Tag: great

5 great ideas for this summer – Italian Cuisine

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The octopus and potato salad is one of the most popular. Why not try some variation?

The octopus it is always present in fish stalls because it is easy to fish it in our seas, but very often it is snubbed because in the common imagination it is very difficult to cook. Even if l'octopus salad is loved by all species in its most classic version, the octopus salad with potatoes!
Prepare the octopus it is really simple and only requires some care to keep the meat soft. Once ready you can use it in many ways and we want to recommend some tasty cold salad this season.

The properties of the octopus

The octopus has 57 calories per 100 grams of product and is therefore a recommended food for those who follow a low-calorie diet. It is low in carbohydrates and fats and rich in protein. Be careful not to overdo it, though, because the octopus contains cholesterol.

How to clean the octopus

First, make sure it is an octopus and not a dormouse. The octopuses have two rows of suction cups and not one, so check carefully.
Eliminate with a knife eyes and horny beak and then rinse it to remove any residue. If you really don't know what we are talking about you will ask for a clean octopus in the fish market or follow all the steps in our Octopus tutorial: a recipe for each tentacle.

Octopus cooking

If you use one pressure cooker 20 minutes will be enough to cook the octopus, otherwise dip it in a pot with cold water and some stalks of celery and cook for 50 minutes then let it cool in the pot. The water must not be abundant, it requires little.

Legend or truth?

Tradition has it that with a cork in water the meat of the octopus becomes very soft. Indeed it seems that this device is very effective, but there are other equally useful solutions. For example, the fishermen say that the octopus must cook in its water and therefore it should not be added too much water in the pot, as we said before, but only a drizzle of oil and a glass of water. Then, you should also avoid cooking salt because it makes the meat harder and wait for the octopus to cool down by itself in its cooking water. Never pass it under cold water.

Salads with octopus

With the octopus you can prepare many dishes and in particular of the delicious salads perfect this season. Here are some ideas for you. Browse the tutorial!

And here is a video recipe for a first one that tastes like the sea

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10 places that give great satisfaction – Italian Cuisine

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Ten restaurants in the city to taste the dishes of a "people's and court's" cuisine, made of dishes from the Gonzaga era, handed down to the present day. To guide us, the greatest Italian patron: Antonio Santini of the Fisherman of Runate, Mantuan doc

Perhaps not everyone knows that the Mantuan cuisine – identified as that of people and court – in the golden age of the Gonzaga (XV-XVII century) represented a point of reference in Europe: the cooks of the Duchy were the first to know how to combine very simple dishes with elaborate ones, creating a school of gastronomic thought, codified by Bartolomeo Sacchi. His treatise De honesta voluptate et valetudine, published in Venice in 1474, spread throughout all the courts and beyond the great recipes contained an absolute novelty: it taught the use of the resources of the territory, according to the seasons, anticipating concepts that are now usual. The court, thanks to extraordinary cooks such as Bartolomeo Stefani – author in 1662 of The art of cooking well, one of the first sacred texts of Italian cuisine -, prepared sumptuous banquets, using the best of the territory: a remarkable research work on the recipes of that period is due to Gaetano and Sandra Martini, owners of The Swan which remains one of the best places in Mantua city.

The importance of rice

The people lived on soups, but they had their specialties like lard pounded with parsley and garlic, very good with polenta, or risotto to the ‘pilot’, which still today is the testing ground of every Mantuan cook by name or in fact. Nothing to do with the guide because this dish owes its name to the workers involved in rice husking called "pilots": it is Vialone Nano rice cooked by absorption, seasoned with Mantuan salami and parmesan. For the record, the "capital" of this dish is considered Castel d’Ario – village 20 km away from the city and birthplace of the legendary Tazio Nuvolari – where he received (rightly) a De.Co. to defend the recipe.

The legendary Santini pumpkin tortelli

And then we move on to pumpkin tortelli on which every corner of Padania – from Ferrara to Crema – boasts superiority. "It is fun to see that as you proceed from east to west, the component of macaroons and mustard increases," he explains Antonio Santini, great patron of the 3 Michelin stars Dal Pescatore, located in Canneto sull'Oglio, south of Mantua. «While with us the pumpkin and the Parmesan cheese have more weight. Everyone loves our pumpkin tortelli: my wife Nadia has been carrying them on for years, now my son Giovanni (the other, Alberto, joins him in the dining room, ed) does it, and has further perfected the recipe, in pasta and stuffing . They would have liked the Gonzagas, I am convinced of it . The Santini card has other references to the territory such as the freshwater fish that the princes brought from Lake Garda when they did not retrieve it from Oglio and Mincio or from the three internal lakes. «We offer pike in white with sauce or crayfish. Another cult is the risotto with catfish and chive fillets: I am optimistic, in a few years we will return to fish from Oglio .

Agnolini and Sbrisolona

And yet agnolini – the meat ravioli similar to cappelletti – in chicken broth that can become a dish "da principe" if served in a consommé cup and with a dash of Lambrusco in the liquid. And here the dish turns into a literary "sorbìr d'agnoli" … Finally, the symbol of sweet Mantua: la crumble Cake, dry and crumbly cake, made with white flour mixed with corn flour, butter and almonds. It is found throughout the Po Valley but, Santini says with a chuckle, "I didn't see it outside our borders until twenty years ago. Obviously it is very good … . Having said that another historic out of town for Mantua (and others) remainsEmbassy of the Tamani brothers – in Quistello, 30 km from the capital – with its luscious and sumptuous cuisine, in closing we can only return to Runate, fraction of Canneto sull'Oglio, dai Santini who boast the Italian 3-star record (23 years in a row) and receive customers from all over the world: menus (obviously not only of local dishes), cellar (legendary) and hospitality (at the top) are famous everywhere. Also because for the selection of the places in the city we asked for the advice of the "Cardinal" of our restaurant. Mantovano doc, but above all a living example of how excellence is achieved and maintained. Enjoy your meal.

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Great cheese bread cake recipe – Italian Cuisine

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Ingredients

1 Kg of white spelled flour
250 g fresh cream plus a little
250 g fontina
50 g grated cheese
50 g crust of clean grated cheese
40 g fresh brewer's yeast
30 g poppy seeds
30 g sunflower seeds
30 g pumpkin seeds
4 egg yolks
4 eggs
honey
butter
salt
pepper

Duration: 2 h 50 min

Level: Middle

Dose: 16 people

For the grand cheese bread cake recipe, beat the egg yolks and 2 eggs. Mix the cream with 250 g of water and let it cool on the fire, then add 50 g of honey, baking powder and eggs and mix; pour everything into a planetary mixer with the spelled flour and 30 g of salt and knead until you get a soft mixture.
Collect the dough in a ball, place it in a bowl, cover and let rise for 1 hour. Cut the fontina into pieces and blend with 2 eggs, grated cheese and freshly ground pepper.
Cut the cheese crust into tiny cubes and mix with the mixture. Mix poppy, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Grease a hinged mold (ø 28 cm) and sprinkle the bottom with a handful of seeds. Flour the work surface and roll out the dough with a rolling pin, obtaining a rectangle half a centimeter thick. Brush it with a little cream and spread the cheese mixture along the long side. Roll up the pasta on the cheese and cut it in half lengthwise and then into 15-18 cm loaves. Roll them up creating «swivels and place them in the hinge mold. Wet the top of the «swivels with a little water and cream, sprinkle them with the rest of the seeds and let them rise again for 25-30 minutes. Bake at 180 ° C for 35 minutes.

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