Mad Italian Foodies

Italian Fruit Tarts

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 22:47:00 +0000

Preparation time: 40 minutes. Serves 10 people.

Is there anything better than a delicious, crispy, crunchy Fruit Tart to start a weekend!? Fruit tarts with Crema Pasticcera and seasonal fruit are the perfect treat for your weekend and are perfect for any occasion: breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea, chemical hunger at night.

1. Sweet Shortcrust Pastry (Pasta Frolla)

275 gr. of plain (all-purpose) flour
100 gr. sugar 100 gr. unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
lemon zest (half lemon)

Mix the flour and the sugar together, make a volcano as shown in the picture and add 1 egg, 1 egg yolk, butter and the lemon zest.

Mix all together with cold hands - remember to keep them cold!! At the beginning the dough will look like crumbles - don't worry, that's normal! Process until dough comes together. Test by squeezing a small amount of dough together with your fingers. If dough is crumbly, keep mixing with your hands until dough is smooth and compact.

Make a ball and flatten it into a disc and wrap in a transparent film. Transfer it to the refrigerator and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out pastry on a lightly floured work surface to 3-mm thickness. Cut pastry and fit it into the tart tins (previously buttered and floured); trim off excess pastry with a sharp paring knife. Prick base of pastry shells with a fork.

Preheat oven to 200° C.

Line each pastry shell with non-stick baking paper and fill with ceramic pie weights, dried beans or rice. Bake pastry shells until edges are just beginning to turn golden, about 15 minutes.

Transfer baking sheet to wire rack. Remove non-stick baking paper and pie weights. Let cool for 1 minute. Remove pastry shells from tins and return to wire rack to cool completely.

2. Pastry Cream (Crema Pasticcera)

3 cups of whole milk
few drops of vanilla (or vanilla seeds)
3 tablespoons of sugar
3 large egg yolks, room temperature
3 tablespoons of flour
half lemon peel

In small saucepan bring milk and vanilla just to the boil over medium heat. Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl whisk together egg yolks sugar until pale. Using a fine mesh sieve, sift flour into egg mixture; whisk until smooth.

Remove vanilla bean from milk mixture. Gradually pour 1/3 hot milk mixture into egg mixture, whisking constantly until well combined.

Pour mixture back into saucepan. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, over low heat. Continue to boil, whisking constantly, over medium heat until thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer mixture to small bowl. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly onto surface of pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming as it cools.

3. Assembling Fruit Tarts

Mixed berries and season fruits: raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, but also bananas, kiwi and peaches.

To prepare glaze, in small saucepan heat jelly over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until jelly is melted, set aside to cool slightly.Divide pastry cream evenly between pastry shells.

Arrange berries on top; using a small pastry brush thinly coat berries with glaze.

If not serving tarts immediately refrigerate to chill. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Having fruit tarts after dinner?! Enjoy them with your homemade Limoncello - Recipe here!

Italian Chicken Cacciatore with Sage and Prosciutto

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 15:05:00 +0000

Preparation time: 40 minutes. Serves 4 people (depending on the size of the chicken)

This is a yummy, typically-Italian variation of the famous Pollo alla Cacciatora recipe. The recipe is also extremely easy and fast to prepare - you will only need few minutes and then let it cook for 30 minutes!

Ingredients:

- 1 free-range Chicken or chopped free-range chicken pieces

- 100 gr Parma ham

- half glass red wine

- sage, rosemary, E-V olive oil, onion

Take a saucepan, add 7 tbsp E-V olive oil and 2 garlic cloves with their skin and put it over medium-low heat. Add the chicken pieces and continue cooking, stirring them about so as to brown all sides (5 minutes per side).

Once the ten minutes is up stir the wine into the pot and cook over a brisk flame until the wine evaporates. Dust with freshly ground pepper and salt on each side of the meat.

When the wine has evaporated (i.e. when you don't smell alcohol in the air anymore), add the chopped herbs (8 leaves of sage and some rosemary) and the chopped ham (see pictures).

Mix well, cover, reduce the flame to a low simmer, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring, over a low flame until the meat is fork tender; should things look like they're beginning to stick down, add a little water.

The dish is ready. This is what I call a mouth-watering recipe: the fat of the chicken melts with the fried and crunchy Parma ham making the perfect sauce... yes, yes, yes!

Try it now!

Mascarpone Amaretti Cups

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 18:54:00 +0000

Preparation time: 20 minutes. Serves 6 people (depending on the size of the cups)

It's time for a nice yummy dessert - easy to make, absolutely delicious to taste! I would recommend to prepare it for an after lunch or dinner.

You will only need:

- 150 gr Mascarpone cheese

- 100 gr Icing Sugar

- 3 eggs

- Shaved dark chocolate

- Some brandy

- Amaretti biscuits

Mix the egg yolks with the icing sugar (ops, sorry for the wrong sugar in the picture!) until you obtain a creamy light mixture. Add the Mascarpone and mix a bit more.

In another bowl, mix the egg whites until they reach a somewhat firm peak. When your egg whites get fluffy...STOP! If you overbeat them, they will liquify again. Then Shave the dark chocolate as shown below.

Add the whipped whites and the shaved dark chocolate to the creamy mixture previously prepared. Gently stir with a spatula from the bottom to the top of the bowl, so that the whipped whites don't liquify.

Your cream is ready!

Add the cookies to a medium bowl and stir in the brandy or any other dessert liquor (just until moistened, you don't want them soggy). It's time to get a cup or a glass. Divide the Amaretti into the bottom of 6 glasses (4-5 Amaretti per glass). Add the cream and top with a roughly shaved dark chocolate. Believe me, this is as good as a well-prepared Tiramisu'!

Can it get better than this?

Unexpected Bruschettas

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 20:43:00 +0000

Preparation time: between 5mins and 1h30. Serves 8 people

Tired of the usual tomato&basil bruschettas? Try out this recipe and you will delight your guest with a simple but sophisticated starter!

We present you two different kind of bruschettas, which can accompany both a rich or light dinner/lunch:

Cherry "Confit" Tomatoes&Burrata

Here you are what you need:

Bread, sliced
Cherry tomatoes
Burrata (a typical kind of mozzarella from Puglia, south Italy), if you can't find it, you can use Buffalo Mozzarella
Oil
Salt&pepper
Sugar

First of all, cherry tomatoes need to be prepared: the only thing you need is time. Cut the tomatoes in halves and dispose them over a oven tray, upon a piece of baking paper. Sprinkle some sugar, oil, salt and pepper over them (sugar and salt in the same quantities).

Leave them cooking in a pre-heated oven at 170° for 1h40mins, at a medium height.

Once tomatoes are ready, put them over a slice of bread, with some Burrata or Mozzarella cut into small pieces.

Put again in the oven (max temperature) for 5 minutes, until the Burrata is melted down.

Serve immediately.

Lardo di Colonnata&Anchovies

For this recipe, the ingredients are a little bit more difficult to find, but once you find them the recipe only take 10 minutes:

- Bread, sliced

- Lardo di colonnata

- Rosemary

- Anchovies

We found the real Lardo di Colonnata in the refrigerated section at Best Of Italy, Ranelagh.

Cut the Lardo in very thin slices, and put it over the slices of bread. Add few rosemary leaves upon it and one anchovy on each slide of bread.

Put in a pre-heated oven at 200° for 5 minutes, or until lardo melts and anchovies become a little bit crunchy.

Simply delicious!

Limoncello!

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:32:00 +0000

For 3 LT of Limoncello: Preparation time: 30 mins, Sitting time: 15 days

No idea for Christmas presents? Try out this simple recipe and you will astonish your friends with a homemade, typical Italian liquor which will help them digest Christmas meals!
The only thing you need are:

1 LT Pure Alcohol (95% min)
8/9 untreated lemons
1 aTnd ¼ L of water
1 kg of sugar
...time: lemon peels have to sit for 15 days minimum, before completing the preparation process.

Day 1:
Pour the bottle of Alcohol and the bottle into a gallon jar.
Try to use organic lemons or make sure that lemons are cleaned to remove all pesticides, dirt, and fertilizer chemicals. Dry the lemons. Use a potato peeler to peel just the yellow part of the skin off the lemons. Make sure you have NO white pith on the back of the peels, because this causes bitterness in the finished liqueur. Try to make the peel pieces as large as possible, because this will make the straining process easier.

Put the lemon peels in the gallon jar and stir gently.

Cover tightly and put away in a cool (not cold) dark place for alcohol to extract oils from peels, creating an infusion. Let it sit for 15 days. Every two days gently stir lemon peels to refresh exposure to alcohol.

Day 15:

Put the water and the sugar together over the heat and let the sugar dissolve into the water. Do not let it boil, otherwise the water will evaporate.

Once the sugar is melted, set syrup aside to cool. It must be room temp before adding to infusion.

Use a slotted spoon to gently scoop lemon peels from the jar and discard. To avoid creating small pieces that will make straining more difficult, try not to break peels as you remove them.

Add the liquor to the syrup and mix gently. Use a strainer to pour the liquor into bottles and return to cool dark place to storage.

Now Limoncello is ready to use: label it and provide yourself with fancy Limoncello small glasses, as showed in the pictures.

Limoncello is best when served directly from the freezer. Enjoy!

Pasta alla Amatriciana

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Preparation time: 20 minutes.

Details: approx. €10 to serve 4 people.

Many of you might remember that we have already talked about the real ancestor of this pasta recipe: the famous and delightful Pasta Alla Gricia. This two pasta recipes share their history together as both of them were meant to sustain shepherds in the Lazio region during transhumance days (i.e. the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures).

It's not surprising then that Pasta all'Amatriciana is just Pasta alla Gricia with the addition of....tomato sauce! Many people say that this pasta is the definite completion of Pasta alla Gricia, that reaches its perfection when it becomes "all'Amatriciana". I love both recipes, and strongly think that both of them have the dignity to be thought as "distinct recipes".

Pasta all'Amatriciana takes its name from the city where it's from: Amatrice. Here (and in Rome's deli shops) you can find the n.1 ingredient for this recipe: guanciale di Amatrice. Guanciale is cured pork jowl, and has a unique, mild, intensely piggy flavor. Obviously you don't need Amatrice's guanciale necessarily (at least if you live abroad), and you can use any other Guanciale available at the shop (it must be rigorously Italian, of course). Please never prepare an Amatriciana with Pancetta or Irish Bacon. Seriuosly, Don't do it!

The preparation is really easy, and once again:

NO GARLIC!

NO ONION!

NO PARMESAN!

NO PARSLEY!

This is all you need:

1 tbsp E-V olive oil
150 gr. Guanciale (you can find it at Best of Italy or Fallon&Byrne in Dublin, or buy it online!)
120 gr. Pecorino cheese (easily found at Superquinn, Fresh, Best of Italy, Fallon&Byrne)
400 gr. Pomodori Pelati (pelati/chopped tomatoes)
500 gr. Spaghetti or Bucatini or Rigatoni
1 chili pepper
half glass white wine
salt, pepper

Bring your well-salted pasta water to a boil. While the water is heating, slice the guanciale thinly into narrow strips and grate the Pecorino. Place the guanciale in a cold pan with a tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil and place over medium heat; the olive oil helps to render the fat evenly and acts as a conduit, transferring the flavor from the pan to the pasta.

When the guanciale strips are starting to get translucent, add less than half glass of white wine. Leave the guanciale on the fire for 1 minute max, waiting for the wine to evaporate and add the Pelati tomatoes. Mix all together and season with salt, pepper and a 1 chili pepper. Continue to cook the sauce for 10 minutes, tossing the mix from time to time.

As soon as you add the tomatoes and the sauce starts to take shape, put the pasta in the boiling water and drain it when it reaches its "al dente" texture. We used rigatoni for this recipe...I love how they mix and dance with the sauce! Quickly add the drained pasta to the pan and turn on the heat. Toss the pasta vigorously coating with the sauce made of guanciale and tomatoes, grinding some black pepper on it. After about 1-2 minutes, remove the pan from the heat and add the previously grated Pecorino (it should not melt on the pasta, so remove the pan from the heat before this step!).

We could say that this recipe is simple, authentic, historical, delicious, etc. I'd say it's Orgasmic. I just can't find other proper words to define it.

Frittata di scammaro: Eggless Omelet

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:15:00 +0000

Preparation time: 40 minutes in total.

Details: approx. €15 to serve 4-5 people.

This is a typical recipe from Naples, a city famous for pizza, passion, chaos, traffic, sunshine and crime! This lively southern port city is a real paradox: you can find incredible venues and historical places mingled with urban decay. Modern skyscrapers and dilapidated houses. Super clean areas and extremely dirty ones.
Naples also hosts the world famous Christmas cribs market: thousands of tourist gather here each here to buy nativity sets, sheep, miniature foods, miniature market stalls and crib figures. I mean any kind of crib figure: ever thought about adding Steve Jobs among the mainstream, standard shepherds?!

Let's go back to our recipe: this is called a frittata but it is not made with eggs or meat. It is a cake of fried spaghetti seasoned with the usual and much-beloved Neapolitan condiments of garlic, olives, anchovies, capers, sultanas and pine nuts. It merely resembles a frittata.

Scammaro refers to days of fasting, and this is one of the so-called lean dishes that you can have before Easter on fasting days. While it contains no meat or dairy, it does have a significant olive oil content (so, for real fasting, I would not suggest this recipe!). It takes time to accomplish, too — 40 minutes of nearly constant attention. But it's worth it. Oh yes, it is.

This recipe fully respects the neapolitan most hortodox tradition and is inspired to the YouTube recipe by Marinella Penta De Peppo. Mrs Penta De Peppo is Naples at its best: culture, love for tradition and arts, beauty and elegance. She is also a great YouTuber and I strongly recommend Italian speakers to watch this video and visit her channel!

Marinella, we love you!

As she teachs us, there is a legend behind this recipe according to which Frittata di Scammaro was a creation of Cico the Wizard (Mago Cico) who managed to create an omelet without eggs (well...the story is far more complex, of course).

Legends apart, let's now focus on the recipe itself, here's what you need:

280 grams spaghetti
100 grams fresh black olives
50 grams salted capers
75 grams pine nuts
75 grams sultanas
4 anchovies fillets
Extra-virgin olive oil and 2 garlic cloves

Take a saucepan, add 7 tbsp E-V olive oil and 2 garlic cloves and put it over medium-low heat. When the garlic starts to get yellowish, add the roughly chopped olives, the capers, the sultanas and pine nuts and mix well. Don't add the anchovies at this stage. Increase the heat very slightly and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. When the sauce is ready, add the anchovies and mix well (in this way they will not melt with the heat).

Cook the spaghetti until al dente in plenty of salted, boiling water. Drain well. When ready, transfer the previously prepared sauce to a large bowl. Add the spaghetti and toss well to distribute the sauce throughout.

Take a skillet and add half glass E-V olive oil. Place over high heat for 1 minute, distributing the spaghetti evenly and pressing it down a little. Then lower the heat to start cooking the omelet and start heating each "pole" of the skillet for 3-4 minutes. Let's imagine the skillet has 4 poles: north, south, west and east. Rotate the skillet over the low fire and heat each pole for 3-4 minutes. Cook one side of the omelet for 15 minutes in total. Then slide it onto a large dinner plate or platter, then flip it back into the pan with the uncooked side down and repeat the cooking process for other 15 minutes (3-4 mins per pole).

Total cooking time will then be 30 minutes!

This recipe is simply amazing: it embodies history, tradition and is characterized by a well balanced mix of mediterranean flavours.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature, cut into wedges (scissors work best), as an antipasto, first course, or second course.

Yes, this is such a great example of simple cooking and great, authentic flavor! Cico the wizard was a great magician..

Italian Mushroom Risotto

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:17:00 +0000

Preparation time: 20 minutes to prepare dried mushrooms + 20 minutes preparation time.
Serves 4 people.

Autumn has hit the town and what's one of the things about autumn? Mushrooms! Well, Risotto with mushrooms: an Italian classic. As many "Italian classics" is often misinterpreted and screwed with any possible creamy sauce: creme fraiche, fresh cream, creamy cream, cream.

It's true, this risotto requires some patience, but oh so worth it! It's a quite light, simple and vegetarian recipe that will astonish any guest coming home for dinner or lunch without any notice. It should not be too dry, nor too watery: it should be as it should be, as the wise man would say.

Let's start with the recipe!

400 gr. Dried Mushrooms
400 gr. Risotto (Arborio)
1/2 onion
2 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
40 gr. butter
2 tablespoon chopped parsley
salt&pepper
grated Parmigiano...a lot of Parmigiano
2 vegetable stocks melted in 1 lt. of hot water
a glass of white wine

Soak the porcini mushrooms in hot water for 10 minutes, then drain well (remember to keep the water!). Prepare 1 lt. broth with the vegetable stocks and keep it warm.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy based saucepan and add the garlic. Fry over a gentle heat for 2-3 minutes, until softened. Remove the garlic, add the previously chopped mushrooms and fry for a further 2-3 minutes, until browned. Add salt and pepper, and a bunch of chopped parsley. Drain the mushrooms and keep the oil aside!

Put butter and chopped onion in another saucepan over low heat; once the butter is melted add the rice and toast it and stir it with a wooden spoon. Add the wine and let it evaporate.

When the rice starts sticking to the pan, pour over a cup of mushrooms water and a cup of broth. Let the rice absorb the liquid and repeat the operation until the rice is cooked.

Remember: never stop to stir the rice, which you don't want to overcook: it has to crunch a little bit.

When ready, add the drained mushroom into the risotto and stir well. Remove from the heat and keep stirring, adding the previously stocked mushrooms oil and grated parmesan. Spread with remaining parsley.

Some people use to add butter in the end: mushrooms oil is healthier and tastier!

Serve immediately...

... and see heaven!

Pollo alla Romana: the recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Preparation time: 40 minutes.
Details: approx. €10 to serve 4 people.

Pollo alla Romana (chicken with peppers or pollo con i peperoni): one of the most classic recipes from Rome! And there's no better way to present this recipe but following the authentic hints by Sora Lella.

Yes, this mouth-watering recipe also allows us to pay a tribute to the glorious Sora Lella. Who was Sora Lella? Well an actress, show-woman, the sister of a old Italian actor and showman (Aldo Fabrizi) and the co-owner of the famous Rome restaurant, now named after her (Sora Lella, on the isola Tiberina).

She was known to the main public as the stereotype of the typical Roman citizen: she embodied skepticism, wit, pragmatism, indolence, indifference, humor, self-irony and sarcasm.

Needless to say, she was extremely funny and a great cook: we could actually define her as a foodie. Her recipes represent the essence of Italian cuisine, sticking to the most orthodox tradition. For all Italian speakers, here is a small video describing this 100% authentic recipe. A real piece of History:

Argh, I love her!

However, let's go back to our chicken recipe: this is an extremely cheap and easy recipe that will amaze anyone loving red peppers! Despite being a very simple mix of ingredients (like every authentic Italian recipe), the taste is really incredible and red peppers are simply great for flavoring chicken meat.

Ingredients:

Chicken pieces for 4 persons
5 vine tomatoes
1 glass white wine
4 peppers
salt, whole black pepper, rosemary
2 garlic cloves

First of all, as Sora Lella teaches us, be careful when selecting red peppers at the shop: they must be 4-cornered, which means they are sweet enough for the recipe. As you can see you really need few ingredients to deliver magic!

First of all, put the chicken pieces in a pan with some extra-virgin olive oil (not too much - we want to keep the recipe light!) and two garlic cloves (don't chop them otherwise the sauce will be too garlicky and we definitely don't want this) and heat the pan on a medium fire. Add some rosemary, some peppercorns and salt the chicken.

Brown the chicken thoroughly from all sides. After 3 minutes add some a glass of white wine and make it evaporate properly for 1-2 minutes. What a nice smell!

Meanwhile, peel and chop the tomatoes and when ready put them in the pan together with the chicken.

Leave the tomatoes mix with the chicken and chop the red peppers as shown below. When ready put them in the pan and toss the chicken folding with peppers and the tomato sauce.

Leave the pan on a medium heat for about 30 minutes covering it with a lid.

After 30 minutes have gone, try the sauce and add some salt if needed. Serve the chicken hot without adding anything. Pure simplicity.

Pollo alla Romana is not only a recipe: it's History. This is the way Romans have been eating chicken for centuries. And this is simply....

... Incredible! Buon Appetito :-)

Quote: "Se Napoleone veniva a Roma se magnava er pollo che je facevo io" (Sora Lella)

Pasta alla gricia

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:16:00 +0000

Preparation time: 15 minutes.

Details: approx. €10 to serve 4/5 people.

Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe, Amatriciana and Gricia: the kings of Roman pastas! Those are the top 4 "seriously Roman" pasta dishes you cannot miss if you visit Rome! We will dedicate separate posts to each recipe, as each one has a different story and preparation. We are talking about very simple pasta recipes whose origins lay in central Italy shepherd's traditions: this means that any ingredient substitution is not minor and will screw up everything!

Pasta alla Gricia is the least famous of the group, but surely many people's favorite....

Let's do some history first: Pasta alla Gricia is the old ancestor of the more famous Pasta all' Amatriciana, and is also known as "Amatriciana in bianco" (basically Amatriciana without tomato sauce). The name origins from a small town in central Lazio: Grisciano, which is very close to Amatrice. Amatrice is the world-famous capital of the incredible Pasta all'Amatriciana (we will soon talk about this in a new post): a small and beautiful town, located on the Lazio mountains in the very heart of Italy.

Amatrice, Lazio, Italy

Back in the past local shepherds used to cook a very simple but super-satisfying dish at dinner that would help them facing the harshness and toughness of the next day. They used to cook this pasta when descending from the mountains with their sheeps. That's why the ingredients had to be very poor and represented the most popular local products: Pecorino romano (the hard, tangy grating cheese made from sheep's milk) and Guanciale (cured pork jowl, which has a unique, intensely piggy flavor). At the beginning of the nineteenth century many shepherds moved to Rome, due to a severe sheep-farming crisis. Gricia and Amatriciana started to become very popular dishes among Romans and since then these pasta recipes are associated to the Italian capital.

The good news for all those who live far from Amatrice or Grisciano is that it's very easy to reproduce Pasta alla Gricia, IF you stick to tradition. Before listing the very simple ingredients, please bear in mind what follows:

NO GARLIC!

NO ONION!

NO PARMESAN!

NO PARSLEY!

NO BUTTER!

NO CHILI!

NO BACON!

NO, NO, NO!

Ok, let's get calm again and list the ingredients for 4 persons:

500 grams Rigatoni or Bucatini or Spaghetti
125 grams guanciale (you can find it at Best of Italy or Fallon&Byrne in Dublin, or buy it online!)
150 grams Pecorino (easily found at Superquinn, Fresh, Best of Italy or Fallon&Byrne)
a small glass of white wine
1 tbspoon extra-virgin olive oil
pepper and salt

The preparation is idiot-proof: sticking to tradition is EASY. Seriuosly, hortodoxy is King in this case. Creative licence is allowed, however, when it comes to pasta - as you can see above (we tried with both Rigatoni and Spaghetti for the post).

Bring your well-salted pasta water to a boil. While the water is heating, slice the guanciale thinly into narrow strips and grate the Pecorino.

Place the guanciale in a cold pan with a tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil and place over medium heat; the olive oil helps to render the fat evenly and acts as a conduit, transferring the flavor from the pan to the pasta. When the guanciale strips are starting to get translucent, add less than half glass of white wine. Leave the guanciale on the fire for few more minutes, waiting for the wine to evaporate and allowing it to release more precious fat that will become the pasta natural sauce! Don't burn the guanciale: it just needs to get brownish. The smell of the Guanciale moist will basically leave you speechless at this stage.

When the pasta reaches the Al Dente texture, quickly drain it and add it to the pan and turn on the heat. Toss the pasta vigorously coating with the guanciale and the fat, grinding some black pepper on it. Remove the pan from the heat and add the previously grated pecorino (it should not melt on the pasta, so remove the pan from the heat before this step!). This will add the perfect sheepy taste to the pasta.

Fatto: Harmony, Sublimity, Simplicity, Art and Splendor all in one plate.

Ecche-to-dico affà?

Sole alla Mugnaia

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:43:00 +0000

Preparation time: 10 minutes.
Details: approx. €10-15 to serve 4 people.

This is just a super easy and tasty recipe that can save you from the usual canned tuna salad or grilled chicken fillet. The recipe is originally french (sole à la meunière), but it's always been a very popular dish in Italy and we will post the Italian lighter version.

You don't need much: just go to any shop and buy some fresh soles or plaices (1 per person)! . Plaices are also very nice and you don't even need to skin them as it's very easy to remove the skin when you eat them after being cooked.

After buying the fish, just go back home: most probably you already have the remaining ingredients in your fridge! That's what you need:

4 soles/plaices
120 grams butter
parsley
flour
salt
lemon

The steps are super easy: flour the plaices/soles in the flour and shake off the excess.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter and the oil over medium heat. Saute the fish on both sides until nicely golden brown, about 5 minutes per side.

Remove the fish to a serving platter and keep warm, discarding the cooking fat. Mmmm.... what a great smell (ahah ok, I need to do some crap marketing sometimes)! Before starting eating, slice the lemon and chop the parsley, which you should then sprinkle all over the fish together with some lemon juice.

As a side, we decided to fry some coarsely cut cabbage with some extra-virgin olive oil, a whole garlic clove and a pinch of Italian chili.

A simply perfect & cheap dinner ready in just 10 minutes.

Bye bye canned tuna!!

Roman walks: forno Campo De' Fiori

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:00:00 +0000

There's nothing better than a weekend in Rome in the middle of October: it's warm, it's beautiful, it's home, it's Rome. Plus, it was 25° and ridiculously sunny, and the reassuring brownish-yellow-light blue Roman colours were shining!

No, I could not spend my weekend back home without thinking at our beloved blog. So, today we'll start with a series of posts dedicated to Roman pilgrimages to holy food sites. And we can't start our pilgrimage without talking about the glorious Forno Campo De' Fiori, can we?

Ok, we need to do some history first ...

In fact, the Forno is located in Campo De' Fiori (literally, "field of flowers" - the name was first given during the Middle Ages when the area was actually a meadow), a very famous square in which a food market is held every day (except Sundays). You can find a statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno in the middle of the square: he was burnt alive here for heresy in 1600.

Campo De' Fiori square is located in the baroque area of the city, enclosed between River Tiber, Piazza Venezia, via del Corso and Piazza del Popolo. In this relatively small area you can find tens of extraordinary churches, world-famous paintings, old roman monuments and enjoy the tales that every street tells you while passing by.

Yes, this is getting boring. Let's talk about real things: our Forno!

Well, this is by far one of the best Forno in town: here you can find an absolutely mouth-watering Pizza Bianca and many other Pizza Al Taglio variations. We are not talking about round pizzas you can eat in pizzerias: this is Pizza al Taglio (see here the dedicated post), which you can buy in local Fornos (i.e. bakeries) or dedicated shops. Pizza bianca is their showpiece: a crunchy, chewy olive oil-based flat bread that lands on the chopping block still hot and straight from the oven every 10 minutes at peak times. And yes, you can see how they make it running through the "kitchen" just behind the counter!

Look at this: orgasmic! If only you could smell the pizza scent when it is taken out of the oven...

Of course, you simply cannot miss all the other pizzas (the Margherita is lip-smacking, but also all the other variations are one step above the rest!), including confectionery, biscuits and the large range of breads they produce every day in the shop.

If you happen to travel to Rome, it's easy to find our beloved Forno: Giordano Bruno is looking exactly at the Forno, whose name is clearly indicated on the walls. I wonder if he had the chance to eat such a thing...

As you can see in the above picture, the same Forno guys own a twin shop which is located on the Forno's left side: you can find a gorgeous "pizza farcita" there (i.e. pizza bianca filled with fresh ingredients like ham, mozzarella, ham&figs, etc.).

If you can't go to Rome tomorrow morning and have lunch there, you can simply try our great homemade Pizza al Taglio recipe!

If you can't eat carbs or have some kind of allergy but will be in Rome tomorrow morning, you can also opt to spend a whole morning beside the entrance of the shop and smell heaven: it's worth it, surely not less than a Michelangelo painting.

Chocolate fondant...what else?

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Preparation time: 10 minutes for the preparation, 8-10 minutes for cooking.

Details: approx. €10 to serve 15 fondants

A.k.a. "How to kick off a chilly-but-dry weekend in Dublin", the chocolate fondant is a simple but sensational dessert.

This recipe has all the requirements to be declared as the perfect dessert recipe: simple, fast, no weird ingredients, you can prepare it in advance and above all, it's with CHOCOLATE.
The only important thing is that you have to know your oven very well, in order to get the right consistency: a little bit crunchy on the side, but exceptionally warm inside.

So, take out from the sideboard:

200 gr. of dark chocolate (70%)
180 gr. of butter
40 gr. of flour
4 eggs
160 gr. of sugar
cupcake moulds

Directions:

Melt the chocolate and the butter together in bain-marie. Whisk the eggs and the sugar together, adding the flour in the end.
Add the melted chocolate to the mixture and use a wooden spoon to blend it well, until you have a smooth cream.

Put the cream into the moulds, previously greased with butter and floured (if you are using silicone or paper moulds you don't need to use butter and flour). Fill the moulds for 3/4 and either:

cook them immediately (180°, for 13 minutes - ventilated oven)

freeze them and keep them for whenever you want to serve them. You can put them in the oven still frozen and the result will be exactly the same.

As I mentioned before, the only complicated part is when you cook them. In order to keep the centre soft and warm, you need to take out the fondants from the oven as soon as you see little cracks on the top:

Garnish them with red fruits, mint leaves and serve them!

Italian Apple tart - torta di Mele

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Preparation time: 40 minutes for the preparation, 1 hour for the baking.

Details: approx. €20 to serve 6 people

There's only one remedy for the sudden end of the summer: welcome in the next season with open arms! Yes, we have to convince ourselves: Autumn is great and full of romance.

Last Sunday the rain was falling slowly upon the fields, trees were losing their leaves, the sky was grey and gloomy. And shops were closed. I could not think of a more depressing moment, so I started looking for a solution. And what's better than an Apple Tart to start the Fall/Winter Season 2012?

Looking at different Italian Apple Tart recipes, I found this one which is the right mix between tradition and innovation. Of course, the Italian Apple Tart is very different from the American Apple Pie (there is no pastry cover) and the British Apple Crumble (no butter crumbs).

Aprons on! Get ready with:

280 gr. plain flour (00)
160 gr. Butter
500 gr. Apples (Gray Pippin Apples, or "Mele Renette")
300 cl. Milk
100 gr. Sugar
80 gr. of Rich Tea Biscuits
40 gr. of Raisins
3 Egg Yolks
1 Vanilla Bean
3 Tablespoons of Apricot Jam
1 Lemon
3 Tablespoons of Marsala liquor (€ 12,99/bottle at Best of Italy Shop)

Short-crust Pastry:
Mix together 250 gr. of flour with the butter (still cold), cut into small pieces. Add 2-3 tablespoons of water and mix until the pastry became smooth. Cover it with cling film and put in the fridge for at least one hour. After that, roll it (3 mm height) over a spring-release tin (previously greased and covered with baking paper) and riddle it with holes.
Keep in the fridge the extra dough.

Marsala Italian-style Custard:
Whisk 2 egg yolks with 50 gr. of sugar, then add 3 tablespoons of Marsala and the remaining flour. In the meantime, heat the milk up with the Vanilla Bean, carved along the side. Pour the hot milk into the mixture and put everything on the stove, mixing well, until it thickens.

Apple Tart:
Crumbles the biscuits and spread them over the pastry in the tin. Cover it with the cream and make another layer of crumbled biscuits and raisins (previously softened up in the Marsala). Keep a spoon of raisins aside, for later.
Peel off and cut into slices the apples: position the apple slices on the top of the tart.
For the central decoration: take a regular shaped apple and peel it, removing the applecore. Put it into a saucepan and cover it with water, adding some lemon peel and 20 gr. of sugar. Let it cook for 10-15 minutes; drain it and cover it with shortcrust pastry strips. Fill the central hole with the remaining raisins and a tablespoon of apricot jam.
Brush the pastry over the central apple with the remaining yolk; heat up the remaining jam and spread it over the apple slices, sprinkling the sugar over the whole tart.

Cook in the pre-heated oven at 180° for 50 minutes or until the pastry gets dark.

Enjoy!

How to Make Panzerotti & Pizzelle

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:12:00 +0000

Preparation time: 10-15 minutes for the preparation, 1 hour for the rising, 5 minutes for cooking
Details: approx. €15 to serve 7 people

Ok, we could not end the Pizza chapter without talking about the world-renowned Panzerotti and the not-so-famous-but-even-better Pizzelle Napoletane.

Seriously, have you ever tried a real pizzella or panzerotto outside Italy? Well, it's ridiculously difficult, rather impossible. We all agree: that's a real shame. However, the good news is that you can perfectly reproduce the authentic recipe.... at home!

We're talking about a super-easy recipe that does not require any long rising time and, most of all, makes everybody happy! Why? It's fried. And funny. Everybody can make it's own panzerotto during a party or friends dinner, filling it with the ingredient he/she likes the most. It will then take seconds to cook.

Ok, I'm talking way too much (ingredients are for approximately 4 people):

500 gr. strong white flour (better if stoneground)
25 gr. fresh yeast (see the Pizza post for more infos about yeast)
125 gr. water
125 gr. milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
deep frying oil

Crumble the yeast with your hands and put it in a plastic/glass bowl. Add milk and mix it with the yeast for a while. Then add a previously whisked egg, water, sugar, oil. After whisking all the ingredients together, gradually add the flour. Whisk everything with a fork for 1 minute and then add salt (when the yeast is melted with all the other ingredients). Never add salt before mixing the ingredients, as it would damage the yeast. Continue to whisk with the fork and then with your hands.

You don't need to knead the dough or remove it from the bowl: the important is that it gets quite compact (still, not dry), like the one in the picture below. Donìt whisk the dough too much: you need to respect His Majesty the Yeast.

When it gets like this, leave it rise for 1 hour or 2, covering the bowl with cling film and leaving it outside the fridge at room temperature. After 1 hour (or 2), remove the film and stretch the dough on the counter. It should be quite thin, approximately 0,5 cm thick.

Heat the frying oil in a saucepan until it gets ready for frying. Use the old method to check if the oil is ready: drop a bread crumbs or a very small piece of dough into the oil. If it takes 60 seconds to brown, then the oil is at 365.

Here we go with the 2 variations! Apologies for the low-quality pictures, but pizzelle & panzerotti are super good when they're hot and we could not waste time with the camera, of course!

Pizzelle

For Pizzelle, you need tomatoe sauce, grated parmesan and a leaf of basil for each pizzella. Tomatoe sauce should be rigorously neapolitan: to prepare it, just fry 2 pieces of garlic in a pan with some extra-virgin olive oil. When garlic gets brownish add the pomodori pelati (tomatoes "pelati") and season the sauce with salt and pepper. Let it cook over a low fire for 20 minutes, adding water if the sauce is draining too much.

Use a glass to shape the dough so that you have round pieces, i.e. our Pizzelle. Gently lower them, one by one, into the oil. Let them fry for 1/2 minutes until they get dark brown (don't take them out too early, as the dough might not completely cook inside).

When ready, drain them on a tray and add the topping: a bit of tomatoe sauce, grated parmesan, grated Pecorino and a leaf of basil. Yummy.

Panzerotti

Same as before, you just need to shape the dough differently and fill it with whatever you might have in your fridge. Ok, I was joking when saying "whatever" (Actually I was not joking when saying this, until I went to a place here in Dublin offering panzerotti filled with ham and pineapple...). Cut the dough to form a slightly bigger rectangle and add fresh ingredients in the middle of it. Recommended combinations of ingredients to fill in the dough:

Mozzarella + anchovies
Mozzarella + chopped salami + provola cheese
Ham + mozzarella
Whatever Good and Reasonable you have in the fridge (no pineapple, please!)

Then fold it over and make a little half moon. Now press the edges to seal them and remove the air inside (start from one side up to the other of the half moon). It's now ready to go in the pan! Unbelievably delicious.

I should just stop eating. . .

Tiramisù time!

noreply@blogger.com (Betti) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Preparation time: 15 minutes for the preparation, 2 hours in the fridge before consuming.
Details: approx. €15 to serve 8 people

It's time to please also our sweet-tooth followers and what better than a Tiramisù to end a typical Italian dinner?

The recipe is super simple and on top of that, you can easily prepare it in advance and serve it the day after: it's even better when all the ingredients have rested together for a while.
This is my aunt's recipe - one of the best Tiramisù I have ever tasted - and here it is what you need (the quantities indicated here serve 8 people approximately.):

5 large eggs
5 tablespoons sugar
470gr. Mascarpone Cheese
2 packs of Ladyfinger Biscuits (a.k.a. Savoiardi)
Some Italian Espresso, diluted and sugared (according to your taste) or some normal coffee: it needs to be liquid and not too much concentrated.
An electric whisker
Unsweetened cocoa powder

Optional:

Marsala Liquor
Chocolate flakes

You can find the Mascarpone Cheese and the Ladyfingers biscuits quite easily: I usually find them in SuperQuinn, Best of Italy or in Fallon&Byrne.

Directions

First of all, separate the yolks from the egg whites - do it very carefully because the eggs whites don't stiff if there are yolks traces. Add the sugar to the yolks and whisk together with the electric whisker, until they form a light, foamy mixture.

Quick Tip: if you are going to use Espresso Coffee, prepare it firstly: in this way it will have time to cool down and you won't scald your fingers when you dip the biscuits into it.

Add the Mascarpone Cheese, in small stages, and keep whisking the ingredients together until you reach a homogeneous, lumps-less cream.

Put the egg whites in a clean bowl and beat them until stiff: you'll realize you have done when you turn the bowl upside down and the egg whites don't fall down.

Add the stiff whites to the cream, with a tablespoon or a spatula; don't use the electric whisker otherwise the egg whites will loose the right consistency.

Once the cream is done, let's start with the Tiramisù composition: prepare a recipient and dip the biscuits into the coffee. Biscuits don't have to be too much soaked, otherwise they will crumble apart. They need to form the tender-but-firm layers of the cake. Put the biscuits in the recipient, one beside the other, until you cover the whole bottom of the recipient. Now, cover them generously with the custard and spread the custard over the biscuits.

Follow the same procedure for the second layer. Sprinkle the cocoa powder on the last layer.

If you like, you can add chocolate flakes between one layer and the other: this will give your Tiramisu a "crunchy" flavour, which is loved by someone. Another variation, according to your liking, consists in adding some Marsala liquor to the coffee, before dipping the Ladyfingers into it.

Honestly I prefer the simple, classic one.

Let the Tiramisù rest in the fridge for at least two-three hours, before serving it with a cup of Espresso, or a glass of Limoncello.

And if you ever come to Rome, don't miss one of the most traditional Tiramisù shop: Pompi. Here you can find different Tiramisù flavours, like Strawberry, Pistacchio, Banana and...Piña Colada! Get ready to enjoy a typical Roman after-dinner meeting place.

Parmigiana Di Melanzane: The Perfect Recipe.

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:09:00 +0000

Preparation time: 30-40 minutes for the preparation (depending on the size of the frying pan), 30 minutes to cook in the oven
Details: approx. €15 to serve 6 people

It's true, we simply can't live without aubergines and that's why we are here to present a Must for any wanna-be Italian cook: the glorious, magnificent Parmigiana Di Melanzane (friends call it also "Parmigiana")!

For those unlucky people who have never heard of it, it's a sort of lasagna with fried aubergines (aka eggplants) instead of pasta. More or less. To preserve the sacredness of this recipe, it is necessary to point out the 4 biggest mistakes people do when pretending to make a Parmigiana:

The worst of all: using ragù or bolognese sauce instead of simple tomato passata - garlic - basil sauce. If you're adding meat in the sauce you're making greek moussaka. Parmigiana is Italian!
Adding grated mozzarella instead of fresh mozzarella or real Italian provola.
Adding inappropriate ingredients like: cinnamon (yes, I found it in a Parmigiana once), peppers, corguettes, etc.
Just don't trust Jamie when it comes to Italian Recipes (look here to see all his heresies about the Parmigiana)

So, please follow this post carefully: we are absolutely intransigent about this recipe, which is extremely simple and does not require any rare ingredient. After all, we're talking about a status symbol of every Italian living abroad.

What you need is:

4 big aubergines (if you are buying Tesco/Fresh/Spar/Superquinn standardized aubergines, then it's 6-7 aubergines - they sell ridiculously small veggies!). More or less, 2 kg aubergines should be ok.
300 gr mozzarella or Italian provola
700 gr pomodori pelati
200 gr grated parmesan
2 garlic cloves
many leaves of basil
extra-virgin oil for the tomatoes sauce and frying oil, 2 tbsp salt

Take the aubergines and cut them into long thin slices. Do not skin the aubergine, as most of their flavor is in the skin itself. As aubergines can have a quite bitter taste (especially those imported in Ireland), sink them in a well-salted cold water for one hour to remove the bitterness. Then drain the aubergines, pressing them lightly between the hands with a kitchen cloth.

While the aubergines are getting sweeter, you can start preparing the tomato sauce, chopping the mozzarella in small pieces or chopping the Provola, if you are using that - today we have used both provola and mozzarella to empty the fridge! For the tomato sauce, just fry 2 pieces of garlic in a pan with some extra-virgin olive oil. When garlic gets brownish add the pomodori pelati (tomatoes "pelati") and add salt and pepper. Let it cook over a low fire for 20 minutes, adding water if the sauce is draining too much.

You can now start frying the slices, lowering them in a saucepan containing 3 cm of frying oil at the right temperature (use the old method to check if the oil is ready: just drop few bread crumbs or a very small piece of dough into the oil. If it takes 60 seconds to brown, then the oil is at 365). The frying part is the most boring one: it might take from 30 minutes up to 1 hour to fry all the slices, depending on the size of the saucepan. Fry them until they get a deep golden colour, witout burning them. Remember that aubergine slices should not be floured or dipped in whisked eggs before being fried. This might result in a quite fat and heavy recipe, tasting worse and - above all - you would violate tradition.

When the frying is over, let the aubergine slices drain on paper towel sheets and then start building our beloved Parmigiana! How? It's easy: just put some tomatoe sauce at the very bottom of the tray, and then start assembling the Parmigiana by creating 4-5 layers of aubergines, each of which must covered with some tomatoe sauce, grated parmesan (that blends all the ingredients), chopped mozzarella/provola, some basil leaves and a bit of salt.

Complete the assembly by creating the last layer and covering it with the remaining tomato sauce, mozzarella and/or grated parmesan and basil leaves. Sprinkle the last layer with some extra-virgin olive oil.

Preheat the oven at 200° and bake for 30/35 minutes until the Parmigiana gets like this:

Pure Joy.

---

A special thanks to Cò for the atmosphere and hospitality, and to the Dolphin's for their creative food solutions!

Recipe on the left is called "Laura's Fagiolini": put frozen grean beans directly in a saucepan with extra-virgin olive oil and 2 cloves of garlic. Simmer all together and when the beans get a beatiful, darker colour, add some passata (tomato sauce) and simmer over a low flame for about 10 minutes.

Recipe on the right is Luigi's "Tripudio Di Mortadella": handmade artistic mortadella waves, baguette slices.

Home-Made Pizza Al Taglio!

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 09:59:00 +0000

Preparation time: 20 minutes for the dough, 24 hours of rising, 10 minutes for the toppings and 20 minutes for the baking.
Details: approx. €13 to serve 7+ people

We decided that no, we could not name a blog "Mad Italian Foodies" without starting with the most adored and popular Italian recipe: Pizza al taglio! Pizza al taglio is a very popular type of pizza baked in large rectangular trays, and generally sold in rectangular slices by weigh. The post is quite long, but the recipe is super-easy and quick (apart from the 24 hours needed for the rising).

This is a foodies' pizza, of course. So, please forget about:

Precooked pizza bases
Plain white flour, or self-raising flour
Frozen/Low quality ingredients
Baking powder

And get ready to use:

1 kg strong white flour (better if stoneground) - €2.90
25 gr. fresh brewers' yeast OR 7 gr. dried yeast - €0.80
700 gr water
20 gr extra-virgin olive oil, 15 gr. salt
300 gr of mozzarella - €3.00
500 gr of canned pomodori pelati (not "Passata") - €3.00

Ok, the first big problem was finding out a proper fresh brewers' yeast in Dublin, without which any wanna-be pizzaiolo would be lost (actually dried yeast is also great). Dublin is a beautiful town but when it comes to food supplies it can be quite disappointing. It's been super hard to find fresh brewers' yeast and after weeks of searches, we finally realized that one of the few places you can find it in Dublin is "PoloLith", a tiny little Polish shop in Rathmines Road, just next to the more famous "Joe Burger". PoloLith has it, Fallon&Byrne and Best of Italy don't. Thank you PoloLith!

Few days after the pizzata, we came across this little gourmet food shop in Donnybrook road, called Roy Fox. Unexpectedly, we found an excellent dried brewer's yeast (it's not fresh, but it's great as well for our pizza - see the ingredients above for the correct quantity).

As you might understand, also flour is extremely important and it is crucial to buy the right type: the pizza dough requires a quite strong flour (the Italian "farina" 0 or 1). A great product is Odilum White Strong Flour, easily found at Tesco or Superquinn. Why strong flour? Because it's high in gluten, and this will transform into a lovely, elastic dough, which is what you want.

Anyway, Let's Start!

Put the flour in a glass/plastic bowl (don't use a metal one, as it might screw up the yeast) together with the yeast fragmented in pieces. Gradually add the water and swirl it, mixing it with the flour and yeast with a spoon.

After a while, add 15 grams of grinded salt and 20 grams of extra-virgin olive oil and mix. it is important to add salt only after the yeast has melted with the flour, otherwise the dough will be lost forever. After mixing salt and oil with the spoon, the dough should look exactly as in the picture below (right side). It' should be quite wet and "muddy". Never add extra flour!

Let it rest for 10 minutes when it's still uneven as shown in the last pic. When 10 minutes are over, start work the rest of your mix with the hands until you have a springy, smooth dough. The dough is sticking to your hands? It's normal, you're on the right way. Take the dough out of the bowl on a previously floured counter (we used semolina - much better!). Knead the dough to dry it a bit (as shown here, minutes 5:20) and put it in a glass bowl.

Cover the bowl with a cling film and store it at the bottom of your fridge (where veggies are usually stored). Let it rest there for 24 hours. The fridge bottom floors are the ones where humidity's higher and temperature steadier, the perfect environment for our yeast! When the required 24 hours have passed, leave the bowl outside the fridge for about 1 hour to allow rising at room temperature. In the meantime, you can start preparing the topping! Which one? Well let's start with the most classical one, Pizza Margherita! For the topping you'll need to:

Chop 2-3 fresh Italian mozzarella and leave them apart in a bowl to dry for a while
Prepare a tomatoe sauce. Please use only Italian canned "Pomodori Pelati" (Best of Italy in Ranelagh has many brands). Never use a Passata, as it is already quite dry: we need the sauce to be liquid enough to resist the heat in the oven. Make a soffritto of 2 garlic slices. When garlic gets brown, add the pomodori pelati (previously chopped a bit) and leave them simmer for about 10-15 minutes at low gas, adding some salt, pepper and a teaspoon of sugar. At the very end, add fresh basil leaves. Italian recipes are simple: please, please, don't add onions, bacon, mexican-chilli or other useless extra-ingredient. You will lose all the taste!

After that, it's time to roll out our pizza! Do it carefully. Watch out. Flour your hands and the counter, then take the dough out and start stretching the pizza, strictly using your fingers ONLY (as shown here, from minute 6:15). The dough should be quite thin, there's no need to make it too thick as it will rise in the oven!

Put the pizza in a previously oiled tray, oil the top of the stretched dough and start adding the topping. Spread the topping on the dough uniformly using your hands. To make a Margherita, cover the dough with the tomatoe sauce and put it in a pre-heated oven at 250°/270° for 20-25 minutes maximum.

Watch out: oven is crucial. Start putting the pizza at the very base of the oven and - after about 10 minutes- move the tray to the upper part of the oven to speed up the baking. This is a mandatory procedure to have a delicious pizza.

Add the mozzarella 3 minutes before the end of the baking, put the tray back in the oven and wait for the mozzarella to melt. Serve with fresh basil leaves and sprinkle with E-V olive oil!

And yes, always use scissors to slice the pizza, so that the yeast is not damaged.

Ok the recipe proportions allow for at least 2 other pizzas (depending also on the baking tray dimensions of course). We were 5 people having dinner, so we decided to use part of the remaining dough for a second pizza: pizza bianca with rocket salad, prosciutto and parmesan shaves! Amazing.

Basically you just need to oil the dough, previously stretched on the baking tray and put in the oven (10 minutes at the bottom, 10 minutes at the top). When the dough gets a beautiful, brownish, yummy colour, just remove the tray from the oven and add the fresh ingredients without baking them. This is simply delicious.

This recipe by Bonci (see this post) is simply incredible and it's the best possible way to reproduce the authentic Italian Pizza al Taglio at home, no matter where you live! It's only a matter of good ingredients, process and hints. Remember: if you "respect" the yeast (which is a live ingredient), if you prepare the dough following our tips, stretch it properly only with your fingers and pay attention to the baking part, you cannot fail.

Look at the picture below, these pizzas are simply amazing!

Ok, if you don't wanna wait 24 hours for a pizza tonight, just go to Manifesto or Manifestino :-)

ps. Special thanks to Seb who contributed to the pizzata taking pictures and bringing prosciutto and wine, french wine (nobody is perfect!). A big thank to Kim and Conor, our official testers and raters!

French Wine & Soppressata!

Calabria Mon Amour!

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Being a real foodie doesn't mean you need to spend hours cooking in the kitchen. Sometimes you might open your fridge and find genuine foods directly from...Calabria.

Delicious soppressata (a typical salame from Calabria), fragrant fresh calabrese bread, luscious sottoaceti (veggies aged in extra-virgin olive oil), lipsmacking pancetta, lovely provolone and yes, boiled irish eggs :-)

No, la Calabria non delude mai!

Our Inspiration: Tricolore Monti!

noreply@blogger.com (Mad Foodies!) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:37:00 +0000

The idea of a blog actually came out few months ago while attending a cooking class in Rome with some friends at Tricolore Monti, a little fancy sandwich shop and cooking class venue. We took part to a fresh pasta course: classes usually start at 7 pm and last about 3 hours (price is €80). We had the chance to learn how to prepare flour-only and flour+eggs pasta: amazing!

Here are some pix:

Some courses are available also in English and I strongly recommend this place if you want to learn the secrets of Italian recipes.....and visit Rome from another perspective :-)

Tricolore is also a gourmet-sandwiches shop at lunch time: here you can try perfectly engineered sandwiches with quite unsual but still mouth-watering ingredients! The bread dough is inspired to Gabriele Bonci, the "Michelangelo of Pizza" as the NY Times defined him few years ago. He is basically one of the best pizzaioli in Italy and his small roman shop "Pizzarium" is becoming world-famous. His recipes will also inspire our next post......

...Stay Tuned!