Rotolo farcito di panna e marmellata

Okay we call it Rotolo farcito di panna e marmellata, you call it Swiss Roll. Whatever you decide to call it it's damn good and I decided to make it for the first time. I did it! Big sense of achievement. Especially considering I don't have an electric egg beater so did everything manually. Biceps, biceps. Ouch.

Ingredients

5 eggs
140 g of white sugar
1 teaspoon of honey
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Icing sugar 
100 g of plain flour
A couple of spoons of whipped cream
Half a jar of Rasberry jam

First we need to make our "biscotto" dough. Separate the eggs yolks and the eggs whites.

In a bowl mix the yolks with the honey, 90 grams of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Beat vigorously until they become light and frothy.

Whisk the whites with the remaining sugar until they become stiff but not too stiff (does it make sense?).
Blend the yolk mix with the whites and add the flour using a strainer.

Mix slowly until you get a lovely dough. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees. Pour the dough over a baking tray that you have covered with baking paper (I used foil but things got a bit sticky).

Cook for no more than 6 or 7 minutes until golden. Remove the dough from the tray, sprinkle it with sugar and leave somewhere to cool covered in cling film. Once it has cooled you can fill it with jam and whipped cream( or Nutella or whatever you like!). Now that I got acquainted with my biceps I whipped mine myself...Roll it, cover it in foil and leave in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Dust with icing sugar, cut and serve!

Spaghetti with crab, prawns and pomodorino tomatoes

This is a great idea for a quick dinner with a chic allure that will impress your snobbiest friend!
Easy to make, fresh, very tasty and perhaps a bit aphrodisiac (just saying). Plus everybody knows fish makes you smart.

Ingredients (serves 2-3) 

1 pack of king prawns
2 tins of crab meat chunks (the John West one is good)
1 pack of pomodorino tomatoes
2  garlic heads
A little bit over half a 500 g. pack of spaghetti (I love De Cecco)
2 dried chilies
Extra virgin Oil as needed
Half a glass of dry white wine
Some chopped parsley to garnish
Salt and pepper as needed 

Chop the garlic, add it to a pan  where you have poured some oil and the crushed dry chilies. Let it brown until it starts smelling all garlicky and delicious (sure you got the idea). Add the pomodorino tomatoes that you have rinsed and cut in half, let them cook until they start releasing some juice, add the crab meat and the white wine and let them cook till the crab meat starts turning pink and the texture becomes more creamy. Add the prawns and let them cook for another 5 or 6 minutes. In the meantime bring some salted water to boil and cook the spaghetti until they are perfectly "al dente". Add the spaghetti to the sauce (duh) and serve with some extra virgin oil and some chopped parsley.

Buon giorno!

I love brunch...especially homemade. I had a craving for Eggs Florentine so decided to make some myself. This version is with fried eggs, literally packed with sauteed spinach and finished with a bit of grated parmesan to replace the hollandaise sauce. Served with a side of new potatoes with butter and mint.

Ragù

You got your gnocchi, now it's time to cook the perfect ragù. I actually suggest doing this the other way around as ragù has to cook for at least two hours.

Ingredients:

1 Onion
2 Carrots
2 Celery sticks
1 cube of stock
1 tablespoon of concentrated tomato puree
500 g. of pork mince meat
500 g. of beef mince meat
Olive oil as needed
Salt and Black pepper as needed

You have to start with the "soffritto", the base for many recipes in Italian cuisine. A mix of finely chopped onions, carrots and celery. You can find a ready made version at Waitrose but chopping it yourself from scratch is much much more fun.

Cook the soffritto in a tablespoon or two of extra virgin oil until the onions turn golden.

At this point add the mince meat and let it cook until it loses its pink, raw colour and turns slighlty brown. Season with salt and pepper. Ragù needs to be cooked over slow fire, so take your time. Add a glass of red wine and let the meat simmer until the wine has almost evaporated.

As I mentioned earlier the secret to a good ragù is the meaty texture. I don't use any plum or chopped tomatoes. Instead I dissolve a cube of stock into some boiling water and add a tablespoon of tomato puree. When the red wine has evaporated I add the stock and tomato and let it cook slowly for about an hour, an hour and a half. I then add a glass of milk and let it cook for another half an hour or so. 

 And your ragù is done!

Gnocchi

I was lucky enough to have my friend Morena come over and do the dirty job and be my "sfoglina" for the day. "Le sfogline" are traditional fresh pasta makers from the Emilian region, usually middle aged or elderly women. Morena is young and beautiful but not less talented in the art of fresh pasta making!

She followed her sister's recipe using only flour, potatoes and salt. The recipe usually suggests adding an egg for every kg. of potatoes but the eggless version was actually very soft and not heavy at all. We were very happy with the result!

Ingredients:

1 kg of potatoes ( Morena kept her potatoes in a dark place for three weeks allowing them to age gracefully which apparently adds flavour to the gnocchi).
Salt, as needed.
Flour, as needed.

Boil the potatoes until they are very soft. Peel the potatoes and keep them on the side to cool until they are warm. Boiling hot potatoes are a no no. Once they have cooled off a bit you can start mashing them with a a fork or a potato masher. Add some salt.

Now you can start adding the flour and working your way until you have a ball of potato dough. We kind of followed our instinct and added flour as we went along. Sounds like witchcraft more than cooking, not very precise but effective.

Take a piece of dough and start rolling it with your hands, you can add flour if things get a bit sticky.
The result should be a long " potato dough sausage". Repeat until you have rolled the entire ball into these lovely wormlike dough creatures.

Now all you have to do is cut them into little squares and your gnocchi are done! I mean, how easy is that? And you will feel so PROUD!"

Gnocchi al ragù

This is one of my favourite dishes ever. Ragù or bolognese sauce is a hymn to slow cooking and using fresh, simple ingredients. You will find a lot of recipes, all claiming to be more authentic ot traditional than the other. I say find one you like and stick to it, although it has to have quite a meaty texture rather than be drowned in tomato sauce. Gnocchi are absolutely cheap and versatile, actually very easy to make and and can be frozen.
Gnocchi al ragù are definitely a dish that even the least expert cook can masterize with a lot of patience and a little love!

Crostata di lamponi

In Italy we would say brutta ma buona, literally ugly but tasty. I have been thinking of something to bake all week. I wanted to try something new that I had never cooked before and decided to give crostata a go. According to Wikipedia Crostata is: "an Italian baked dessert tart, and a form of pie. It is traditionally prepared by folding the edges of the dough over the top of the jam/marmalade filling, creating a more "rough" look, rather than a uniform, circular shape". See! It wasn't meant to be that uniform or circular after all! It's quite straighforward and easy to make and the result is absolutely yummy.
I filled mine with Rasberry jam and followed the recipe below.

Ingredients:
100 g. of sugar
300 g. of plain flour
2 eggs
90 g. of butter
Jam as needed
1 teaspoon of dried yeast

Create a fountain with the flour, position the eggs, sugar, flakes of butter and yeast in the middle of the fountain and work the ingredients with your hands until you have a ball of dough. Cover the dough in clingy film and put in the fridge to cool for at least thirty minutes. In the meantime grease a round cake mould in butter and cover with a pinch of flour. Roll the dough with a rolling pin until you create a base that is aproximately 4mm high. Keep some dough on the side as you will need it to create the typical "grid" that characterizes this cake. Place the base in the cake mould working the edges until you have a small crust. Cover it in jam (I used rasberry but any jam will do), leaving some room at the edges. Now roll the dough that you kept on the side, cut it in strips and place it on the jam creating a diagonal grid. Heat the oven at 180 degrees and cook for 40 minutes or until golden brown.