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Cavatelli e Bietole

Cavatelli is a favourite pasta shape of mine. The shape is from Southern Italy and it is popular in the regions of Molise, Basilicata and Apulia.

The verb "cavare" means to scoop or gouge, so "cavato" means scooped or hollowed out, concave, and cavatelli are little scooped out pasta pieces. A shape that lends itself to nestling sauce in its hollows. I like making Cavatelli, whether the simple cowrie shell shapes, sometimes called "cavatelluzzi" made with just the index finger or the many fingers longer version. I like it because though you need to shape each piece one at a time, you don't need a pasta machine or a rolling pin, just your hands, flour and water and a work surface. Wood is better, because pasta likes warmth but anything will do at a pinch.

I still have my gorgeously fragrant stone ground Senatore Cappelli flour and this is what I used: 250 g (a generous half pound) durum wheat flour and 125 ml (half a cup) of warm water, plenty for two.

I made the dough using the usual durum wheat pasta proportions of about half the weight of flour in warm water. No other ingredients. I kneaded the two together long enough to get a smooth dough that looked like this. I put it away to rest under a glass bowl - a plastic bag or plastic wrap will also do.

 

Magic!

This is why I like doing cooking classes for kids: 

And now you're here, check out my Giveaway.

Crisp Calamari

  
Who doesn't love these? Definitely one of my favourite things but not that easy to get right. There are two tricky things to watch for: making sure the calamari are not rubbery and making sure they crisp and not greasy after deep frying. Italians are superb at this and in my time here I have garnered many hints and tips and use them all. For Italian frying tips and trick check out my Posterous Blog - a good idea to read that up before making this recipe.

Here I am sharing a recipe for making crisp outside, tender inside Fried Calamari to enjoy as a pre-meal antipasto with your Prosecco or as a meal in itself. I say "a" recipe because i don't always make them this way, but these did turn out especially good. I used a batter this time, though often I just use flour. Because I am fond of a nice light crisp batter I like this Fritto (also called Frittutra) both ways, though many Italian insist just flour is best for frying shrimp and calamari rings. And in truth flour on its own does adhere better to the squid rings You can try both ways and see which you prefer. If you use only flour, place the flour in a bag, pop the dried squid inside and shake till they are well coated. Nice to just throw the bag away after and have nothing to wash up.

A little note: the more finely milled the flour, the better it coats the item to be fried. This means less risk of spitting as the liquid in the squid (or vegetable) leaks out. It also means a very fast seal is created round the item being fried, which stops it from becoming penetrated by the oil and turning greasy. Here I used chickpea flour, as I often do with fish. I like it because apart from coating beautifully it also makes the finished calamari that little bit more golden. Other fine flours you can experiment with are rice flour, potato flour and corn starch, though when I have used these I have never so far used them alone but just substituted for about a third of the regular flour. 

Fritto di Calamari

For 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course:

300g (a little more than half a pound) of fresh whole squid

150g (5 ounces) chickpea flour

150-200ml (one third to fourth fifths of a cup) ice cold fizzy mineral water

milk for soaking the squid

ground nut (peanut) oil for deep frying

a small piece of butter

a slice of old stale bread

an ice cube straight form the freezer

salt

a lemon

First you need to clean the squid, and this video by 5min.com courtesy of www.crafsters.org shows you how if you've never done it before.

Once you've cleaned the squid, cut the triangular fins off, and cut the bodies into rings. If the tentacles section is quite big cut it into two or three.

Keep the tentacles and fins separate from the rings and place in two bowls, then cover in milk and leave for at least 2 hours - this helps to keep them tender.

 
When you are ready to fry, dry off the squid on paper towels first. Prepare you serving platter by lining it with paper towels

Ready for the new Giveaway?

 

This time I wanted to offer a prize that anyone and everyone can enjoy, wherever they are, so this giveaway is for a

50 $ Amazon Gift Card

to spend any way you like. I was thinking the books of your choice in the language of choice, but you can use the card any way you wish if you win, no restrictions.

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If I were the winner I would head for cookbooks so I thought I'd mention a few favourite Italian cookbooks here so you can look up any you don't already know. In order of the oldest to newest they are:

Pellegrino Artusi - Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well - First published 1891 - University of Toronto Press ( 2003); ISBN-10: 0802086578 ISBN-13: 978-0802086570

 


Elisabeth David - Italian Food - First Published 1979 - Penguin Rev Ed (1998); ISBN-10: 0140273271 ISBN-13: 978-0140273274

Marcella Hazan - Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Knopf (1992); ISBN-10: 039458404X ISBN-13: 978-0394584041

Carol Field - Celebrating Italy - William Morrow & Co (1990); ISBN-10: 0688070930 ISBN-13: 978-0688070939

Antonio Carluccio - Carluccio's Complete Italian Food Quadrille Publishing (2002) ISBN-10: 1903845564 ISBN-13: 978-1903845561

Giorgio Locatelli - Made in Italy: Food and Stories Fourth Estate (2006); ISBN-10: 1841157015 ISBN-13: 978-1841157016

The Italian Academy of Cuisine - La Cucina - The Regional Cooking of Italy - Rizzoli (2009); ISBN-10: 0847831477 ISBN-13: 978-0847831470

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Amazon Gift Card, Cook Italy Blog Second Giveaway

 
To enter your name for the draw you need to

Subscribe to this Blog.

If you are not sure what that means or what that it involves, here is a very short video that gives a clear explanation, in simple English:

What the heck is RSS?

So this is what you need to do to enter

• First subscribe to get updates of new posts on this blog. To subscribe you can either click the icon in the right hand bar or else the Follow tab in the navigation bar at the top.

And the Winner is.........

 

Thank you all for participating, I was thrilled there were so many entries for my first Cook italy Bologna Cooking Class Giveaway!

To draw the winner I used the random numbers generator at random.org and this is the result:

Draw #1,528
1st draw held by Carmelita Caruana
Completed on Sunday, 14 February 2010 at 22:18:46 Europe/Rome Time
65 entrants, 1 winner

Winners (1)

1st: 24 - XXXATerksdotcom

Entrants (65)

#22: -XXXiniAThotmaildotcom
#23: -XXXadsATgmaildotcom
#24: -XXXATerksdotcom
#25: -XXXATstutzdotcom
#26: -XXXisaATyahoodotcom

The winner of a cooking class for two in Bologna is Teresa O'Connor. I e-mailed her and waited for her reply before publication and this what she wrote:

Carmelita: Yes! Yes! I accept with great delight. Thanks for the best Valentine’s Day present ever…How exciting! I’m not quite sure when we can get to Bologna. But I promise you, we’ll come before Feb. 2011 – and we can’t wait… What do you think are the best times to come? Meanwhile, my husband said he has gained weight just by looking at your Web site…

Congratulations Teresa!

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It was fun reading all your favourite pasta dishes. Some people got so carried away thinking about Italian food that some non pasta dishes got nominated: risotto and gnocchi got several votes and veal saltimbocca and coratella alla Romana also got mentions, though they are main courses.

 

Of the pasta dishes, pasta with seafood, especially Linguine or Spaghetti alle Vongole (with clams)  was the most popular. There were several mentions too for pasta dressed with pesto, Spaghetti Carbonara and the Southern Italian favourite Spaghetti al Pomodoro, with the eggplant Pasta alla Norma edging in also. 

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AND IF YOU WERE NOT LUCKY ....

Just come back tomorrow when I will be posting a NEW Giveaway right here and you can try your luck again!

Fennel Sformato

 

Sformato di Finoccchio

I often say that traditional Italian cooking needs up-dating only in presentation. The tasty traditional home cooking recipes we all love were prepared in the past by busy women who had enough to do putting nourishing food on the table without worrying about making it look good as well, as is entirely understandable. Besides all food looks beautiful when food is hard to come by and your next meal not guaranteed. Today, luckily, things are different, and we can afford to take the time to make food look beautiful. And one of the reasons I love Sformati is because they really lend themselves to pretty presentation.

Texture is another reason I love Sformati. A Sformato is light and airy. Easy to like and easy to eat. It is also very versatile. Although usually made with vegetables, you can make a Sformato with almost anything: ricotta, fish, chicken, cheese or shrimp, they can all transformed into a lusciously soft and tasty Sformato. You can even transform leftovers into a delectable dish by pureeing and combining with eggs and bechamel.

Though not often served in traditional restaurants (far easier to serve poached, grilled or gratineed vegetables) Sformati are quite often eaten at home here in Bologna. I cook them with whatever is in season. A winter favourite is an Artichoke Sformato that is served surrounded by Bologna's tinier-than-tiny veal meatballs. In spring I like a Sformato made with zucchini, topped with a fresh tomato sauce and garnished with shelled new fava beans.

The Sformato is not a Cucina Povera dish from the country side, the coast or the mountains, but a bourgeois dish enjoyed by the more leisured urban classes. The well-to-do dean of Italian cookbook authors, Pellegrino Artusi, has six vegetable Sformato recipes in his 1891 "Art of Eating well". His recipes are for Sformati of cauliflower, artichoke, spinach, cardoons. green beans and fennel.

Of the fennel one he writes:

"This sformato, because of its pleasant aroma and the sweet flavour of the fennel, turns out to be one of the most delicate".

Which indeed is true. The fennel, which is pretty strongly aniseed flavoured eaten raw, is here transformed into just a subtle whisper, a faint echo of itself, making a Fennel Sformato one of my favorite ways of eating this winter vegetable.

Here's the recipe:

Cook Italy's First Giveaway!

 

My blog is young and new and I want lots of people to discover it, so to tempt you over I've got a few great giveaways coming up.And this is the very first one. The prize you can win is a full six-hour

Market-to-Table Cooking Class for 2

with me here in la bella Bologna. First touring the fabulous Medieval Market, then cooking a tasty traditional Bolognese meal  together, then eating it up, of course!

Yes, you do need to get over here under your own steam and at your own cost, but you may be planning a trip already, you may already be resident in Italy, or you may have a friend who is coming over to Italy between February 2010 and February 2011. That means the class can be anytime in the next 12 months, depending on my availability, and yes, you can transfer your prize and give it as a gift to a family member or friend.

To enter you need to leave a little comment below this post telling me what your favourite Italian pasta dish is.

Your comment can be short, very short or long-ish if you prefer.

I teach Italian cooking to non-Italians not to Italians, so if you are Italian, I'm sorry, you can't participate, but you can tell your non-Italian friends to visit and coment.

I would love lots of people to join in so please tell lots of friends about this: on the phone, by email, on Facebook, on Twitter, just spread the word.

And keep coming back because I will have more giveaways - maybe even very soon!

 
So this is what you need to do:

• To enter you leave a comment below, naming your favourite Italian pasta dish.

• You can leave one comment only. You do not need to have your own blog to enter/leave a comment.

• Make sure you include your email address – in the email field, not the comment field – so I can contact you if you are the lucky winner.

• Your email address is only so I can contact the winner. I will not be passing it on to any third parties, nor sending you emails myself  -  I communicate with you here on this blog.

• You may submit comments any time until 9 pm GMT - Greenwich Mean Time on Sunday February 14, 2010.

Eastern Time is GMT - 5 hours;

Pacific Standard Time is GMT - 8 hours;

Japan Time is GMT + 9 hours.

• When the comments close the winner will be chosen from the comments through http://www.random.org/, a random number generator.

• I will email the winner to let them know and to discuss the scheduling possibilities

• I will post an update here announcing the happy winner.

So try your luck, have fun and let’s get started - I can't wait to read your comments!

Heart of Hearts Risotto

 

A red plate and a large heart cutter transform this dish from an ordinary risotto to a special one for Valentine's Day. An artichoke risotto is one of my favourites, especially when topped with some crisp fried artichoke and guanciale strips. Guanciale is what I use in place of pancetta, because it always seems to be tastier, probably cured for longer. In Bologna  excellent guanciale is easily available and I keep a good sized chunk to hand: it is one of my "never-without" ingredients.

Which rice for risotto? In Italy it is either the elongated and elegant Carnaroli, which you can see on the left above or Verona's smaller, rounder, whiter Vialone Nano on the right. Why not Arborio? Carnaroli and Vialone Nano have a higher amylose content than Arborio so they absorb more liquid without becoming sticky. In addition, rice labelled Arborio may legally contain other related rice varieties in Italy, but if it is labelled Carnaroli or Vialone Nano it cannot legally contain any other variety but the one on the label. I use both Carnaroli and Vialone Nano, with a slight preference for V. N. which cooks faster than Carnaroli, being a smaller grain. Arborio is fine too, much better to use Arborio than to try to make risotto with long grain rices: a fail from the start, the texture and consistency will never be right.

Hearts upon Hearts

 
Cuori di Caricofi su Cuori di Polenta

I do enjoy playing and coming up with fun food for special occasions. For Valentine's Day my friends are my heart cutters and my imagination.

As a starter for a romantic meal, this year I came up with heart shaped polenta crostini topped with fried fresh artichoke hearts embedded in white cream cheese, surrounded by two very red Mediterranean shrimp. These shrimp don't turn red, they are deep red to begin with - softer in texture, high in flavour and what a colour!

If you don't eat shrimp, you can leave them out; maybe make an edging of sliced halved red radishes instead? You could then top with Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings. And I think I should have let the outline of the polenta crostini show more, instead of covering it up completely when assembling. That's what I'll do when we make this on the Saint Valentine’s weekend cooking class in Bologna.

To make this pretty starter you will need.

 - Pre-cooked polenta in a slab about half an inch high.

Make this well ahead, as the drier the top the better it will hold together when frying. You can use the quick cook kind and follow the package instructions but I made mine (nearly 40 minutes of stirring!) using just over a pound (500 g) of medium ground polenta, 2 litres of water and a tablespoon of coarse sea salt.  If it isn’t well salted polenta turns out dull and bland. 

Here is a link to wonderful post on making polenta from scratch from Frank Fariello's excellent Italian food blog.

 - Two tablespoons soft white cheese like Straciatella (which is what you find in the middle of Burrata ) or Robiola  - I used the local Squacquerone from Romagna which has a nice acidity and the right consistency.

 - A fresh artichoke

- A lemon

 - 4 medium shrimp

-  Extra virgin olive oil

 - Rapeseed or ground nut oil

- Salt

- Small salad leaves for garnish.

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I am going to go into detail on how prepare the artichoke hearts, in the clever Italian way, so if you already know what to do skip this part.

I assembled the following:

Bread knife with serrated edge

Potato peeler

Small sharp knife

Small coffee spoon with a sharply pointed edge

A bowl of cold water

A lemon.