Tag: meat

22 ways to cook horse meat – Italian Cuisine

Slim, rich in iron (more than twice as much as beef), tasty and sweet. Horse meat is an ingredient that should not be underestimated, especially if you are looking for new flavors. And since it is present in the diet of sportsmen and growing boys, we can consider it in all respects a noble and precious food for our health. And although for some people buy horse meat from the butcher is a habit, many still say that they have never tasted it. Here then we come into play, with many good ideas and some guidelines to approach a first consumption.

But before focusing on the perfect recipes to learn about and enhance horse meat, let's review the basic rules to enjoy it to the fullest.

1 – Watch out for cooking

As we said before, we are dealing with a very lean meat that requires cooking that does not dry it. The ideal is therefore to opt for a typical consumption blood steak or even raw (it is very appreciated as a base for jokes, carpaccio and tartare). If you want to focus on longer cooking, on the other hand, it is preferable to rely on wet preparations such as stews and rolls with sauce.

2- Fillet inspiration

To understand how to treat horse meat, we can refer to cooking which is reserved for valuable and delicate parts such as beef fillet. The slice of horse meat in question will need to be two to three inches thick and put in the oven at 180 ° C for 5 minutes per side. We will then pass it in a pan with a knob of butter to finish cooking and give flavor, enriching to taste with sage leaves.

3- Lean, but not too much

Horsemeat is practically devoid of fatty parts, the same that usually melt in a pan avoiding burning. So if we love the scalped and greedy effect of certain preparations, a small amount of fat will have to be added. Yes in butter, to which to combine perhaps whole grains of pepper, but it is oil is also perfect with which we will continue to wet our meat during cooking, recovering it from the corners of the tilted pan.

Our recipes

And now … let's cook! In the gallery below you will find preparations such as morsels cooked in Barbera, meatballs, braised meats, ribs, stews, hamburgers and delicious pasta dishes. Well 22 recipes to try and try again without hesitation.

Horse stew with white wine and Apulian artichokes

Basket of noodles with leeks and horse frays

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Which extra virgin olive oil should be used for meat? – Italian Cuisine

Extra virgin olive oils that best accompany beef, sheep and pork. Recommended by our expert depending on the cooking

Red meats require well-structured oils, with much, much character: for example, those with medium to intense fruitiness and with very pronounced spikes of bitterness and pungency.
Usually this category of extra virgin is identified with those of Central Italy, Tuscan in the lead, or of the South, Puglia in particular.
Right, but only in part because it is not only the territory of origin that determines the characteristics of an oil and its flavor, but also the variety of olives from which it is obtained.

Here are those that, taking into account their origin, better enhance the individual preparations.
Good extra virgin olive oils with cattle
Beef and beef have a rather intense taste. On a base already rich in flavor it is therefore necessary to use equally tasty oil. It gives a greater palatability and a general sense of pleasantness to the use of an extra virgin olive oil with a robust character, rich in fruity and savory notes.

Good ones with roasts

Sicilian oils are excellent from cerasuola olives, but if the meat is marinated before being cooked, those from nocellara del Belice or tonda iblea are fine because they are savory and fragrant, able to better balance the taste of the preparation.

Escalopes (or slices)

They want fruity and fragrant oils like the Tuscan ones from the frantoio or moraiolo cultivar. If cooked with pizzaiola, with tomato, or with pepper, the Pugliesi of Salento are exceptional with coratina olives or cellina di Nardò. Tartare: the lean meat minced beef with anchovies, onion, capers, parsley and yolk and seasoned with lemon, salt and pepper wants a drizzle of oil, which should be of medium fruity like the Abruzzese from Loreto olives. Ribs: either grilled or grilled, they are accompanied by a medium fruity flavor, better still the Molise or Gargano oil from rosciola or peranzana olives.

Boiled

Still steaming it goes close to the intense fruity of the Barese from coratina olives, intensely herbaceous and very bitter and spicy; if it is served cold in salads or with sauces (for example with thyme), well also those from Umbria with moraiolo or Sicilians from nocellara del Belice. Stracotto alla fiorentina: perfect in this case a regional combination. Therefore, choose a Florentine oil from the oil mill triad

Overcooked At Fiorentina

Perfect in this case a regional combination. To be chosen therefore a Florentine oil of the triad frantoio, moraiolo and leccino, rather intense and sapid, bitter, with peaks of astringency. With pork, savory with judgment

Pork, although tasty, can contain less intense oils

With the ribs

If flavored with orange juice, they are a delight accompanied with a Sicilian extra virgin olive oil from Moorish olives, a Trieste oil from bianchera olives or a Sardinian variety of Bosana. For those with anchovies or olives, both Veneto and Lombardy medium-sized oils are good, obtained from Casaliva or Gargna cultivars.

With fillet and loin

They are the leanest cuts and for them both medium intensity fruity oils and those with a decidedly more intense and marked character are good. The difference comes from the type of cooking and the seasonings used: as a rule, the longer the first and the tastier the seconds, the greater the intensity of the oil used must be.

On the livers

Wrapped in the pork net and then baked in the oven, they require an oil with an intense flavor and a compact consistency like those of the Tuscan Maremma from olive Seggianese olives

For the kid, better little oil but with personality

Less savory than that of mutton but more than that of lamb, kid meat is nevertheless rich in taste and quite fatty, so the oil to be used must be little but very fruity and sapid, with a penetrating taste that pinches into throat. Particularly if, as often happens, it is marinated before cooking, the oil from Bari with pure coratina olives and the moraiolo of Umbria prove to be excellent. The grilled ribs are an exception: in this case it is better to use an extra virgin olive oil from Lazio from Itrana olives, with an intense fruitiness. It should be noted that the kid is often prepared according to regional recipes: in this case the suggestion is to also use local oils

Luigi Caricato – Number 11 November 2008

With meat sauce, cacio e pepe or with beans? The perfect pasta is prepared like this! – Italian Cuisine

It is the greatest classic of Italian cuisine, a true symbol of Italy in the world. But to do it to perfection, we reveal some tricks!

Versatile, light and tasty, with the right mix of nutrients and the possibility of being combined with many dishes, even very different ones. It is the ingredient that makes a meal, or even capable of turning a boring party into an effervescent party, as happens in Barilla's latest global spot, in which we see Davide Oldani and the tennis champion Federer working at the stove in the preparation of a tasty spaghetti that will bring back the enthusiasm among all the guests.

But since when you are dealing with such an important element of the history of Italian cuisine you always have to start from the basics, we decided to investigate further trivia, tips and tricks, three pasta dishes that are among the emblems of the culinary tradition of the Bel Paese.

Pasta with ragù Bolognese style

Bolognese ragù is a piece of Italian cooking history. Imitated, copied, sometimes even offended by somewhat questionable reinterpretations. And if the meat sauce recipe is mandatory, a separate chapter in-depth deserves pasta, as important as the sauce in the success of the dish.

The origins of this dish are very ancient, there is even talk of the end of the 1700s, when Alberto Alvisi, the personal chef of the Cardinal of Imola, officially began preparing meat sauce with minced meat. What kind of pasta Alvisi combines with Bolognese ragù is not known, but anyone who cares about the sacredness of this dish will tell you that it wasn't the spaghetti.

Even if you've seen them with meat sauce in almost every part of the world – and sometimes even in Italy – any chef (amateur or not) in Bologna and the surrounding area will tell you that this is a huge mistake. The pasta to combine with Bolognese sauce is strictly tagliatelle, better egg-based because it is more porous and perfect for holding the sauce. Try the Tagliatelle with Barilla Emiliane egg, which present a rule of art pastry that combines durum wheat semolina and fresh eggs from free-range hens, in 2 millimeters thick. So why are there so many spaghetti menus around? Perhaps because vermicelli were used in the past – also due to the inflections of southern Italian cuisine – and the great confusion that exists abroad about the various cuts of pasta did the rest.
If you really don't want to use noodles and prefer the short pasta, butterflies or feathers are allowed, rigorously striped to marry better with the sauce. In the traditional recipe we also speak about the meat to be used for the preparation of the ragù: the beef folder (pulp, belly, shoulder fesone or spindle) and the stretched bacon.
Remember, going back to the pasta, to salt the water before lowering it (approximately 1 liter of water with 10 grams of salt every 100 grams of pasta) and always respect the cooking times, without relying on personal sensations.

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Spaghetti cheese and pepper

The much-mistreated spaghetti Bolognese ragu make their reappearance, this time from absolute and correct protagonists, when we talk about another recipe, this time of the Lazio tradition of our kitchen. Let's talk about spaghetti cacio e pepe, a real must among the simplest first courses (in the ingredients) but tasty. The recipe to prepare them is simple but must be followed step by step to achieve a satisfactory result.

There shouldn't be any need for it but it is good to repeat it, one of the tricks (if not the most important one) for preparing spaghetti cacio e pepe in a perfect way ismandatory use of pecorino romano like cheese. Remember that depending on the seasoning of the cheese you have chosen, you will also have to change the amount of water for the preparation of the cream.
For a more professional preparation use the black pepper in grains and not the one already ground, toasting it in the pan just before using it.

Going back to pasta, remember to use high quality spaghetti, such as the Spaghetti N ° 5 by Barilla, prepared with excellent durum wheat and dies redesigned in detail for a consistent taste and to retain the best sauces. Do not cream them on the pan with the fire burning: the cream of cheese will turn into a lumpy dough that will remove the taste and creaminess of the dish.
Last tip on cooking pasta. In the cheese and pepper it must be drained long before the optimal cooking because it needs to make another pan with water and pecorino.

Pasta and beans

Pasta and beans is a typical dish of Italian cuisine that undergoes variations depending on the latitude to which it is prepared. The traditional recipe – which for many is the Neapolitan one – requires that the pasta is cooked in the same pot in which the beans are cooked, instead of being cooked in salted water separately, as happens in other recipes.

In the preparation you can use the pancetta or – according to the country tradition – the pork rind and it is always better to clean the beans the day before cooking and leave them to soak overnight to make them more tender and creamy.

Although not everyone agrees, precisely because the various regional recipes, using different ingredients, have different peculiarities, one of the tips for the success of pasta and beans is to use egg pasta, absolutely short, more porous and therefore ideal to give even more creaminess to the dish. If you don't want to use egg pasta, choose however a short format to taste among maltagliati, tubes and rigorously striped ditalini or let yourself be tempted – if you are not purists of the kind – from the always good mixed pasta. Barilla offers different short pasta shapes to choose from for an excellent pasta and beans.

If you want to prepare a recipe even richer in vegetable proteins, choose a type of pasta (always short) of type whole wheat. Remember that in pasta and beans also the cooking water is an essential element in the recipe, it must therefore be salted correctly and used to cream the dish (if you do not directly cook the pasta with the beans) at the end of cooking.
In the Roman tradition the perfect format of pasta to use is called sagne, a kind of short cut tagliatelle made fresh with water and flour and cooked with a mixture of celery, garlic, rosemary, bacon and cannellini beans.
The secret to the creaminess of the recipe is only one: Cook the pasta slowly, directly in the beans. The starch, in contact with the beans, will give life to the typical cream of pasta and beans cooked to the rule of art.