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!

CBC - Fusilli ai peperoni

I wasn't thrilled by this recipe, but I'd make it again. The preparation is kind of a turn-off though...


The cookbook was: La cucina dell'Emilia Romagna in 450 ricette tradizionali; Newton & Compton Editori 1998, page 83


Ingredients (for 6):
400gr Fusilli
400gr bellpeppers
80gr butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ladle of fine broth
one glass of dry white wine
salt and pepper

Preparation:
Prepare the peppers (cut out the "innards", little white skins ecc.) and put into boiling water for a moment to skin them. I did this step only partially, the skin did not want to come off, no matter what! If you have a better way to do this, please tell me (I think one can put them in the hot oven?). Cut into small pieces and fry in butter and oil. Add wine and simmer until evaporated, do the same with the broth. Salt and pepper, and let simmer on low heat. Prepare the Pasta, drain and mix with sauce, serve immediately.

As you can see from my pic, there was no sauce. There were only single pieces of pepper, nicely cooked in wine and broth. I think I also added a whole lot of broth, because the peppers were still hard and started to burn as all the broth had already evaporated. The dish is also in desperate need of parmesan cheese to top it off.

CBC - Strozzapreti with Salmon-Cream-Sauce

I made this on request of my better half, and it was good. Crazy good. I have no idea what made it taste so good, as it was basically only pasta + salmon + cream. But I thought not to ask, but to enjoy instead. And I am adding this to Soul-Food!!!!! Definitely.

So, the cookbook is the following: Pasta, Zabert Sandmann, 2000 (the same editor as the Antipasti-Book), page 64

Ingredients:
400gr Strozzapreti (it's a kind of thick-cut pasta)
Salt
various herbs (e.g. Basil., Rosemary, Oregano ecc.)
1 tablespoon butter
250gr cream
2 tablespoons Lemon-Juice
400gr Smoked Salmon (I think I used less)
freshly ground pepper


Preparation:
1. Cook Pasta according to package instructions.
2. wash herbs, shake dry and pick leaves from stems. Put aside some for decoration, cut the others in small stripes.
3. Heat butter in pan. Fry herbs in butter, add cream and lemon-juice, let simmer for 4 minutes.

4. Cut salmon in stripes and warm in hot sauce. Add salt and pepper to sauceas you like it.

5. Drain pasta and mix with sauce. Decorate with herbs (or not, see below).

Home-Made Pasta with Beef Stew (Strozzapreti al Ragù di Manzo)

The recipe is this one, I just used beef instead of lamb. It turned out quite nice and I have a mega-portion ready fir the freezer.

And look who wandered into the kitchen to help? Well, maybe I had to shout a little bit to make him come.... I cannot remember :-)))

Spaghetti alle Vongole, Fried Calamari-Rings

Ingredients:
Calamari-Rings
Flour
Clams
Tomatoes
Garlic
White Wine
Parsley
Chilis
Spaghetti
Oil (Sunflower and Olive)

Preparation:
The Calamari-Rings, must be covered well with flour, and will then be fried in hot oil. Put on a paper towel to drain off excessive oil and salt.
The Vongole (clams), prior to cooking, must be put in cold salted water where they purge themselves from sand. Throw out crushed clams or clams that are open. Heat olive oil in a pan and throw in clams. They will open and salted water will spill out, so you do not need to add water or salt. Instead, add garlic, parsley, diced tomatoes, white wine and, if you like it hot, finely cut red chili. Let simmer for some time, throw out clams which do not open up. Cook spaghetti and mix with clams. DO NOT, repeat, NOT add cheese. You will be banned for life from entering Italy.

These are the Calamari-Rings

Floured Calamari-Rings

Fried and Salted (I don't know why, but part of the flour-crust always falls off)

Vongole in a sauce of white wine, tomatoes, garlic and Chili

I forgot the parsley, here it is

 Close-Up of Parsley, if you didn't really believe me :-)))

Well, and then the most embarrassing thing happened. We were so hungry that there's no picture of the finished Spaghetti plate. So please use your imagination!!!

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.

Two types of Tortellini

Since there was close to none cooking involved, there's no recipe. Shame on me. I just opened and cooked two packages of store-bought Tortellini (one with meat filling and one with spinach-ricotta filling). For me the sauce was Spinach-Feta (I had a whole bag of Spinach-leaves in the fridge which otherwise would have ended up as food-waste), for the Mister it was pancetta and cream.

Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

This week's choice of CBC  was - surprise surprise - another Pasta-Dish. It comes from the Italian region Umbria, one of the smaller regions with lots of hills, mountains and forests. Thus, the cuisine is genuine, hearty and meaty, with a strong tendency also for venison. If you ever come to Italy in the fall, make sure to spend a few nights in an agriturismo in Umbria. You can visit beautiful cities by day (Assisi, Perugia, Gubbio, Norcia, Spoleto, Orvieto, Terni....) and by night you can indulge in fabulous pasta, meat and polenta-dishes. 

Here's just one glimpse of what you could be eating (and I'm not even a very good cook)! It's: Emilia Valli "La cucina umbra in 300 ricette tradizionali"; Newton & Compton Editori, 2003 (recipe on page 76)

Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

Ingredients:

300gr flour 

2 eggs 

400gr lean lamb meat

2 garlic cloves

2 rosemary twigs

40gr of fat / pancetta

olive-oil

250gr of canned tomatoes (the already diced ones)

1 glass of broth

pecorino-cheese

salt and pepper

Preparation:

Spear meat with garlic and rosemary. Heat oil in saucepan or skillet and gently fry the meat from all sides together with the diced pancetta. Salt and pepper the meat (I didn't). Add the tomatoes and, after a few minutes, the prepared broth. Cover and let simmer for about 40 min. Since I tend to burn sauces and meats, I turned the heat very low and stirred frequently. When cooked, take the piece of meat out of the sauce and work it with the chopping knife (I do not know if this is the right word, however I mean this type of knife!). Return meat to sauce, put aside. 

While the meat was cooking, you prepared the pasta dough: knead together flour and battered eggs, adding a pinch of salt and a few spoons of water. Knead for quite some time, you should obtain a smooth and workable dough. The original recipe went on like this: Roll out dough very thin, cut into small rectangles of 2,5 x 5 cm and pinch them together in the middle, obtaining a butterfly-shape. However my dough wasn't made for this kind, unfortunately it was too brittle. So I decided to go for long and kinda thick spaghetti (there's an extra componetn for this on my pasta-machine, so it was quite easy!). 

Cook pasta in lots of salt-water, drain, and mix with hot sauce. Sprinkle with pecorino-cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Here's the sauce in the making, bubbling happily on the stove

and the pasta

The Mister's (rather full) plate

Close-up of my (normal) plate

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:

Orecchiette Maggioline

This is the first of my Cook-Book-Choices!!! Yeah for us! It was quite fun trying something new and I was really surprised by the choice - usually that sweet man at my side runs like hell if a veggie comes near him. I myself am not the biggest fan of asparagus, but it was ok and quite nice to have something different. I doubt that this recipe will make the Top 10 of our favourite foods (or even near that), but anyway, here it comes:

The recipe was taken from this book:

Here's the original recipe:

For 4 People

300gr Orecchiette (ear-shaped Pasta from Apulia)

1 kg Asparagus

200gr canned tomato (already pureed)

70 gr fresh salsiccia

1 piece of onion

50 gr Butter

2 Tablespoons olive-oil

grated parmesan-cheese

salt

Scrape the stems of the asparagus, and cook in salted water. When done, cut the tender parts into small pieces. Lightly brown the cut onion and salsiccia in olive-oil, add the tomato-puree and salt and let simmer for 20 min. In the meantime bring to the boil salted water and cook the pasta according to package-details. In another pan melt the butter and add the asparagus-pieces, then add the tomato-sauce. Stir gently and let simmer for a few minutes. Drain pasta and mix with sauce, top with parmesan-cheese.

Her are tow pics of the result, one still in the pan and one on my plate.

Well, Hello Mr. Gambero

Here are a last few impressions of our super-fishy Holiday-Food:


Seafood















Seafood-Pasta















Hello Mr. Gambero, nice to meet you!

Agnolotti with mushroom-pancetta-filling

First of all, I don't even know if I made real "Agnolotti". I cannot even tell the difference between the various types of filled pasta and I guess there isn't even a real difference. So, basically I made fresh pasta from scratch with a mushroom-pancetta filling and a creamy mushroom sauce and it was awesome. We had those in a restaurant while on holidays, and my dear sweet beloved man told me that I could never make something so delicious. Well, I proved him wrong. The following recipe is for 3 good eaters or 4 normal eaters. If you're saying you're a normal eater, but a salad fills you up, then maybe you can consider 6-8 servings :-)


Pasta Dough
400gr flower
4 eggs
salt
olive-oil






Make a mountain of flower and then a volcano in the middle. Put eggs into volcano. Add a bit of salt and a spoon of olive-oil.







Now, the original recipe says: "Now stir the eggs until they are well mixed, then slowly stir more and more of the flower into the egg mixture, then knead with hands until you have a smooth dough."

What I did was: Start stirring eggs. Ignore breaking of volcano. Try to keep eggs from flowing everywhere. Scratch eggs and flowers from table while trying to knead. Scream a bit. Try stopping baby from putting eggy flower-mush into mouth. Scream some more. Try stopping dog from walking through egg that has dropped to the floor. Knead. Knead. Knead.



The recipe calls for 15min. of kneading the dough, I was exhausted after 12 and decided that it was enough. Cover ball of dough with cling-film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.






Filling
Pancetta
Mushrooms (I think that boletus / porcini would be best, but I used simple white mushrooms)
parsley
garlic
spices as you like
parmesan cheese




Cut meat into small cubes and fry in olive-oil with 2/3 of the chopped mushrooms and some garlic. If you want to, you can add some white wine and let it simmer for a bit, but a bit of water will do.











Take lots of parsley, and blend together with the pancetta-mix. Add a bit of water if too dry, and add some grated parmesan cheese. Add other spices as you like, but the pancetta should be salty enough, so I'd recommend not to add any salt. The mixture shouldn't be too dry, but neither "slimy".














Filling the Agnolotti





The dough needs to be rolled out very very thin on a flowered surface- I use a pasta machine for this, I have no strength and patience to do this manually.




Put small blobs of filling on dough, cover with a second layer, press firmly down and then cut into squares. I used one of those cookie/pasta-rollers. Make sure you're putting unflowered side on unflowered side, otherwise the two layers of dough will not stick together. The agnolotti will be cooked in lots of boiling saltwater, usually they're done when they swim on the surface of the water, but you should try one as cooking times depend on thickness of dough, size of agnolotto, ecc. Drain and serve.






Sauce



Fry the remaining mushrooms in olive-oil, add cream and milk and bring to a boil. Add salt and other spices if needed.







Put a bit of sauce on a plate, place agnolotti on sauce and top with grated parmesan cheese. Done. Enjoy!