Tag: cuisine

Puccia meatballs: the Apulian sandwich with meatballs – Italian Cuisine

Apulian sandwich with Apulian meatballs: two traditional classics meet in a new fast food format in Milan. Here is the recipe!

Puccia is a typical bread from Salento, an area of Puglia. It is a classic street food made with pizza dough cooked in a wood oven and used to prepare sandwiches, then stuffed with local products.

It is an art, and from Puglia it arrived in Milan thanks to Puccia & Pasta, a new format that combines prices and speed of fast food with recognized local specialties such as the capocollo of Martina Franca (Slow Food – IGT), the caciocavallo Silano Dop, the Prosciutto di Faeto (recognized PAT traditional Italian agri-food products), the Stracciatella of Putignano the rare Podolica cow meat, Slow Food presidium. To make it better, they use mother yeast, type 1 flours (nutritionally more balanced: less refined, with more bran and wheat germ that make it digestible; moreover, dietary fiber helps to maintain good intestinal function and modulates the glycemic impact while taking food) and wait for a long leavening.

The puccia with meatballs

The puccia with meatballs brings in a sandwich a classic Apulian recipe, that of meatballs with sauce. Made of chopped pulp of minced beef, eggs, stale Apulian bread soaked in milk and grated canestrato cheese from Foggia. These are the simple ingredients of the Apulian meatballs, to keep them light you can avoid frying them and cook them directly on a very slow fire in a simple tomato sauce. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients for 4 people

400 g of minced beef meat
2 eggs
4 spoons of canestrato cheese (or pecorino)
1 clove of minced garlic
1 glass of warm milk
150 g of stale rustic bread
salt and pepper
chopped parsley

For the sauce
1 liter of tomato sauce
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic
salt and pepper
basil
Apulian extra virgin olive oil

Method

Soak dry bread in warm milk. Wring it out and mix it with the eggs, cheese, meat and crushed garlic. Season with salt and pepper, form the meatballs about 4 cm in diameter and leave to rest for half an hour.
In the meantime, in a large pan, sauté with garlic and onion and cook until it becomes transparent. Add the sauce and cook over low heat for half an hour.

The mystery of the smooth pen in the time of the Coronavirus – Italian Cuisine

Reviled and offended, abandoned in supermarkets, in reality they are among the most loved by Italians

These lines you read are a strenuous, decisive and powerful defense of the smooth pens, worthy of Alicia Florrick or Harvey Specter in their most televised moments.
I saw with horror the social accusers, those empty shelves except them, the only survivors, or abandoned: the smooth pens, in fact.
Sorry: but why don't you like them?
They are soft, delicate, they grab the sauce with delicate ease, they take over our palate by caressing it, they kiss the butter with the elegance of a geisha while playing shamisen, they sit with soft kindness in the remote corners of our oral cavity …
And you? You who run to the supermarket as if the world is about to end, leave them there?

One thing, this, inexplicable for me. I, who spent years looking for them when I lived abroad, just can't understand. What better are all the other pasta to be snubbed as if they were plagued?
Protagonists of the Norma, excellent with the classic salmon vodka, perfect in a baking dish with tomatoes … In short, of recipes, in our pages of "La Cucina Italiana", we have published many.

I came to this conclusion: the problem of smooth pens is entirely Milanese and I, until these technical tests of apocalypse, I had never noticed. So now a doubt arises: but how many guests at my table will have fake love for my favorite pasta without revealing the slightest sign of disappointment?

"I continue to look at this photo taken before at the supermarket and I think of the fact that the great defeat of this virus are the smooth pens that Italians make even when they are panicked and preparing for the apocalypse" (photo twitter. com / diodeglizilla).

Fortunately, the South is giving me tasty satisfactions. Yes, because it is here that one third of Italy's smooth pens are sold. We are talking about a total of 2.5 million tons, where Barilla is in first place with a 31% share. But legend has it that the first pasta factory to offer it was Voiello, and history has it that the smooth pen is the mother of all the other pens, which came only later, like the rigate. And if it were not so, and I want to believe that it is, how could those delicious penne alla sciaguratella with tomato, butter, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, chilli pepper, basil and cream be explained in Naples?

And then there are other numbers that make us understand the injustice of that abandonment on the shelves of Milanese supermarkets: the important market share that De Cecco occupies, which is around 15% of the total. Then, with smaller volumes, Pasta Rummo follows: here the penne are solidly placed in 13th place between spaghetti and bucatini, with 1.4% of the market against champion spaghetti.

And anyway, to avoid any misunderstanding, the Doxa reveals that the penne are on the podium in the ranking of short pasta for all Italians (it also includes the rigata, but oh well).

So tonight for dinner tonight … strictly smooth!

the recipe to prepare a perfect hummus – Italian Cuisine

A recipe, a multicultural dinner and new welcoming rites. In the sign of tolerance

Sami, Lebanese and his Syrian wife Leen made me reflect on the true sense of hospitality in these times of high diffidence, among viruses, soft quarantines and bizarre political proclamations. I spent an evening with them and 5 friends: four Italians from various regions, all moved to Milan for work, and a Balkan between Monaco and Milan.

It was a pleasant evening for various reasons.

First: Sami, thirty years old, is a cook and shopping for strategic consulting for an American company, he is Lebanese but works in Dubai while his wife and daughter live in Milan. A true lover of good food, he was one of the founders of Slow Food Lebanon years ago. At the entrance of his Milanese apartment there is a library full of international cookbooks, including a collection of recipes from La Cucina Italiana in English. In the background there is a cooking program, at the table we talk about food: in short, everything is typically very Italian even if the atmosphere is international.

Second: Samy cooked all the time with his 2 year old daughter Giulia in his arms. He sees it from Thursday to Saturday and time is precious.

Third: the table is colorful, full of meze (Middle Eastern appetizers) but partly prepared with Italian ingredients. Samy does the shopping between here, Lebanon, from where he gets some spice and Amazon shipped.

But above all Samy decided to share his family secret with me chickpea hummus, then declined in various ways.

Hummus: the perfect recipe

The recipe belongs to her mother, but the version of her father-in-law, Leen's father (still men who cook), is also involved.
"The secret is in the ice," he generously reveals to me: it makes the consistency really soft.

Ingredients

1 kg of dried chickpeas
200 g tahina
200 g warm water
20 g extra virgin olive oil
1 glass of lemon juice
3 cloves of garlic
sesame seed oil
salt
bicarbonate

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight in cold water, drain and cook for 1 hour, along with a teaspoon of baking soda: it will make them very tender.

Drain them, let them cool, then put them in the mixer with 200 g of tahina, 200 g of warm water, the juice of a glass of lemon juice, 20 g of olive oil, the garlic deprived of the green soul and a pinch of fine salt. Start blending then, when the consistency is silky, add one or two ice cubes and continue blending.

Complete with two to three tablespoons of sesame oil.

How to combine hummus

It serves it with the pita, the typical Middle Eastern bread, sprinkled with za'atar, mixture of spices based on marjoram, thyme, oregano and sesame seeds.

Another lesson: although the hosts are Muslim, there is also the table wine. "We searched the internet for the best combinations with humus", explains Leen laughing "obviously we understand very little about it". The result is a passito and a Chardonnay that we drink with a lot of humus-menu. There is the pink humus with the beet, the one with toasted pine nuts and the one with diced beef. Sami also updates me on trends: the maximum, according to him, at this moment, is the humus of avocado: in America they obviously go crazy.

The hummus that unites

In the middle of the table, there is a huge one salad with feta and tomatoes. In the background, there is a compelling cooking program filmed in China.

Coronavirus seems to have diluted like ice in humus chickpeas.

Sami leaves us with a doggie bag, an ethical souvenir, in my opinion, and instructive for children too "we can't eat all this leftover food, it would be a shame to throw it away". Among the souvenirs there is also a book on Lebanese home cooking in a healthy version, an envelope of Za'atar and one of Sumach or Sommaco, Middle Eastern spice made from red berries with a truly intriguing smoked aroma.

Sami also gives me a mold for Ma'moul, typical sweets of his country, made with shortcrust pastry and stuffed with dates. In short, it makes gastronomic culture and is courteous to guests.

Everything is stored in a bag with the words "I love my mum" or "I love my dad". These two guys made me feel at home like never before. They made me forget the daily anxieties of recent times for a while. But above all remembered that every world is truly all a large and unique country.

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