Junglefrog Cooking » cooking italy

Tomato bruschetta and pasta with cream and sausages; Cooking Italy!

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:00:16 +0000

Tomato bruschetta

It’s been forever since I last cooked something for the Cooking Italy group which is all about the wonderful book “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan. You know how things like that go; in between cooking for the Daring Cooks, the Daring Bakers and various other cooking groups and challenges… it almost seems impossible to keep things up!

The problem is that I like them all, but reality is that I simply cannot do them all. Not all the time anyways… On top of that I had decided to lose weight (whatever happened to that…lol) and figured I could do without rich and creamy pasta sauces for a while. Well, I can tell you that it sure helps to not eat rich and creamy but it doesn’t help if you then end up baking chocolate cakes or other sweet and wonderful goodies! O well, as long as we’re healthy right?

I bumped (yes, bumped… It’s a very large book….lol) into Marcella’s book last week and then figured it was about time I got back into cooking with the group. I totally love her recipes and the two I will share with you today are two prime examples how simple cooking can be soooo rewarding.

The first one is a delicious tomato bruschetta which is just simple and gorgeous all on it’s own. Works perfect as an appetizer, a snack or a light lunch. We had this together with the pasta as there is not a lot of greens in the pasta and I figured that instead of doing a salad I make a nice bruschetta. The bruschetta was on the Cooking Italy schedule even before I started with the group, but I hadn’t made it and I love all bruschetta’s.. so a natural choice!

It amazes me every single time how much flavor you get by simply rubbing a clove of garlic over a toasted piece of bread! The recipe said to spread the garlic over the bread but I tend to find that a bit too overpowering so I rubbed half a clove of garlic over the fresly toasted bread, sprinkled it with olive oil and put the tomatoes on top. Key in this recipe is to use good tomatoes. You do not want the watery type. That will just kill the taste of the bruschetta. So nice tomatoes, whatever variety you have in your area and remove the seeds for the most part and chop them in small pieces, mix with fresh basil and put on top of your warm toasted bread. Add some salt and pepper and you’re done!

And delicious it is!

By the time we got to the pasta it was dark, so not the best light to shoot a pasta dish. The pasta was incredible; there is hardly any ingredients in there and it is still very good and very tasty! You should give it a try!

SAUSAGE AND CREAM SAUCE (serves 4)

225 gr sweet sausage

1,5 tbsp chopped onion

25 gr of butter

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

freshly ground black pepper, salt and freshly grated parmezan for the table

150 ml whipping cream

450 gr of pasta (this sauce benefits from using a pasta shape that traps the sauce well, such as conchiglie or fusili

1. Skin the sausage and crumble it as fine as possible

2. Put the chopped onion, butter and vegetable oil in a small saucepan. Turn the heat to medium and cook until the onion becomes colored a pale gold, Add the crumbled sausage and cook for 10 minutes. Add a few grindings of pepper, all the cream, turn the heat to medium high and cook until the cream has thickened, stirring once or twice. Taste and correct for salt.

3. Toss the sauce with cooked, drained pasta and serve at once with grated parmesan on the side.

Pasta with cream and sausage

Pasta amatriciana; Cooking Italy and a give away!!

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:47:17 +0000

In the spirit of the season I figured I would do a give-a-way as I saw this fun book while browsing for christmas presents on the web. I ordered two copies; one for me and one for the lucky winner of the give away. It’s a book with Dutch recipes, called Dutch Delight and while I haven’t seen it myself yet it looks like a fun book with some very typical Dutch recipes in there. So if you’ve always wanted to know everything about Dutch cooking and how to make it now is the time to leave a fun comment on my blog. The winner will be picked at random and I might ask for the help of Tom for that very important task… Be sure to enter your comment before December 25th!!

O and in case you were wondering; no, we don’t all walk around like the lady on the cover! There are still some areas of Holland where you can find the traditional clothing, mainly places like Volendam and the like and even then, I do think it is in large part to please the tourists… Anyway, no hesitating and go and leave that comment!

Now on to the dish I prepared today; I had been meaning to give this one a go for a looooong time as everybody was raving about it. When you look at the ingredients you might think; what is all the fuss about? It’s a pasta dish with tomato sauce… and well, it is. However, due to the added chili and the pancetta this dish is simply delicious. Or maybe it is the slow cooking times (not really a slow dish to make, but simmering mere tomato sauce for 25 minutes is long normally) that give it the added flavor. If I look at the other dishes I have made from Marcella sofar then I am thinking it must have been a combination of both.

Now ofcourse I am a huge tomato fan; just love them. First of all; I think they are very pretty with their nice round shiny skins and luscious glossy exterior… and then on the inside there is all this yummy goodness. Ok, admittedly we have some pretty bad tomatoes here as well. It’s only in recent years that we can buy more then your average watery tomato. We now have pomodori, tasty tom’s, cherry tomatoes in all colors, kumatoes etc. etc. Don’t you just love international influences??

Now I have to admit that I made this dish in the afternoon thinking I needed to have some light to take a photo… How sad is that. I am home alone tonight as Tom is gonna be working late, so nobody is expecting dinner to be at regular dinner times. With the current winter months the light fades really quickly so in terms of photo taking; you can actually prepare this dish ahead. It should be warmed up in no time I am guessing.

I was not the only one who was very interested in this particular dish; I think it was the crisp pancetta that I put on top that made the smell irresistible to Gizmo! I couldn’t help but take a quick snap before I chased her away from my dinner

Gizmo trying to catch a little bit of pancetta!

If you would like to try this dish yourself (and it is worth it!!) here is the recipe

Pasta Amatriciana (tomato sauce with Pancetta and chilli pepper from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan)

Serves 4

2 tbsp of vegetable oil

15 gr butter

1 medium onion, finely chopped

6 mm/1/4 inc thick slice of pancetta, cut into strips

400 gr tinned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up

chopped hot red chilli

pepper, to taste

salt

3 tbsp freshly grated parmezan

450 gr pasta

Marcella recommends using bucatini for the pasta shape. Since I did not have that available I used conchi’s (I think they were called that, but I am not sure!) penne, rigatoni or conchiglie would also work equally well.

1. Put the oil, butter and onion in a saucepan and turn on the heat to medium. Saute the onion until it becomes coloured a pale gold, then add the pancetta. Where I live it is impossible to find pancetta that is thicker then very thin and already sliced so I used thinly sliced pancetta but left the slices on top of eachother which then resembled a slightly thicker slice. Cook for about 1 minute, stirring once or twice. Add the tomatoes, chili pepper and salt, and cook, uncovered, at a steady gentle simmer for about 25 minutes. Taste and correct for salt and hot pepper.

2. Toss the pasta with the sauce, then add both cheeses, and toss thoroughly. I could only find the one cheese, so I used only parmezan, which worked great anyway.

This dish was made for Cooking Italy!

Cooking Italy; Risotto with porcini (well… not really)

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:07:23 +0000

Mushroom risotto

Ok, I am so terribly behind on the Cooking Italy schedule that it’s kind of a miracle that I made the risotto that is scheduled for december 14th ahead of schedule… But then again; I didn’t exactly follow the recipe that Marcella gave, so not sure if this counts as having finished the recipe.. lol… I was planning on using porcini, as I really do like porcini, but for some reason my supermarket was out of the porcini and I had set my mind on making risotto, after first thinking I was going to make Olga’s pasta (which I will be making soon!) and then thinking to follow Lisa’s suggestion of another pasta to in the end decide to make risotto… So far for making up your mind before going to the store!!

Not being able to use the porcini I settled for using another dried mushroom which they did have in the store and that was cantharelles. It wasn’t very long ago that I tried my first cantharelle fresh and so I had never tried the dried version before and can’t say that I liked it either. My guess is that the mushrooms were rather old; they even smelled ‘dusty’!! I had them soaked in hot water for 15 minutes and then they had to be cooked for 10 minutes. Cantharelles are known to be difficult to clean and these ones were even harder to clean judging by the mouthful of sand Tom had to swallow later on.. Oops.. I did rinse them when still dry and cleaned them again once cooked. I did not use the soaking liquid which I do like to do when using porcini, but it just didn’t smell very good, so I skipped that part.

Instead of sticking to the ingredients in the recipe I added some peas in for color and taste. Plus I added fresh chestnut mushrooms as well. Which was a good thing after all since the dried ones where not that tasty. For the broth I used forest mushroom cubes as I had tried that before with risotto and really liked the mushroomy flavor that comes out of them. They are only around at this time of year, as it’s not a common flavor for making stock.

I do make risotto very often and this was not the best of them due to the – not so tasty – chantarelles, but it was still a decent meal. As was Tom’s remark when taking a second helping; ‘ for a vegetarian meal it’s quite tasty’.. I can see how this would work really well with porcini and I might even throw in a few crispy baked pancetta bits.

I hope to make another of Marcella’s dishes for tomorrow! I have been meaning to make the amatriciana pasta now for a while, but every time something was missing and now I seem to have all the ingredients!

Cooking Italy; Making pizza dough!

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:00:15 +0000

Home made pizza!

Let me start by making a confession; I am not a big pizza fan…. Maybe I should be considering that my studio is actually located above the infamous New York Pizza chain!! It also tends to be the first thing that people ask me when they first come to the studio; if I eat a lot of pizza… Well, the answer would be no. NYP is only open from 4 pm anyway and I tend to be gone by then, so they wouldn’t be able to serve me pizza even if I wanted them to!

But in general I have always thought of pizza as a second rate Italian meal. I mean; if you can have gorgeous pasta, delicious meat, fish or whatever other dishes, why settle for something as basic as pizza?? I don’t know… we sometimes order pizza, but the ones you tend to get are greasy, too thick or too thin, not cruncy and in general not really very good. Tom loves them, so we do order pizza sometimes, but then I order pasta carbonara… which is actually also horrible, but you know sometimes convenience wins from culinary delights…

Ready for the oven

But….. on the menu for last month we had self made pizza dough for the Cooking Italy group; a group of like minded people who cook from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. And due to time constraints I am waaaay behind with the schedule but today was as good a day as any to make pizza… The process was not too hard; I started with the foodprocessor and then finished by hand with kneading the dough. I was a little bit afraid that I didn’t have enough rise in the dough but it worked fine. It did rise for about four hours, since I didn’t need it any earlier. I used only half of the dough for one pizza of roughly 30 cm in diameter.

I don’t own a pizzastone (not surprisingly since we never made our own pizza before) so while thinking about the alternative I remembered we had a stonegrill set. Not sure if that is known outside of Holland, but it’s basically a stone which is placed on a heating element and it’s very populair around christmas time where everyone sits around the table and grills there own meals basically on that one stone.

The stone gets – obviously – very hot so I figured it would do in the oven as well. And it did! Worked perfectly. I guess it’s probably the same material as a pizzastone anyway.

The only problem I then had was to get the pizza into the oven in one piece. I don’t own a paddle (baker’s peel) either so I put cornmeal on a pizzaplate and tried to get it on the hot stone in the oven from there. It worked in the end, but it was’t perfect by any means, so I have to think of an alternative way of getting it into the oven. I am possibly thinking I am might make mini pizza’s next time…. I love to make different kinds of toppings instead of just one. Plus I can make my own very cheesy pizza and Tom can have a cheeseless pizza…

Despite the fact that it didn’t get into the oven perfect (it lost a little bit of the topping due to my shuffling back and forth) it was absolutely delicious and soooo much better then a storebought pizza or take-away pizza! Much to my surprise really as I hadn’t expected it to be this good. The pizza was very thin with a nice cruncy crust, although maybe a little bit too wet in the centre as I didn’t use the correct tomato sauce. Couldn’t find it and didn’t want to go in search either so just went with what I had but that is more for sauce or soups. Not really suitable for pizza.

Ok, so now on to the recipe!

Basic pizza dough (from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking)

Makes 2 round pizza’s about 30 cm in diameter)

1,5 tsp active dry yeast

250 ml lukewarm water

375 gr plain unbleached flour

extra virgin olive oil (1 tbsp for the dough, 1 tsp for the bowl and some for the finished pizza)

0.5 tsp salt

a baking stone

a bakers peel (paddle)

cornmeal

Put the yeast into a large bowl and dissolve it completely with about a quarter of the lukewarm water. When dissolved, add a third of the flour and mix thoroughly wih a wooden spoon. Then as you continue to stir, gradually add 1 tbsp of olive oil, the salt, another quarter of the lukewarm water and another third of the flour. When putting in flour and water for the last time, hold back some of both and put in as much of either as you need to make the dough manageable soft, but not too sticky.

Take the dough out of the bowl and slap it down very hard against the work counter several times (great stress reliever… ), until it is stretched out to a length of about 25 cm. Reach for the far end of the dough, fold it a short distance towards you, push it away with the heel of your palm, flexing your wrist, fold it and push it away again, gradually rolling it up and bringing it close to you. Rotate the dough a one-quarter turn, pick it up and slap it down hard, repeating the entire previous operation. Basically you want to end up with a soft and pliable dough. Shape it into a round ball.

Grease the inside of a clean bowl with olive oil and place the dough inside. Cover with clingfilm and put the bowl somewhere quiet and warm so it can rise in peace for about 3 hours. Longer is fine too.

At least 30 minutes before you are ready to pop the pizza into the oven preheat the oven to 230 C/450F. Sprinkle the baker’s peel generously with cornmeal. Take the risen dough out of the bowl and divide in half. Unless you can put two pizza’s at one time in your oven, put the other half back in the bowl and cover again until you are ready to use that part.

Flatten the dough as thin as you can opening it out into a circular shape using a rolling pin but finishing with your fingers. Leave the rim somewhat higher then the rest.

When it is the desired shape, put the circle of dough on the – with cornmeal covered – baker’s peel.

Put the topping of your choice on the dough and slide it, jerking the peel sharply away, on to the preheated baking stone. Bake for 20 minutes or slightly more. until the dough becomes coloured a light golden brown. As soon as it’s done drizzle with a little but of olive oil and serve.

It was getting near dark when I took the photos so they are not the sharpest… Too lazy to get the lights out!! But am planning to make more of these!

Cooking Italy; Spaghetti with white clam sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:15:07 +0000

When I first read that we had white clam sauce on the menu for this week’s Cooking Italy, I was seriously doubting that I would be making this. You have to know that I am really not a fan of shelled seafood… I just think they look scary.. But then again; I do love a good coquille and I always think you have to try something first before you can say that you don’t like it. And clams where something I had never tried before, so…. I went in search of clams. Well first I went in search of how clams are called in Dutch… and quite frankly; I still don’t know! So if anyone knows what a clam is called in Dutch please let me know.

I ended up buying ‘kokkels’ which I think is possible translated as cockles? But they look sort of similar to clams, so I figured those would do. It’s not as if you can actually buy those in the shop here. I had to call our one and only fishshop and ask them to bring it. Ofcourse that meant I had to purchase an entire kilo of them, which is really a waste. The good side was that I could practice on how to prepare them as I was – and still am – quite clueless.

Cockles

The recipe stated that you should put them in a pan on high heat and once opened remove them immediately and the juice would then be used to prepare the rest of the dish. Ok, that sounded fairly simple but what happened when I put the little beasties in the pan is that they did drip some fluids but that evaporated as soon as it hit the really hot pan! So no juice whatsoever was left after the first testrun.

The second try I figured I should ad some oliveoil into the pan before tossing them in and that worked better, although it was really a limited amount of juice. Now I didn’t toss in 20 pieces at one time, so that could have been the issue. Who knows… The recipe also states that you should pour the juices through a paper kitchen towel to get rid of any remaining sand or other stuff that shouldn’t be there, but really… that would have meant that it would all be taken in by the paper! It was that little…

I did feel kind of sorry for the little creatures… being tossed like that into a hot pan and basically being boiled alive.. A bit cruel I thought but ok, they were gonna die anyway at some point.

Apart from that whole cockle/clam adventure it was pretty straightforward, so no surprises there.

Now as far as the taste goes; I was really not impressed. Keep in mind that I am not a fan of shelled fish. There is something about them that just doesn’t really work for me.. Although I have to confess that I am probably just being squamish… I mean…. look at that thing in the shell; that – to me – does not resemble something appetizing! Ofcourse, I am glad that I tried it and I will definitely not be making this again…lol… I also thought that there was not enough juice to follow the recipe. So that part to me was a bit weird. I love pasta and most of the flavors that go with it, but this was a no go for me.

But if you are a fan of shelled fish then this just might be perfect for you! Here is the recipe:

White Clam Sauce (serves 4)

18 live clams in their shells

5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic

1,5 tablespoon of chopped parsley

1 red hot chili pepper

1 plum tomato, diced

100 ml dry white wine

450 gr of pasta

6 fresh basil leaves

To clean the clams put them into fresh water with salt for about 20 minutes. They will open up slightly and expel the sand that they have inside. Scrub the clams to clean them of any debris and repeat the process until no more stuff is coming of them.

Once cleaned keep them in a bowl in the fridge, uncovered so they can breath… (this is really weird as they make little popping noises while in the fridge…)

Heat up the clams to open them in hot pan. I found that you need to add either oil or a little bit of water, as otherwise the fluids coming from the clams will immediately evaporate. Make sure to cover the pan as it will jump around a bit.

As soon as the clams open up take them out of the pan using a slotted spoon, take the clams out of their shells and cut into 2 or 3 pieces unless they are very small. Put them in a small bowl and cover with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cover the bowl tightly with cling film and set aside for later but don’t put in the fridge.

Choose a skillet or saute pan that is large enough to contain the pasta later. Put in 3 tbsp of olive oil and the sliced garlic, and turn the heat up. Don’t let the garlic become coloured, then add the parsley and the chili pepper. Stir once or twice and add the diced tomato. Cook the tomato for 1-2 minutes, stirring it from time to time, then add the wine. Simmer the wine for about 20-30 seconds, letting it reduce, then turn the heat off

Cook the pasta in salted water until it is barely al dente. You don’t want the pasta to be too well done, although I did find that the juice of the clams wasn’t sufficient to cook the pasta till further so my pasta was slightly underdone.

Drain the pasta and add immediately to the skillet or saute pan, turning the heat up high and adding the clam juice. Cook, tossing and turning the pasta, until all the juice has evaporated.

Add the cut up clams with all the oil in the bowl and the torn basil leaves, toss in the pan 2-3 times, then transfer to a hot plate and serve at once.

Junglefrog Cooking » cooking italy

Tomato bruschetta and pasta with cream and sausages; Cooking Italy!

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