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Cooking school: lentils, how to clean and cook them – Italian Cuisine

Cooking school: lentils, how to clean and cook them


Lentils, good and healthy, are a special ingredient for auspicious recipes. Find out how to use them in the kitchen.

Did you know that lentils are the oldest legume cultivated by man? Since 7000 BC there are traces of their existence, from the small and tasty mountain ones to the brown and red ones of the southern regions. Now they are preparing to triumph on our tables in the New Year's Eve.

Find out how to treat legumes and vegetables for successful dishes by participating in our course

The countless beneficial properties of this legume

Lentils are also known as la meat of the poor, as sources of potassium, iron, phosphorus, folic acid, zinc, copper, magnesium, pantothenic acid, thiamine, niacin and vitamin B6. All these properties make them more digestible than other legumes, also due to their thinner skin. After sowing in January and harvesting in August, we find them dried all year round and in all colors: red, orange, yellow, black and brown.

How to clean lentils in the best way

Like all other legumes, lentils go too wash in cold running water before use, taking care to eliminate waste. A simple trick to understand which lentil to keep and which not, is to eliminate all the shriveled seeds that float once immersed in water. In general, after soaking, it is best to remove the water and rinse them well before cooking.

The importance of slow cooking

Preparation and cooking times vaccording to the size of the legume: for small lentils, such as those from Castelluccio, just half an hour of soaking and twenty minutes of cooking in plenty of boiling water. If you use large lentils, soak them for two hours and then put them to boil for an hour. If you owe them instead accompany with cotechino, boil them for 40 minutes and then finish cooking (at least another 40 minutes), with the meat over low heat. In fact, it is essential for all legumes to cook very slowly, over low heat so that the water "quivers". If cooked over a high flame they never become tender, they break and are emptied. Traditional cooking in clay pots or flask even better as the Tuscan tradition wants for example, they are among the best. Cooking in an earthenware pot gives the dish a special flavor, but takes longer. When cooking with the flame at a minimum it is important to simmer and never boil, continuing to add hot water if necessary. In addition, throughout the cooking, the lentils must be constantly covered by water. To reduce the time you can use the pressure cooker: you proceed by skimming the lentils and closing only when no more foam is formed.

One of our favorite recipes with lentils

To enhance the flavor to the maximum, one of the best recipes is also the simplest and fastest one: the soup. Just fry a clove of garlic with a little chilli in extra virgin olive oil, add the lentils directly and continue adding water until cooked. And finally, serve with croutons and a drizzle of raw oil.

Text by Giulia Ubaldi

How to clean and cook baby octopus – Italian Cuisine

How to clean and cook baby octopus


Here are some tips when in the kitchen we are struggling with baby octopus, small octopus to be stewed, boiled or fried

THE baby octopus they are gods miniature baby octopus, in fact, they closely resemble the "older brothers”And they share many with them features, both in form and in flavor.

One of the main reasons that makes those who bring in hesitant kitchen, especially the first few times, this type of clam, is the fear of not cleaning them well and therefore having difficulties in their preparation. Clean the "sand octopuses”- as they are also called – in reality, it is much simpler than one might think. Anyone who doesn't even want to try always has two alternatives: buy them frozen foods (and therefore already clean) or get a hand from fishmonger of trust.

How to clean baby octopus

So let's find out how to clean the baby octopus. The first thing to do is unplug the film that covers the bag that contains the entrails: to facilitate the operation the Advice is to immerse the octopus for a few minutes in salted water, remove the guts and then rinse thoroughly under running water. It is then necessary to turn the octopus upside down, doing pressure on the sides of the opening that appears between the tentacles, and eliminate the beak that comes out. The last step is to delete the eyes of the mollusk with a pair of scissors. At this point everything is ready to cook them!

How to cook baby octopus

Three o'clock cooking main for sand octopuses are: in humid, boiled and fried. As for the first hypothesis, the advice is to cook them by heating extra virgin olive oil in a pan with one clove of garlic and then add the octopus, making them lightly brown and blending with del White wine. As soon as the liquid has evaporated, add some Cherry tomatoes (preferably without peel), cover with a lid and cook for about 30 minutes, adding some parsley chopped and seasoning with salt and pepper.

Who wants to cook them boiledinstead, he simply has to put them a cook in water (with the addition of a little vinegar) for about 25 minutes, draining them and letting them cool at room temperature.

Who, on the other hand, wants fry them, must dry them very well after cleaning them, flour them one by one and then put them in a pan with plenty of oil. It takes 5 minutes to prepare them well gilded and crunchy.

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Cooking school: how to clean clams and many recipes – Italian Cuisine


Find out how to clean clams to prepare first courses and delicious recipes. Always in the name of good food

We Italians have never done more to discuss a good plate of spaghetti with clams. With or without cherry tomato? And the wine, yes or no? But regardless of all the theories regarding recipes, condiments and cooking, it is good to start on the right foot clam cleaning, any dish we will cook later. In fact, if these molluscs are not cleaned well, the first bite will be enough to warn that annoying little sand under the teeth, for this it takes clarity on the management of these seafood. And we are here for this.

The fundamental soaking phase

First of all, at the time of purchase, the clams must have the EEC health mark, to have guarantees on the origin of the product and its reliability from a health point of view. Everyone knows that it is necessary then to put the clams to soak in water and salt, both coarse and fine, about 15 grams per liter. But perhaps not everyone knows that the container must then be placed covered in the refrigerator for at least two or three hours, so that they have all the time they need to purge. Let's not forget that like mussels and lupins, clams also live in the sand and work more or less with the same mechanism: they have two valves with the mollusk in the center, which draws its nourishment through special siphons that filter the water, and it is precisely this is the cause of the sand that gets trapped inside.

Each clam is different from the others

It is important not to treat clams as a set of shells, but to spend time with each of them. In fact, after draining them from the water, they must be beaten one by one inside the sink, making them fall from a height of 30-40 cm. Only in this way could we be sure that we have completely eliminated any trace of sand from the seabed and that we have only perfectly clean clams in front of us.

Cluttered with clams.

Remove the clams with the broken shell

A valuable tip that is sometimes underestimated is to discard absolutely all clams with a broken shell, because they may have already been dead for a long time. Once you have completed all these cleaning operations and selections, you just have to keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, but without exceeding a maximum of two days for any reason. And then you are ready to choose the best recipe to enhance their essence.

You just have to enroll in one of our courses to learn how to cook them in the best way! Do you agree?

Here are many tasty recipes with clams

Texts by Giulia Ubaldi

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