Tag: first courses

Pea and ricotta cannelloni: recipe with and without cooking – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Pea and ricotta cannelloni without cooking

I often prepare this recipe in summerwhen the desire to cook is less and less and it is too hot to turn on the oven.
I prepare the cannelloni with carasau bread, slightly moistened with water and oil.
I fill it with peas and ricotta, wrap it well and then arrange everything in a baking dish. Complete with cherry tomatoes or ox heart tomatoes cut into cubes and seasoned with oil, salt and plenty of basil or oregano.
I replace the peas with lo raw spinach when I really don’t feel like turning on the stove.

Carasau bread for making cannelloni without cooking.

Cannelloni crepes with peas and ricotta

Do you love crepes?
Then you absolutely must use them to make cannelloni.
Prepare a classic dough for savory crepes, also using wholemeal flours if you want, and then fill each crepe with the pea and ricotta filling.
Cannelloni made in this way are much more delicate and tasty, they cook first in the oven and you can fill them as you prefer.

Cooking artichoke stems: delicious zero waste recipe – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Cook the artichoke stems it’s a great way to avoid waste in the kitchen. Often only the hearts of the artichoke are used and therefore today we bring to the table a first course based on artichoke stems, in order to also enhance this part which is often thrown away.

Artichokes: spring treasure

Artichokes are a vegetable whose season runs from March to June. They are rich in proteinsbut also of fibers and are suitable for multiple uses in the kitchen. They are often cooked fried, but also sautéed or stewed. They can accompany second courses or they can become a single dish.
They have a shape similar to a flower and are composed of an upper part, also called heart of the artichokeand from the stem.
The outer leaves of the artichoke are not edible as is the beard found inside. In many recipes only the heart of the artichoke is used, but the stems can be recovered and consumed after removing the outermost bark which is hard and stringy and therefore not edible.

We used artichoke stems to prepare a really tasty and simple to make pasta based on ricotta and walnuts.

Pasta with artichoke stem pesto, ricotta and walnuts: the recipe

Pasta with artichoke stem pestoMarta Tovaglieri

Ingredients

320 g of short pasta such as fusilloni
2 artichoke stems
1 shallot
100 g of cow’s milk ricotta
5 walnuts plus a couple for serving
extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper

Method

Clean the artichoke stems: cut the outermost part of the stems and then peel them with a potato peeler to remove the hardest and stringy part. Cut them into cubes.
Peel and chop a shallot with a knife. Heat a large pan and brown the shallot with a generous drop of extra virgin olive oil.
Also add the artichoke stems and cook until they are soft. If necessary, add a drizzle of water. Season with salt.
Place the cooked artichokes in the glass of an immersion blender. Add the ricotta and the shelled walnuts. Blend well and then season with salt and pepper.
Boil the pasta in plenty of salted water. Add two ladles of cooking water to the artichoke and ricotta pesto to make it softer and velvety.
You do skip the pasta with the artichoke stem pesto and serve with a few pieces of walnut.

Artichoke stem pesto: other uses in the kitchen

Artichoke stem pesto is an excellent condiment for pasta, but can also be served on hot toasted bread, for an unusual and tasty appetizer. For an extra touch, you can also add fresh chili pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil before serving.

Sardinian fregola in 10 recipes that make you dream of the sea – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Do you dream of the sea, perhaps even in winter? Then you must try Sardinian fregola in 10 recipes with guaranteed excitement. There fregola Sardinian it is one of the most famous dishes on the island. Also called fregola or it’s cool, it’s a paste semolina with a very ancient history: according to Statute of the Millers of Tempio Pausania dating back to the 14th century, its preparation had to take place exclusively from Monday to Friday, so as not to consume the water necessary for agricultural work on Saturday and Sunday. Its name comes from Latin frisarethat is to say mince, crush, crumble. In fact, fregola is prepared in exactly this way, appearing in the form of small grains.

How to make Sardinian fregola

Fregola can be easily done prepare at home with three simple ingredients: 400 g of durum wheat flour, 200 ml of water and a pinch of salt. Pour the semolina flour onto a pastry board and slowly pour the warm, slightly salted water into the centre. Then, with a circular motion of your fingertips, rub the dough until it forms small balls. It doesn’t matter if they are slightly different in size! Leave a cloth to dry and rest overnight. In the end, toasted the fregola in the oven at 200° for about 15 minutes: in this way it will take on its typical brown color and the flavor that makes it unique. All that remains is to cook it following the chosen recipe.

Fregola with clams: traditional recipe

According to tradition fregola is prepared with clams (or cockles), a type of mollusc a little smaller than clams. There are different ways to make this dish: there are those who prefer it with gravy tomato and who blankwhoever prefers risotto the fregola and who instead serves it how soup. Try this recipe: you will need 1 kg of clams, 300 g of tomato puree, 250 g of fregola, oil, salt and parsley.

First, drain the clams: wash them and leave them in water and salt for at least an hour; finally rinse them. Cook the molluscs in a large saucepan with garlic and extra virgin olive oil for about 4-5 minutes, until they open. Once opened, separate them from the shells (you can remove all the shells or just half. Recover the cooking liquid by filtering it through a fine mesh strainer.

Heat the extra virgin olive oil with two cloves of garlic and start cooking the tomato. After 10 minutes add the fregola, add the liquid from the clams and cook according to the cooking time (about 15-17 minutes). At the end of cooking, add the clams, complete with chopped parsley and serve.

Sardinian fregola: 10 delicious recipes

There fregola with clams it is a great classic, but in Sardinia there are many other typical meat-based recipes, in particular soups and soups. There frigola in broth of meat or the fregola with sausage they are very tasty alternatives, but you can also opt for imaginative vegetarian recipes and even serve it coldlike a rice or couscous salad.