Learning some english recipes and enjoying food... as usual

Last week a friend of mine invited me to a professional cooking class... I couldn’t believe it! I love learning from professional chefs and more in England where they cook different things from the ones I used to see cooked in my italian family.

The plan was to prepare a 3 courses meal in less than 1 hour almost and ... To eat it all together! Just great!

So I went to L'Atelier Des Chefs, an amazing place near Oxford Circus, very little from outside, but very well organized internally: there are 2 big kitchens, one on the street level and another downstairs and lots of cooking tools available to use in the class but especially to buy. A very cosy place with nice and welcoming people!
So we started our class around 11,30 with a Prosecco glass, gently offered, and the 3 courses meal was composed by the following recipes:

Pea soup with crisp pancetta and garlic croutons
Crisp fillet of sea bass with braised fennel and brown shrimp vélouté
Chocolate and praline cream with espresso coffee emulsion and hazelnut financiers

We started with the preparation of the basic ingredients: cutting finely the onion, garlic, mint & chives, peeling the bread, and putting the potatoes to roast in the oven. And all these easy tasks were all quite difficult if you wanted to follow the chef's lesson: first thing he showed us how to properly cut the ingredients and it's so much more difficult of what I could have never thought!

Then we mixed some of the ingredients to prepare a very rich sauce for the veloute’ while the other group was starting to deal with the mousse and financiers biscuits. This mousse made with the praline cream and the hazelnut dough for the biscuits were just great!

Finally, the financiers in the oven and the cream in the fridge, we places the fish to cook in the pan with just a little bit of oil, the fennel to boil and we started to prepare  the soup, cooking the peas and frying the bread.

It was a really funny day and of course I don’t tell you how much good the food was! I loved my peas soup and the veloute’ was great, But for me the real revelation were the financiers biscuits, very similar to the "Magdalene", that I used to eat when I was little and that I loved sooo much! Now I even cooked them by my self!!! Great place and great experience!

And you? Have you ever been to some professional cookery class?

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Pastificio dei Campi for couples and singles

As any other year it’s almost Saint Valentine's Day and everywhere is an explosion of heart, adverts with chocolate boxes, flowers, champaign bottles etc.

It’s true that lots of people don’t really care about this day anymore, but finally it’s an excuse as another to spend some quality time with their other half. But what if you are alone…

In Italy we solved the problem proclaiming the 15th of February the "Singles' day" and Saint Faustino, the saint of the day, is now also the saint of all the singles: big parties are organized in clubs and between friends and finally everyone has is own day of fun.

At Pastificio dei Campi we think we are in charge to make everyone always happy especially if in love with the good food. So we made specific packaging for couple but also for singles who want always change shape of pasta and enjoying it alone!

Here I present you... Duetto (250 gr) and Egoista (125 gr) from Pastificio dei Campi.

Choose the shape you like the most and dedicate the dinner to your other half … or just to you! Look for them at Foodinthecity or at Melograno Deli.

So, are you going to have a romantic dinner or just a … “selfish” one?

Anyway, we hope you will enjoy it!

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To start the year in the best way

Just a few word to thanks who in Christmas gave me a little amazing book that I of course suggest to anyone who have not read it yet: "The Small Pleasures Of Life' by Philippe Delerm.

This treasure is a real small pleasure by itself: it describes the most common and simple happy moments in life but with certain details and realism that you can  almost live again the sensations in your memory.

It's just a compilation of quick pictures of moments of everyone's daily life, but so well described that you finally have the chance to stop and appreciate them even more: the first sip of beer, the dark red of a glass of Porto, the smell of the apple in the cellar etc.

I don't think i can find anything more adequate than this book of precious sensations to wish you a fantastic 2012, full of memories like these.

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Other Christmas ideas for your presents

Still looking for the latest presents? Are you already planning the shops you will visit this weekend to look for some great Christmas idea? Here i am to help you out.

If last week i told you about the great Maxi Cubes of Pastificio dei Campi, available directly on our website, this time i will give you another idea for your presents.

What about a Christmas hamper filled with the best italian product available on the market? We are sure this will be a present that will make everyone happy and, especially in these times, spend on food is always a good idea. 

And if you are looking for great italian products, i will suggest you to go to Food in the City or to Melograno Deli.

Food in the city is a warehouse based in St. John's wood (London) but it's also a great website where you can order directly online. The hampers you can see here is just and example and you can ask for a bespoke one. Over £40 the delivery is free. 

Have a look and you will remain amazed by the quality of their products. 

Melograno Deli instead is in Holland Park (London) and they are also specialized on italian brands but they also have cheeses, cold cuts and lots of other typical products.

"Our hampers are made with acacia wood accessories (cheeseboards or salad servers) and they can be made up either by us, or with products of the customers choosing."

At this point, I can just suggest you to have a look at the London map and enjoy your weekend of italian delicatessen... and don't forget to add our pasta to your shopping.

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An online unique offer for pasta lovers

As you probably know today is Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving that since 2005 has been recognized as the most successful for sales online. In these days in fact is starting the real Christmas shopping and always more people are doing it online. Quick, easy and no-stress the online shopping  is definitely the best s solution.

And do you know that you can buy even our pasta online? Not just on foodinthecity as  lots already know, but even directly on our website where in fact you won’t just find the normal pasta packages, but some special Maxi pasta Cube available just from our online shop.

What are the Maxi Cube Pastificio dei Campi? For those who has never seen them before, just let me tell you that are the best and more original food present you can give to a real pasta lover:  it's a giant box, always in the shape of a cube, like all the boxes of Pastificio dei Campi, which contains various kinds of pasta.

There is the Maxi Cube tasting, with 5 pounds of pasta Gragnano PGI bronze drawn and slowly dried at low temperature, in 10 very different formats, which represent the most famous Pastificio dei Campi shapes: paccheri, broken candles, ziti, penne rigate, orecchiette, ribbed tubes, spaghetti, linguine. And there is the Custom Cube Maxi, for who knows what he loves and wants to choose in total freedom  the shapes to be included (for a total of 4 kg).

And it’s not finished yet. After the success of last year also the Maxi Cube Selection is on sale again: a gourmet kit, consisting of 4 kg of pasta Pastificio dei Campi, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil DOP from the Sorrentina Peninsula  L’Archangelo and the tomatoes Miracle of San Gennaro by Sabatino Abagnale.

For more information please see our online shop and good Cyber Monday to everyone!

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A new recipes book by Manuela Darling- Gansser

Today is Thanksgiving and being mainly an American celebration, every year I find myself a bit puzzled : I never know what to bring to parties and worst, what to cook in case they ask me to bring some food …exactly like this year.

On Monday I received an invitation for tonight. The email was saying that everyone was requested to bring something, but I can’t cook anything else than Italian food !!!

Luckily I have just received a new Stunning Recipe Book, that of course is about Italian food, but that gave me also a very nice idea for tonight.

The book is called Four Season and has been written by Manuela Darling – Gansser,  a traveler and a linguist who, born in Lugano, has always been passionate about cooking and Italian food.

She put together this book after passing some times in different parts of Italy. Each season is described trough a region:  spring is Sicily with its amazing seafood, fruits, sweets and amazing smells and gastronomic tradition. Her childhood spent in Sardinia represents the summer with its cheeses, vegetables and great dishes from her memory.  In autumn Manuela reaches Piemonte in the north of Italy where there are very reach recipes,  a strong peasant food tradition and some unique ingredients like chestnuts and truffles. Finally in the Alps  in winter she passes to the reach and hot north Italian recipes, from stews to polenta, from Lamb pie and roast venison to some amazing chocolate cake.

So yesterday I started browsing through the beautiful recipes (the pictures are amazing and the book in itself it’s a beauty) with the sensation that the majority of them could be quite easy to follow. And there I found one thing that I never had the chance to try before: Bagna Cauda.

This is a very famous dish in the North of Italy and it’s a classic in autumn after the harvest, because the peasants used to eat it all together to remove the sweet smell of the grapes.

Considering that tonight the main dish will be the  turkey with all the trimmings, I wasn’t really keen to bring any other big main  but I thought this could be a really nice dish to have on the table and to eat all together. If you want to follow my idea, here is the recipe from the book in Manuela’s mum version:

BAGNA CAUDA DELLA MAMMA
(Mamma’s Raw Vegetables with Anchovy Cream)

This is the way my mother used to make Bagna Caoda. Boil the 500ml cream with the peeled garlic cloves (4-6) for 15 - 20 minutes so that the cream reduces and thickens. In a fondue dish, melt the butter. Cut the anchovies (8-10) very finely and add them to the 50 gr butter.

Cook them on very gentle heat, until they have melted. Now add the reduced cream. Crush the softened garlic cloves with a fork and stir well, taste and add a little ground pepper. Prepare the vegetables (cucumber, carrots, celery, peppers). Wash them well, slice, dry them, then put them on a large plate.

Put the sauce in a fondue dish over a flame in the centre of the table. Each person puts some vegetables on their plate, and then dips the vegetable sticks into the sauce. It’s also delicious to serve some grissini on the side, to dip in the sauce.

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It's out now with lots of tips.

 
Written by Rose Prince columnist for the Telegraph and expert of food, markets and gastronomy, the Good Produce Guide 2012 it's really a little treasure... especially for someone like me, coming from abroad and with almost no knowledge about english traditional producers. I can tell you one or two things about italian food and typical regional products but it's not the same for the english ones.
 
So I really enjoyed reading through the various categories of this book from markets to deli, from butcher(always hard to find here) and bakery or artisanal producers.

I mean I have already my faithful italian delis ( Melograno and Foodinthecity ), but is always good to know where else you can buy good food if you are in the other side of the city!  And I have particularly appreciated for this reason the map that comes at the end of the book ( that I would just divide in color to make it easier to read) and that can guide you in the different areas of London and UK.
 
And what to say about the list of seasonal english products and the festival calendar? Great! And if in the future i will visit some other english place I'll easily bring this with me or i will check before to go to discover all the best food from the nation.

So yesterday i put the guide under test and I had a look at all the places around Covent Garden, where I was and I found not 1 but 3 great places for a really good cup in the afternoon: these were Drury coffee near Leicester square, the Tea palace in Covent Garden Market and finally Monmouth Caffe that I listened lots of time but that I actually never tried yet! So I went there and it was great: fresh coffe beans and great pastries… irresistible!

Do you want to pick the best of what UK can offer, or you just want to have good food that you can trust in... Let this guide inspire you! And if you are looking for a 100% italian and artisanal PGI pasta, don't forget us ;)

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