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).

Xmas in the holy land

My non existent attitude towards religion doesn't stop me from celebrating religious holidays as any chance is good to cook, have friends around and eating an insane amount of crisps (why the hell am I running my ass off otherwise?). Ok, next year we will be more prepared about what we are actually celebrating and won't spread false news about the 20 days pregnancy of mary, but quoting a friend of us, perfect is the enemy of good :)

SALMON AND BROCCOLI PIE

Prepare the besciamella sauce melting 50 gr of butter and 50 grams of flower in a pan, then add up to one litre of milk and stir until it boils. When it is ready, add nutmeg and salt. Boil the broccoli in water for few minutes and then add them to the besciamella. Take one sheet of puff pastry and place it in a baking tray, add the broccoli besciamella and the smoked salmon in thin strips to decorate. Cook in the oven for 30 mins @180 degrees.

 

SPICE BRAD STICKS

Evergreen. Taken from here.

PASTA SCEMA

As the chef (that wasn't me) defined it :). A very nice pasta with roasted breadcrumbs, sundried tomatoes and tuna.

Ribollita im pita

Winter in Tel Aviv means a week with some rain and some 7 degrees. Ok, readers from abroad, no room for complaining but please understand that the apartments here are damn cold and the only way of heating them is either rivers of cava (and yes, we VERY reluctantly did it) or a hot soup. 

And now that the winter is already gone, the sun shines high in the sky and the parka coat can rest in peace into the closet until I move to Maastricht, Silviot are left with ribollita soup for the whole week and for the whole building :) 

But ribollita without bread is like peas without carrots, like AS Roma without Totti, like, to come back to the main point, TLV without sun. I had mini pitot in the kitchen and no will to go fetch more suitable bread, so here we go:

RIBOLLITA IN THE PITA POCKET

I started with the celery-onion-carrot mix chopped and fried in a big pot with two spoons of oil evo. I then added cannellini white beans, a whole peeled potato, one can of crushed tomatoes, mixed herbs and filled the pot with water. I let it cook for a lot doing a bit of catch up with my online spanish classes, until the potato was soft. I mashed the potato, took out some of the beans (40%) and blended them, hence added everything back into the soup. I also added a package of unknown green vegetables (I dreamed about finding black kale, then hoped to be surprised by regular kale, sincerely wished to find a cabbage but eventually settled for this weird 7 shekels dark lettuce). I served it with the vegetables inside a pita pocket and the soupy part outside, and I will serve it again, and again, and again….