Italian Food - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Italian Food

25
Jun
2023

The Italian Cuisine I Love Redux

categories: 1970's recipes, Anchovies, Bread, Italy, Pasta

Buongiorno Amici! Today we are taking another look at The Italian Cuisine I Love by Jules J Bond. We last looked at this book all the way back in 2012 where I developed quite a crush on the author…Bond…Jules J Bond. And who wouldn’t crush on this bon vivant and possible spy! I spent quite a while with Jules J last time and his tuna stuffed tomatoes are still a favourite summer lunch for me! Today, however, will be a flying visit, albeit a delizioso one!

The introduction to The Italian Cuisine I Love says

Italy is a country where the joy of eating is one of the many joys of life”

And today, wherever in the world we find ourselves, we will be trying to capture some of la dolce vita with some fried anchovy bread and Spaghetti in Garlic Sauce. Sorry carb phobes, this one is not for you!

Fried Anchovy Bread

Bear with me for uno momento haters of anchovies……just take a moment to look at this…

Yes, I thought that might change your mind. But if you really, really hate anchovies, leave them out. Add some salami or prosciutto or olives just have it with the cheese! If you also don’t like cheese, then I have nothing for you.

Now that’s the Italian Cuisine I Love!

Fried Anchovy Bread – The Recipe

As delicious as the anchovy bread was, it was just the begining!

Spaghetti In Garlic Sauce

As the fried anchovy bread was quite rich, I thought I would keep the second course quite light. I wanted to have pasta because last time I didn’t make any of the pasta dishes. I chose a Spaghetti in Garlic Sauce. This is a version of a Spaghetti Aglio e Olio and was super yummy!

Spaghetti In Garlic Sauce Recipe

It was so nice to step back into the worldof The Italian Cuisine I Love. I now own a few more in the Cuisines I Love series so hopefully it will not be another eleven years before we step back into the world of Jules J Bond!

13
Dec
2020

Arrivederci Made In Italy

categories: Italy, Made In Italy, Tasty Reads

It seems like only the other day that I was writing that I had finished cooking through Cantina and now here I am also having finished Made in Italy by Silvia Colloca! Admittedly I only had eleven recipes left to cook when I started but I am still pretty proud of myself! The cover claims “more than 80 authentic recipes from the heart of Italy”. Of the…I’m not going to count them, so let’s just call it 80 recipes, I made 34 so I’ve cooked 42.5% of the recipes contained therein.

Made in Italy – The Summary

Made in Italy contains fairly standard Italian fare, which is probably the reason why a) I cooked so many recipes from it and b) why I was able to do the last few quite quickly – the ingredients and the techniques are familiar to most home cooks. The dishes include pastas, pizza, breads, cakes, salads, and seafood. Not to mention delicious little snacks/appetisers like these Olives All ‘Ascolana!

It also contains gorgeous photos of the areas in Italy that the book covers (Marche, Abruzzo and Molise so would also make a lovely gift for armchair travellers!

I also liked that many of the recipes were really quick and easy to prepare. This was particularly refreshing coming on the tails of Cantina where pretty much every recipe was either incredibly elaborate to cook or had had to come by ingredients.

My Favourite Recipes

These were the recipes that got over 4.7 (out of 5) in my personal rating scale. The ones marked with an asterisk are my absolute favourites.

Sides, Salads and Appetisers

Broccolini cooked with chilli and garlic
Crostini with lemon, ricotta and spinach
Grilled primo sale and vegetable salad (The primo sale is homemade cheese and was delicious)*
Olives All’ascolana*

Main Meals

Calamari with tomatoes and wine
Fresh pasta strips with slow-cooked goat sauce
Lasagna, Marche style*
Chard Tart*
Herb frittata with Goat’s curd

Desserts

Celebration sponge cake
Apricot and olive oil cake*
Bear’s cake

Made in Italy – My least Favourite things

The St Martin Rolls were not good at all – I suspect this was due to the use of self-raising flour rather than plain flour. I didn’t rate any of Silvia’s slices of bread but these were by far the worst.

And, whilst the landscape and food photography was beautiful there were a few too many pictures of Silvia looking impossibly thin. Then again, if I looked that good, I would want to be showing my perfect figure off in many photos too!

Overall, I would rate this book 4.5 stars out of 5. It is a very nice addition to the genre of Italian cookbooks and one that I know I will cook from over and over!

If you are looking for a last-minute gift idea for a friend who has been to Italy I can recommend Made in Italy as both a lovely souvenir of a trip and a great cookbook. Be prepared to pay though. Even used copies on Amazon are selling for upwards of $50! Let me know if you want any of the recipes listed above, I can scan them through for you.

Next Tasty Reads book I will be cooking through is Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall’s River Cottage Light and Easy – this will be a welcome counterbalance to the rich food after Christmas so I am looking forward to it! I have 33 recipes left to cook so it is likely to be a full year effort!

And tell me…what is your favourite Italian cookbook?

Have a wonderful week!

22
Nov
2020

Homemade Ricotta – Finding my Whey!

categories: Cheese

As regular readers will know I am cooking my way through Sylvia Colloca’s Made in Italy which was a Tasty Read’s book whey back in 2015. To date, I have two recipes left to cook and I am going to try to get them both done this weekend. However, one recipe which bamboozled me was Silvia’s recipe for homemade ricotta.

I really wanted to make my own ricotta but there was something in Silvia’s recipe that was a stumbling block. It called for a whole litre of whey. I had no idea where I could get that from. I mean I eat a lot of yoghurt but even for me, collecting a whole litre of whey would take about a year! The internet abounds with recipes and ideas to use your leftover whey but falls strangely silent on how to get it in the first place. There’s whey protein powder but that seems to be more for bodybuilding than cheesemaking.

I asked a friend who regularly makes her own ricotta. “Where do you get your whey from?” The answer was a largely unhelpful “From the previous lot of cheese”.

Hmmm….so, with no seeming way to get whey, I turned to the internet. Which did not disappoint. I found an Epicurious recipe that used water and lemon juice instead of whey!

Well whey, hey we are good to go for the making of ricotta! It’s so easy!!!! It’s not a pretty process as it involves curdling the milk and cream with lemon juice.

And then straining the curds out of the whey.

So simple! And the end result is proper ricotta!

Making anything from scratch is great. Making cheese…amazing!!! I was so proud of myself! And this is a great way to use up cream that you may have leftover from making other things. I guess that technically I should have saved the whey from this batch so I could make Silvia’s recipe but I totally forgot. I am thinking about what a goat’s milk ricotta might be like so maybe I will save that batch.

Silvia says you can use your homemade ricotta for breakfast with honey and fruit. I used mine, with some homegrown oregano to make Ottolenghi’s Ricotta and Oregano Meatballs . They were delicious and I thought I would have some over to take some photos of the following day but we ate them all!

Homemade ricotta and homegrown oregano!!! Look at me being all homestead! I felt like I was from the little house on the prairie!

Now excuse me, I’m off to turn a hollow log into a meat smoker!

Have a great week whatever you get up to!

28
Jul
2020

Name Plates: Pizza a la Garibaldi

categories: 1970's recipes, Italy, Name Plates, Pizza

What do an Italian revolutionary, a biscuit, a beard and this post have in common? They are all named Garibaldi! This Pizza a la Garibaldi comes from The Italian Cuisine I Love (1977) by Jules J Bond. I have a particular fondess for Jules J so I was eager to pick this book back up again. And who doesn’t love pizza?

What is Pizza a la Garibaldi?

Ok. So, I’m not going to explain pizza. Because it’s pizza!

Pizza a La Garibaldi though? Has cheese, green and black olives, oregano / marjoram, and anchovies. I also added some strips of roasted red pepper for reasons which will become clear right about now! This is the picture of the Pizza a la Garibaldi from The Italian Cusine I Love.

And this is me trying to recreate it. I think Jules J piped lines of tomato sauce on his pizza. There was no way in hell I was going to do that so strips of piquillo pepper it was! I wish I’d had some of those cute rolled anchovies with capers to get the same look as Jules. Mine looked like blobs.

The Recipe And Variations

I was interested to see that Jules uses bread dough as a base for his pizza. I have not been able to find yeast for love or money since the start of the first lockdown when everyone went sourdough mad so I was unable to test that part of the recipe out. Also, my preference is for a thin and crispy base rather than a thicker base so I used one of those souvlaki pitas for my pizza.

The Pizza a la Garibaldi was very tasty but for me the big disappointment was the cheese. Part of the joy of pizza, for me anyway is that beautiful streeeetch of the mozzarella.

Parmesan may be tastier but does not give the same joy! I will definitely use mozzarella next time I make this.

Who Was Garibaldi?

Well, we don’t have all day so here are a collection of fun facts about Giussepe Garibaldi

Unifier of Italy

Garibaldi was almost single-handedly responsible for helping Italy move from a collection of city-states to the country we know today. He and his volunteer army of guerilla fighters, the Redshirts, conquered Lombardy and later Sicily and Naples.

Anti Slavery Advocate

Abraham Lincoln offered Garibaldi a job as a Commander in the American Civil War. Garibaldi refused the post partly because Lincoln did not condemn slavery strongly enough for his liking.

Pacifist

Even though he was a soldier for most of his life, in his later years Garibaldi became something of a pacifist beliving that war was generally neither righteous or an effective means of getting what one wants.

Champion of the Underdog

Garibaldi believed in worker’s rights, women’s emancipation, racial equality, and the abolition of capital punishment.

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Garibaldi spent some time in South American and for the rest of his life work the clothing of the gauchos. He is also the originator of the Garibaldi beard.

Keen Entolmologist*

A little known fact about Garibaldi is that he was an avid collector of flying insects, a love he developed in South America. In order to keep his collection with him on his travels, he had specimens of his collection baked into little clay tablets. He could then pop these into his pocket to look at between skirmishes.

These small clay tablets are believed to be the origin of the Garibaldi biscuit.

(Photo via Delicious Magazine UK)

Modern Day Garibladi

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find one of these but come on down Navarone Garibaldi. In case you haven’t heard of him, he is the son of Priscilla Presley and Marco Garibaldi, stepbrother to Lisa-Marie Presley and a member of the band Them Guns. Hmmm…maybe he could have gone with The Guns of Navarone…or would that be too obvs? Anyway, here he is!

Have a great week. And eat some pizza! It’s scientifically proven to make you happy!

*This “fact” is little known because I wanted to have an interesting story for the origin of the Garibaldi biscuit. The actual truth is that the reason why they are named after Garibaldi is totally unknown.