Some rules you absolutely need to follow.

I have already given you some truly Italian pasta recipes, some have been easier, some longer and some a bit particular.

However I will now take a step back just to make sure that you know the first basic, but so important ground stones of the Italian kitchen. By this, what I’m trying to say is: this post will be a basic but important learning session you just can’t miss.

First of all let’s take a big saucepan or stockpot, large enough to contain all the pasta you like to cook. This rule is especially important in case you are preparing long pasta. Fill up the pot with 1 liter of water for every 100 gr of pasta. All this water is to allow the pasta to not stick to each other and to maintain a constant temperature during the cooking process. When the water starts to boil add 10-12gr of salt (the big grains one) per liter. Don’t add it before the water starts to boil; salty water takes longer time before it starts to boil.

After a couple minutes you can add the pasta and increase the heat to maintain the water boiling. Now, let’s stir, it’s better to use a wooden spoon when stirring and to do it a couple of times during the process. This is an important part of the pasta cooking process since the pasta needs to be emerged in the water in order not to stick to one another.

Based on the shape and quality of the pasta, the cooking time will be different. It’s normally written on the bag but the cooking time also depends on your individual taste too. If the pasta is not Pastificio dei Campi, I always try it some minutes before the time indicated on the bag in order to not have it over cooked. With the pasta from Gragnano, you can be sure that at that time the pasta will be “al dente”, which means not too hard but not overcooked… just perfect!

However you can break the pasta with a fork and try it before draining it, just in case. Never add cold water at the end: that removes the starch that helps hold the sauce.

Now the pasta is ready to be combined with the Italian sauce of your choice. There are, as you already know, some too choose from. My tip for the part is to continue to keep an eye on the blog and you will have lots of nice ideas for your favourite pasta sauce. For now, at least you know the secret for the perfect start.

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Some tips to recognize a really good pasta from the most common one.
 

After speaking about the recent English passion for food, and after the quick look at some tech tools that can help you in the kitchen, it's time I gave you some important related tips starting with some basic facts.

 

For an Italian dinner, pasta is your main ingredient and has to be chosen with care and attention: you will need to keep these tips in mind when you want to buy and eat the best pasta!

What really determines a good quality of pasta? Color, texture, smell, ingredients, origin and packaging. And I will explain why!

It all starts from the durum wheat. For Pasta dei Campi for example, it uses just italian grain, taken from an area of about 250 km around Gragnano. For the Pastificio it's very important that the grain has been cultivated in a place with historical tradition in a region like Puglia, Basilicata, Molise or Irpinia. This durum wheat has a protein content of around the 14%, compared to a normal value of about 10,5% found in classic production. It is also rare to find this type of pasta in Italy. This  amount of protein will give the consistency, taste and smell to the pasta.

 

The harvest happens just in the right moment of the maturation of the grain, the stocking follows straight away and it’s done in the same area for a perfect conservation of the prime product.
This will then be milled with care (with a low power machine) to maintain all it's original fragrance. The preparation of the mix is a delicate equilibrium between lots of components: the water temperature, semolina grain and the climate conditions. The pasta maker will coordinate them in a way to always reach the best mix possible.

Another very important factor is the bronze extraction. This material entering in contact with the pasta, will create that rough surface that will help the union with the sauce. But this has to be made in the right measure: not too rough and not too smooth.

Then there is the drying process that has to be slow and at a low temperature to maintain the fragrance. It is essential to complete all of this work and the work mentioned previously in the best way possible. This will give the pasta the right color, which should be yellowish and not amber or orange.

Finally there is the packing, completed by hand to avoid destroying the pasta. The combination of these methods should result in the highest quality pasta.

So next time you are in the supermarket, check where the pasta is made, what the ingredients are, if it looks a bit rough, and finally if the color is yellowish and not amber, dark or closer to orange.

Then if you will try Pastificio dei Campi, you will really understand the difference!

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From the center of Italy to your table in only 10 minutes.

Have you ever cooked pasta at home? Maybe yes, but what about pastaamatriciana? It's one of the most traditional dishes in Italy, especially in Rome: Amatrice in fact is a town really close to this amazing city . The recipe is very quick, simple but really tasty...
 
This sauce goes particularly well with a special type of pasta: bucatini. Do you know it? It's a long pasta, similar to spaghetti but it's thicker and  bigger and has an hole in the middle! This makes the pasta not too heavy, but still more consistent than a classic spaghetto. Normally this kind of pasta could be quite hard to find in London, but now with Pastificio dei Campi you can find it at Harvey Nichols or online at Food in the city. 

So if you are tired of  always cooking spaghetti with the same tomato sauce, than this is  certainly  the time for you to try this recipe...especially now with the arrive of the new shallots  in the supermarkets! A few simple products will give you a complete and delicious dish, and because it's so quick and easy, why don't invite some friends for dinner like i did last night?

Ingredients for 4 - 5 people:

 - 500 gr of  Bucatini Pastificio dei Campi

 - 2 small shallots

- 200 gr of guanciale, if you can't find this you can use pancetta
 
- 500 gr of tomato passata

- 80 gr of Pecorino romano

- extra virgin olive oil

- salt, pepper and a bit of chilli peppers

Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the guanciale or pancetta cut in little pieces. Then add the chopped shallots (tastier than a regular onion) and wait for them to cook a bit on a medium fire.

When the shallots become transparent, add the tomato passata, with some salt, pepper and the chilli peppers cut  in thin slices. In the meantime boil water with some salt  and when ready add the pasta and cook for around 6 minutes. While you are waiting for the passata and the rest to cook, grate some roman Pecorino cheese. This looks very similar to Parmesan cheese but it's saltier and has a stronger taste.

Check on the sauce. If it’s getting too dry, turn off the fire until the pasta is ready. Then drain the pasta, but keep some water on a side just in case. Add the pasta to the sauce and toss it whilst the pan is on the fire so the pasta will be able to absorb the great sauce and flavours.

Serve it on a plate with some grated pecorino on top and fresh grated black pepper if you like it. I hope you will enjoy the bucatini and this real roman recipe.

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Some i-tech tips to improve your cooking time

Thursday on the LondonDaily Telegraph, our Italian tourism minister asked Apple to remove an Iphone application that suggests Italy is the home of "pizza, mafia, pasta and scooters". She said “I cannot allow our country to be discredited by a criminal organization".
Thinking about this Iphone app and the increasing number of them on the app store I started to look at the most famous food related ones. What a discovery: there are plenty and very useful ones for all of you who likes to learn more about Italian cuisine and products.

Let's begin by two amazing one discovered on Mashable: TopChef Recipe Finder and CookBook. The first one will help you to find recipes with your grocery shopping, season fruits and vegetables. The second instead will let you input ingredients and will suggest you some recipes that you can make using them.

Now there are special italian ones... So if you want to become a real Italian chef and know what we really eat in Italy those are perfect.
You can’t miss the app. Eataly - The Recipes: Eataly, the biggest market for quality food in the world has selected 1,000 best recipes inns throughout Italy reported by Slow Food. Moreover, thanks to the "Wheel of the Seasons" you will have the possibility to know fruits and vegetables by month & season.

And Gambero Rosso created an Iphone guide to Italian restaurants and 2010 wines... It will helps to prepare your "dolce vita" holidays and weekend or  to choose the best Barolo or Chianti of this year, to impress your hosts.

There are also Ipad applications, for those of you who have one.

In fact if you want to cook and you have an Ipad, this can be a really great support. Try one of the best app for Italian recipes, the Artusi HD app: 222 recipes coming from the traditional and real Italian tradition. You can search for recipes and when you find the one you like, quickly add it to your “Favorites” for quick access afterwards. Moreover, if there’s something worth sharing, that can be done just as easily via email.

That's not it... if you have a weekend planned in Milan, you can’t miss to have a meal in "Il Marchesino", restaurant of the Teatro la Scala. Here the same Guglielmo Marchesi, very famous Italian chef with historical fame, suggested to use the Ipad to make the menu more clear. Since September this is reality and the menu’ look stunning!

What about the Blackberry owners? Don’t worry there are some nice app. also for you! With iFood Assistant LITE powered by Kraft, you get fun, convenience and delicious inspiration, all for free. With Healthy Recipes instead, you can browse and search almost 200,000 recipes, plus save your favorites. It also provide calories, carbs, and more for each recipe. Perfect for anyone on a diet!

Do you use any application to cook or have inspiration ? Tell us your experiences about it. How do you use it ?

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From the harvest to the table and in your pasta

The plan for this weekend was to go to the Food Harvest Festival organized in the Southbank center over the weekend. That's was a nice occasion to know what are the most common seasonal products in England or if there were some totally new and interesting to try... Maybe with some pasta! Unfortunately, cause the weather the market has been cancelled, at least on Sunday so I couldn't buy anything for my dinner.

I decided instead going to the market near my house and to look for products from the English farmers. I saw some beautiful broccoli sprouts that I thought could have been great with some nice strong ingredients like anchovies and garlic... and I thought about one old recipe from the south of Italy. With some short pasta like the Pennoni, it could have been perfect.

 

Ingredients:  

- 150gr broccoli sprouts
 
- 200gr Pennoni Pastificio dei Campi
 
- 4 anchovies in olive oil
 
- one spoon extra virgin olive oil
 
- some rosemary
 
- 2 garlic cloves
 
- a big chili
 
- a spoon of fresh bread crumbs

- shaved Parmesan cheese or Pecorino Romano
 
Boil the sprouts until almost ready but still a bit hard. Put the garlic in a pan with the olive oil, then add the anchovies, the rosemary and chili all cut in little pieces. Let everything cook and at the end add the points of the broccoli sprouts drained form the water.

Use the water of the broccoli to cook the pasta and when ready, just  place it in the pan to make it absorb the sauce and get mix with the rest of the ingredients. Then add the spoon of bread crumbs (better if before you can toast it a bit in a clean pan) and mix again. Serve with some Parmesan or Pecorino romano cheese and the dish is ready.
 
The next market will take place in mid October and will be all about cheese and wine! Let's hope the weather will help us this time, but in the meantime let me know what do you think of this recipe!

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And after the summer there is September with its fruits!

It's still hard to say goodbye to the summer, but what about all the new fresh ingredients September is bringing to us ?

The most characteristic for me has always been the fig, so little, so weird in it's aspect, so smooth and simple outside but so surprisingly reach and sweet inside! In italy we have a long tradition of products made with it, especially sweets, from cakes to biscuits to simple dry figs in the winter.

Then there is also this very famous combination of figs and ham, that for how much can appear simple and almost poor in it's origin, it's give you always an amazing tasting experience. And if the pizza with ham and fig is already a must and a great discovery, why don't try the pasta?

I looked in internet on italian and english blogs and i found similar recipes with figs and ham on the first ones, while in England you seems to enjoy more the combination of the figs with rosemary, so i decided to come up with a third idea: let's try the three ingredients together. 

I loved it, but you need to be very careful to put the right quantity of each ingredient, to maintain a balance between tastes. Not too sweet, not too salty, not to much of just one ingredients: they need to combine in a new flavor without delating the others.

I choose the spaghetti because i thought the creamy sauce was going to be well absorbed and well accompanied by them... and in fact i think it was the right choice. What do you think?

 Here is the recipe for 5 people:

- 500gr Spaghetti Pastificio dei Campi

- 6 fresh little figs

- 10 thin slices of Parma ham or even Serrano if you find it.

- a bit of fresh Rosemary... to still remember the summer 

- salt, pepper, olive oil and Parmesan or Pecorino cheese if you like the taste.

Put some oil in a pan and then directly the rosemary leaves and the ham cut in little stripes. Add some salt,  pepper and wait for the pasta to cook. When this is almost ready add the figs without the skin and in slices and let them cook for some minutes. Add some water if needed or a bit of cream if you prefer (i normally try to avoid it, but with strong tastes like these, sometimes can be the perfect missing link).

When the pasta will be "al dente" (around 7 minutes), drain it and pass it in the pan with the rest. Serve it with the grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese and say welcome to September!

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How to control your weight being happy

Have you heard someone speaking about the Fashion Week lately? Yes ok it's everywhere and lots of events are popping up here and there especially in London! So why we are speaking about it here too? Just because like every year this events won't just bring attention to the fashion world and the glamour, but to the beauty, and the models too of course! Thin? too thin? Starving size zero? Is this something to show to the teenagers? Is this a good example to give to people? Is this the beauty?

Let me share a secret with you: everyone can be fat or thin how much he/she wants, and the designers can use all the type of models they want, but the reality is that we all need to learn how to eat not how to diet and what is healthy and good for our body, what it make us happier or not.

In Italy too everyone is always speaking about diet, but the reality is that we have less junk food, we eat more at home and we have a great variety of products and a big culinary history. The famous Mediterranean Diet comes exactly from this: "it’s a modern nutritional recommendation inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of poor coastal regions of southern Italy, Crete, and Greece in the 1960's” (Wikipedia).  The principal aspects of this diet include high olive oil consumption, high consumption of legumes, high consumption of unrefined cereals, high consumption of fruits, high consumption of vegetables, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate to high consumption of fish, low consumption of meat and meat products, and moderate wine consumption.

 On top of that, everyone in Italy is more or less able to cook a plate of pasta and it’s just this that can save your line. Do you want something quick and easy, something that can fulfill you being healthy? Pasta is the best answer always. And the pasta in the right dose and cooked at home with a light sauce can be the secret of each diet and size control, giving you all the energy and beauty and even the concentration you want and need!

And because I know this is also the time of the year where after holiday everyone try to lose the pounds collected in the summer, here is the tip for you to follow: eat complex carbs ( like pasta and bread ) to control your weight and enjoy eating!

Why do you think the Mediterranean diet has been proposed to be part of the Unesco's list of "intangible" cultural heritage?

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