How to use bay leaves – Italian Cuisine

The laurel has distant roots, is a plant famous for its beneficial properties and is one of the most used aromatic herbs, thanks to its versatility

laurel, Laurus in Latin, is an evergreen plant native to the Mediterranean, often used as an ornamental hedge but perfect to use in the kitchen, for its strong taste. The laurel leaves can be picked in any season, they have a leathery appearance and an elongated shape. If you use fresh they have a stronger aroma, while if made dry they become less intense.

Laurel, a "divine" plant

The origins of this plant are so ancient that Ovid speaks of it in his own Metamorphosis. Bernini himself was able to interpret with grace and sensuality the myth of Daphne (laurel in Greek) and Apollo, in a statue displayed at Villa Borghese in Rome. In the myth, Apollo, god of poetry and music, falls in love with the nymph Daphne, without being reciprocated. Pursued by the god, the nymph escapes and shortly before being reached by Apollo she asks for help to Mother Earth, which immediately turns it into a laurel plant. Bernini manages to stop the moment when Daphne, surrounded by the hand of Apollo, arches and begins her metamorphosis into a tree: her legs become roots and her hair turns into branches. From that moment, the laurel became a sacred plant to Apollo, and with it poets were celebrated.

The properties of the laurel

Used since ancient times for its innumerable therapeutic properties, laurel has become one of the most widely used aromatic herbs in kitchens throughout the Mediterranean. Its leaves contain a geraniol rich essential oil, terpineol and eucalyptol, useful elements to alleviate stomach disorders and to reduce cough and phlegm discomfort. Laurel is also an excellent anti-inflammatory against arthritis and rheumatism. In the kitchen it is used fresh, dried or powdered.

The laurel on the plate

The strong taste of the laurel is perfect to accompany various dishes, from soups, to meat (especially game), to fish. It is often used to prepare i court bouillon, to flavor beans or lentils. Also suitable for enhancing the taste of fish, it is often used with shrimp and shellfish in general. It is then indicated with boiled chestnuts, artichokes in oil and with baked potatoes.

Laurel vinegar

To perfume your salads or to give an extra touch to creams and sauces, you can prepare a vinegar flavored with laurel. It is very easy to do, it only takes a little time for the aromatic herb to release all the essential oils that characterize it. First, take a liter of white wine vinegar, let it heat up for a few minutes in a saucepan, without boiling, and then infuse 15 fresh laurel leaves, washed and dried. Close the bottle with a stopper, leave it in the sun for three weeks and then strain the vinegar into another bottle, close it tightly and store it in a cool, dry place.

The laurel infusion to promote digestion

An all-natural remedy to aid digestion? Put five or six bay leaves in infusion in the boiling water and let them steep for about ten minutes. Then drink, you will see that the effect will be assured. If you prefer something more alcoholic, prepare a rosolio with bay leaves. Mix 800 g of sugar with 1 and a half liters of water, clean 50 bay leaves and dry them. Put them in a bowl that can be closed with 1 liter of pure alcohol. Leave to infuse for two weeks, then, after this time, filter the liquid and add it to the cold sugar syrup. Mix and let stand for two months. At this point, filter the liqueur again and then bottle it.

And now in the tutorial some tips to use laurel!

Recipe Crunchy bundles with spiced chickpea cream – Italian Cuisine

Ingredients

450 g boiled chickpeas
300 g trumpet zucchini
300 g Greek yogurt
50 g rocket
10 pcs yellow cherry tomatoes
8 pcs of phyllo dough sheets
2 pcs cardamom pods
1 pc spring onion
cumin powder
coriander powder
mint
lemon
garlic
tomato concentrate
peanut oil
extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper

Duration: 1 h 15 min

Level: Middle

Dose: 8 people

For the recipe of crispy bundles with spiced chickpea cream, slice the onion and brown it in a casserole with 1/2 clove of garlic and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. After 2 minutes add the chickpeas and let them cook for 1 minute. Add 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, 1 glass of water, 1 teaspoon of cumin, 1 of coriander and the crushed seeds of 2 cardamom pods. Cook for about 5 minutes: turn off when the water has dried well. Blend the chickpeas to obtain a thick cream. Process the filo pastry, one sheet at a time, keeping the others covered in the package to prevent them from drying out. Cut a sheet in half and fold each piece in half lengthwise. Place at the base of the strip 1 spoonful of chickpea cream and close the pasta in small packets, giving a triangular shape, with more turns. Moisten the last portion of dough with a little water to seal the triangle. Cut the trumpet courgettes into thin strips and season with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper; mix them with the rocket and the sliced cherry tomatoes. Prepare a sauce by mixing the yogurt with a dozen chopped mint leaves, salt, pepper, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the juice of 1 lemon. If desired, you can also flavor it with a piece of minced garlic. Fry the triangles in hot peanut oil and drain them on kitchen paper. Serve with the salad and the sauce.

Anti-waste recipes: the art of recycling – Italian Cuisine

We need the Earth, but the Earth also needs us. Great policies are not enough to safeguard our planet from exploitation. Each of us must commit to reducing consumption. Starting with food. Here are our recycling recipes, for a daily anti-waste battle

We are facing obvious climate change. Increasingly longer summers interspersed with violent storms, capable of discharging the amount of rain that falls in a month in just a few hours. The so-called flash floods. Real storms with devastating tornadoes. And this also in a country like Italy, where the rhythm of the four seasons has always characterized the mild climate of the boot. At the same time, the glaciers of the Alps are shrinking at a worrying rate, while at global level the situation is certainly not better. The ice of the Poles shrinks, producing in the long (but not too long) period an elevation of the sea with millions of square kilometers of coastline that could end up under water; Siberia is on fire, Alaska is on fire, Amazonia burns incessantly. And to make matters worse, Donald Trump wants to take away the Tongass National Forest of Alaska, the largest forest in the United States, from the restrictions imposed 20 years ago on cutting and transporting timber; the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has exceeded the threshold of three soccer fields per minute under the Bolsonaro presidency; Putin looks away while Siberia goes to ashes; Japan has declared that having no way to store Fukushima radioactive water, it will be discharged into the Pacific with incalculable damage to the ecosystem that could involve all the Earth's seas.
Already, our seas, proven by fishing activities that, although prohibited, are often practiced, illegally, the same; our seas, where immense islands of plastic waste float adrift; our seas, where rivers are discharged, often reduced to open-air sewers, saturated with poisonous substances.
And then there is the bad air we breathe, especially in large metropolitan areas, despite many efforts to contain pollution.

Human activities have such a strong impact on the Earth that this year the Overshoot Day (the day when we consumed all the resources that the Earth offers us in 2019) we reached on July 29th: then we started to consume in deficit , to consume the resources of 2020!

Special Earth: recycling and anti-waste are the recipes of the future.

Is it man's fault?

The question that many politicians, scientists and ordinary people ask is: is all this human activity, often also reckless, responsible for climate change? There are two currents of thought, both supported by scientific studies. There are those who say that yes, it is the fault of man and his exaggerated exploitation of the planet. Then there are those who claim that there have always been climate changes, even devastating ones, because they are cyclical and occur beyond human activity. In support of this theory they show us the climatic history of the Earth, the great changes of the past, when man was not even there. But also the minor ones, in any case important, intervened before the industrial era, of pollution and of the massive exploitation of the planet's resources, such as the Small glacial age (Pet), which occurred between the mid-fourteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. An icy cold that was preceded by a long period of relatively high temperatures called Medieval hot period. After the Pet, which ended around 1850, temperatures started to rise again, causing a new reduction in the mass of ice, a phase that is still ongoing, compounded, perhaps, by human factors that produce the greenhouse effect on the atmosphere: the in short, global warming.

One thing is certain: that climate changes are natural or the consequence (total or partial) of human activity, pollution is (obviously) wrong because then the "jewels" of the Earth we must eat, drink, breathe us all. It is therefore necessary to reduce, without ifs and buts, our "weight" on the planet paying particular attention to the waste, in order not to burn unnecessarily the energies, not infinite, of our great Earth house. And this is not the task only of governments and states, with far-sighted policies, when unpopular in the short term, but a commitment, indeed an obligation, which concerns us all individually, daily, meticulously.

Anti-waste recipes: because recycling is good, it's good, but above all it's right!

Let's start from here: on 29 January 2019 it was calculated that 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away before reaching our table; then there is what we waste at the table. A quarter of that same food would be enough to feed the more than 815 million hungry people.
It makes you shiver, right?
And yet, in our own small way, in our daily lives, each of us participates in this waste. And then, always in our own small way, in our daily life, we learn to correct our bad habits. For example, optimizing spending, thus lowering our non-essential consumption and consequently reducing the production of industrial foodstuffs, the waste we produce, the monetary outflows of our portfolios.
And then there is one thing that you must never forget: in the kitchen nothing is thrown away, because everything (or almost) can be recycled, transforming what is about to become garbage into a new dish, good, creative and nutritious. Fantasy in the kitchen, then!

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