From the Christmas eve dinner party, pasta and traditions

As i told you in the previous post, this year i was ready to prepare the Christmas dinner in a very traditional way, cooking just fish but also trying to present to my guests a dish that could be a bit original. I thought could have been nice to put together products from Italy and UK, so i choose to use the Wild Smoked Scottish Salmon from Forman & Son.

This is in fact a 100 year old family business supplying smoked salmon, caviar and other smoked and fresh fish to the world's leading hotels and finest restaurants in UK and from 2002 is also online on Forman & Field, fine food mail order company specializing in fresh, traditional British produce from small, independent producers. 

This was just a part of my special treat for my guest on Christmas. They still didn't know Pastificio dei Campi, the pasta that was going to be used to create the main protagonist of the Christmas eve dinner: Spaghetti with Wild Smoked Salmon and cream of courgettes.

Here the ingredients for 6 people:

600 gr Spaghetti Pastificio Dei Campi

200 gr of Smoked salmon

4 courgettes of a medium size

1 fennel

4 spoons of  pine nuts

4 spoons of Mascarpone or single cream

some garlic cloves,

salt, pepper, some fennel seeds

a glass of white wine

Cut the courgettes and the fennel in little cubes, then place them in a pan with some olive oil and chopped garlic cloves. Let it cook for around 10 minutes adding some salt and pepper and then pour the glass of white wine. When evaporated, turn a bit down the fire and cover the pan.

Now in a big sauce pan prepare the water for the pasta, add some salt and when it starts to boil, add the spaghetti. Let them cook and in the meantime blend the vegetable with the pine nuts until creamy. Now put everything again in the pan you used before with also the mascarpone or single cream and the smoked salmon in strips.

When the pasta it's "al dente" drain it and toss it in the pan with the salmon and the cream. I added here some whole pine nuts too and I serve it hot with a sprinkle of fennel seeds. If too dry, you can even add a bit of olive oil but not Parmesan. We don't normally use it with the fish and you could risk to cover some flavors.

This dish it's perfect for Christmas, but it's also a quick and easy recipe to cook any day of the week, being a very complete main course. I hope you will try it!

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3...2...1... and it's Christmas day: all the steps to arrive prepared.

Have you finally bought all the presents you needed? Have you wrapped them all. Fantastic! You are half the way to your perfect Christmas. Now you just need to be sure that everything will be ready for your Christmas lunch or dinner!

Here some quick suggestions to don't miss anything and to enjoy the day in the best way!

The first step is of course to chose the menu': are you going to cook the classic turkey or are you looking for something different? Maybe a bit more... italian?

We have the tradition to cook a big dinner on the 24th and also a big lunch on 25th, meals that we normally share with our family and close people. On the 24th the Christian tradition is to don't eat meat, so all the dinner will be based on fish and each region has is own tradition. In the south are very famous the "Spaghetti o Linguine 'a Vongole" (Spaghetti or Linguine with clams) while in Rome the "Capitone"(large eel) is the typical fish cooked in the Christmas dinner...or at least this was happening in the past.

Recently we just care to cook fish but any kind of recipe is accepted. The only thing sure is that we will serve and enjoy a little aperitif, a pasta dish, a fish with some vegetables and of course all the classic italian Christmas desserts: pandoro, panettone, torrone depending buy the regional traditions.

So whatever will be your menu', first of all decide all your courses and then make a list of all the ingredients you will need. Then check you have all the cooking equipments necessary for your dishes and if you are a bit unfamiliar with certain recipes and way to prepare them, search online any suggestion or video explanation you can find and follow them carefully.

Then don't forget to think about the way you will present them: do you need any decoration or some more ingredients to put them on each plate? Put them too in the list with also any missing cooking equipment and then go out for the last shopping!

In case you have guests and they will bring some dishes to help you out in the preparation of the dinner, it's always better to discuss this with them directly to avoid any duplicate.

If you can't find all you need at once, make sure you create a second list with the missing ingredients and go in other specific shops to buy them.

After that make the cooking easier sipping a glass of good wine or Prosecco and then be ready to relax and enjoy the dinner!

What i'm going to cook for Christmas? You will know it in the next post...but you can be sure will be a pasta dish with fish.

Meanwhile I wish you all to have an amazing time with family and friends. Merry Christmas!

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Some original ideas from the Pasta World for your Christmas.

Just few days are separating us from Christmas, so it's time to put together all our energy to buy the latest presents and prepare the house for our guests. This will be the focus of my next posts.

Let's start directly with the first idea: the Christmas pasta tree. A new way to decor your tree and your house for the festivity, using some natural and easy material like pasta... ok it's not exactly something that I suggest everyone to do, but it's just something that come up in my mind observing the pasta from Pastificio dei Campi: it's not just great to eat but it's really beautiful! A pleasure for the mouth and for the eyes :) Just have a look a this "Santa Pacchero!"

Let's speak now about something a bit more interesting and serious like the gift list: are you sure you have bought all the presents you needed? Have you already wrote all your desires to Santa or are you still putting down the latest ideas? Here few more suggestions all absolutely "pasta related".

Do you often cook the same shape of pasta, or you try to combine the right pasta shape  with  sauces? Do you need help and some more learning about this? here is the book for you (and for me, considering is at the top of my personal wishes list).

“The geometry of pasta” by Caz Hildebrand e Jacob Kenedy. " The perfect shape + the perfect sauce = The perfect Pasta!" Problem solved. Kenedy is the chef and owner of the restaurant Bocca di Lupo in London, while Hildebrand is a designer. By their union has born this elegant, simple, but extremely beautiful and interesting book to learn how to team up sauces with pasta shapes. Really unique in its genre, this book it's really something useful even for an italian like me, who can always miss some perfect combination. Is better penne or eliche with arrabbiata sauce? Spaghetti or bucatini for carbonara? etc.

Then for the ones in troubles with the long pasta, like linguine, spaghetti or bucatini, instead of the classic spoon to help you with, why don't try this technological fork? I have to admit I found it a bit weird, but maybe could be a real solution. Do you have a friend always in trouble when eating pasta? Or you simply don't want to splash sauce and pasta everywhere  anymore? Another problem is solved with Hog Wild’s Twirling Spaghetti Fork

Finally if you simply want to give a nice pasta hamper for Christmas, Pasta di Gragnano PGI from Pastificio dei Campi, is here to help, offering you one of the most high quality products on the market.... and look at the packaging. It seems to be made to be a gift!

You can buy this directly here in the shopping section of the website, or on Food in the city site, or you can even purchase them in all the Harvey Nichols shops around England. Finally you can even try to win an hamper on the blog Eat like a girl, but run because you won't have so much time left.

I hope this guide will help you with your latest presents, or simply letting you know a bit more about the pasta world!

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"It's not possible to cook italian without italian products" Theo Randall

Yesterday I finally had the pleasure to try Theo Randall's italian cuisine. It was a real discovery. He serves his amazing dishes at the Intercontinental in London and with a very interesting menu and even more interesting list of wines, the night was a real surprise.

I had Cape sante: pan fried diver caught scallops with chilli, parsley, capers, datterini tomatoes, Swiss chard and lentils di Castelluccio. The dish was accompanied by a very good Fiano from 2007.
At first sight the combination of  scallops with  lentils was a bit weird and new for me, but the tomatoes and the cime di rapa ensured an amazing combination of flavors and textures to all the dish that is of course really good. And the lentils you could see were really from Castelluccio, because little and with a very thin skin.

As a main course I tried instead the wood roasted Cornish monkfish, Coda di rospo, with violet artichokes, potatoes, prosciutto di Parma, thyme and garlic . This dish was instead accompanied by an amazing Puligny Montrachet. As you probably know I love artichokes and they are so difficult to find here in London, that when I saw them between the ingredients of this dish I couldn't resist. The potatoes were sublime and the fish with the capers and the artichokes, just perfect and the general taste was great but I keep on being more traditional, preferring not ham on the fish.

I'm describing you all this nice dinner just to tell you the secret of this very interesting  restaurant in London. It's Theo Randall in person to explain us that " there is no way to cook italian cuisine without italian products" and "My menu is made up of the same simple rustic dishes I enjoy when I go to Italy".

He is not just a good chef, he is also interested in the real taste of italian products and in studying new ways to combine these ingredients together. He uses english products just if they are the best of what the country can offer , like meat or fish, but for all the rest instead he uses Natoora that bring in England the best fruit and vegetable from Italy twice a week.

Personally I have to say he is also a really nice and simple person, who came to chat with us on his own initiative and give us all these information about his dishes and ingredients. I also had an amazing selection of desserts, and it was really a problem to choose the best one: the ricotta, Amalfi lemon and the chocolate cake were amazing but then i tried the clementines sorbet and it was just unique.

The same Theo's passion for the real italian products, is shared by the sommelier too, in love with italian wines: he goes and search for the best ones directly in place and, with the time he has put together in fact a very peculiar and fine wine list.

It was a pleasure to see all this passion and respect for original italian products and of course it was delightful to have the pleasure to taste those wines and dishes.

All my respect to Theo Randall too!

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Converting people to the real italian pasta taste!

On Saturday and Sunday I was protagonist of a really interesting tasting session in Harvey Nichols in London. This is the main chain where you can find our products in the UK and we decided to offer to all the visitors in London a little bite of our pasta.

We started our session around 12 o'clock both the days and I have to admit it was all really well organized, the staff nice and the customers happy and interested in the black and red brand.

We placed a little table exposing our products and me, Linguina in person, cooked pasta for everyone. Just simple tomato sauce and Parmesan, but thanks to the good quality of the pasta, it was everything very good and even easy to maintain "al dente".

Everyone could try the Eliche, Lumache and even Calamarata, and all of the visitors discovered the real difference between this pasta and the one they are used to! I was keep on saying that one bite could tell them much more than 2000 words, because until you don't try it, you can't really believe in the difference.

This pasta is naturally tasty, consistent and special, because made by 100% pure italian Durum wheat. It's slow dried, thing that maintains the pasta tasty and reach with the 14% of proteins, while the bronze dye make it rough on top and able to absorb the sauce in a unique way.

I'm not just here to impress you all being particularly auto - celebratory. I'm saying this because I saw it on the face of the people when they were trying the pasta. It's all true and you can taste it!

So next time don't loose this occasion and come to taste it you too! You will be surprised!

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A recipe to celebrate the local producers and the good food.

Today it's for the second time Terra Madre Day, a celebration of food diversity and the right to good, clean and fair food, organized by Slow Food. Last year  more than 1,000 events took place across 120 countries. Lots of different events have been organized this year too and you can find all of them here.

Following the invite by Carlo Petrini, Slow food International President, to highlight today the importance of eating locally, I thought could have been nice to create a recipe with english and italian ingredients made by local, traditional and very careful producers.

It so happens that i have been finally to Taste of Christmas the past weekend and between stands of wines, fudges, bread and cheeses, I found also the english cheese winner of the title of World Champion Cheese 2010: the Cornish Blue, a handmade ArtisanFarmhouse Cheese from Cornwall, right case of english local producer.

I couldn't miss the occasion to buy it and considering the taste, similar to Gorgonzola but much less strong (I'm simplifying just to let all of you understand), I though to put it together with walnuts, a classic seasonal ingredients!

Then Pasta di Gragnano PGI from Pastificio dei Campi with its old history and traditional and careful way to produce the pasta, from the  bronze extraction to the drying process, it's a perfect representative of a local south italian producer.

So here is my "locally sourced" recipe!

Ingredients for 3 people:

300 gr Mezzi Occhi di Lupo from Pastificio dei Campi

120 gr of cheese gorgonzola

60 gr  walnuts

40gr butter

Finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper.

The preparation is not very long so i suggest you to put some  water on the fire as soon as you start. Then add some salt and the pasta when it's boiling. Meanwhile in a saucepan melt the butter then add the chopped cheese and let melt it too over low heat, stir well together until the mixture is as smooth and creamy as possible.

Then take the walnuts and chop them finely,  the more the better. Add them to the pan and stir well, to mix all together. If the cheese tends to stick to the pan just add some water from the pasta.

When this is ready and "al dente", drain it  and pour into the pan with the sauce and toss it. I serve it without Parmesan to don't miss the Cornish blue's taste, but with some chopped parsley.

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For you the Maxi Cube Tasting or the Maxi Cube Custom!

Finally it's the 8th of December. Today in Italy is holiday and the majority of the people will spend their  time decorating the Christmas tree or shopping for the latest presents still in the list.

Have you already bought all your presents or you are just starting to think about them? But especially, are you the one who loves doing and receiving surprises or you prefer to buy or receive something requested?

We could stay here discussing hours about that and I personally prefer people who try to guess your taste and give you something, also little, but with an effort, than who is asking you 'what do you want for Christmas?". This sounds to me a bit lazy and simple. And there is no comparison with the surprise to open a packet and find something you didn't expect!

However for all of you, Pastificio dei Campi has a great solution: you can finally shop for your favorite shape of pasta on the same website, clicking on the e-commerce section.

Here you will find 3 options:

The Maxi Cube Tasting: a perfect pack for those who want to know (and be surprised by) the production of the pasta factory and loves to try many different formats. It consists of five kilograms of pasta Gragnano IGP, bronze drawn and slowly dried at low temperature, given in 10 different sizes selected from among those that best represent our company: paccheri, calamarata, pennoni, candele spezzate, penne ziti lisce, penne mezzani rigate, orecchiette, tubetti, spaghetti, linguine.  A nice gift idea for all lovers of pasta.

The Maxi Cube Custom:  a customizable package, designed for people who already know our Pasta Gragnano IGP or for those that have very decided tastes. Choose the contents of your package: this is left entirely to you. 8 packages of pasta, 500 grams Gragnano IGP in most popular formats.

Then of course, it's almost Christmas and you can also buy the fantastic gourmet gift box,  made in limited edition for Christmas 2010. Here the pasta di Gragnano IGP is accompanied by two other symbols of the south gastronomic tradition, an high quality extra virgin olive oil and tomatoes as explained here. (And the first five to leave a comment on the post will receive a 15% discount to buy this Cube).

So undecided or  ready to choose your  pasta shapes and Maxi Cubes?

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