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 - Spaghetti with Lemon-Lamb-Sauce

This was on request of my Mom. And it was awesome!!!! I'll make this one again, that's for sure!

The cook-book is still this one: Pasta, Zabert Sandmann, 2000, page 70

Ingredients: 

400gr Lamb 

100gr bacon

1 big onion

1 bouquet of dandelion or rocket

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 clove garlic

400gr Spaghetti

1/8 l white wine

1/4 l veggie-broth

freshly ground pepper, salt, nutmeg

1 teaspoon lemon-peel

150gr Crème Fraiche or Cream

6 tablespoons lemon-juice

Preparation:

1. Cut meat and onion in small dices. Wash and dry dandelion or rocket. 

2. Heat oil in a skillet, fry meat for circa 5 minutes and then drain the oil in a small bowl (and put aside for the moment). Add garlic and onion to the meat and fry some more.

3. Bring water to a boil and cook spaghetti.

4. Add drained oil, broth and wine to the meat and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg (I left it out) and lemonpeel. Let simmer for another 10 minutes.

5. Stir in Crème Fraiche and Lemon juice, lower heat and let simmer another 10 minutes.

6. Drain Spaghetti and mix well with sauce, decorate with dandelion.

Three Types of Risotto

My In-laws were coming (again) for dinner and so were two of hubby's nephews. So we were 6 + Baby, and I decided to make different types of risotto. I still had left-over ragù, I had bought mushrooms and had not planned to use them in my weekly menu, and I had the brilliant idea to make chestnut-risotto. So here it goes. Again, unfortunately, I did all of this without sticking to closely to a recipe, so there won't be any indications to grams or Milliliters.

As you might have guessed, the base of all of the risottos is, well, risotto. Who would have thought that???

Risotto
Risotto-Rice (Arborio)
Onion
Olive Oil
Hot Broth (I made it with beef stock-cubes, but of course you can make it from scratch or with vegetarian cubes)

Just so you know, I had about 2,5 liters of broth and 800gr of uncooked rice and there were 5 strong eaters + one picky one and I still have some in the freezer....

Prepare broth and keep hot. Dice onion and fry in olive oil until light golden. Add rice and turn with wooden spoon until glazed with hot oil from all sides. Add a couple of ladles of broth and stir until rice has absorbed all liquid. Continue until rice is done (not too mushy though, the center still has to be "al dente"). You might not have to use all liquid or maybe you need to prepare some more broth. Of course you could add some white wine with one of the broth-ladles.

Risotto ai Funghi
'Shrooms :-))) (champignon or porcini)
Parsley
White Wine
Olive oil

Cut mushrooms in thin slices and fry in oil. Add white wine and let simmer and evaporate most of it. Add parsley and if it's too dry some of the broth.

Mix well with the cooked risotto, and here's the result

Risotto with Chestnuts
Chestnuts (about 25-30 pieces)
Sugar

With a sharp knife cut two lines on the flat side of the chestnuts, one vertically and one horizontally.

Bring water to the boil and add chestnuts, let boil for 10-15 minutes. Take out one by one and peel off the hard outer shell and the soft dark skin (it leaves a bitter taste). Leave some chestnuts as a whole, cut the others into small pieces.

In a small pan melt 2 tablespoons of sugar until liquid, then add water (the sugar might become one solid piece  upon contact with water, but be patient, it'll dissolve again). Stir until you have a nice syrupy liquid, then add the whole chestnuts and let boil a few minutes until nicely caramelized from all sides.

 Add broken chestnuts to the rice about halfway through the cooking-process, continue with ladle / broth / simmering as described above. When the risotto is done, use the caramelized chestnuts to decorate. Here we go:

Risotto al Ragù
Left-Over Ragù (recipe is here or here)
Risotto


Mix. Done. Picture is bad. Sorry.

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 :-)))

Lazy Post: Pollo al Forno with Patate al Forno

Beginning of Post:
Pollo al Forno with Patate al Forno. 
End of Post. Picture.

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 ;-))

 

Cauliflower-Spinach-Beef-Curry

Ingredients:
Beef
Frozen Spinach Cubes
Cauliflower
Green Curry Paste
Coconut-milk
Garlic

Preparations: Dice beef and fry in oil. Add garlic, washed cauliflower, divided and cut into the "single flowers" (or whatever you would call them) and a couple of spinach cubes and the curry-paste. Add some hot water and stir well, when the cauliflower is almost cooked and the spinach defrozen, add coconutmilk and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve with rice or rice-noodles.

Lentil-Soup with Wieners

Ingredients:
Lentils
(Spring-) Onion
stock-cubes
carrots
potatoes
pancetta
Wieners
Parsley
other veggies as you like (I had none, but leek would go well I think)


Preparation: Soak lentils overnight in cold water. The next day, drain and rinse. Fry diced onion and pancetta in a big pot in a bit of oil, add lentils and cover with boiling water. Add some stock-cubes and let simmer - you might check on package instructions for the lentils. I added the dices potatoes and carrots about 10-15 minutes before the end of cooking time of the lentils and the wieners about 5 minutes before the end. Throw in some parsley and/or other spices. Serve hot with bread (or add more potatoes to make it a complete meal). A dash of vinegar goes really well with this soup!

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.

Insalata di fagioli con "Speckpflaumen" (Bean Salad with Bacon-Plums)

A friend reading my blog asked if I could cook something with beans. She told me about a cold bean-dish from Naples - so far I haven't been able to find a satisfying recipe for this soup, but when browsing my cook-books I came across this recipe and couldn't resist. And I have to say: Yeah me for not resisting, it was delicious!!! 

This is the cook-book: Antipasti, Zabert Sandmann, 2000

Ingredients (serves 4):
600gr white thick beans (dried)
2 garlic cloves
1 bay leave (nope, not for me)
12 dried plums
1 red onion
1/2 bunch of parsley
200gr bacon slices
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoons Aceto Balsamico (I used Crema di Balsamico, it's sweeter and not so "vinegary")
Salt and Pepper


Preparations:
1. Let the beans soak overnight in cold water, drain and rinse with water. Peel garlic cloves and cut into small pieces. Bring beans, garlic and bay leaf with water to the boil and let cook for about 1,5 hours. Drain and let cool.

Here's a pic of my overnight beans and one for comparison dried bean - soaked bean.

2. Let plums soak in water for 1 hour and dry well - I used soft plums so I skipped this step.

3. Peel onion and cut into thick pieces. Wash parsley, shake dry and pluck leaves from stems.

4. Wrap each plum with a slice of bacon, eventually use a toothpick to fix. Heat sunflower oil in a pan and fry at medium heat.

5. Mix olive oil, Balsamico, 2 tablespoons of water, salt and pepper. Pour over beans and mix well, let marinate for minimum 30 min. Eventually salt and pepper again.

6. Spoon beans on plate and garnish with onion and parsley. Serve with bacon-plums and bread.

And here is the masterpiece!!!

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.

Quick and Easy Chicken-Veggie-FridgeCleanUp-StirFry-Curry Whatever

Today was meant to be another Cookbook Choice: Chinese Chicken with Cashew Nuts. Well, I was so sure to have soy-sauce in the pantry, that I didn't check. If course there was none - my brain must have wired pictures from years ago. Oh, and I didn't find the right noodles. And no chilies. So, with three ingredients missing I decided to push this recipe into next week's meal-plan and make a quick Curry with whatever happened to be in my fridge/pantry. Thus, I could also prevent some food-waste. Whatever turned out to be:

Ingredients:
3 small chicken breasts (fillet, maybe about 300gr)
2 spring onions
2 carrots
half a zucchini
one can of bamboo shoots (drained weight 175gr)
2 cloves of garlic
peanut oil
some green curry paste
one can of coconut milk
rice

Preparation:
Mix some curry paste (according to how hot you like it) and peanut oil in a bowl. Dice chicken breasts, peel carrots and use a potato-peeler to cut long and thin stripes. Do same with zucchini. Drain and wash bamboo shots. Peel garlic and spring onions and cut into pieces. Mix everything together with the curry/oil in the bowl.
Mine looked like this:

I think you could also prepare it well ahead and just keep it in the fridge. For cooking: Pour some oil into a pan and just dump the whole mix into it when hot. Stir well. When ready (tricky, this one. When you have decided that it's ready) just pour the coconut milk over it and let simmer. Mine cooked for too long and the milk was reduced way too much.

Serve with rice or Chinese noodles.

Sorry for bad quality. :-(

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