Entries Tagged 'love for food' ↓

Risotto is a typical rice recipe of northern Italy. There are different ways to prepare it and you can make it with any kind of ingredient, from vegetables to meat.
Some time ago we were given a pumpkin and eventually we decided to open it and to cook it.
It was beautiful and ripe, and very big…
I used a part of it to make a delicious soup and the other part to make risotto. This is how I cooked it:
I warmed up olive oil in a large pan, then added onions, leek and one potato, all chopped, leaving them on small fire.
I cut in very thin slices the pumpkin (that had been emptied and cleaned before) and added it to the rest, covering then all those vegetables with water. I added salt, pepper and chopped parley and covered the pan leaving on small fire, stirring regularly.
After about 20 minutes some water had been absorbed and the pumpkin was soft enough. So I added the Vialone Nano rice, which is the best variety for risotto, with its short and round grains. I must say that my favourite rice is from Melotti, an historical producer from the countryside located South of Verona, a very good area for rice since centuries.
For the quantity, we usually measure one cup of rice per person.
After adding the rice, you need to stir frequently and sometimes add water, because rice absorbs a lot of liquid. A good vialone nano rice quality usually takes 15 minutes to cook, sometimes even 20. The only way to know if it’ ready is to taste it…

When you see that it’s almost ready (the grain is getting soft outside but still a little bit hard inside), stop adding water. A good risotto must not be too dry, nor too liquid. It must appear smooth and creamy.
At this moment, I turn off the fire, add a small quantity of butter and a cup of grated Parmigiano cheese. I cover the pan for about five minutes.
Now the risotto is creamy and thick and ready to be served!

Food in Tuscany has kept a very original and archaic nature. No compromises with a modern, world cuisine. Tuscan people don’t like compromises. In the same way as they were able to maintain the originality of their landscapes, avoiding as much as possible jerry-building (unfortunately very common in other parts of Italy), so they also kept in their cuisine many ancient recipes.
Eating their vegetable soups, meat, pasta and many other special recipes, I always have the feeling I am still eating the same recipes as in the time of Dante, Boccaccio, Lorenzo de’ Medici… This feeling is even stronger when we are in those wonderful medieval villages, as Montefioralle for example, or in places with view on the renaissance buildings in Florence.
The flavours are strong and masculine, the ingredients are natural and rustic. Recipes are transmitted since generations, with a big respect of tradition.
My brother-in-law who is born and raised in Florence is an artist of Tuscan cuisine. Last weekend in their beautiful house on the Chianti hills he prepared the Gran Pezzo, which literally means “big piece” and this is the name of the recipe, but it is also a very big piece of meat!…

The Gran Pezzo is a huge rib steak (more or less 3 kg) with bones, bound together with a string and then cooked for a couple of hours in the oven at high temperature. In this case he used the firewood oven in the garden. He prepared the meat covering it with salt and pepper. The result was delicious: a crisp crust outside and rosy and savoury inside. Accompanied by baked potatoes and some bottles of Chianti Classico, it was a great Tuscan dinner!

I will conclude today my description of the Italian way of drinking coffee with cappuccino.
I guess everybody knows what it is: an espresso coffee with addition of milk. But it’s not just milk, because it’s warmed up with steam (using a special nozzle on the espresso machine that I described in my previous post), which produces a delicious foam, which makes cappuccino so unique….
Anyway, preparing an excellent cappuccino is not so easy, because the best cappuccino must have some conditions.
Not too warm: if it’s too warm it’s because the barman used to much steam to warm it up. Consequently the cappuccino will be not only difficult to drink, but also too “long” because of the quantity of water produced by the steam.
The foam must be thick: so thick that you will drink it first and then collect it with a spoon…
A good balance between coffee and milk.

In Italy the real cappuccino addicts select and choose their favourite breakfast bars according to their cappuccino.
When do we drink cappuccino? Only for breakfast, usually together with what we call a “brioche”, a croissant.
If you are in a bar or restaurant in Italy and you see someone drinking cappuccino after a meal or in the afternoon (or sometimes even at night!) then one thing is sure: this is a tourist!

Today I will talk about espresso, maybe the most famous Italian coffee, because it’s not only drunk in all bars and restaurants in Italy, but now more and more also abroad.
Espresso is made with a quite complex machine where pressurized water comes in contact with compressed coffee powder, coming out through a kind of nozzle.
There are now many types of those machines, not only for bars but also for home. I always prefer drinking it from a professional machine.
A good espresso coffee is served in cups that are warmed up keeping them on top of the machine. The coffee is freshly grinded and its aroma can vary a lot, depending from its quality, but also from the machine. The real espresso is very creamy and it’s just a very small quantity, absolutely not a full cup, even if the cups are already very small!

Tourists are often quite surprised by this kind of concentrated coffee, they prefer sipping coffee slowly.
That’s why seeing Italians in the bar is very funny and almost hectic, as they don’t drink their coffee, they just “throw” it in!
Being in a crowded bar in any Italian city at 9 a.m. is actually a very eclectic experience. All these people ready to go to work in their very stylish suits, still with their sunglasses on their nose (even if it’s raining), rush into the bar and push each other at the counter. The real amazing thing is that every single Italian likes his coffee in a different way. Who takes it “pure”, who wants it with sugar, some prefer it with cold milk, some with warm milk. You have also a category of people that besides those 4 basic categories also like it in a big cup. In this case the range of “special requests” becomes very wide. In the “big cup” people not only drink a cappuccino, no, they sometimes want a “spotted milk” (means 90% milk against 10% coffee), but also this can be adjusted with many variations. Others want a big cup with coffee and warm milk but “with a lot of foam”. Then you have those who have a particular attention to health, they will order a “deca” but sometimes specifying that it must be HAG (the importance of a brand…). Others like to go back to origins and order a barley coffee. I really admire our barmen!
What about myself? I like a normal espresso and I just add some sugar in it. It’s a matter of fact that I’m not a fantasist regarding coffee….