Those two gorgeous, fluffy dough balls left over from last night were made into pizza this lunch time. Simple and delicious, lots of tomatoes, some olives and fresh onion. I can feel my waistline expanding, as I write this, but hey…. 🙂
Last Saturday at Casa Boarati( casa nuova!) we have been treated to some lovely food again. It was lovingly prepared in their new kitchen, with fire burning, while vino was being enjoyed and conversation was flowing together with the said vino. One of the courses were small calzone made my Enrico, with Molly’s filling of spinach and ricotta. The dough was beautifully thin and crispy, I wish I could have had more, but there was fresh tagliatelle being made with veggie ragu, so I didn’t pig as much as I wanted.:-)
But I asked Enrico for recipe and made my first calzone today. Started in the morning, made a wonderful dough, far too much of it, which is why we will have pizza for lunch tomorrow, I saved some dough in the fridge. So, after Enrico, I used 550g of manitoba flour, 150g of semola di grano duro, fresh yeast 5g, some salt, some olive oil. KA did the kneading, then I stretched and folded it twice every 30 mins. Left to prove for about 5 hours- it’s grown beautifully, then, before we had to go to school for Izzie, I shaped the dough into 5 handsome balls to rest further.
Quickly pan fried some onion, red pepper, aubergine, spicy sausage- not spicy enough- and when we came back from school we could get cracking.
Having watched some videos on calzone last night I used some ricotta as well as mozarella and tomato sauce. Sun dried tomatoes were brilliant. What it needed and next time I will be ready, was some heat, some chili, either flakes or fresh. Maybe some olives, black ones. Lots of room to play and play I shall!
Farro has been bought and it was cooked and enjoyed yesterday. And it will be eaten often; research has been done, it is very good for you, it is tasty and it is versatile.
I wanted a nice, simple salad for lunch, so after a good rinse I added my farro into a pot of salted, boiling water and cooked for about 30 mins until it was soft, but still had a bit of a bite. Cooked it like pasta, in Molly’s words.
To this I added some cooked broccoli, green beans, fresh cherry tomatoes, a shallot, some spring onions, sweetcorn,some pecan nuts, seasoned with salt and pepper and generously drizzled with that fabulous olive oil from Lara. A sprinkling of parmesan was a bit of afterthought, but extra flavour nevertheless.
It was enjoyed by myself and Florek, who said he wouldn’t have it every day, but he liked it enough.
While enjoying an evening glass of sangiovese riserva I took out the remains of the salad out of the fridge and had some still, even though I wasn’t at all hungry!
Then, at school in the afternoon I was given a bag of homegrown lemons by Steve. I gave him a chunk of my carrot cake last week, for which I use candied orange peel. He said I should try making candied lemon peel and that he could help sourcing the best lemons. I didn’t need any more encouragement and the wonderfully fragrant peel has been soaking since last night. To be continued! ..:-)
That was our first Christmas in the new house.
We invited Alice and Ken, who brought Caroline along and thank God for that, is all I will say! 🙂
Food wise it was a bit challenging- lots of cooking for 6 people most days, no Mariusz, no Bozenka, no sous chefs, solo io. One fussy vegetarian.
I decided not to make tons of food, like my mum always has for Christmas, I did a few classics, but opted out of trying too hard. Vino sfuso was drunk, also one good bottle of Chianti we have brought from Greve. I would have loved some sledzik, I missed my mum’s cooking, next year we will try hard and get them over here.
For Christmas Eve I’ve served some excellent barszcz (Caz loved it) with paszteciki, recipe of Robert Maklowicz. I felt zero urge to slave and make uszka, not for this crowd. Paszteciki were excellent and I’m keeping the recipe; 200 g of plain flour, 120 g of soft butter, a tbsp of sour cream, quite a serious sprinkling of salt and 2 egg yolks. All this kitchen aided and chilled in the fridge for an hour. The filling for them were porcini and cup mushrooms. Important to seal the edges with some egg white before sticking together. Baked for 20-25 mins in 180 degrees. Lovely and crumbly.
I also made “ryba po grecku”, which was enjoyed by every fish eater at the table. Some golabki with rice and mushroom filling, clementine cake with creme fraiche to finish.
Christmas Day was again all mine to prepare, the main event were turkey wraps with mushroom filling served in a creamy, luscious marsala sauce, roasted veggies, baked red cabbage, pigs in blankets. Orange creme brulee and cantucci for dessert. Grappa bottle was unexpectedly finished.
On Boxing Day we went to Trattoria Nonna Clara, lots of lasagne was eaten, I however had some wonderful chestnut pasta with duck ragu, oh yeah! A real treat!
Izzie and Caz became best of friends this Christmas, here seen enjoying some focaccia in Lucca.
Also worth mentioning are those fabulous oranges we get in Esselunga, the juice from them is pure perfection. Gino enjoyed the box. 🙂
12 months to go, but I think we will aim for The Stronie Team to be here next winter.
Last Saturday The Boaratis came over for a pre- Christmas get-together, as they will be flying off to America for Christmas. They are mostly non meat eaters, so I thought I’d make some pierogi. I have no more twarog though, used up all my stash from the freezer, so I had to get creative. I substituted it with feta and made a batch of “Greco- Ruskie”, not too bad, but twarog really is the best option. I had some festive Ula Pedantula on youtube, big glass of water and quite enjoyed making pierogi for Molly, Enrico and the kiddos.
The other batch I filled with a combo of dried porcini mushrooms and some cup mushrooms too, these were my favourite and I’ll be making more for Christmas eve.
What made my evening were the kids, Nina, Elio and Izzie, happily stuffing their faces with my effors, eating, and helping themselves to more. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Molly brought the dessert, a lovely, creamy, simple and very well made vanilla cheesecake, plus some very posh cherries in syrup to go with it. It was very much enjoyed.
A certain Gino took to Enrico and made himself very comfortable on his lap.
It was a lovely evening!
The remaining pierogi panfried the next day made us a lovely lunch. 🙂
Steve and Ale came over to dinner on Saturday and brought along a very handsome bottle of Amarone. As is often the case, it tasted nice on the occasion, but the day after we have finished the other half of the bottle, which accompanied some Tuscan sausages, mash and … yorkies. The wine has breathed and became phenomenal. Izzie requested yorkies, I obliged, in spite of the fact that I had to scrub the oven after cooking them.
Recipe from Good Food, 70 g of plain flour, combined well with 2 whole eggs, 100 ml of milk slowly added, seasoned with s&p, cooked in very hot oil for about 20 minutes, 230 degrees.
What a wonderful marriage that was, Amarone and yorkies. To be repeated!
And it has been really, really bloody wet. For over a week now. At times it’s really intense, so yesterday when we were driving home from school, we were looking at this….
Country roads resemble small rivers, so this morning we decided to give Izzie a day off school, weather forecast for next 3 days looks a bit more optimistic.
I baked some doughnuts today, the recipe is already on the blog, exactly the same, I took my time though, all the lights were on most of the day, as outside is grey and dark- I ended up with one of the best ones ever. They are disappearing quickly too.
And a few days ago I fancied kotlety mielone. I had some minced veal, which was a first for mielone, normally it is pork. I added lots of chopped, fried onions, some stale bread soaked in milk, a handful of parmesan, seasoned them well with salt and pepper. Tossed in breadcrumbs, panfried, served with truffle mash, as you do, when it rains and one can be bothered! They were fantastic, I might make them for the dinner with Blackmores in 2 weeks time.
Anna, the lovely lady who lives next door, has given me 2 bowls full of veggies from their garden. The day before we had lunch together in our place, just to thank them for being so lovely to us from day 1. Nadia and Cristian came too, as did Anna’s husband, Francesco, largely responsible for growing all this fantastic produce.
The big tomatoes are on the windowsill for the colour to develop, but the little, sweet datterini were not kept waiting. I turned them into a lovely tomato sauce, spiked with a bit of chili, with lots of onions and garlic and a touch of fresh mint too. We had it with penne, a bit of aubergines and crispy guanciale completed the picture.
With our apetitivo we had some bruschettas, the best ones were those with stracciatella and datterini, the others with Anna’s aubergines, panfried with shallots and garlic. We devoured them with a glass of Santa Cristina bianco.
Next spring I will attempt growing some veggies, the neighbours and Steve set the bar really high!
Nicoise onion tart, which I have first come across while browsing Rick Stein’s book “French Odyssey”. When Moka was here last week , we’ve made one together for lunch one day, but I knew from the first bite that I will be making it again MY WAY. 🙂
This was our joint effort;
We had the ready made pastry from Esselunga, Moka has prepared the onions, I put the whole thing together and baked it. It was very tasty, made a great lunch, but the onions could have been softer. Moka panfried them and wasn’t interested in adding fresh bay leaves or thyme from the garden ( I smuggled some through at the end for garnish), which I found rather surprising.
So yesterday, on a first rainy day in over a month I made the pissaladiere again. My onions were cooked under cover for over 40 minutes with a generous bouquet garni. This made a huge difference. Once I removed the herbs, I gave it another 20 minutes uncovered which made the consistency almost spreadable.
Black olives on top take the 15 minutes in the oven well, anchovies don’t. These should definitely be added after the baking.
Excellent light supper alongside Greek salad and some good chianti.
Molly and Enrico invited us over to dinner last night. As usual it was lovely to catch up with them and spend a few hours with their lovely kiddos, who not only know how to behave at the table, they also eat everything that’s served (salad??!!) and are simply a pleasure to be around.
I offered to make the dessert, sponge cake with whipped cream and fresh pineapple, this time however I’ve made the sponge from a different recipe than my mom’s, I used Dorota’s from mojewypieki.com. 3 whole eggs, 3 tbsps of plain flour, 3 tbsps of potato starch, 6 tbsps of sugar/vanilla sugar and 1/4 tsp of baking powder. After less than 30 minutes in the oven I ended up with a perfect sponge.
I have no picture of the ready thing, sadly, but it was enjoyed and some was left for today, to Elio’s delight!
I tried homemade caponata for the first time and I loved it. And I can’t wait to make it myself this weekend. Sweet and sour, served with crusty baguette and prosecco sfuso. Life is good!
The main were wonderful, light, soft, pillowy gnocchi with pesto. All made fresh! Just how they should be. Might also make some one of these days!
