Tag: avoid

How to make the perfect polenta: 5 mistakes to avoid – Italian Cuisine

It is one of the most traditional dishes of northern Italy and is perfect paired with fish, cheese or meat. Preparing it in a workmanlike manner is a question of proportions and times, of flour, pot and salt. Find out how to do it without making these 5 mistakes

Polenta (from the Latin puls, farinata di farro) is a food whose history is lost in the mists of time. In the Middle Ages it was one cream made from chopped beans cooked with oil, onions and sometimes with the addition of cereals such as buckwheat and spelled. It has always been a food for the poor, even when the beans were replaced corn meal, and starting from 1700 it became a typical meal in the regions of northern Italy. Polenta has always been served as a substitute for bread, as a side dish, accompanied by other foods, or sliced and toasted or fried. For a very long time it was a subsistence food, so much so that due to its continued consumption, without the addition of other nutrients, it has contributed to the spread of a disease called pellagra, due to a lack of vitamins. Currently, polenta, like many other poor foods, is experiencing a period of rediscovery like gourmet dish and tradition. And like all traditional dishes, you can prepare them at home, provided you don't fall into these common mistakes. Let's see them together.

Polenta: 5 mistakes not to be made

Don't give her time
Polenta is a dish that needs patience, to cook well, to become that soft and smooth mixture, perfect to accompany a meat stew, a tasty fish or a cream cheese. After pouring the flour into the pan with water and salt, the secret to obtain a homogeneous mixture, without lumps, is to mix the flour, slowly, for a long time, with a whisk, while it slowly thickens and cooks. Resist for at least an hour. If constancy does not belong to you, change the menu.

Choose any flour
The polenta has been preparing for about 400 years with the flour of longed corn (large grains). You can choose a full one if you like a more intense aroma. Also there buckwheat flour it is perfect, and is used above all in the valleys around Sondrio, in Lombardy: it has a darker color than that of corn, a rougher consistency, suitable for local cheeses. If you are not so foolhardy, you can try a mixture made from buckwheat flour and corn flour, to get what is called polenta taragna. In Veneto, instead, white corn is used, for a polenta accompanied by cuttlefish or cod. In the south, between Naples and Foggia, polenta is made with well-ground maize flour: it is fried, cut into slices and becomes street food.

Use any pan
Polenta has always been cooked in cauldron, that pot with high sides and a convex bottom, made of copper (or cast iron), able to spread heat evenly and cook the corn perfectly. All the others don't even consider them. The pot has only one tilting handle, because in the past the polenta was cooked in the fireplace. Fashions have changed, but the good habit of cooking polenta in the copper pot remains.

Miss the doses of flour and water
Only the veterans of polenta are allowed to enjoy the luxury of going to the eye. For all others, the doses to consider are: 4 liters of water for each kg of flour. Bearing in mind that the more raw the flour is, the more it will absorb water. So, if you use one of buckwheat, add liquid at your discretion. Indicatively then, 500 g of flour is enough for 4 people, unless you have invited the greatest admirer of polenta to dinner.

Abound with salt
The hand that prepares the polenta must be slight. There is no exact dose of salt that must be put into the water while it is warming up, but eating a too tasty polenta is really unpleasant. Keep in mind that often the foods to which it is accompanied are very savory (see cheeses): for this reason it is better to be light, so as not to ruin such a job. Salt can also be added once the polenta is cooked.

How to combine polenta

Discover in the tutorial our recommendations for a dish based on polenta.

What is Botox, what causes it and how to avoid it – Italian Cuisine

It can be extremely dangerous, but it takes relatively little to be safe from this spore which, without oxygen, can trigger a toxin. Here are some rules, especially when preserves are made at home.

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Not just punctures to be more beautiful (or beautiful!): Botox also has a dark side. The Clostridium botulinum, which owes its name to the word "botulus "(which in Latin means sausage, to which it was originally associated) it is in fact essentially a spore which, if it comes into contact with the food, releases one toxin. If ingested, the botulinum toxin produced by the bacterium causes one sort of paralysis real associated with severe accessory symptoms e, in the most severe cases, it leads to respiratory arrest. However, botulinum development occurs in oxygen-free environments (Anaerobic), therefore it does not nest in all foods. An example for everyone? Preserves. And not all of them.

Where it lurks
Meanwhile, let's see where we can find it and where we absolutely can't find it. Non-acid preserves and those that cannot be stabilized by adding high concentrations of sugar or salt are potential incubators. This category includes preparations of meat and tuna in oil or natural, the pickled vegetables, i flavored oils, the vegetables boiled and not well washed, the non-acid sauces rich in oil (like pesto).

And where it does not nest
Instead, they are outside suspicion naturally acidic or acidifiable preserves, such as tomato sauce and pickles, or prepared by subtracting water (with the addition of sugar or salt), such as jams and jams, capers, anchovies and salted or pickled olives .

Golden rules to preserve well
At this point it is important to observe some rules because normally the most dangerous are the homemade preserves. Rule number one: hygiene. In short, boiling is not enough, hands, equipment and raw materials must be washed well. But there are also other tricks, such as using vinegar with acetic acid values of no less than 5%, using large pots (at least 5 centimeters of water above the container cap); use gaskets and plugs only once, do not fill the containers to the brim, make sure that the jars are always immersed in water during the heat treatment and after cooling check that the caps are curved inwards. Attention finally: if the product, which is preserved by hand or is industrial, presents bubbles or unnatural colors and odors, lift the antennas.

Emanuela Di Pasqua,
September 2019

DISCOVER THE SALT AND PEPPER COOKING COURSES

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Why is the octopus chewy? 5 mistakes to avoid – Italian Cuisine

Octopus is a tasty and versatile dish, perfect to make in salads on these hot summer days. Often, however, it is gummy and indigestible. Follow our advice and you will have a soft and perfectly cooked octopus

The octopus it is one of the tastiest and most enjoyable dishes to eat in salads, now that temperatures reach 30 degrees in the shade! It can be garnished in many ways, with classic potatoes and parsley or with other vegetables such as peppers, green beans, carrots or diced mixed vegetables. However, it often happens to obtain a rubbery octopus: the biggest difficulty, in any of these recipes, lies in fact octopus cooking, which, if wrong, would ruin your plate irreparably leaving you a hard and chewy food, impossible to swallow. To be able instead to get a soft and cooked octopus, you should not rely on chance or a false beliefs like cork stoppers, but avoid 5 common mistakes which you will find in the tutorial. Here, however, we recommend recipes.

Octopus salad with olives and potatoes

It is perhaps the best known of the octopus salads and the easiest to prepare. First choose a fresh and clean octopus (weighing 800-900 g), let it freeze overnight in the freezer and the next day let it thaw in the fridge. Once thawed, put it in a large pot with plenty of cold salted water. Add a carrot, a stalk of celery and a bay leaf. Cook on a low heat until you see the water smoking. At this point remove the pan from the heat, cover it with a lid and let the octopus cook in this water for about an hour. Turn it from time to time with a fork and check the consistency of the meat. After about an hour remove the lid e let the octopus cool in its water, without draining it. Once it is cold, remove it from the pan, with your hands, if you prefer, remove the suction cups and the skin and cut it into pieces that you will place in a large bowl. Apart from boil three medium-sized potatoes in their skins. Once cooked, peel them and cut them into small pieces. Add the potatoes to the octopus, add some taggiasche olives in brine and a few leaves of parsley. Season everything with plenty of extra virgin olive oil, a sprinkling of sweet paprika and serve.

Stripping: yes or no?

Here it is a question of tastes and also of traditions: in South Italy it is not used to remove the skin from the octopus, nor the suckers, unlike in Northern Italy it is a more common practice.
Let's say that, especially in very large octopuses (over 2kg) the skin can be annoying, especially on the head, but you can easily eliminate it after cooking.

Gordon Ramsay Recipes

Tag: avoid

How to make the perfect polenta: 5 mistakes to avoid – Italian Cuisine

It is one of the most traditional dishes of northern Italy and is perfect paired with fish, cheese or meat. Preparing it in a workmanlike manner is a question of proportions and times, of flour, pot and salt. Find out how to do it without making these 5 mistakes

Polenta: 5 mistakes not to be made

How to combine polenta

What is Botox, what causes it and how to avoid it – Italian Cuisine

It can be extremely dangerous, but it takes relatively little to be safe from this spore which, without oxygen, can trigger a toxin. Here are some rules, especially when preserves are made at home.

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Why is the octopus chewy? 5 mistakes to avoid – Italian Cuisine

Octopus is a tasty and versatile dish, perfect to make in salads on these hot summer days. Often, however, it is gummy and indigestible. Follow our advice and you will have a soft and perfectly cooked octopus

Octopus salad with olives and potatoes

Stripping: yes or no?

From our archive, some tantalizing ideas to bring the octopus to the table

It is one of the most traditional dishes of northern Italy and is perfect paired with fish, cheese or meat. Preparing it in a workmanlike manner is a question of proportions and times, of flour, pot and salt. Find out how to do it without making these 5 mistakes

Polenta: 5 mistakes not to be made

How to combine polenta

It can be extremely dangerous, but it takes relatively little to be safe from this spore which, without oxygen, can trigger a toxin. Here are some rules, especially when preserves are made at home. <! – send by email ->

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Octopus is a tasty and versatile dish, perfect to make in salads on these hot summer days. Often, however, it is gummy and indigestible. Follow our advice and you will have a soft and perfectly cooked octopus

Octopus salad with olives and potatoes

Stripping: yes or no?

From our archive, some tantalizing ideas to bring the octopus to the table

It can be extremely dangerous, but it takes relatively little to be safe from this spore which, without oxygen, can trigger a toxin. Here are some rules, especially when preserves are made at home.

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send by email

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