Tag: Difficult

Stuffed Krapfen Recipe | The Italian kitchen – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Biting into cream-filled donuts: does just the thought make you daydream? You are in the right place then, where you can find the recipe for fabulous krapfen.

What is the difference between krapfen and donut?

Sometimes they are used synonymously, but krapfen and donuts are not the same thing. The donut is typical of Tuscany and is created without eggs, without filling and with granulated sugar around it, while krapfen has eggs, filling and icing sugar.

Krapfen: origins and diffusion

The krapfen has Austro-German origins and due to proximity it first spread to Italy in the Dolomites area and then, with many variations, to the south, such as in Campania and Sicily, where they are known as “graffe”.

Cannelloni recipe with monk’s beard and robiola – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Step 1

Mix the semolina with 60 g of warm water, an egg, a pinch of salt and a spoonful of oil. Let the resulting dough rest for 1 hour, covered with cling film.

Step 2

Trim the friar’s beard, removing the bottom of the stems, and wash it very carefully, changing the water 2 or 3 times to remove all the dirt well. Blanch it in boiling salted water for 3 minutes, then drain it. Then sauté it for 2 minutes in a pan with 4 tablespoons of oil and 2 cloves of garlic with the peel, slightly crushed.

Step 3

Mix the robiola with the grated parmesan, salt, pepper and an egg. Chop a third of the monk’s beard and add it to the robiola, mixing (stuffing).

Step 4

Roll out the dough into thin sheets, cut them into 18 rectangles of approximately 8×10 cm. Blanch them in boiling salted water for a few seconds, then pass them in cold water, spread them on a cloth and pat them dry.

Step 5

Fill the rectangles with the filling, distributing it with a pastry bag into small strands on one of the long sides. Spread a little filling on the other long side, so that the dough adheres, closing the rectangles like cannelloni.

Step 6

Heat the cream with the milk and a crushed garlic clove. Once it boils, remove the garlic and add the corn starch dissolved in a little cold water. Cook for 5′, season with salt and pepper (béchamel sauce).

Step 7

Arrange the remaining friar’s beard on the bottom of a baking dish greased with oil, then place the cannelloni on top. Cover them with the béchamel, sprinkle everything with grated parmesan and bake at 200°C for 10.

Farina bòna: everything about the “difficult” ingredient of MasterChef 13 – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

What is the good flour? How to use? Last night, on MasterChef, the contestants, in the Golden Mystery Boxthey found an assortment of yellow-colored ingredients: in addition to cheddar cheese, chanterelles, mustard, yellow apple, turmeric, passion fruit and petit pâtisson (or patissone courgette), there was also good flour. Since it is still little knownHowever, the aspiring chefs competing didn’t know exactly how to use it.

What is good flour?

In fact, good flour – a traditional product of the Onsernone Valley, one of the most inaccessible in the Canton of Ticino, a few kilometers from Locarno – remained forgotten for a few decades. Until Ilario Garbani Marcantini, primary school teacher in Intragnatogether with the Onsernonese Museum, has rediscovered and valorised this precious corn flour, which is obtained grinding the toasted grain very finely.

His own story

It is said that the first to produce it was a miller from Vergeletto called Annunziata Terribilinicalled Nunzia, who did with corn (the same that is used for the production of polenta, coming from the Magadino plain) what was traditionally done with rye: a nice roasting in a pan until the beans burst, which he then ground finely to obtain a flour with a unique flavour. Good flour is also characterized by the type of grinding, very fine, thanks to the use of special, smooth millstones, like those of the now ruined mills of Vergeletto.

Once upon a time, farina bòna was part of the diet of the Onsernonesi, who consumed it accompanied with milk, cold or hot, water or wine, or in the form of soup, la poltina. But the change in eating habits after the Second World War progressively reduced the presence of this ingredient. At the end of the 1960s, even the last Onserno miller left his job, and good flour was no longer talked about for a long time. Only in 1991 and 2013 were the Loco and Vergeletto mills restarted and they started grinding it again.