Loretta Fanella, the recipe for a gourmet breakfast – Italian Cuisine

Four signature desserts to accompany the coffee with a path of delicious and unforgettable flavors. The perfect recipes and combinations

Loretta Fanella, the pastry chef who boasts a training based on Adrià Ferran and Carlo Cracco, told us about her new passion for pairings in front of a really special breakfast. With Lavazza, he has for the first time tackled the topic of pastry coffee seen as a pairing rather than proposing it among the ingredients. The aromas and scents encountered in the different coffees become theinspiration to create special desserts, able to recall the notes of the mixtures and highlight their peculiarities.
"Although at the beginning it may seem a complex operation, it actually becomes simple with a little experience. I learned, for example, to combine cherry, mango and tropical fruit in general with coffee. Then there are ingredients like hazelnut that perfectly match the coffee: a marriage explored in some regions such as Piedmont and Campania, but which deserves to be known throughout the Italian territory , he told us when we met her at Identità Golose .

The sweets that Loretta Fanella created for Lavazza

Here then are the dessert recipes signed by Loretta Fanella which we tasted in conjunction with Lavazza coffees Classic Collection, a selection dedicated to Italian espresso connoisseurs. Glod Selection, Top Class and Gran Riserva, designed to explore the different facets of coffee and choose the one we like best based on body, aroma and taste (aromatic, intense or balanced). And after having tasted them all and found what you like best, all that remains is to prepare these amazing desserts to enjoy your dream breakfast and pamper yourself a little.

Orange and carrot plumcake

Here it refers to the classic combination of hazelnut and coffee thanks to the hazelnut flour and the pleasantness of orange is also explored thanks to the grated skins.

Ingredients: 200 g of soft butter, 150 g of sugar, a pinch of salt, 3 whole eggs, 150 g of julienne carrots, bof two grated oranges, 90 g of hazelnut flour, 150 g of flour, 16 g of baking powder

Method: Whip the butter with the sugar and salt. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Combine the carrot and orange peel and finally the flour with the baking powder. Place small paper muffin cups inside and cook at 175 ° for about 10 minutes.

Dark tart

Dark chocolate and coffee, the combination is perfect. To make it even richer, the pastry chef decorated the chocolate filling with a roasted coffee bean. Very good!

Ingredients for cocoa pastry: 200 g of butter, 200 g of sugar, 25 g of egg yolks, 70 g of eggs, 400 g of pastry flour, 50 g of cocoa, 4 g of baking powder, a pinch of salt
Ingredients for chocolate filling: 350 g of dark chocolate 70%, 250 g of fresh cream, 50 g of butter

Method: Work the soft butter with the icing sugar. Add the eggs and finish with the sieved powders. Spread the dough between two sheets of baking paper and let it cool for about two hours. Make a disc with a 3 cm diameter metal ring, cut and lay the edges about 3 cm high and pierce the base with a fork. Bake at 175 ° for about 8 minutes.
For the stuffing: sheat the cream with honey. Melt the chocolate and gently add the cream creating an emulsion. Pour the mixture over the pastry base and decorare to taste.

Dark chocolate mint

It might seem like a risky idea, yet mint goes very well with coffee. Seeing is believing.

Ingredients for the dark chocolate shell: 500 g of tempered dark chocolate
Ingredients for mint ganache: 100 g of fresh cream, 30 g of glucose, 120 g of sugar, 100 g of dark chocolate, 2 drops of mint essential oil

Method: Fill the polycarbonate molds with tempered chocolate. Wait a minute and empty; beat well to remove excess chocolate and leave to crystallize for 12 hours in a cool, dry place.
Heat the cream with glucose and sugar. Pour over chocolate and melt it. Pass an immersion mixer and add the mint. Let it cool to 30 ° and fill the chocolate shells. Allow the chocolates to crystallize and close with tempered chocolate.

For the milk chocolate and salted caramel bar

In this case, we focus everything on cinnamon, capable of enhancing the spicy soul of the coffee. Loretta also wanted to recall the habit of enriching coffee with cinnamon, often experimented also with cappuccino.

Ingredients for cinnamon pastry: 275 g of soft butter, 90 g of sugar, 20 g of eggs, 300 g of flour, 4 g of salt, 5 g of powdered cinnamon
Ingredients for chocolate ganache: 300 g of cream, 70 g of glucose, 195 g of milk cover, 175 g of dark coating
Ingredients for salted caramel: 100 g of granulated sugar, 50 g of butter, 150 g of fresh cream, 2 g of salt
For coverage: 300 g of milk chocolate

Method: Whip the soft butter with the sugar in the planetary mixer. Add the eggs, salt and cinnamon. To finish, finish with the sifted flour, stirring gently the dough so as not to dismantle it too much. It can be used immediately or after having it rested in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Cut the dough into a rectangle 5 cm long by 2.5 cm, in a hot oven at 170 °.
For the ganache: Heat the cream with glucose; pour it over the chocolate pieces and let it melt for a couple of minutes. Blend with an immersion mixer for a couple of minutes. Allow to crystallize and give the shape of a cylinder.
Salted caramel: Caramelise the sugar until the color is golden. Add the soft butter, mix well and add the cream at a temperature of 32 degrees. Boil and add salt and vanilla. Remove from heat and leave to cool.
Now that we have finished all the preparations, place the salted caramel on the pastry rectangle and add the ganache cylinder. We cover everything with tempered milk chocolate and let it crystallize.

no food waste, yes purchase savings – Italian Cuisine

Thanks to the application Too Good To Go just arrived in Italy, restaurateurs and large retail chains can sell unsold food at the end of the day at reduced prices. Thus Europe's largest anti-waste network also extends to our country

It has recently arrived in Italy and is called Too Good To Go. We are talking about the app that allows anyone to actively participate in the fight against food waste and, at the same time, to save on food purchases. In short, the proverbial two birds with one stone.
Designed in 2015 in Denmark, the app, which today counts almost 9 million users, is already present in 9 other European countries and is among the top positions in the App Store and Google Play across the Old Continent. Now, to expand its already large anti-waste network, Too Good To Go is available for Italian phones.

How does it work

The "magic" formula is this: Magic Box. Merchants of fresh produce and restaurateurs registered with the application can put up for sale bag (the Magic Box, in fact) with a surprise selection of fresh products and dishes that remained unsold at the end of the day and that cannot be put back on sale the next day. No waste of food, for the good of all, and an economic return, albeit small, as an advantage for sellers.
On the other hand, the users / consumers who, with their purchases, participate in the reduction of food waste and buy with a simple tap on the application excellent meals at minimum prices, between 2 and 6 Euros.

Once you download the app (free) on your smartphone, and complete simple registration procedures, just geolocate and search for the nearest local members, order your Magic Box, pay it through the app and pick it up in the time slot specified for find out what's inside.

How Too Good To Go works. — Image from the Too Good To Go website.

So the Earth is also helped

About a billion and 300 thousand tons of food are thrown away every year. To understand: if food waste were a country, they would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, also considering all the resources needed to produce food (FAO data). And the forecasts for the future are really worrying: by 2030 it will reach 1.2 trillion food wasted every year.
And in Italy? Well, we are certainly not the first of the class considering that every year over 10 million tons of food are thrown, equal to about 15 billion euros a year (Waste Watcher report 2019).

Ok, of course it won't be a smartphone app to remedy this situation, but somewhere you need to start. And they need intelligence and good will. Thus, on balance, it was found that each purchased Magic Box avoids the emission of 2 kg of Co2. To date, more than 11 million Magic Boxes have been purchased in Europe, which has allowed the environment to avoid the emission of more than almost 23 million tons of CO2 (calculation source: EPA – United States Environmental Protection Agency). Furthermore, in order not to limit oneself to just food, but to operate in a wider ecological vision, to limit the use of packaging, Too Good To Go stores will encourage customers to bring their own containers and bags from home.

Too Good To Go in Italy

Recently arrived in our country, Too Good To Go has already received the approval of many operators: from small artisan shops, bars and pastry shops to large retail chains. In Milan, the city from which the app was first tested, Tramezzini Veneziani di Tramè, the artisan Le Polveri micro-factory and the Eataly Smeraldo sales point, joined the event; but also the organic EXKi restaurants and Carrefour Italia stores. But the list of businesses that appears on the Too Good To Go screen gets longer every day. For the rest of Italy, the application activation program will take place in stages: in a month it will be the turn of Turin; to follow, the aim is to cover the main Italian cities within a few months.

How to cook the perfect veal roast – Italian Cuisine

More than a dish, veal roast is a metaphor. It means home, Sunday, family. For this prepare a perfect veal roast it's a mission of love. But it is not an easy task at all. The errors are always around the corner: from the cooking time to the cut to choose. For this reason the first suggestion is to arm yourself with a lot of patience and do an accurate field research to discover the best meat supplier. Discover how to cook veal roast following the advice of Salt and pepper!

How to choose the best cut of meat

For a dish so important in the Italian culinary tradition, things cannot be left to chance. For example, when it comes to deciding which one meat cutting choose to prepare the veal roast, you have two roads in front of you: trust your butcher or play it safe and ask for the codon. This is the ideal part of the beef to prepare this dish because the meat remains very soft and is easy to cut.

Another cut that may be suitable for this preparation is the veal shoulder, said walker. Even it rump, the fesa and the magatello they adapt well to become excellent roasts. If you are not able to do it, have the meat tied by the butcher with food string. Once at home, place a sprig of rosemary and some sage leaves between twine and meat. Be careful with the fat it is one of the most important parts to be evaluated when buying meat and absolutely must not be without it. Above all, never eliminate the fat from the piece of meat you are going to cook: its presence is essential in the browning phase, when it must give all its flavor to the muscle.

How much meat for 4, 6, 8, 12 people

Now that you have chosen the right cut, find out how much meat you need depending on the number of guests you want to feed. For four or six people, you can prepare the veal roast with a piece of variable weight between 600 grams and 1 kilogram. Go up to 1.5 kg if people are eight, it reaches 2 kg if your table will welcome twelve people.

How to cook the roast

Whatever cooking method you choose, to cook a perfect veal roast you will first need to proceed to searing. This step is essential before baking. There are those who shorten the time and propose a faster version of this preparation technique, inviting them to cook the meat directly in the oven, better to avoid. Indeed our advice for a soft and juicy veal roast it is to seal the meat well, making it brown in a pan with a little oil, before passing it in the oven. Beware of a very dangerous mistake that few consider: never roast cold, just taken out of the fridge. The meat may have a thermal shock and harden.

Once this obstacle has been overcome, another myth must be dispelled: the roast does not require biblical cooking times. If you have a ventilated oven, 30 minutes at 180 ° C are sufficient for small pieces. If you have little time, bring the temperature to 200 ° C and decrease the time the meat stays in the oven. THE cooking times they depend fundamentally on the size of the piece of meat and its own tastes, for approximately well-cooked meat it can be calculated approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes per kg.

To understand if the veal roast is ready, you can use a very useful meat thermometer, which will test the core cooking temperature. The calf is "pink" when it is at 60 ° C, at the point at 68 ° C and well cooked at 75 ° C.

For to cook roast veal roast start by preparing the meat. After bringing it to room temperature, remember to pull it out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before browning, massage it well with salt and then put the rosemary between the food string and the meat. If the butcher has worked well, between the meat and the string there will also be slices of lard or bacon, which will add that extra touch of flavor and softness.

Preheat the oven, bringing the temperature to 200 ° C. While the oven reaches the right heat, take care of browning the veal roast in a large saucepan in which you have heated 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil or a bit of butter. As soon as the sauce is hot, add the meat and brown it over medium heat, turning it on all sides with 2 wooden spoons or two scoops. Fundamental: never puncture the meat with a fork. Add with half a glass of white wine and let it evaporate over a high heat.

At this point transfer the roast into a pan from oven. Add celery, carrot, chopped onion, rosemary, sage and pepper. Put everything in the preheated oven and cook for 1 hour, taking care to turn the meat from time to time. Sprinkle it with its cooking juices, to which you will alternate a few tablespoons of boiling broth.

Once the cooking time is over, check the heart temperature: must be about 68-70 ° C. If you do not have a thermometer, use a toothpick, taking care to reach the heart. If the juice that comes out is transparent, without red or pinkish traces, then the veal roast is ready. At this point the roast is baked and covered with gods aluminum sheets to make it rest for 10-15 minutes at the most.

A trick that can embellish your veal roast is in the napping with a sauce prepared with the cooking sauce. Take all that is left in the baking pan – celery, onions and carrots – and put everything in a saucepan. Dry and remove the fats that will surface. Add 10 grams of cornstarch and cook for 2 minutes. Then wet the mix with a glass of wine. Before it has evaporated completely, add water or broth: in this way you will be able to effectively remove the whole cooking surface. Cook until it has become a sauce. Filter e serve the sauce with meat.

Roast veal in a pan or casserole

If you don't feel like using the oven, know that you can cook the veal roast in a pan or in casserole. The fundamental step in this case is to "seal" the meat during browning with a bottom of butter and oil. In this way, passing the meat at room temperature into the mix of animal and vegetable fats, the will be produced Maillard reaction: a nice crust will wrap the meat and its juices.

In the pot also add all the vegetable needed. Then, after browning with the passage in white wine, cooking begins. As the cooking surface dries, add a couple of ladles of vegetable broth and cook for about 1 hour over low heat, covering the pot with the lid. Don't forget your veal roast on the stove and always check the state of the cooking juices. At the end of cooking, let the meat rest a little and then cut the slices. Before serving, immerse them in the sauce of the bottom of cooking to give your veal roast a unique flavor.

Veal roast in a pressure cooker

You can also cook your veal roast in a pressure cooker. After preparing the sauté, brown the meat in the pot in order to seal the surface and create the protective crust. Add a little water or broth, so that the roast cooks thanks to the steam and the air present in the pressure cooker.

With this tool you can cook in a healthy and tasty way, optimizing times. Often the pressure cooker is used to prepare the roast base for the vitello tonnato.

Veal roast with Thermomix

Cooking the veal roast with Thermomix is possible: enough place the piece of meat on the blades and let it cook with the cooking bottom for 60 minutes at Varoma temperature. You can also cook the potatoes, placing them on the tray of the Varoma.

Secrets for soft and juicy meat

Among the secrets not to be forgotten to get a roast veal with soft and juicy meat one concerns the salt. According to the great kitchen professionals, salt should never be added to raw meat to avoid hardening it.

If you like strong flavors, to prepare yours perfect veal roast our advice is to massage the piece of meat before cooking with a mince of herbs or some untreated citrus peel or some spice. In this way the flavor of the aromas will penetrate the fibers very effectively.

Another mistake to be very careful if you do not want to compromise the softness of veal is the respect of cooking times. Remember: the more the meat is cooked, the harder it will be. In addition, when cooking is finished it is best not to hurry to cut the slices for your guests. There meat in fact must be left to rest. Once extracted from the oven, wrap it in the still very hot foil, and let it cool down like this. In this way it will preserve its natural moisture, remaining soft and tasty.

How to cook roast with potatoes

Let's start with the basic concept: it is the roast that must be added to the potatoes being cooked and not vice versa. To prepare theroast veal with potatoes, wash them, dry them, peel them and then cut them into pieces, taking care that the pieces are all the same size.

Pour them potato wedges in a bowl and adjust to oil, salt and pepper, adding, as desired, a clove of peeled garlic and a sprig of rosemary or a bunch of sage leaves to flavor it all. Stir well and transfer the seasoned potatoes to a baking tray or a large oiled oven dish. Bake in a preheated oven in static mode at 200 ° C for about 20 minutes, meanwhile dedicated to the roast. When you have finished browning the piece of meat in a casserole dish, transfer it to the drip pan or oven dish in which you are cooking the potatoes. Continue cooking both until the heart of the roast reaches 68-70 ° C.