Fusilli Salsiccia e Cime di Rapa (Italian Sausage and Turnip Greens)

This is a traditional recipe from Apulia, although you should cook this with orecchiette-Pasta and not with Fusilli. Oh well....

You need:
Italian Sausage
White wine
Cime di Rapa (wikipedia gives these to me as Turnip Greens, it is the leafy part - I'll show pics) If someone knows how these are called in English, please let me know!!!
Peperoncino
Pasta (orecchiette or any short pasta you like)
Onion
Olive-Oil

Info:
These are the Cime di Rapa. Cima is the Italian word for "top, end, summit" and Rapa is a turnip.

 

Preparation:
Put on pasta-water. Dice a small onion and cut the sausages in small pieces. Fry both in olive-oil until crispy and brown, add some peperoncino and a nice shot of white wine. Have a nice glass yourself. Let simmer until the wine is almost evaporated. Meanwhile prepare the Rapa: We only need the leaves and the little flower-parts, not the stems. You can strip or peel off the leaves from the stems. Wash and then throw in with the sausages. You might need to add a bit of boiling water (from the pasta-pot). Be aware that a big bag of Rapa will turn into an almost-not-there part once cooked, similar to fresh spinach. Cook the rapa for some minutes. Meanwhile your pasta should be ready. Drain well and throw in with the rapa-sausages-sauce, mix well. Serve hot and covered in fresh parmesan cheese!!!
Note: Since the sausages usually are quite salty and peppery, you won't need to add other spices to the sauce!

Quick and easy Pumpkin-Potato-Soup with Feta Cheese

Cut pumpkin in pieces, peel potatoes and dice. Heat oil in a big pot, fry pumpkin and potato, than top with boiling water and cook until both are tender. You can add whatever spices you like, such as chilis or ginger. Drain, but save the cooking water!!! Blend potatoes and pumpkin and add cooking water to make a thicker or thinner soup, just as you like it best. Top with feta cheese and serve with bread.

Tortilla-"Lasagne"

I was in the mood for something Mexican (or what we misleadingly call Mexican). I bought tortillas and hot-tomato-sauce Mexican Style, chicken-breasts and Edamer cheese and some red and yellow bell peppers and an avocado. I still had some Nacho-cheese-sauce in the pantry.

Note: The following recipe wasn't bad, but neither was it extremely good. The taste was fine for something I came up with this same afternoon, but consistency and fillings/toppings have yet to be improved! I'll definitely make this again but then I'll put more effort into it!

1. Marinate chicken-breasts with part of the Hot tomatosauce, some olive-oil and some garlic.
2. Fry in pan and cut into little chunks, add the rest of the tomatosauce and the diced bell peppers

3. Mash avocado, add some lemon-juice and Nacho-cheese-sauce.
4. Cut the tortillas into rectangular pieces so they fit into your casserole-dish. I used the cut-off pieces to do the last layer - no food-waste :-))
5. Start with a layer of tortilla, then Avocado-mash, then chicken-peppers. Continue until toppings are finished. Top with grated Edamer cheese or any other cheese you might prefer.

Here's the first layer of Tortilla.

The second layer with avocado-mash

The third layer with chicken-peppers

Layers in Casserole-Dish

Topped off with grated cheese

Out of the oven

Piece of Tortilla-Lasagne

Side-view ;-))

 

Pasta with pancetta-zucchini-creamcheese-sauce

Ingredients:
Pasta
Zucchini
Pancetta
Creamcheese

Preparation: Cook pasta according to package instructions. Meanwhile, cut zucchini in thin slices. Fry pancetta in olive-oil and add zucchini. When zucchini are almost cooked add a bit of the salted pasta-water and the cream-cheese, stir well. Season according to individual likes - I might add some black pepper and a bit of salt, but that's it. Drain pasta and mix with sauce, add parmesan cheese if you like.

Soup with Minced-Meat, Leek, Cream Cheese and Potatoes

This is one of my favorite soups or stews!! I used to make it with one of those package-mixes until I decided that I did not need them anymore.

Ingredients:
450gr minced meat (beef)
4 leeks
about 1,2 - 1,5 l boiling water + broth/stock-cubes
400gr cream-cheese (a little less might do as well)
potatoes

Preparation:
Prepare the leek, cut into small pieces and wash. Fry minced meat in a bit of oil and add the leek, fry for another couple minutes. Add about 1,2 l boiling water and the amount of stock-cubes needed or the amount needed to satisfy your salt-taste-buds. Peel potatoes, cut into small pieces and throw in as well, let boil until the potatoes are cooked (you might need to add some more water). Add cream-cheese and stir in well.

You might want to cook the potatoes separately, the original recipe is without them. I think the soup would go great with rice or bread as well. I just added the potatoes to save on time and pots :-). Feel free to add more spices or salt.

I'm sorry that the picture does not look very inviting, but I assure you that the taste is fine!

Risotto with Salmon and Mozzarella-cheese

This was a quick and easy meal. I'm not the biggest fan of rice and especially not of Risotto, but a friend has been eating this again and again for quite some time so I thought I'd give it a try! What can I say? - IT'S AWESOME. And it was just about the first food my baby practically inhaled. Usually she's not the best eater (she likes almost everything, but after a few spoonfuls the just stops eating and instead starts throwing food everywhere...), but this risotto was a big hit. 


Here's the "original" recipe (she got the idea from watching How I met your mother, Season 2, Episode 3, where Barney and Ted's Mother talk about Salmon Risotto - Hey, so TV has some advantages after all...). I made some slight alterations, but see for yourself: 


For 2:
cubes (veggie) for stock/broth
200gr. risotto-rice
1 small onion
(white wine if you like)
150gr. smoked salmon
150gr. buffalo-mozzarella (or normal mozzarella) / Crème Fraiche
lemon juice
dill
salt/pepper


Prepare some stock [broth?] (750ml boiling water and stock-cube according to package or according to how salty you like it - I took the veggie-variety). Turn down heat but make sure the broth remains hot. Cut one small onion into small pieces and fry in butter and olive-oil (equal parts) until light golden. Add about 200gr. Risotto-rice and stir until the rice is covered with the oil/butter. De-glaze with a bit of white wine (I left this step out). Add one ladle of broth and stir gently until the rice has soaked up the liquid. Repeat until you finished the broth or until the rice is cooked (ideally, those two coincide). Add some pepper (I didn't) and about 100gr. smoked salmon (cut into small pieces; I sued more, maybe 150gr.), 1-2 tablespoons Crème Fraiche (I used about 150gr. buffalo-mozzarella, cut into small pieces), a dash of lemon juice and some dill (again, I didn't, I have no idea what it's called in Italy). Since the broth is quite salty you shouldn't need to add salt, but feel free to do so or to add other spices.


Here's the risotto and the baby:

Summer Pasta

Ingredients:
Fresh Pasta
Veggies of your choice (here: zucchini, tomatoes and mushrooms)
pancetta
some cheese - I used "Stracciatella", a special cheese from Apulia in South Italy, a kind of liquidish mozzarella mixed with cream

Fry pancetta in Olive-oil, add veggies and spices (salt, garlic, herbs) as you like. Meanwhile, cook pasta. Cut cheese in small pieces or if cream-cheese, put in ball and stir well. Add fried veggies and drained pasta. Serve either hot or cold, it's good both ways.





Veggies and pancetta in pan












Stracciatella










Finished product :-)

Panzerotti

Panzerotti are little halfmoons of yeast-dough filled traditionally with tomato-sauce and mozzarella-cheese and deep-fried in oil. They are soooo delicious (!!), and all you need is a bit of dough and some fillings - so there are two big advantages:
1. You can use almost every left-over to stuff into your panzerotti. Clearly, there are fillings which are more Italian than others, but we're not picky.
2. Every member of your family can create his own favorite filling.

To make the concept clearer to you, I copy from Wikipedia (Mind you, the picture is mine, showing a glorious "Funghi and Salsiccia"-Panzerotto and a Fior di Zucca):

Panzarotti or panzerotti are filled pastries, different forms of which are popular in Italy and in the United States, especially in Southern New Jersey. Panzerotti originated in central and southern Italy, especially in Apulia. They are small versions of the calzone, but produced with a softer dough. The most common fillings are tomato and mozzarella, but spinach, mushrooms, baby corn, and ham are often used. Another filling is onions stir fried in olive oil and seasoned with salted anchovies and capers, a seasoning that, mixed with bread, is also used in Apulia for stuffed bell peppers.In America the word has come to be spelled "panzarotti", and is regarded as singular (with the plural being "panzarotties" or "panzarotti"). They can come in various sizes from 4" to 12", and are most commonly semi-circular shaped. It consists of a pocket of dough filled with varying amounts of melted mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and any reasonable number of fillings, which is then wrapped, salted, and deep-fried. The panzarotti rises during this process, creating a pocket containing a considerable amount of steam which should be partially released prior to eating.


Enough babbling, on to the real thing!!!


Ingredients:
- one ball of yeast-dough (basically the same you'd make for white bread or pizza: flour, water, yeast, sugar for the yeast to rise, a bit of olive-oil, salt)
- fillings as you like, the classic is tomato-sauce and mozzarella-cheese
- sunflower-seed oil for the frying (or equivalent)




For the fillings I prepared and then mixed freely:
Spicy salami in little chunks
Italian salsiccia
Funghi
Tomato-sauce (tomatos, olive-oil, basil; let simmer for a while and then cool off)
Mozzarella-cheese in little chunks
Fior di Zucca (it's the flower of zucchini! You see it here on the left side and above.)



After the dough has risen for the appropriate time you can start preparing the Panzerotti. As quoted above, there's no rule as to the size, but they're often served as antipasto so I wouldn't make them too big. Take a piece of dough, shape it into a ball and roll it flat out. You should obtain a flat and round piece of dough, like a mini-pizza.

Careful not to roll it out too thin as it might tear when closing it. I have a Panzerotti-shaper, so I transfer the piece onto it and then add the filling. Don't use too much filling and leave a "filling-free" border. Close carefully, pressing firmly down on the borders.





It should look like this, but it could also look a lot better! You then heat the oil in a frying pan and just let the panzerotti fry in it, flipping it over after some time. Again, I'm sorry not to be able to give an exact time, but you'll figure it out.


Mine were slightly too browned, I'll try not to heat the oil too much the next time and to cook them a bit slower - well I was hungry while cooking and wanted them to be ready quicklyquicklyquickly....






And here are two more fillings, one is tomato-salami-mozzarella and the other is zucchini-flower and mozzarella (this one was especially yummy!!)

PIIIIIZZZZAAAAAA

No recipe, just two pictures. But I assure you, it's homemade.







Salami and red peppers for me!













Prosciutto and Funghi for the husband!

Left-Over-Fridge-Clean-Up! May 28th

Who doesn't know the scenario where one looks into the fridge and has to admit that yes, it's pretty well stocked, BUT:
- some of the food is on its way to grow new lifeforms
- there are a zillion little bowls, each containing some left-over from previous suppers
Well, sometimes there are days, when you just have to throw random stuff together in order to have a quick and delicious meal whilst using up food which you otherwise would have to throw out.

I had two of those:
1. left-over oven-potatoes, thrown into a frying-pan with wieners and green beans.
2. mini-tortellini with pork-fillet, green beans and melted feta-cheese.

Both were delicious!

Baby: Pasta and Broccoli in Cheesesauce

Since my little one has decided that she's big now, and since I'm fed up with cooking special baby-pap every day and feeding it to the dog because "la signorina" does not like it, I started cooking for her the grown-up way. This way, we both can eat it and I do not have to cook several meals. All I have to do is add salt to my plate afterwards, as i cook without salt. Today we were to use up the broccoli:

broccoli
cream-cheese of any kind you like (we used stracchino), milk
pasta


Cook pasta, at the same time cook broccoli until soft (I did it in water, which pretty much kills all the vitamins, so steaming might be a better idea). Melt cheese in pan, add milk until you have a creamy sauce. Add broccoli and pour over pasta.










Broccoli is good for you!