THE pizza.

This trip back from Torino is the most appropriate moment to talk about something else that was soooo good I want to recall its amazing taste in my mouth again and again: my focaccia. Yes, after many trials, after being scattered from one food blog to another, I found THE recipe and I want to share it with the entire universe (BTW, there is some aficionado of my blog that reads it from Russia - wow - this is very cool as I do not know any Russian except the one with vodka and coffee)
A note for my non-italian readers: this is not the round pizza that you get in the pizza restaurants; this is more something similar to the pizza al taglio that you get as a quick lunch in shops, thicker and with more variety in the toppings.

THE PIZZA (for three big focacce)

500 gr regular white flour
500 gr semola flour
600 gr warm water
25 gr fresh yeast
5 teaspoons of honey
5 teaspoons of EVO oil
7 teaspoons of salt

Melt the yeast and the salt into the warm water and add honey and oil. Mix the two flours in a bowl and make a hole in the middle, then pour slowly the water inside the hole and start mixing with the hand. When all the water is added, start working on the dough on the table until it is solid and homogeneous, then let it rest for at least one hour in the oven turned off (with just the light on).
Prepare the baking trays with EVO oil, place one third of the dough in each tray without touching it more than necessary, and flatten it with the fingers VERY GENTLY, leaving the surface as irregular as possible, i.e., leaving the holes made by the fingers. Place the trays back into the oven and let the three dough rest and raise for another hour minimum.

I made three focacce: one with slices of potatoes, mozzarella, black olives, black pepper and red onions; one with tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil and speck, and the last I cooked it plain with just coarse salt and rosemary and then I stuffed it with prosciutto and mozzarella. I suggest to always sprinkle with coarse salt as the grains have a superb taste when they melt in the mouth. Enojoy!

Un po' di cazzi miei (Some business of mine)

Few hours ago I was walking down Ibn Gavirol with 2 thoughts in my mind: 1) the interaction between my low blood pressure and TLV's burning whether is making me useless for research in particular and for society in general; 2) I feel happy. I know this latter feeling is going to expire soon, as in 20 minutes I'll have an appointment with Natasha the russian waxing lady around the corner, but let's not think this far in advance :)

I am happy about the life I am living lately, happy because of all the awesome experiences that are involved in living in a place so different from what I was used to. The connection with food is that this happiness sometimes clashes with the picture of all the crazy stuff I was cooking when I was in a relationship (see picture below) that at that moment I thought was forever. And now I am so happy it was not, because the abrupt change in perspective (from a mortgage in Cardiff to a shared flat in Tel Aviv), in the CV of my life, will look like something that made me more open, more experienced, more balanced and eventually happier :D

I do not envy people who did not have the possibility of such a variety in life, and also I think one should share the life with someone only if, before that, he/she was able to feel happy alone (potentially indefinitely). BTW when I see this same independence in a man, I feel more keen on undressing than in front of Javier Bardem with a 2-days moustache :D

Gnocchi (again!) with caramelised cherry tomatoes and aubergines (again!) pesto

I know I know, it looks like I am always making gnocchi, so please, all of you who live nearby my place and might consider coming over for dinner at some point, would you mind organising a collection for buying me a pasta machine, to increase my blog's entropy? 

And now that I think about it, I was meaning to post another recipe today (chicken stripes with red pepper and mint) but it was magically disappeared from the kitchen before I managed to take a picture, which perhaps means it was too good to last? Anyway, I had such a stuffed day I didn't even find time to eat what I cooked, but that made the taste of the rogalach(ot? im?) I had after the movie night even better ^__^

GNOCCHI WITH CARAMELISED CHERRY TOMATOES AND AUBERGINES PESTO

Caramelised cherry tomatoes: cut each tomato in half, place in a baking tray and sprinkle some caster sugar on top, then salt, some EVO oil and let the tomatoes dry in the oven @ 130 degrees for one hour or so.

Aubergines pesto: bake the aubergines in the oven for one our, peel them and remove some of the water. Blend with garlic, mint, basil, pine nuts, EVO oil and salt. 

And before going back to work, a snapshot from one of my fav mangas ever, that talks about two roommates that had met by chance but become absolutely necessary to each other in almost no time: sounds familiar? :D

Hachi actually is very loud, loves cooking and naively believes in the goodness of all the human beings. But as a consequence of a much stiffer attitude towards contraception, my Hachi is happily dating Nobu at the moment :D

Fish ravioli and baked salmon, AKA meet the family!

I am back to work after three weeks overseas during which I had many many occasions to prove my cooking skills, but  the one I was more worried about was the planned meet-the-family dinner that I hosted to introduce S1 and S2 's families. And it turned out an A-W-E-S-O-M-E night! 

Before life abruptly taught me so, I did not believe in the influence of the family in a relationship, but well, I learned the lesson I guess :) 

As it's been already 3 months since S1 and I moved in together, we thought it was about the time for us to introduce our families, in my case there was a chunk missing (my nephew and my sister-in-law were at the beach, lucky them) but not having constantly to check that my nephew was not trying to kill himself allowed a smoother conversation. Conversation that was as usual mastered by my brother, and the more I get to know him, the more I love him (funny that the process started only a few years ago even if our existence overlaps by 30 years)!

FISH RAVIOLONI WITH AUBERGINES AND FENNEL FLOWERS

Make circles out of the pasta dough and fill them with raw cubes of stone bass, an aubergines baked in the oven for 45 mins, salt and fennel flowers from the countryside around Roma. Make the ravioloni folding the circles in the middle and pressing the edges with a fork. Boil and season with a sauce made with cherry tomatoes and one spoon (one spoon only!) of cream fresh.

       

BAKED SALMON

Put the salmon fillets in oil, lemon and herbs for a few hours. Mix breadcrumbs, paprika and crushed almonds and add the filtered juice of the marinade. Cover the fillets and cook in the oven for 10 minutes. I served the salmon with zucchine a scapece (fried zucchini with vinegar) and baked potato slices.

Barley with rocket and mussels

Cucinareconlentezza is on tour in Rome! Which means several things: 

_I spend my days helping out my mum and despite my very progressive ideas I realised I am a perfect housewife

_I can take pictures with the big Nikon

_I can cook mussels

The other day I was looking for something light but fancy to cuddle my mum without loading more weight on her recently refurbished back and I though about a nice pasta salad I ate once upon a time in my previous life, when I happily was a fashion designer :) so I came up with the following:

BARLEY WITH MUSSELS AND ROCKET

I boiled the barley and added chopped cherry tomatoes, rocket, EVO oil and the mussels I cooked with a garlic clove and EVO oil. 

Ars

Death by Pizza

In my many monologues against the capitalistic society, the culture of inducing the needs for strawberries in December and the Ikea packagings that always contain double of the amount of what you actually need, I never really say that there are (at least) two fields in which I cannot manage myself to apply whole idea of enough: shoes (of course!) and food. While when I buy shoes I am aware that I am violating the same principles I passionately defend for the rest of the day, with food is more of a primordial italian housewife kind-of-thing, the chubby italian mamma for whom it is a matter of honor to stuff her guests until death. And I think I did recently with pizza. 

PIZZA DOUGH

Make a nice fountain with 1 kg of flour and place in the hole 25 gr of yeast melted in warm water and 2 spoons of sugar, some more warm water with 6 spoons of oil EVO and some salt and start mixing. Add slowly warm water until the dough is nice and elastic (total water should be around 600 ml). Leave it to rest in a warm place for a couple of hours. 

PIZZELLE FRITTE

I made little squares of pizza dough and let them rest for another half an hour, then fried in oil and seasoned with coarse salt, tomato-garlic-basil sauce and grated parmigiano

PIZZA WITH RED PEPPER, POTATOES AND CAPERS

(I added red pepper, mozzarella, potato slices and capers)

GIRANDOLE WITH ZUCCHINI AND PINE NUTS

I made a rectangle of dough and added mozzarella, zucchini cubes, dill, basil and crushed pine nuts. I rolled it and cut small girandole about 3 cm thick, then placed them in the baking tray to rest another 30 mins

PIZZA WITH TROPEA ONION AND PEPPER

My fav. Also black olives if I had them.

PIZZA WITH NUTELLA

If your guests, for some reasons, are still breathing, this will be the final straw (guaranteed!)

Quinoa with zucchini tagliatelle and shrimps

How many of you work for a boss that saves the shrimps' heads and delivers them to your door, so that you can make fish stock? That's what happened last Friday, and I was able to make stock frozen cubes that will last for a few times. First recipe is this quinoa thingy that I prepared listening to Matthew Bellamy singing (with his typical I-have-a-very-bad-stomachache voice) Supermassive Black Hole to get ready for the Muse concert happening in 10 days :D :D :D

QUINOA WITH ZUCCHINI TAGLIATELLE AND SHRIMPS

I prepared a fish stock with the shrimps' heads and used it to cook the quinoa, adding fresh dill, hot pepper and oil EVO when ready. Shrimps were pan-fried for few minutes and the zucchini tagliatelle recipe belong to S1 :D