The fruits of the sea

I am not sure this is the right way of translating the name of this Italian recipe, but "fruits of the sea" sounds so poetic so I'll go for it :)

The past weekend I assisted two marathonists in the preparation for their first race. The night before the big event they asked for some "pasta with substance" and so there I was, talking sign language with the Turkish guy at the Turkish supermarket, an amazing place to buy fish in Frankfurt if you are not too concerned about hygiene ratings :) 

Anyway, the pasta turned out pretty good, and perhaps it contributed a tiny little bit to the big success. It was great to see my man picking a goal and working his ass off to reach it, and when I saw his smile at the finish line my mind started soaking in a hot bath made of proudness, admiration and oxytocin :D

SPAGHETTI AI FRUTTI DI MARE

Serves 4

500 gr cockles 

1 calamari (damn autocorrection!!!!! CalamarO!!!!)

1 squid 

500 gr prawns with heads

400 gr spaghetti n.8

Garlic

White wine 

Parsley

First leave the cockles in cold water for 30 minutes, drain and fry in a pan with oil EVO and a garlic clove until they start opening. Peel the prawns and place shells and heads in a pot with oil EVO, fry for 5 minutes and add water to cover. Boil for some 30 minutes to make a nice fish stock. In a big pan, put oil EVO, a garlic clove and the remaining fish cut in stripes, cook for 2 minutes and then add a good sip of white wine. In the meantime, boil water and cook the spaghetti halfway, then add them to the squid and calamari. Add the prawns cut in pieces and the cockles. Add the fish stock until the spaghetti are al dente. Generously add parsley and oil EVO to serve. The day after, 42.195 km will be in your legs, I guarantee ;)

Brisè olè

Yesterday I was surfing through food blogs to find a recipe for a pie to bring for dinner at friends and I saw many yummi quiches. My brain was about to send the command to type "puff pastry" in my shopping list when I read the recipe for making shortcrust pastry (pasta briseé in italian): water, butter, flour, mix, done. Well well well, let's give it a try, I thought. Now I wonder why I ever bother spending hours of my life looking for puff pastry in the supermarkets (it is always in an unpredictable place) when shortcrust is so easy. Also, I have to say, apologising in advance to my french readers, despite it contains a good amount of butter, it doesn't give the impression of eating a whole french bakery as the puff pastry does :) 

SPINACH AND FETA PIE

for the pastry:

200 gr regular flour

100 gr butter

70 gr cold water 

for the filling:

20 gr butter

a small onion

800 grams fresh spinaches

200 gr feta cheese

4 eggs

80 gr parmigiano

nutmeg

In a mixer, place the flour and the butter extremely cold and mix until sand-like. Place on a cold surface (metal for example), make a volcano and add the cold water sip by sip, but quite quickly, to make a solid dough. Place in the fridge until the last second.

Boil a large pot of salty water and cook for a couple of minutes the spinaches, then drain them and, when cold enough, squeeze them to remove as much water as possible. In a pan, place the butter and the chopped onion, and then the spinaches. Let it go for 5 minutes and then blend it quite coarse.

In a bowl, mix 4 eggs with the grated cheese, add the blended spinach cream (cold!!!!) the nutmeg, salt (only a bit), pepper and the feta cheese cut in small cubes. 

With a rolling pin, make a thin layer with the shortcrust and place it on a round tray, trim the border and use the remaining pastry to make small stripes. Place the spinach cream inside, fold the border, place the stripes and bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Delicious!

When pistachios meet bucatini

During my several dinners in Tel Aviv with number of guests > 10 I have learnt to love pesto, due to its impressive performance in terms of costs and cooking efforts :) also I found out it comes out quite nice even with non-local ingredients, so I go for it quite often. 

This time I made it a bit special and sicilian-style, as my mum brought some pistachios. I like the word pistachios, it reminds me of a very special person that once tried to persuade me that its initial was an F, just like in Fenelope Cruz ;)

BUCATINI WITH SUNDRIED TOMATOES & PISTACHIOS PESTO

Blend the pistachios and leave two spoons aside for later; add rocket leaves, sundried tomatoes, EVO oil and blend until creamy. At the end add grated parmigiano. Cook the bucatini al dente and add an obscene amount of pesto. Decorate with rocket leaves and pistachio powder.

A bed made of cheese

This came out less pretty than I thought but tastier than I had hoped, so please use your imagination ;)

A few days ago my mum came to visit me here in the cold north, where winter has already come (this is for all the GOT nerds), and in line with the worst italian stereotype she brought vegetables, cheese, herbs and a bunch of other italian tasty cousins of the tasteless stuff I can buy here :)

She even brought courgette flowers! We make pizza with those (we=italians). We fill them with mozzarella and anchovies and fry them (we=romans). But this time I made pasta:

PASTA WITH COURGETTE FLOWERS, ANCHOVIES AND FONDUE

In a pan, fry a garlic clove, 6-7 anchovies and chilli with oil EVO. When the anchovies are melted, add the pasta cooked half-way and continue cooking it adding its water. When the pasta is almost ready, add the courgettes flowers in stripes. Serve on top of a couple of spoons of fondue made with half gorgonzola and half milk (I made it in the microwave).

I <3 breadcrumbs

My recent trip to Sicily reminded me how much I love breadcrumbs, and also that breadcrumbs in italy are, quite oddly, crumbs made with old bread, as opposed to the orange stuff that is sold in northern europe to make schnitzel :)

So I took with me a small packet with breadcrumbs made by my mother. Italian, homemade, mother: when these three words are used altogether to describe something, it is normally food and it is normally delicious. 

SPAGHETTI WITH RED PEPPERS AND BREADCRUMBS

The red peppers were roasted into the oven at 180 degrees for ~45 minutes, then placed into a bag and sealed to let them "sweat their skin away", then pealed. In a pan, fry a garlic clove cut in small pieces and a few anchovies (3 to 7 depending on how much you love anchovies, me 10); when the garlic is golden, add the red peppers cut in stripes. In the meantime, cook the spaghetti half way and pour them in the pan, then cook until ready adding their water from time to time. In another small pan, fry the breadcrumbs with some EVO oil until golden. When the spaghetti are ready, pour generously the breadcrumbs and enjoy <3

Story of a lonely cod

I am having some troubles in finding a decent fishmonger here in the Netherlands, the only fish I can easily find is salmon but salmon I like it raw so not much material for my blog :)

But I came across this cod, most likely died of loneliness, and I started dreaming about the baccala' (the salty dried cod) they do in Roma…

SWEET AND SOUR COD WITH CHERRY TOMATOES AND KALAMATA OLIVES

It took me literally 7 minutes to do it, 5 of whom talking with my nephew on skype (and luckily he has a good sight and at some point shouted "aunty, aunty, smoke!" saving my dinner)

200 gr codfish

100 gr cherry tomatoes

10 kalamata olives

2 teaspoons of honey

4 teaspoons of white vinegar

2 spoons of white flour

2 garlic cloves

oil EVO

salt

pepper

Roll the cod cut in stripes into the white flour and pan-fry it with 3 spoons of oil EVO. When the cod gets tanned, remove the pieces from the pan and keep it warm. In the same pan, add a spoon of oil EVO and the garlic. After one minute, add the cherry tomatoes, the olives and some warm water. After few minutes, add honey and vinegar and cook for 2 more minutes (adding water if it gets dry). In the last 30 seconds I added back the cod really carefully to avoid smashing it. Salt and freshly ground pepper. Enjoy!

Mindfulness

Another foodless post in my food blog, I should stop calling myself a foodblogger, also because my foodless posts (sadly?) are read much more than my recipes :)

I have been cooking a lot lately, but I failed in taking any decent picture. Hence, tonight let me talk about one of my personal hot topics of 2014, which is mental health and specifically the effect of meditation and physical exercise on it. Wow, I am a real radical-chic, I wear a Burberry trench coat and talk about vegan shit and meditation, unbelievable! (the 10-years-back myself would have killed me)

I (in my spare time, as many friends would say) work as a researched in the field of neuroscience, and thus I hear quite often words related to brain conditions such as disease, plasticity, degeneration, and so on, but I guess I always saw such things as legends in my plots, factors in my anova, and nothing more.

But more recently, I joined the anxiety club, a very prestigious gathering of people that is not as exclusive as one might think, but instead rather welcoming with new members from all over the world :)  Googling my symptoms (and throwing years of medical research out of the window), amongst a lot of shit I also found something interesting: a paper showing that the effects of meditation in anxiety/depression are comparable to those of mild antidepressants. Ok, let's do it.

For the first week or so, I only learned to mind the weight of my ass on the chair. But I didn't quit, because at the time the thought of my ass pressing on the chair was better than anything else that was crossing my mind. I did it for a while and I still do it when I feel like. What I liked most was the idea of letting thoughts and feeling flow, without fighting the negative and chasing the positive ones. I am not sure I learned how to do it, perhaps not, but I liked this idea so much that I kept trying. But every now and then, the 10-years-back myself popped up in my mind, saying with a teasing voice: what are you becoming, a freaking hippie? Will you start dancing in the moonlight and talking with flowers? The brain is working as any other organs, full stop.

Well, after a while I made my mind on it. Yes, the brain is like any other organs, ok, a bit more sophisticated, but that's what it is. Abnormal mental states are symptoms that something is not working properly, as muscle pain is the symptom of too much exercise. But perhaps meditation is a way of training the brain to engage healthy circles of thoughts, just like controlled physical exercise is a way of training the body. BTW, training the body too has a positive effect on mental states, and this is one of the reasons why I run my ass off during the week :)

So, I still think lighting incense sticks and orienting the bed towards east (or west? or south?) is not helpful for mental health. Eventually, it is a misbalance of neurotransmitters. But meditation yes, perhaps it helps. Along with a deep search of what has gone wrong. And someone that every day reminds you that perfection is boring, just loving you the way you are.

The 10-years-from-now myself is looking at me with a gentle gaze and the smile of who thinks that a lot of water has to pass under the bridge (perhaps too much of a literal translation from the italian, but you know what I mean ;) )

Italy 0 - 2 Spain

Can't believe what I am about to say (considering that food is perhaps the only theme about which I feel some kind of patriotism, along with that sport in which we recently might not have done really great), but my Italian-style vegetable soup scored really poorly against the salmorejo in both taste and presentation :(

To give some background, a Spanish vs an Italian, throath infection vs wisdom tooth infection, unclear who was supposed to look after who, but love sometimes means also sharing antibiotics :)

Anyway, I thought about doing a vegetable soup as both could not really swallow, so I started with the usual base of celery-onion-carrot chopped in big pieces and I added courgettes and fennels, plus enough water to cover the vegetables. I cooked it for a good hour, then blended it leaving the texture quite coarse. In the meantime, I sliced one courgette and pan-fried it with two spoons of oil EVO. I added toasted Tuscany white bread, fresh chopped parsley, dill and some good oil EVO. 

Well, it was decent, especially the courgettes on top where making it less boring than what it was in fact. But.... oh-my-god how better the salmorejo was! Tastier and more suitable to the specific occasion, as it is served cold. On my defense I can say it is not vegan, so it is way easier to have something tasty when you add jamon and egg, but on the other hand I am sure it would have been delicious and refreshing also without them. I was defeated, but given the circumstances I don't mind too much :) 

Asparagus night

Here in the Netherlands they are all about asparaguses, and in my endless journeys back and forth from Frankfurt I always see tiny temporary asparagus stands, giving the road a very romantic touch. Thus, every monday morning I thank the asparaguses because for a little while I am distracted by the thought that I am waisting hours of life in the dutch countryside :)

To make a concrete effort and please the god of asparaguses, I decided to throw an asparagus dinner party for two. The god of asparaguses didn't like it too much though, as my guest was delayed by about three hours and I ended up eating spoonfuls of strawberry jam while watching breaking bad :(

RED AND YELLOW PEPPER ROSES

I roasted the peppers in the oven and peeled them carefully. I cut them into stripes and made tiny roses, stuffing the pepper stripes with pieces of anchovies. Lastly, curly parsley to decorate. (Sort of taken from www.giallozafferano.com)

ASPARAGUS CANDIES

These were my winners and helped a lot during the journey to Eurodisney of the day after :) I boiled the big white asparaguses and then round a slice of ham around them, then a strip of puff pastry. A beaten egg on top and sesame seeds, 15 minutes in the oven and that's it :) (Sort of taken from www.giallozafferano.com)

ASPARAGUS INVOLTINI

That were supposed to be shaped like involtini (rolls), but I forgot to buy the toothpick to secure them :D

I boiled the green asparagus tips for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, I rolled in flour the beef escalopes and cooked them in a pan with a spoon of oil and some lemon. I made the involtini with the escalope, a slice of gouda cheese and 5-ish asparagus tips. I baked the involtini in the oven for a few minutes. (Sort of taken from www.giallozafferano.com…. yes I was not that original after all :D )

Vegan/vegetarian/fish-etarian: how I see food and nutrition after 30 years of eating

Shame on me, I am not cooking anything worth writing, but my fingers are hitching, so let me write down some recent thoughts of mine about food and everyday nutrition :)

I always liked meat, while my relationship with cheese is problematic. I could not eat it as a child, so I basically started tasting cheese from my late 20ies onwards (and funnily enough, still I can hardly pronounce the word, it makes me think about something dirty and wrong :D)

Anyway, I have always been very critical with vegetarians, first because meat is yummy, second because if we just go back a couple of generations, eating meat was a privilege so still nowadays the choice of not eating it seems really posh to me. In addition to that, the fake meaty thingies for vegans looks soooooo sad in the shelf of the supermarket, sadder than going for a 5-minutes civil wedding and still wear a princess white dress :)

But more recently I got more and more involved in reading opinions and facts about healthy life style on one side, and about the impact of the massive meat consumption on the planet, hence I started changing my mind.

I still think eating meat is ok for kids, but we eat WAY too much meat and this is not only unnecessary and bad for the planet, it is also not healthy for ourselves on the long run (even though as a scientist I still need to see a peer-reviewed unbiased longitudinal study about the effect of meat on health)

I do not approve myself radical choices, as I think that balancing nutrition is enough to lower significantly the impact on the earth without giving up the pleasure of enjoying jamon along with aceitunas manzanillas and perhaps a mini of mahou :)

So here we go: I try to be fish-eterian during the week and perhaps even vegan mot of the times, so that I allow myself some meat and diary products only when truly there is a good reason. So you'll see a lot of bean soups in my place mon-thurs. Also I try to eat very light meals and avoid too many carbohydrates in the evening. The reason is basically the same: when I am in a nice social environment, I want to enjoy food without limitations. So, to keep a reasonable weight I try and stay light when it is just me, my hello kitty pyjama and a new girl episode :)

Crêpes de noantri

Something else that was buried into my photo folder and that my mum remembers as a great success is this very simple recipe that I made in Roma during my transition period between Tel Aviv and Maastricht. It was inspired by the cicoria (chicory), a bitter vegetable that I used to hate as a kid and now I like it so much I would eat it daily, just to compensate all the times I said "no!" to my mum with that sharp bitchy voice that only annoying kids can have.

CHICKPEAS CREPES WITH CHICORY AND BACON

I prepared the crepes dough with chickpeas flour, one egg and milk (not sure about the exact amount, but it has to be quite fluid). I fried the crepes one by one in a small pan with some butter (just a tiny bit, and then the first crepes is generally trashed). I filled the crepes with chicory boiled in water and then fried for a few minutes with one garlic clove and chilli, and bacon roasted in a pan. Parmigiano on top and 3 minutes in the oven, et voila'.

Pasta, pasta, pasta

According to the title, I am supposed to talk about pasta, but to do so I need to remember first what these pictures are about, as I created the draft of the post one month ago and forgot by now :) 

So, well, what is sure is that many things have changes since I cooked that pasta, starting from my spatial coordinates: I am writing from my new desk in Maastricht, a cute town where I will be spending at least 10 months in the near future, cute town that offered me a brand new kitchen made of bright steel that I already love with all my hearth, amen. And I will be spending my weekends between here and Frankfurt, that is only a quick train ride and a ridiculously slow bus ride in-the-middle-of-dutch-nowhere from Maastricht, so slow I get bored already writing about it. But Love puts wings on your mind and on your suitcase, babe. Anyway, to quote the balkan beat box, let's skip further bullshit and go to the point of:

THE RAVIOLI

It's all about the filling, and I think I found my perfect balance with this mix: minced beef (~250 gr), minced pork (~250 gr), minced mortadella, minced gambuccio (prosciutto), 2 eggs, a lot of parmigiano. The meat is cooked in a pan with onion and oil EVO, and perhaps some wine at some point? No idea, but if I were to make it again, I would probably add a bit ;)

Then the pasta is, as usual, made with 100 gr of four per egg (less than one egg per person), and I generally mix regular flour with semola to have a more coarse sheet. Mmmhhh, now I want some, it would help in defeating the waffle dependency that I developed since I landed in this country :)

ORECCHIETTE CON CIME DI RAPA

And coming back to the original theme, in one of my numerous back and forth to Frankfurt I carried with me some cime di rapa (no idea how to translate, it is a kind of green vegetable that tastes like broccoli with a bitter twist) to cook a super quick pasta, just boiling them along with the orecchiette (that made the same journey Roma->Frankfurt) and, when cooked, frying everything in a pan with oil EVO, chilli and one anchovy. The Chianti was waiting for me in Frankfurt, but I have the feeling it was not exactly german :)

Oriental chicken

While the Guinness chicken is frying in the kitchen, the last treat for my brother before I come back to the holy land, I want to talk about another possible and equally respectful death for the chicken, but with an exotic twist :)

I generally avoid cooking ethnic food at all. Sometimes, just for myself, I make an okoyomiyaki (my fav japanese dish), I eat it and then I feel like an american in front of fettuccine alfredo ;)

But a few days ago I was watching a cooking show on the telly and they were making a recipe with chicken, pear, couscous: looked yummy, maybe too far from the boundaries set by the glorious italian tradition but I was feeling adventurous enough :)

CHICKEN WITH PEARS AND COUSCOUS

I sliced a whole onion and gently fried it in the pan with a spoon of EVO oil, then I added the chicken cut into pieces. I had some beef stock ready in the fridge, so I melted the saffron into a glass of stock and added it to the chicken and let the pan go. In a different pan, I cooked two pears sliced with butter and honey until tender, and added it to the chicken only when the latter was ready.
Separately, I prepared the couscous following the instruction on the package and using the beef stock. I sliced a boiled carrot that was left when I prepared the beef stock and added it to the couscous.
I served the chicken on a couscous bed and the pear slices all around, to give my brother the opportunity to ignore the fruit and just go for the chicken, but he surprised me and shyly placed into his plate a slice of pear, moaning - he really loves me!

Xmas lunch/2

The second and last part of my Xmas lunch :)

Please please please do me a favour, especially if you are having a hard day, or if you think you owe a reward, as soon as you finish reading this post grab some sage and deep-fry it in a batter made with flour and sparkling water, it will blow your mind! 

TUNA OF BOILED MEAT AND ROASTED CAULIFLOWERS

This is also borrowed from a recipe of north Italy (Piemonte), but the original version is made with rabbit. Now, I like rabbits either alive jumping in the fields or already cooked in pieces, when they have lost all the cuteness embedded in their original shape. So, I replaced the rabbit with mixed meat (beef and chicken), letting them cook very slowly in a pot with water, celery, onion, carrots and mixed herbs (rosemary, sage, juniper, laurel, thyme). I let the meat cool down in its own broth and then cut them in little stripes with the hands. I took a jar and made layers of meat, black pepper grains, laurel, garlic and oil EVO. I let the jar rest in the fridge for one night and served it the day after at room temperature.

The side dish is made by boiling the florets of the cauliflower, roasting them in the oven for 20 mins with 2 spoons of oil EVO and breadcrumbs and then serving them on a tahini bed.

DEEP FRIED LAMB CHOPS AND SAGE

Ohhhhh…. fried sage! Please, try it, it is an unbelievably tasty and unbelievably easy: just melt some flour in sparkling cold water, dip the sage leaves in the batter and deep-fry them in oil. This was the side of the lamb chops dipped in eggs and rolled in breadcrumbs (by my mom… ok I cheated I made only 9 out of 10 dishes!)

PEA BALLS WITH TZATZIKI AND BAKED POTATO SLICES

The pea balls are taken from here, while the side this is made with thin slices of potatoes and sweet potatoes baked in the oven for few minutes with rosemary, coarse salt and oil EVO

HONEY, BRIE CHEESE & PEARS PASTRY

This dessert also falls in the category of quick-easy-but-unbelievably-tasty, as it is made by thin sheets of puff pastry cooked in the over for few minutes, slices of pears and slices of brie cheese, baked again in the oven until the brie starts melting. Before serving, some (biological) honey on top and that's it :)

Xmas lunch/1

True that xmas has been now over for more than two weeks, but the silver nail polish I am wearing gives me all the rights to still feel the festive mood and talk you through my xmas lunch :)

To my super-nerd mind, Xmas is like a function that multiplies everything by ten, which means it increases the happiness content of the happy moments but also increases the pain in case the mood is not that happy. This year I felt my family needed a change, thus I decided to divert the lunch from a regular, traditional smooth periodic function, made of tortellini and mixed boiled beef, to a more eclectic collection of delta functions (the steepest and shortest function on earth), ten of them for the sake of precision, ten tiny dishes cute for the eye and tasty in the mouth :D 

CAPRESE FINGERFOOD

this is taken almost exactly from here. I have to say the result was very cute but "meaningless" taste-wise (according to my brother, who instead loved everything else)

RAVIOLI DEL PLIN

I had this amazing ravioli in Torino, and I felt in love with them. The filling is made with mixed pork and beef meat cooked with celery-onion-carrot, blended with spinach and scarola salad, one egg and parmigiano. The sauce is made by overcooking the celery-onion-carrot left in the meat juice and blending them, adding some flour to make it more dense. 

TORTELLONI SPINACH AND BUFFALO MOZZARELLA

These were my winners ;). I made the filling simply cooking fresh spinach in a pan sealed with a lid and a spoon of olive oil for few minutes. When ready, I let them cool down and added cubes of very VERY good buffalo mozzarella, one egg and some parmigiano. Then I made the giant tortelli, boiled them and served with a plain cherry tomato sauce (I made it by first peeling the tomatoes dipping them in boiling water for 30 seconds, and then cutting them into cubes and cooking the sauce for 5 minutes) and some thyme leafs to decorate.

BARLEY WITH HAZELNUTS AND FENNEL IN CASTELMAGNO FONDUE

The taste of barley, hazelnuts, fennel seeds and cheese fondue all together is absolutely stunning. I borrowed the idea from my chef friend, and every time I make them I am surprised by the pair fennel/hazelnut. It is indeed very simple: I boiled the barley, added grated hazelnuts, oil EVO and fennel seeds. I used a round pasta cutter to make nice towers of barley and served with a fondue of cream fresh, milk and castelmagno (a strong cheese from the north of italy).