I have many ideas, projects, dreams. I write them down on a little black notebook with a black pencil, I like to be old style once in a while. Many of these projects are connected with my blog – like, a newsletter, sooner or later I’ll send you a newsletter, promise – and others are related to my cooking classes. Yes, I feel I’ve underestimated the importance of cooking classes in this space, I want to tell you more about the classes, show you pictures, let you know how happy and lucky I am to meet interesting and curious people, to live with them a piece of my dream. I hope to be more present, active and proactive from June on, be ready because I feel I need to give you something more and make this little corner of freedom and creativity even more lively. Because you deserve it.

So, before an Italy tour that will bring me to Milan, where I’ll cook in Piazza San Babila for the Milano Food Week, to Sicily, where I’ll spend a few days with Claudia and other old friends enjoying food, sea and sun (hopefully) and to Padua for Bruce Springsteen’s concert, I want to share with you a few pictures of one of the few sunny not rainy afternoons of this awkward rainy spring.

And how not to tell you about the other exciting project! We have a vegetable garden, a real, serious one! Luckily my grandma, my dad, my mum and my sister are taking care of it, because my thumb has every other colour but green. It will be an amazing garden, with courgettes, aubergines, carrots, tomatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, lettuce… just name a vegetable and it will be there! We just need a pinch of sun.

I’ll be back soon, have a great weekend and thank you for your comments, e-mails and feedback. I promise I’ll catch up with all your lovely comments from June on!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A breath of fresh air…

The coffee shop was simple and cozy: a long glass counter, polished to perfection, where cakes, scones, eggs, bacon and beans were neatly arranged. In front of the counter, facing the bright wide windows, tiny white tables for two people. Outside of that little café there was Ireland, the boundless meadows of the Kilkenny Castle, bus as the only means of transport and the curiosity of a continuous discovery.

That was my second time in Ireland, a week in August for the university summer break, a breath of fresh air between the exams of advertising and semiotics. I was travelling with my friend Laura, companion of many road trips. We decided to have breakfast in that coffee shop, curious to see how would feel to eat as a local. I still remember how it was called: three item special. An inviting name, though we probably misunderstood the real meaning of special at the moment. With the help of a not too trained English we ended up ordering two three item specials and three other additional dishes from the menu selection. We sat slightly intimidated at the table and we waited. Soon after two waitresses came out from behind the counter and began to bring our breakfast. Beans with tomato, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, toasts, butter and jam. Then a moment of embarrassment: we run out of space on our table. They looked at each other, then they took a look around and decided to move a table and add it to ours to have extra space. And they kept on bringing the smoked ham, cakes and scones with jam.

We not hold back laughter, while the other regulars of the small coffee shop in Kilkenny looked at those two naive tourists with a mixture of disbelief and tenderness. Needless to say, the breakfast came out of the cafeteria with us well hidden in backpacks in the form of snacks and sandwiches for lunch. Too abundant, too far from our habits, but perhaps for that very reason so indelible in my memory.

As you might have heard, the Italian breakfast is quite another thing. First of all, in most cases – except for individual preferences – breakfast is sweet and not salty, and then it often verges on the routine and monotony. I know people whose names I won’t make now – mum – that have been eating the same breakfast for thirty years: scalding caffellatte with three fette biscottate at dawn every day. Every day. Also for Christmas, even for her birthday, in winter and summer, that’s her breakfast.

We felt it was the right time, after a year of Italian Table Talk – already a year! – to cover the topic of breakfast and tell you about our preferences, our rituals and our memories related to the first meal of the day, which according to experts – and according to my mum – is also the most important one. Valeria wakes us up with the raisin buns of her childhood, Emiko has instead baked a tray of little cherry tarts which can put a smile on the face of the most surly person, while Jasmine made ​​a classic cake perfect in its simplicity, the torta margherita. I am presenting today an classic of the breakfast at the bar, the Italian croissants known as cornetti.

If you follow me on Instagram (do you follow me on Instagram? nooo? You can find me as JulsKitchen if you ask) you may have noticed that I like to vary the breakfast, from crepes to bread pudding cake, from yogurt with fresh fruit and cereals to rice pudding. I do not have a tradition and I’m very careful not to fall into the routine: I enjoy changing, as far as possible, to wake up with a bit of curiosity. It is a different matter when it comes to breakfast at the bar.

Having breakfast in a bar in Italy can be stressful if you’re not used to it and you suffer from the usual performance anxiety that hits you in the most important public occasions. At first comes the choice of the sweet pastry you are going to eat or dip in your cappuccino: I usually come closer to the counter and I start pointing out the various croissants. Which kind of croissant is that? apricot jam. That one? wholemeal and honey. That over there? chocolate. There instead? custard and apple. Then I understand by the impatient tone of the waitress that I have asked too many questions, so I begin by saying with little certainty: then I’ll take a croissant with… moment of reflection during which I mentally try all the combinations… nothing inside. Is there a plain croissant? And I grab with an apologetic smile the delicate croissant, often still warm, that the waitress hands me wrapped in a paper towel.

Then it comes the time to order coffee. Usually in the bar at breakfast time there is a large crowding all around the coffee counter: the usual, macchiato, ristretto, corto, a cappuccino, a latte macchiato, a long coffee. Wall Street at end of the day is much more quiet than a bar at breakfast. Requests are made ​​in a tone that ranges from brisk to pleading, this being me when trying for the fourth time to order a coffee and someone else next to me gets his order before me.

Then, with your coffee in the balance in one hand and the croissant – the empty croissant – in the other, you move towards a table if you’re lucky, or you press yourself in a corner of the counter to finally enjoy your breakfast. It is probably clear that I prefer to have breakfast at home, with all the calm of the world, without having to fight for my coffee. Though the still warm croissants have more than a reason to be appreciated, especially if you are lucky enough to find those made as they should be made, with good butter. Making them at home takes time and patience, especially in flaking, but every once in awhile I assure you it is worth a try.

I learnt the following recipe during my pastry course last year, I cut down the ingredients to have a normal amount of croissants – 40 cornetti are perhaps too many also for me - and simplified the procedure in order to make them ​​easily at home. The result is the cornetto you might order at the bar, with its shiny surface, not too sweet nor too buttery. Unlike the French croissant, the Italian cornetto has more sugar and has also eggs and orange peel that are absent in the croissants, thus resulting … well technically heavier, but the orange hint will hide the amount of butter still present and most importantly the egg gives a pale yellow colour which helps to add a bit of happiness to the morning. Ready to dust with flour your hands and nose?

Link love

Not to lose a single post by the Italian Table talk girls, these are our Social Accounts:

• Emiko, her blog is Emikodavies.com, @emikodavies on Twitter, and her Pinterest
• Valeria, her blog is Life Love Food, @valerianecchio on Twitter, her FB Page and her Pinterest
• Jasmine, her blog is Labna.it, @labna on Twitter, her FB page and her Pinterest
• Juls, my Twitter @Julskitchen, FB page and Pinterest

The hashtag to follow the conversation on Italian Table talk on Twitter is #ITabletalk (easy, isn’t it?). We are curious to hear which is your favourite breakfast and how you deal with routine!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Italian croissants and breakfast in a bar for the Italian Table Talk

I am an easy to be persuaded woman, you just need a bunch of flowers and I’m sold. In this case the flowers were the pretty blossoms of my chives and the refined seducer a potato salad that has become in the course of a cloudy May morning my favourite potato salad, the same I would bring from now on to any picnic with friends, the same I will accurately write down in my recipe notebook to passed on to a future daughter, or son, you never know.

If I lived in an American tv series – you cannot even imagine how many times I’ve dreamt about this – this is the potato salad I would bring to my neighbours’ barbecue in the backyard garden, spooned in a giant colourful plastic bowl and neatly wrapped in cling film. I can perfectly imagine myself, dressed in a marvellous fifties’ style, serving generous portions of potato salad along with a juicy pork rib. Coming back to our barbecues and traditions, believe me if I say that this potato salad is also the ideal side dish for a roasted sausage.

There are few things that are more satisfying and reassuring than drizzle a good extra virgin olive oil over a potato salad for lunch.

A warm potato salad, neither hot nor cold, warm. Warm because it is the right temperature that allows the salt to melt slightly, but not completely, the extra virgin olive oil to open up its bouquet of aromas, releasing scents of freshly cut grass or bitter almonds. The chives enhances its smell, keeping fresh as just cut.

The lilac flowers of chives are a romantic grace, though they are essential to the balance of taste of the whole salad: delicate and persistent, they linger from the first to the last bite, making the simplest of salads a small masterpiece.

To make it such a masterpiece, be sure to use your best extra virgin olive oil, a flaky salt, such as Maldon salt or Fleur de Sel, and grind the black pepper on the very moment you0re serving the salad. Although simple, this potato salad requires some attention and care and will reward you with an amazing experience. The final touch is a soft boiled egg, which makes the salad a well balanced lunch.

  How to make utterly perfect soft boiled eggs. Check this post I found reading Geekmom on Wired. The article is simple and fun and holds you by hand to achieve the perfect result with a step by step explanation: you’ll get with no effort a soft boiled egg with a white and firm albumen and a deliciously runny yolk, with the consistency of honey.

And this is my tip to peel the soft boiled eggs without damaging the outside: when the eggs are warm gently tap the pointed end onto the countertop so it cracks, then blow inside, as if you were inflating a balloon. The air will penetrate between the shell and the egg white, so that you will peep the egg effortless.

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Post di: Juls' Kitchen

You buy me with flowers: potato salad with chives flowers and soft boiled eggs

Hi, my name is Giulia, I have a problem and I would love to share it with you: I lack the sense of measure. I believe and I do hope it is due to my motto you have to be generous in the kitchen. It happens often during my cooking classes, and my friends are lucky witnesses.

A classic menu is made of five courses – appetizer, first course which usually is a dish of home made pasta, a main dish, a side dish and a dessert. Then you make up quick recipes with leftover ingredients such as salads or tasty frittate. Then how can you skip an olive oil, cheese and charcuterie tasting? If you want to get to the core of the Tuscan cooking you must bravely face all the challenges I will offer you throughout the day.

Then, last but not least, I tend to cook for a minimum of four people, even though we are just three – my guests and me. Just imagine what would happen if they want a second serving and there’s no more meat in the pan! It’s not a proper thing to be seen during a cooking class, at my table, so I just double the quantities and I have no fear.

The result is that we often eat leftovers for the next two meals, venturing in unlikely pairings. Sometimes I invite my friends over for dinner, padding out the meal with a good piece of pecorino cheese, grassy olive oil and wood baked bread. Leftovers are also one of the reasons that urge me to often vary the cooking class menu, otherwise sooner or later my family would mutiny and run away to the nearest fast food (well, at a second thought, probably they would not choose a fast food but a porchetta truck parked along the road selling crackling pork in a well filled sandwich).

Although I often brag quite unconsciously about my ability to over exaggerate the quantities, I messed it dramatically for the last picnic we organized. I made the most classic and crowd pleasing menu – fava beans, pecorino, salami, farro salad, strawberries with whipped cream and mousse au chocolat – then I had the brilliant idea to bake delicate tartlets with fava beans, pecorino and ricotta. It is an unusual way to present fava beans and pecorino, the most classic and loved food pairing of Italian picnics of the 25th of April, our national holiday, and May Day.

Weight the ingredients, add this and that, mix, knead, roll out the dough, bake it… at the end I managed to style prettily on a dish just three tartlets. Three. There were eight people – eight hungry people – coming for the picnic. My crowd pleasing menu would have certainly turned in a fight for the last tartlet. So I decided to cut a long story short and have them for lunch with my sister. My friends would do with the idea of them, I hope!

Do not miss these tartlets  if your ideal picnic includes a checkered tablecloth, a green meadow dotted with daisies, one or more dogs chasing each other in the background and a wicker basket from which you gleefully pull out, just like Mary Poppins, sandwiches, cookies, a refreshing lemonade, a form of cheese that still smells of milk and a generous handful of fava beans.

This is your recipe if you like spring picnics and love to be tickled by that subtle and sparkling liveliness that you can breathe in the shade of an olive tree under the May sky. Just pay attention to the quantities, and bake a tartlet for every friend!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Fava bean and pecorino tartlets

We wanted to give Zita a surprise, we’ve planned this baby shower – veg party for weeks. Oh, she will love it! Oh, she will be so surprised! Oh, she will have all the time to read all our posts bursting with love just before delivering the little bundle of joy.

And yes, she made us the sweetest surprise. Tonight she sent us a text. Adam was born at 6.53pm today. He’s beautiful. Can you see my happy goosebumps from there? Yes, I bet you can!

So, Zizi, we beg you pardon if we are a bit late, but today, in this beautiful May Day with blossoms in the trees, warm sunshine and birds chirping, there’s yet another reason to celebrate, your sweet brand new Adam, the newly born nephew of this huge crazy family of blogging friends and aunts!

Zizi is a vegetarian blogger, or better, for me she is THE vegetarian blogger. She is a true inspiration when it comes to create appetizing dishes with vegetables and other things that were almost unknown to me before meeting her. Just to name one: tofu. In my Tuscan oriented mind tofu was just a white and pale slice of something absolutely tasteless before she visited last year and took possession of my stove for one evening.

Add a bit of soy sauce, roast here, sauté there, cube the tofu, add a bunch of healthy broccoli and do not forget to generously add the minced garlic into the pan. In a few minutes she made such a delicious vegetarian dish with tofu and broccoli, and from that moment on, when I feel like having tofu – yes, she made this happen to me! – I just follow the same recipe and add whatever vegetable is in season.

That’s the reason we’re throwing a vegetarian baby shower for her, and that’s the reason I ventured for the first time to try this traditional Tuscan recipe I bookmarked months ago, a sweet zucchini cake known as scarpaccia.

Scarpaccia means literally old shoe and if you look at the pictures you can guess why they decided to give to this cake such an unappealing name: it has the same thickness of an old shoe sole! It is a traditional cake from the coastal town of Viareggio, located in the North Tuscany in Versilia, and it was traditionally baked during the zucchini season by old sailors with the vegetables of their garden.

This zucchini cake is not too sweet, has an unusual green taste for a cake and keeps its moisture thanks to the thinly sliced zucchini that enrich a simple batter made of flour, milk, egg, sugar and olive oil. Do not forget a few leaves of fresh basil to make this cake even more aromatic. The recipe comes from one of my favourite books of Tuscan cooking, Giovanni Righi Parenti’s book La cucina toscana.

Here’s our veg party for Zita, Ivan and their little newly born Adam. Join us to celebrate Zita’s new baby in this beautiful spring day!

• Regula: Nourishing Stout & Oat Drink 
• Beth: Moghrabieh Salad with Preserved Lemon and Coriander Pesto
• Jasmine: Whole Wheat Flour Cocoa Cookies
• Artemis: Kasopita – Cheese Pie from Εpirus
• Sarka: Kiwi Carpaccio with Pecans and Manuka Honey
• Emiko: Ricotta and Dark Chocolate Cake
• Sneige: Pomegranate Curd with Seedy Pine Nut Crust
• Simone: Pistache Raspberry Cakes 
• Karin: Fresh Pea Souffle with Goat Cheese

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A Tuscan sweet zucchini cake for a new mum

My favourite country road stretches from my house into the nearby wood, shaded by four oak trees and speckled along the edges with flowers and herbs. Until a few years ago what attracted my attention were the closed buds of poppy, which I would pick up to guess the colour, and purple and yellow delicate field flowers, which I used to tie with a string to make a skimpy bouquet to be regally placed on the marble table in the living room.

Then my perspective changed, thanks largely to my grandmother, who began to show me edible wild herbs that grow unsuspected along the edge of the road. That is chicory, when it is young and tender is good in salads, otherwise you should cook it along with the wild Swiss chard you can forage in our field. That’s salad burnet tastes like a summer cucumber and it’s the queen of fresh green salads, that is wild lettuce instead. Forage dandelion before it blooms, it’s so good for your health, use poppy sprouts to make an unusual omelet…

These are names and definitions that encode an ancient knowledge. Man, an omnivorous animal, since the beginning faced the dilemma of choosing among an infinity range of food at his disposal. He gave names, he created traditions, recipes and shared knowledge that could lead his descendants to the recognition of what is good and edible, preventing them from what poisonous Nature could hide.

I already told you about one of my first experiences with foraging wild herbs, a morning spent with my grandmother. This would be a never ending theme, where tradition, culture, gastronomy and superstition have great influence. So, when every field in the countryside and each country road is blooming with dandelion, nettle and chicory, we decided to make these humble wild herbs queens and protagonists of this month’s Italian Table Talk.

Jasmine, just come back from an amazing experience in Sicily that made her fall in love with its amazing food, uses the wild fennel to make a traditional dish of pasta, pasta con le sarde a mare. Emiko, in Tuscany right now (yay!), found a good bunch of calamint on the walls around the Collegiata in Fucecchio and makes a spring dish, carciofi in umido. Valeria took a walk in the park close to her house in London and foraged nettle to make a pesto to go with scrambled eggs.

I asked my grandma to forage some herbs and she came back with a bag full of chicory and dandelion, just slightly too hard to be eaten raw but perfect once cooked. I made a generous portion of malfatti – perhaps even better than the classic ones made just ​​with spinach – and I left a good half of the bag to finally make acquacotta with spring herbs.

Acquacotta is a typical Southern Tuscan soup, I already made a winter version with onions, tomatoes and celery. Though, the first time I ate acquacotta was in the late spring, I was spending a weekend in biodynamic farm in Maremma, in the province of Grosseto, and I was sitting with some friends at a long wooden table.

The owner of the farm, a sociable and talkative woman, brought to the table a huge heavy pot, wide and shallow, helped by her husband. She’d cooked the soup for hours on low flame with the foraged herbs of a dry late spring, then she’d broken the eggs of her chickens on top, letting them cook just enough time to have firm whites and runny yolks, thick as a syrup. She spooned some soup in every bowl, then she carefully lifted the eggs with a slotted spoon. To finish the dish a few slices of toasted bread previously rubbed with garlic.

Link love

Not to lose a single post by the Italian Table talk girls, these are our Social Accounts:

• Emiko, her blog is Emikodavies.com, @emikodavies on Twitter, and her Pinterest
• Valeria, her blog is Life Love Food, @valerianecchio on Twitter, her FB Page and her Pinterest
• Jasmine, her blog is Labna.it, @labna on Twitter, her FB page and her Pinterest
• Juls, my Twitter @Julskitchen, FB page and Pinterest

The hashtag to follow the conversation on Italian Table talk on Twitter is #ITabletalk (easy, isn’t it?). We are curious to hear which are your experiences with foraged herbs that are blooming now in our countryside.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Foraging for the Italian Table Talk – Acquacotta, foraged herb soup

Well before dawn she packed her sack for a long day of mountain trekking: the proper shoes, a bottle of water, two sandwiches with cheese and walnuts made the evening before and a tin box with a dozen muffins dotted with chocolate chips. These things happen when a foodblogger packs for a walk.

When spring comes you can suddenly notice a burst of activity in our world, just as in Nature. While the trees are busy producing tender leaves that in a few days will explode in shady groves, we humans dust off the activities hung up in the cold winter months.

Cyclists in single file – but more and more often in groups of two or three, damn – invade our country roads, while teenagers with spring jackets ride their scooters as if they were horses, enjoying the daylight after school. The evening sky fades to a pale white, the golden light kisses the trees and the monuments, cities that I’m learning to know just like Florence change under my eyes and turn into an amazing show that you feel like your own private moment of bliss.

Spring is coming and you restart the outdoor activities that you had set aside for a while. To be precise, in my case it is a brand new start, a long to-do-list for this 2013, a list that we are crossing out consistently with satisfaction and fun with my friends. I began with mountains in winter to launch the new year with style, Sunday it was the turn of trekking in the mountains.

I supposte that after more than four years of friendship and blog you have now understood that I am not that athletic, I found my balance in Pilates where I feel almost harmonious and feminine. Other sports or outdoor activities usually find me clumsy or hampered, yet a walk in the Nature always gives me new energies and cleanses my mind.

Let alone doing it in the mountains with a group of friends, it was even more cathartic: the mind is cleared of all thoughts, you just focus on the next step, or at least it was like this for me, facing it for the first time. You have an ultimate goal, but you keep it there in a corner of your mind and you face just the here and now. You deal with your limitations and fears, find the solution to the current difficulties – like that narrow path overlooking the waterfall, but, oh the satisfaction once you got through it!

Then you reach the top, you sit there, stretch your legs, enjoy the sun kisses on your face, and embrace with your eyes the horizon. That is the most beautiful moment along with the shower in the evening once you get home. There, overlooking the world, that sandwich with soft cheese, walnuts and radishes made the night before and put in the backpack at dawn gives you an immense satisfaction, nothing comparable to a dinner in a fancy restaurant, it tastes of challenge, victory, achievements.

After the sandwich I pulled out of my packpack a few muffins with chocolate chips, baked late in the evening as breakfast for the trip. They eded up with a sweet bite an unforgettable lunch on top of Monte Croce of the Apuan Alps, 1,314 meters, the sea in the far background, smiling friends around me and other snow-capped mountains behind.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A sandwich and a tin of muffins with chocolate chips in my backpack

News always scare me a little bit. Even more than a little bit to be honest. What is strange is that I also like the news, like a lot. I am always looking for something new, I hope that something will change, I hope to be surprised by new and unexpected things that give spice to life. And when they finally arrive, I am scared, I need time to get used to that.

I like to create my small personal routines that welcome in the morning and give me self-confidence during the day, so when something breaks the routine, well it makes me lose my balance. And that scares me. But on the other hand I am the first one aiming to break this balance – I try constantly even without realizing it – because this is what keeps you going and makes you discover other aspects of yourself and the outer world you would not know otherwise.

I made these reflections while using for the first time Takaje, the vacuum system by TreSpade, received in November… I mean, November. It’s April now. A lapse of time that can make you perfectly realize how long it takes me to use something completely new and out of my habits. I faced the news with the only approach I have: books and more books on sous vide cooking. Yet I was blocked by the news, by the fear of not having all the right tools to embrace fully prepared a new experience.

The answer came a few days ago. Move around the obstacle and move forward, or rather deal with fear in a creative way. If you do not have all you need to cook sous vide, use your machine to marinate the chicken drumsticks and then deep fry them. Simple, fast, clean and above all tasty.

And now it’s your turn!

Do you have experience with sous vide cooking? Recipes to suggest? Tips, tricks and practices that you want to share? And also, since I’m interested in the same way, how do you deal with news?

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Deep fried chicken drumsticks and the fear of new experiences

It was not supposed to ba a blogpost, it should not even be a studied photo. It was a careless day with friends: it was warm, variable, with the blinding sun of the first spring days. We looked with concern at the heavy clouds running in the sky, we deserved at least a sunny day.

It was supposed to be an unpretentious crostata made with different leftover flour, an open jar of homemade blackberry jam and a bowl of strawberries left from a birthday cake. A humble cake to finish with something sweet a garden barbecue with Noa and Draco happily running in the background.

Then, as it’s happening more and more often lately, I experienced a deep awareness, I felt the urge to freeze somehow the moment: a blurry polaroid where all the smiles stood out anyway, a tray of grilled meat passed from hand to hand slowly becoming lighter, the warm sun on your skin, playing cards and laughing without a reason, listening to music in silence – the best kind of silence, not heavy but light, because the music was talking for us -, the feeling of being where you had to be, with the people you wanted to be and to be yourself without filters, eventually.

How to freeze this? how to make it eternal, or rather infinite? With the only mean I have, I had to write a post. I have to express my gratitude to those who came into my my life by accident – but then is it really chance, or is it a more complex scheme of which we live only the laughter and the fun? Thank you for filling the last three months with fun, thank you for making my life exciting and vibrant. Thank you for the new experiences you gave me the chance to make, for the surprises, the chatter, the laughter, the film at the cinema with huge popcorn bins, thank you for the days spent with our dogs, thank you for the walks and for the fun texts, thank you for the happy mornings of Whatsapp chats in bed, thank you for your advice, for the hopes of sun and the reality of rain, thank you for the projects of short trips and longer holidays. Thank you for this ordinary life that you made extraordinary.

From now on this will be our crostata. An outer shell made with whole spelt flour and raw cane sugar, my mum’s blackberry jam and a handful of strawberries left from Ale’s birthday cake. It was born as a humble crostata but now this is our special crostata, because we enjoyed it together, those who were there and those who were not physically there, but it was like they were there!

Happy dogs…

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A simple crostata: thank you for the ordinary that becomes extraordinary

Let’s talk about tiramisu, this grey weather which was supposed to be a blooming spring is definitely calling for something decadent. A tiramisu – well dusted with cocoa powder and with an impressive mascarpone cream – is definitely one of the desserts that I just can not resist, I can surely list it among my favourite treats to indulge myself. Even though I have recently slightly changed my taste for sweets, turning into a love for wholesome cakes bursting with fruit, a cup of tiramisu is still one of the most immediate choices I make when I want to make me something special, to wrap my thoughts in a sweet numbness. A killing me softly kind of dessert.

Sunday will be Easter and I decided to celebrate with style and to surrender to my sweet tooth. With a sharp knife – warmed on the stove – I opened carefully the traditional chocolate Easter egg and filled it with lady fingers soaked in black coffee, thick layers of a velvety mascarpone cream, chips of dark chocolate to suprise your taste at every layer and a generous dusting of unsweetened cocoa powder to finish. Yes, a tiramisu enclosed in a chocolate egg. Call it decadent, call it a sensuous dream. I call it the perfect idea of tiramisu. Here you can find my recipe for our family tiramisu.

Happy Easter from the bottom of my heart to you all. I wish you to spend these holidays among the people who love you. Enjoy their company, good seasonal food that will become even more tasteful when shared at a table cheered up by chatter and laughter. Relax, have fun, experience something new of just do what makes you feel confident and happy,  do not worry about the weather and let Spring bloom within you.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A tiramisu in an eggshell, or my sweetest wishes for a Happy Easter

There are tears of joy, sorrow, disappointment, anger, crocodile tears and even chopped vegetable tears. These are traditional tears, a subtle alchemy given by chopped onions, wooden cutting board and a sharp knife. Before blenders there was this ancient ritual of hand-made battuto - vegetables minced by hand on a cutting board that year after year would slowly take a welcoming shape, becoming like a womb.

The battuto is a metaphor for life. You have many ingredients on a chopping board, they are colourful and with different textures, they seem not able to mingle into a single preparation, they tend to run away in each direction. Yet with patience, work, attention, care and even more patience to catch a runaway carrot, after a few minutes of work a heterogeneous collection of vegetables becomes a battuto made by the book, the starting point of many traditional recipes.

This is what Gabriella Ganugi, author of the book La bambina che contava le formiche. Meditazioni in cucina did. In her book Gabriella writes with honesty about her childhood in her grandma’s garden counting the ants, about the Florence flood, her ended marriage, her work and how she picked up the pieces of her life and put them back together in a new mosaic, more colourful and exciting, something to identify with and to be proud of.

The passion for cooking and for family recipes, from her grandmother, her mother, her recipes as a young bride and later as a confident woman, the recipes are the red thread of this book, a way to enjoy memories and experiences. Today Gabriella is the founder of Palazzi Florence Association for International Education, which counts among the many activities Apicius, an international hospitality school. Can you see how she used her skills to make an unforgettable battuto, the starting point of many recipes and so many different lives?

I had no doubt when it came to choose a recipe from the book, it would be the sugo finto, literally a fake sauce, a vegetable tomato sauce which pretends to be a meat sauce. It pretends it so well that even you, who made it, are persuaded.

Everything starts from there, a generous dash od a good extra virgin olive oil to cover the bottom of a saucepan. It is an old time recipe, so no questioning on the amount of olive oil used, believe me. Add the minced vegetables and cook on low flame until soft and golden. Add half a glass of your favourite red wine and let it reduce, it will give body and character to the sauce, then finish with some pureed tomatoes, which will cook slowly until it becomes a thick and tasty sauce, perfect for a dish of pasta to be shared with your friends.

Now, which is the crucial test of any sauce? you make the scarpetta! if once you have finished your dish of pasta you inspect the tablecloth in front of you looking for a piece of crusty bread to mop up the sauce left in the plate, then it means that yes, you are definitely a gourmet, but also that the sauce was really good. I could not resist, as I could not resist tasting the sauce directly from the saucepan with the same piece of crusty bread.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Sugo finto – The vegetarian version of a meat sauce

On Monday I had one of the first cooking classes of the new season and we made cecina, also known as torta di ceci, a Tuscan chickpea cake. My American guests loved it and gave me a lot of fresh new ideas about pairings and other occasions to use it beyond our usual street food approach. I realized how versatile it could be and a urge to make it again grew faster in me. So here I am today with a new version, partly Tuscan, partly Middle Eastern inspired.

Like a good thirty year old Italian girl extremely related to my family, until my new life as a single girl living on her own I had always lived at home with my parents and sister and grandma, sometimes I am almost ashamed to say this. Always with one small exception, 5 weeks in Pisa for a post-graduate course, in a small apartment without a kitchen but with a microwave. At that time I discovered the cecina, which in Livorno is named torta di ceci, chickpea cake. It became my main source of livelihood.

Do not call it cecina in Livorno, or they will refuse to serve you because they called it torta, simply. Seriously, I am not exaggerating. It is actually a cake made of chickpea flour, tasty and simple, showing the preference of Livorno and its people for straightforward and genuine food.

I was at the central market in Livorno, the heart of the city along with the port, and I asked for directions on where to eat a good torta di ceci. Everyone addressed me without hesitation to Gagarin, just outside the market. It is one of the last torterie, if not the last, that still serves only torta. Take a good look, because the door is so small that it can be confused with a house entrance, it is a little shop that serves the best torta you can imagine. They have been doing this for 52 years, and they just serve torta, you can trust them.

Despite this heavy Tuscan influence, every time I think of chickpeas the first thing that comes to my mind are hummus and Lebanese recipes, probably inspired by one of my dearest friends, Bethany, a real hurricane in the kitchen, who can create amazing dishes with just a few ingredients in addition to chickpeas. Her creamy hummus is the best I have ever tasted and… oh, her hummus balila! we devoured it at 2am in the morning, gathered around a happy table, armed with spoons and Arabic bread.

Then, another mental association. Whenever I mention hummus, I immediately crave for a carrot hummus I tasted the first and only time I’ve had the good chance to dine at one of Ottolenghi’s restaurants of in London. It was simply awesome.

I found a good recipe that really inspired me to make carrot hummus. It is a recipe developed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage chef. Carrots are first roasted olive oil and garlic, then pureed with tahine and lemon juice. Lemon – which I used instead of orange – refreshes the taste of carrots and is a perfect match to the cecina. Do not forget a generous sprinkle of za’atar.

Serve it as an appetizer, but believe me, this can be a well balanced and satisfying main course especially if combined with a raw fennel salad.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Chickpea cake with carrot hummus

Easter came and along with it came the perfect time to renew the pretty coat, or the black patent leather shoes, or the lace blouse, everything so Eighty. This would happen not a hundred year ago, but when I was a child. About twenty years ago there was still the idea that Easter came along with Spring, massive spring-cleaning to welcome the parish priest come to visit to bless the house, a general rebirth and a sense of measure that could be found in small symbolic celebrations.

Everything was still related to a more sober way of understanding life, it gave value to small achievements, like finally wearing your new blue pinafore dress, that had been hanging in the closet for weeks. I won’t tell you how dramatic it would get when it was too cold outside to wear my new Spring dress. Definitely my motto Spring is within me, thus outside, thus I will dress lightly, was born in those days.

On the top shelf of our living room, on display for a few weeks, there was a chocolate Easter egg, at most two: my grandmother would buy an embroidered one, as I used to call the chocolate egg wrapped in cellophane and decorated with colourful icing drawings of flowers, lambs and doves.

On Easter morning we would get up early and crack the eggs open, one for me and one for Claudia, we were so curious to find out the surprise. There was nothing ritual in opening the eggs, you would just hit firmly the egg along the seam and dive immediately into a burst of small pieces of chocolate. Most of them would end up directly into the milk for breakfast.

Most of the time we would celebrate Easter in San Gimignano, to visit my grandfather Remigio. We would spend the whole day there with my ​​aunt, my uncle and Margherita, my cousin. All dress up, we used to go to the Mass in the Cathedral, which was impressive for a little girl like I was, then we would run through the tiny back lanes of San Gimignano to get to lunch on time.

Mum and aunt Silvana had already set the table, my grandmother Marcella used to bring a tiny wicker basket covered with a linen doily. Underneath there were the blessed hard boiled eggs.

This is the perfect moment to think back with joy to those Easters, not only because in two weeks we’ll celebrate Easter again, but because we decided to make it our theme for this month’s Italian Table Talk round up. As you will see Easter is a religious holiday – actually the most important celebration from a religious perspective – that has as always important implications on our food culture.

Emiko is actually writing about what comes before Easter, she’s making a 19th century Good Friday lunch. Valeria has made for us the Neapolitan pastiera, probably one of the most famous Easter dessert of our country. Jasmine has baked a Passover bread, called mimuna, and she will tell us something more about the origins of this holiday.

I’ll show you instead what was waiting for me at home after Mass for Easter, being it still our lunch every year, with small variations.

The starters for an Easter lunch can change year after year: crostini neri, crostini with mushrooms, small vegetable flans, cold cuts and cheese… But there is always a constant, the blessed eggs. These are plain hard-boiled eggs, cooked as long as you need to recite the Apostles Creed, as my grandmother would say, peeled and placed with care in a small basket. The eggs are blessed during Mass on Easter and they always open our lunch, simply seasoned with a pinch of salt. The first course usually is not relevant for the tradition, for us it changes every year.

Then we come to the main course, and this is where the tradition is truly felt. It is lamb, roasted, stewed or even fried, but lamb it should be. This is an ancient legacy, which dates back to the Jewish Passover, but I think for us is quite simply related to family habits.

As a side dish, along with roasted potatoes that are a favourite of children and adults, we traditionally make piselli alla fiorentina, green pea made according to the Florentine tradition: a clove of garlic, a pinch of sugar, extra virgin olive oil and a few pieces of pancetta or prosciutto.

As dessert you’ll bring to the table the chocolate egg and the schiacciata di Pasqua, a classic and one of my fondest memories.

But here’s the recipe for the lamb, the real protagonist of Easter lunch. For this recipe I took inspiration from The Complete Book of Florentine Cooking: Over 250 Traditional Recipes, Easy to Prepare and Delicious to Eat written by Paolo Petroni, a reference for Florentine recipes.

Link love

Not to lose a single post by the Italian Table talk girls, these are our Social Accounts:

• Emiko, her blog is Emikodavies.com, @emikodavies on Twitter, and her Pinterest
• Valeria, her blog is Life Love Food, @valerianecchio on Twitter, her FB Page and her Pinterest
• Jasmine, her blog is Labna.it, @labna on Twitter, her FB page and her Pinterest
• Juls, my twitter @Julskitchen, FB page and Pinterest

The hashtag to follow the conversation on Italian Table talk on Twitter is #ITabletalk (easy, isn’t it?). We are curious to hear which are your traditions related to Easter.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Roasted lamb and a Tuscan Easter lunch for the Italian Table Talk

Please, Spring, come fast because there are exciting things that I can’t wait to experience till the last drop. An example? Well, let me start from the beginning. Last year I met by chance Leela, and I was immediately fascinated by her bubbling and inspiring personality.

She’s a talented photographer but most of all a sensitive and sweet woman, someone you feel immediately related to, someone you would trust at the first glance. We kept in contact for a while, then a few months ago she asked me if I wanted to take part in an incredible photo workshop she was going to teach in Florence in May with Bianca. Guess which was my answer?

How can you say no to two passionate women who will lead a dream-like tour where the main themes are Tuscany, food, photography and, yes, passion? This is more than just a holiday. It’s a time designed to make the most of your precious time in Italy. We want you to FEEL Italy, not just SEE Italy – and using your camera is the perfect way to do that.

So here we are, a few informations on the main characters of this incredible opportunity.

Leela Cyd

She does what she loves everyday and her infectious enthusiasm will inspire the photographer inside of you. Leela has landed her some pretty sweet gigs as a cookbook photographer and a contributor to the mega-blog Apartment Therapy and The Kitchn. Commercial clients also hunt her down for her stylish portrayal of their hotels and restaurants.

She has shot interiors, portraits and food for magazines such as Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Kinfolk, Whole Living and the New York Times. She also owns the award winning blog Tea Cup Tea.

Bianca Gignac

She proved why it is so dangerous to let your daughter go to Italy – she met and married an Italian man. She lived on his turf for a few years: she got a job, built a life and made great friends.

She even got along fantastically with her Italian mother-in-law. Her relationship with Italy is unique – she understands it as a resident and as a foreigner – and she knows sharing her second home, her love and her insider knowledge of Italy can make other people’s travels to Italy more meaningful.

So which is my role here?

My country home will host our group as we spend the afternoon stirring pots, chopping herbs and creating our Tuscan feast. The cooking lessons will introduce each dish with family stories and local traditions; you’ll learn to cook as Tuscan grandmas and mums do every day in their kitchens for their families.

Of course the evening will also be a wonderful opportunity to put your new food shooting skills to the test that you learned earlier in the week. No cooking class at Juls’ kitchen would be complete without a wander through my Tuscan hill town and an aperitivo in the garden. It’s the calm before the eating storm.

If you want a dose of Tuscany, creativity, incredible food, fresh air and the sparkly vibe of Florence we invite you to join us for this incredible week. See the full itinerary.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Florence photo workshop May 19-25, 2013

There is lunch and there is dinner. There are many recipes that can be made indifferently for your midday meal or for your evening meal, they have a wild independent spirit, they suit your family needs and moods, they are welcomed anytime. Then, there is a bunch of recipes that are specifically tailored to suit your dinner, just as the potato cheese gateau. It is one of my family staple dishes, I can remember it on our table since I was a child, constant and reliable, with just a few variations, but just for dinner.

In my family we start making the potato cheese gateau around October, it comes along the first signs of the cold weather. There’s a moment when you realize that summer is over, and it is when your mum tells you: guess what I am making for dinner, it looks like ages since the last time we had it. I’m making the potato cheese gateau. And you welcome the gateau with a strange mixture of melancholy and excitement.

The melancholy you experience is the same you feel every time the good things end, just like when summer is over and you see people shutting down they holiday houses at the sea, the first yellow leaves scattered along the alleys and the warm scarf you wrap yourself in when you go out. The excitement is for the cheese oozing from the gateau and the good smell of the fireplace that soon will welcome you home like a warm hug.

If you can identify a moment when you start making the potato cheese gateau, it’s hard to define precisely when you stop. Usually you keep making it until late April, when it will be replaced by tuna loaf, pasta or farro cold salads. You slowly decrease the frequency, and from one day to the other you boil potatoes just to make a colourful cold salad with anchovies, parsley and onion, no more for the gateau. You rise your eyes from the table where you’re peeling the potatoes, look around you and see summer.

As for many other recipes on this blog – especially bracioline al pomodoro - it’s so rooted in my family traditions that… I’ve never made it before. I mean, it’s one of my mum’s pieces de resistance, so I’ve just eaten it so far, until last Sunday.

Its winning point is the filling: cooked ham and mozzarella, smoked ham and blue cheese such as gorgonzola, basically whatever you have in your fridge. Making it time after time you’ll find your favourite combination. As for me, nothing beats smoked ham and gorgonzola. As a matter of fact, though, the best part is the crisp surface.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Our Sunday dinner: potato cheese gateau

During summer the smell of flowers and honey is sweet, in spring Nature explodes and makes you believe that everything is possible, because after the cold months there is always a rebirth. In autumn fiery colours are the dominant of my walks, an incredible and surprising warm palette. In winter, especially on sunny days, country walks still offer other joys: the brisk air on your face, your cheeks bright and pink, a rush of energy that makes you alive after your walk. But above all, let’s face it, I love to come back home and find something warm waiting for me.

Last year I spent two weeks in England in winter between London and the West Country. We enjoyed long afternoon walks along a river or along narrow paths surrounded by high hedgerows, under endless skies. Then we would arrive in a small town and find the local tea room, where you could warm up yourself with a cup of steaming tea, enjoying also scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Small pleasures whose expectation made ​​even more memorable our afternoon strolls.

Back at home, I enjoy coming back from a walk and brew some tea, to warm hands and spirit. Just imagine: you sit around a table and chat over a cup of tea, sheer joy. There is just one thing missing, something sweet to go with your tea. Cookies, cakes, pies, everything is perfect. But now that we are at the end of the apple season, for me nothing beats a baked apple stuffed with nuts and raisins.

These apples can be made just before you go for a walk, then leave them in the oven. When you’ll come back you will find them warm and juicy, just put the kettle for a tea or a coffee and a quick and luscious snack is ready.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Baked apples after a walk in the countryside

In Proust’s book À la recherche du temps perdu – which I admit I have never read – the protagonist eats a madeleine and this awakens his childhood memories. Oh, les madeleines, tiny French pastries with a delicate buttery lemon flavour, elegant and refined. My madeleines are instead bracioline al pomodoro, crumbed and fried beef slices that are then cooked in a thick tomato sauce. You should be able to understand what kind of person I am…

These bracioline are my first noteworthy gourmet memory. I was probably five years old, it was autumn and it was the day when I came back home from the hospital after the adenoids surgery. That day marked a change in my life, an epochal change. A universe of flavours and tempting smells opened wide to a skinny, pale, little girl.

I remember that day, I sat at the head table in the old grandma’s kitchen, the light came through the door behind me and an inviting scent reached my nose from the stove, waking up my appetite. Grandma brought to the table a red enameled pan with two handles and served me a thin slice of beef cooked in a thick bright red tomato sauce. She cut it and I began eating.

Here the sources – my mother and grandmother – agree with my memory: a new, intense and unexpected burst of flavour. Granny, what have you put into the meat, it’s delicious! they say I shouted in ecstasy. Grandma smiled back at me and said that it was just like the other times, it was me who had changed.

So, here it is the marvellous food that marked the beginning of my foodie discoveries, a peasant dish, created to increase the available meat, which is passed in a beaten egg and then thickly coated with breadcrumbs, fried and then cooked again with a good dash of tomato sauce, the same they would bottled during summer with a basil leaf, the same we still make. It is so typical of our area and so responding to the need of feeding large families with nothing that my granddad Remigio in San Gimignano used to make exactly the same dish. He even cooked it into the same red enameled pan.

When mum was still working in San Gimignano I used to spend every Thursday with my granddad Remigio. We would spend the sunny mornings walking and searching for pine nuts into the big square shadowed by huge pine trees, then we would come back home for lunch and he would cook these bracioline for me. These memories are so vivid that I just need to close my eyes to taste them again.

I have them here on my tongue, the familiar taste of the tomato, then the soft breadcrumbs soaked in the sauce, like a sponge, and finally the meat, tender as a little girl would like.

These are my madeleines, the first bite of a braciolina and there it is, a film that features a girl in a checkered apron playing outside in the garden under the shade of the lime trees and the acacias, a stone tied up with a rope pretending it was her dog and the fig tree in the late summer where she would climb to eat the juicy fruits still warm from the September sun. A happy little girl, maybe not too refined with her grazed knees, due more to clumsiness than to tomboy adventures!

On Sunday I decided to make them again, or better, to make them for the first time after a whole life of pure enjoyment, and I felt like a child again. The temptation to mop the sauce with a piece of crusty bread is strong, indulge yourself in a memorable scarpetta.

You’ll obtain the best result with a good piece of beef – you don’t need an expensive cut, just a very thin slice of beef -, fresh free range eggs, home made tomato sauce bottled during summer and real breadcrumbs, made with leftover stale bread. And believe me when I say that it’s difficult to go wrong with these bracioline once you start with good ingredients.

They are unreasonably good even cold and you can turn them easily into a filling for a rustic panino, made with two slices of a country loaf and some lettuce leaves. The perfect sandwich for a school trip, can you imagine unwrapping it in front of your classmates? It would be enough to come back to primary school…

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A childhood flashback: bracioline al pomodoro

I used to imagine my life as a single woman in my new house a little bit different. I would have chosen freely and sometime randomly my lunches and dinners, maybe one day guacamole and tortillas, the other day a green salad and grilled cheese with wholemeal bread or even a creamy risotto just for me. I had not considered, though, the proximity to grandma’s and mum’s houses and the Italian character strongly harboring in me. So my life as a single woman is dotted with lunches at grandma’s and dinners at my parents’ house. Sometimes I also dine out, for your information… But breakfasts, oh the breakfasts that I make!

It all began as a game, to have fun with my camera and Instagram, a challenge to find something different to photograph every morning. There are days when I am on a run and breakfast is just the mandatory coffee and some biscuits. Luckily there are also relaxed days, when I am able to make something from scratches, as a rice pudding with cardamom and saffron or baked apples stuffed with dried fruit. Then there are the days when I am impressively organized and I make my breakfast the night before.

A tart made with leftover short pastry and jam baked before going to bed makes me sleep rocked by the smell of sugar and butter and it makes me wake up with a smile. Whole wheat bread wrapped in a kitchen cloth the next morning becomes an ideal base for my favourite spring flower honey, produced by my friend Gigliola, who lives a few kilometers from here. And then there’s Benedetta’s bread pudding cake…

As Tuscan, I worship stale bread. We do not throw anything away. If not used directly in cooking you can grate it and make extraordinary breadcrumbs that will give new life to golden fried chicken and stuffed vegetables. Some time ago I posted on Facebook a photo of the breadcrumbs I had just made to recycle some stale bread and Benedetta asked me if I had ever tried the stale bread pudding cake.

Now, you must know that I met Benedetta almost ten years ago at a friend’s house. Since then we met just a few more times, but we found out that we have so much in common, a passion for cooking and a true love for nature and for some heartbreaking TV series, ending with a recent love affair with Florence. Well, we’re kindred souls. I asked her the recipe.

To cut a long story short, in a week I’ve already baked it twice. While you make it you’ll already have an idea of what the result will be: the hot milk softens the dry bread and makes it the perfect start for a rustic and moist cake, which will be enriched with two tablespoons of cocoa powder, nuts, an egg and a some sugar. From here on, just add your imagination: just think at fresh raspberries in summer or a handful of chocolate chips if you want to indulge yourself… delicious!

Link Love

• Bread pudding by BBC Good Food, lovely with tea, or custard or ice cream for dessert
• Bread pudding cake, this time from Joy of Baking, just imagine it made with croissants…
• last but not least, I want to show you where I bought my fabric from, the nice Etsy shop Fabrics and Frills. Linda is such a sweet and fun person, we became friends after my first purchase, I will surely buy more colours!

… then, time to introduce you Noa, six months old, she has something of a Maremmano and something of a Golden Retriever, she came into our life to mess it up and make it even more fun and enjoyable. We walk together, she’s trying to feel at home here, and I just hope she’ll get along well with Wolfi. We already love her!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Bread pudding cake for breakfast

I would have never expected to talk about love on my blog, especially on St. Valentine’s day. As you have probably noticed, I usually tell you everything about me, you know of my goals, my dreams, my recent move a few metres from my parents’ house, you know about the cat who arrived in August and the huge white puppy who arrived yesterday (ops, I haven’t told you yet about her, surprise!). You know how much I love Tuscany, genuine food, my family, my friends… but then that’s where I draw the famous line in the sand, or in the flour.

Then Emanuela and Fabio, architects and bloggers behind Coffee Break | the italian way of design, asked me to write a guest post on St. Valentine’s day. I looked at their blog and I liked it, elegant, modern… then all that coffee convinced me, and I said to myself, take it as a challenge, see what you can do. I went to the supermarket and wandered through the aisles in a trance, I could not figure out what to cook, everything seemed obvious or not poetic at all (the first idea of a bean and farro soup was discarded immediately).

Then the idea: I had some excellent fish stock in the freezer, stashed away for Christmas when I had been too generous with the portions, made with soup fish from the Orbetello Gulf, thick and so tasteful. I was saving it for special occasions, so here’s the perfect time to use it. Love is sharing and generosity, a bowl of cuttlefish soup to be shared and eaten with two spoons. You give yourself to another human being without necessarily expecting anything in return.

Love takes time, patience and passion, just like a fish soup. Consider three hours to get a thick soup where you’ll taste all the shades of the sea. But then you realize that the taste was worth the time you waited for it to be ready, listening to the pot slowly simmering on the stove. Love is not exclusivity and isolation, just as you would imagine a soup: multiply the ingredients, add a few more tablespoons and chairs and invite your friends over. Love is daily like a soup can be, it comforts you, makes you feel good, surprises you but leaves you with a certainty in your heart. It is nourishment.

Here’s how I came to make this cuttlefish soup, a challenge also from the photographic point of view, because a chocolate cake would be certainly more palatable, but I like to push the line! And since I always cook with generosity, we had this for dinner with my family!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Love in the time of Saint Valentine. Cuttlefish soup

Being a country girl, in my eyes Florence is a city, it is great and wonderful. The view from Piazzale Michelangelo takes my breath away in any season and at any time of the day. Every time I walk around the city centre I can not help but take a picture – real or mental it’s the same – of the Duomo, from every perspective. I love that moment when I look up to the top, and then higher again, because otherwise you can’t embrace everything with your admired eyes. I look forward to this moment, I hold my breath for a second, and then I let it go with a sigh, the same every time as if it were the first one.

Yet, despite this sense of grandeur that comes over me every time, what I really love about Florence are the tiny back alleys that you may discover only with friends who live there, the private and mysterious look of a garden you see beyond a wall (I may be a bit too influenced by Notting Hill, oopsy Daisy), the small stores and workshops that seem to belong to another time.

In one of these workshops I went to learn how to make schiacciata alla fiorentina, a typical sweet flatbread made during Carnival time. You perfectly know that Carnival is not my favourite time of the year, I see it as the last obstacle between me and the warm weather of spring, though every year I find a reason to save it, its sweets! Last year I tried to fall in love again with Carnival with a feast of typical sweet treats from Siena and Valdelsa, cenci and frittelle.

This year, thanks to the theme we have chosen for this month’s Italian Table Talk, Carnival of course, I decided to give another chance to this holiday and take advantage of a new crush I have for Florence to discover one of its most typical desserts, schiacciata alla fiorentina, also known as stiacciata unta, greased flat bread. Emiko will present a typical sweet of the Florentine carnival, berlingozzo. Valeria, a pure Venetian girl and therefore the best source to learn about the carnival traditions, has made favette (castagnole) and will tell us about her personal experience and the excitement of Carnival seen through her eyes as a child. Jasmine will instead present the Jewish Purim and an evocative sweet treat, chiacchiere alla giudia.

But back to our schiacciata. I took my bus on a winter day so shiny and sunny that seemed almost spring and I went to Florence to visit Andrea Bianchini, a famous chocolatier and pastry chef, to learn how to make a good schiacciata. As I have said many times, it is impossible to talk about a generic Tuscan cuisine, since my region is extremely fragmented when it comes to typical food. Just like with lampredotto, schiacciata alla fiorentina does not cross the boundaries of the city to get to me in Valdelsa, and not only I had not made it before last week, I had never even tasted it. The things you do just for the science sake…

Despite its name that reminds of the savoury flatbread so typical of all our bakeries, schiacciata alla fiorentina is a sweet cake, fragrant with orange and vanilla. During Carnival time it appears in every bakery, pastry shop and bar in Florence. There is even a real competition aiming to nominate the best Florentine schiacciata, though the best one is almost universally attributed to Giorgio. Dusted with icing sugar with the Florence lily on the surface, now it is increasingly served filled with whipped cream, chocolate or custard.

At the beginning the schiacciata was just bread dough enriched with lard. Just remember, Carnival always falls in the period when the pig is traditionally slaughtered, so lard was there, ready to be used. Then it was made ​​even more special by adding sugar, vanilla and oranges, so recognizable in the cake where you use both the grated peel and the juice. Carnival was in fact the last chance to indulge in the pleasures of food and life before Lent – semel in anno licet insanire used to say the Latins, it was a time in which everyone was allowed to break religious and social conventions.

Andrea Bianchini also told me that often the oranges in the traditional Florentine pastries used to be actually bergamots, very common in the area in the past times: as evidence, those round citrus fruit you can see in Della Robbia’s enamelled majolicas are actually bergamots. Another important element of the schiacciata alla fiorentina is its shape, traditionally rectangular. Apparently we owe the success of this cake to the nuns of Santa Verdiana in Florence, who used to serve food to the detainees in rectangular baking trays.

In the past, without going too far back in time, grandmothers would make the schiacciata with leftover bread dough and bake it in the wood oven. I guess oranges, that give to this cake its typical and well recognizable taste, were considered just what is now Bourbon vanilla for us, precious and rare. At a time when a tangerine or an orange were a Christmas gift seen as treasures to be savoured by excited children, just imagine how special and decadent the oranges would make this cake.

This schiacciata, made according to Andrea Bianchini’s recipe, is a good compromise between the traditional one made ​​with fresh brewer’s yeast, lard and a double rising and the modern home version, often made with olive oil or butter and baking powder.

Link love

Not to lose a single post by the Italian Table talk girls, these are our Social Accounts:

• Emiko, her blog is Emikodavies.com, @emikodavies on Twitter, and her Pinterest
• Valeria, her blog is Life Love Food, @valerianecchio on Twitter, her FB Page and her Pinterest
• Jasmine, her blog is Labna.it, @labna on Twitter, her FB page and her Pinterest
• Juls, my twitter @Julskitchen, FB page and Pinterest

The hashtag to follow the conversation on Italian Table talk on Twitter is #ITabletalk (easy, isn’t it?). Tell us which are the typical sweets treat of your Carnival and how you live this crazy moment of the year!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Schiacciata alla fiorentina, a sweet flatbread for Carnival and the Italian Table Talk