CHOCOLATE CAKES

It is Easter time, so chocolate has to be the main character of many recipes. I have started preparing “Fiorentini” and “Tartufini al rhum”

FIORENTINI
Ingredients:

300 gr. almonds without shell

300 gr. milk chocolate

It is quite simple find almond without shell and the brown skin. If you have to remove the skin just put them in a pot with a bit of water and let boil, then dry and rub them until clear.

Toast almonds baking them for few minutes in pre-heaten oven. Melt the chocolate bain marie, add almonds when creamy. Let sit then prepare a large tray with oven paper and using two spoons from small balls. Put in the fridge for half an hour.

                                    

TARTUFINI AL RUM
Ingredients:

100 gr. di amaretti

200 gr. dark chocolate

80 gr. butter

50 gr. di rhum

Unsweeted cocoa powder

Using the mixer mince amaretti, melt chocolate and butter bain marie, then add biscuits and rhum and stir. Put in the fridge for about an hour. When the mixture become hard make small balls using a spoon (smaller then a walnut) and pass in the cocoa powder.

                                     

CHOCOLATE AND RICOTTA CHEESE CAKE

I wanted to talk about pasta topping, the none of my guests wrote me asking about my breakfast famous cakes! She suggested me to start with one of her favourite: chocolate and ricotta cheese cake.

Ingredients:
for the pastry
300 gr. flour
100 gr. sugar
120 gr. butter
1 egg
1 baking powder
lemon zeist

for the filling
400 gr. ricotta cheese
120 gr. sugar
100 gr. dark chocolate

Mix in a bowl flour, sugar and baking powder. Then add egg, lemon zeist, room - temperature butter. Knead using hands until having a grainy pastry. In a 28 cm baking tray pour 2/3 of the pastry and press it to cover the bottom of the tray.

In the meantime prepare the filling mixing ricotta cheese, sugar and chopped chocolate.Pour on the pastry. Cover with the pastry left making big crumbs. Bake 180° for 30 minutes.

Il Castagnaccio

We waked up this morning and all the countryside was covered with snow. I opened the window and I felt the cold air thinking: perfect weather for “castagnaccio”! 

This is an old and simple recipe made with chestnuts in our countryside. During the winter, in front of the fireplace there were always chestnuts: boiled, roasted or dried. We used to reduce them in flour and prepare them in a way which could replace a soup or the bread: here is the recipe.

Ingredients for 4 people:

gr. 300 chestnut flour
gr. 80 raisin
gr. 30 pine nut
5 walnuts
rosemary
gr. 400 water
olive oil
salt

Pour the flour in a bowl with salt, water and 2 spoons of olive oil, stir until creamy and smooth. Oil a cake pan with 3 spoons of olive oil and pour the mixture (it has to be less then a finger thick). Cover it with raisin, rosemary, walnuts and pine nut. Bake medium heat for 40 minutes.

Liver Pate'

This recipe comes from the most antique cooking writing called “De re coquinaria”. It was written by Apicio, a rich Roman who loved good food and spent all his money for it. At least old rich man in Italy used to have better habits than the current ones....

He writes: “cook liver, chop it and add pepper or “liquamen” (you don't really want to eat that!) or salt and add olive oil – hare liver (or lamb or chicken) and shape it as fish if you like. Pour on it olive oil”

Here you are my own version of it: 

300gr lamb or chicken liver, wash it and put in a pan with chopped onions, a couple of bay tree leaves and two anchovies. When start browning pour Vinsanto (holy wine). If you do not have it but you can replace it with Marsala wine, usually more easy to find, or some similar sweet wine. Add some salt if needed. Whip everything (its own liquid included) adding some butter until creamy. Pour in a mold. Let it cool and turn out the mold before serving.

Lent biscuits

Since Lent just started, I decided to write about “Quaresimali”, a kind of dark biscuits shaped as letters or numbers born in the kitchen of Tuscan convents and eaten in the period between Carnival and Easter. Today you can find them just in bakeries around Florence. I prepare them to color the tray where I serve “cantuccini” and “brutti boni”, two other types of buiscuits that my guests like a lot. Then you will have 3 different types of biscuits to choose from!

Quaresimali


Ingredients:

gr: 200 flour
gr: 200 sugar
gr:50 peeled and roasted almond
gr. 50 peeled and roasted hazelnuts
3 eggs white
gr. 50 unsweeted cocoa powder
vanilla extract
cinnemon
about 8 gr. of baking powder

Mill hazelnuts and almonds, mix with flour, sugar, cocoa, vanilla, cinnemon and baking powder. Whip the eggs white and add the other ingredients stirring from down to up. When the mixture is consistent, shape the biscuits on an oven tray. Bake 140°C for about 15 minutes.

Brutti- boni

Ingredients:

g 350 peeled almonds
gr. 300 sugar
4 eggs white

Chopp almonds and mix them with sugar. Whip the eggs white and add almonds. Using two spoons make small balls and let them wait for about an hour and bake at low temperature for about 30 minutes.

Cantuccini

Ingredients:

400 gr.flour
250 gr. sugar
250 gr. peeled almonds
2 eggs
3 yolks
baking powder
orange zert
salt

Whip yolks and eggs with the sugar until creamy, add flour mixed with baking powder, almonds (a bit roasted in advanced) and orange zest.

Shape long cylinders  3 fingers large and one thick. Bake at 180°C for about 20 minutes. Cut obliquely giving the traditional shape. Re-bake for 10 minutes to crisp.All these kind of biscuits have to be kept in glass jar to stay crumbly.

Pici - my son Marco favorite!

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of my guests asking about a kind of pasta she tasted here. The only clue I had was her definition as the “pasta of the poor man”. That is when I understood! We have many traditional poor recipes but the best is “pici con le briciole” (pici with roasted bread crumbs). In fact the only ingredients are: flour, water, bread, olive oil and grated pecorino cheese.

For 6 people: mix together 600gr flour, 280gr water and salt. Make a small ball  and let sit for 1 hour. 

Stretch pasta 1 cm thick and cut in thin stripes. 

Using your hand make long thick “spaghetti”. We define this process as “appiciare” which is the way we make this kind of pasta. The technique can be difficult the first times, you need to practise a bit.

In the meantime put the “pici” on a wood table covered with flour and a dishcloth dividing the different "levels" that they keep on forming as fast as you make they. In this way they will not touch each other.

In a saucepan pour olive oil and 4 garlic cloves. When they start browning add crumbs bread and stir. Add salt and pepper. In a big pot pour water and salt, when the water boils put the  “pici”. Cook for about 3 minutes from the moment they bob up. Drain them and add in the saucepan with bread crumbs. Add grated pecorino cheese.

Now your “pici” are ready!

                                         
During summer period the perfect way to present them is with a tomatoes topping, a very quick and tasty sauce.

To prepare this sauce pour olive oil and garlic in a pan, let it cook for a few minutes then add chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper. Let it cook for 20 minutes and finish it with basil. In this version use parmigiano cheese instead of pecortino.

                                       

During winter time, instead,  meat “ragù” is the best.

                                      

Il Lesso (Boiled Meat)

At the end of the XIX century Artusi, one of the most important Italian cooking writer of the period, used to say “the good and healthy stock” was fading away together with good recipes like “lesso rifatto” (an old recipe in which boiled meat is pan fried with vegetables). 

Today we spend less time cooking and this is the reason why nobody prepares homemade stock anymore and also why we can find boiled meat just in restaurants offered as a "delicacy", while it used to be a really common meal for our grandparents. Re-discovering simple flavors can actually be useful to understand how we used to live in the past. We all know that cooking is culture and that it reflects the society. Today we judge everything first of all by its appearance only and this is also true also for dishes. In the postwar period, when Italian economy started growing, but we still had strong rural culture, a natural way of cooking was created and I hope we will not lose these traditions.

I know today it is not so easy to find high quality meat, but if you have the opportunity try to prepare it in combination with your own stock, you can serve the boiled meat with different kind of sauces or cook “lesso rifatto”.

MEAT STOCK

Ingredients for 2 liters stock  

gr. 500 beef

a piece of bone and one of beef leg
half chicken

1 onion

2 carrots

1 celery

2 tomatoes
2 gloves

Salt

In a saucepan put all the ingredients, 3 liters of water and let them boil for 2 hours. When the meat is soft, remove it and pass the liquid through a strainer. Put it in the fridge for a few hours, then take away the fat on the top.

STRACCIATELLA

Half scrambled egg

1 spoon of parmigian cheese

Salt

Nutmeg

Mix everything together and pour in the boiling stock

                           

FRASCARELLI

This recipe comes from Pienza, a place you want to visit when you come to visit us in Tuscany. 

Mix 2 eggs and 200 gr flour and make crumbs using your fingers. Cook it then for few minutes in boiling stock. Serve with topping of parmigiano cheese.

LESSO RIFATTO

Ingredients:

300 gr. cold boiled meat
3 onions
4 small tomatoes
olive oil, salt and pepper
flour

Mince the onion and let them brown with 4 spoons of olive oil, then put the boiled meat chopped and cover with a bit of flour. Add salt and pepper and stir for a few minutes. When the meat starts browning add the tomatoes. If it dries too much add some stock. Cook it for 10 minutes. If you want you can garnish it by adding anchovy and parsley on top.