the garlic clove the pine nuts and the basil leaves, add  the salt, the Parmesan, the Pecorino cheese and keep pounding using a light circular movement of the pestle.

Add some of the Extra Virgin Olive from time to time and keep  mixing until  you obtain  a smooth creamy sauce. Pesto should not be greasy and the amount of oil used must be well absorbed and not floating on top.

Trofie and Trenette are the pasta used in Liguria, however linguine or spaghetti al dente will make a good companion to this sauce. The original recipe also says to cook the pasta in the water with french green beans and potatoes and serve all together dressed with pesto (more like a salad type of dish), but you can just mix this with pasta and will be great!

Comment (0)