Sto diventando abbastanza bravo a fare il pane, quindi mi sento in grado a questo punto di darvi qualche consiglio.

Ho sperimentato un po’ con la pasta madre o lievito naturale, che e’ semplicemente un composto di acqua e farina lasciato a fermentare, questo composto si usa come lievito per fare il pane.

Per capire come fare la pasta madre, sono partito da questo video, e dalla seguente ricetta:

200gr. di farina forte
90gr. di acqua

Impastate tutto e lasciate in una ciotola coperta per due giorni in cucina vicino al cesto della frutta.

Dopo due giorni rinfrescate prendendo 100gr. del composto (buttate il resto), 100gr. di farina, 45gr. di acqua e questo è appunto il RINFRESCO. Con queste proporzioni farete tutti i rinfreschi.

Trascorsi i due giorni se il lievito non si è mosso bisogna ricominciare e buttare tutto.

Se invece esso è cresciuto siamo arrivati a un buon lievito naturale che ora rinfrescheremo per una settimana una volta al giorno e cosi’ sara’ pronto.

A questo punto possiamo dire che abbiamo la nostra madre che dobbiamo rinfrescare ogni due giorni se la teniamo a temperatura ambiente e ogni 4 se la teniamo in frigo.

Ciao ciao!!

Tags: pane, recipe.

I’m at my parents house, in Fabrica di Roma, they have a small field were they grow vegetables, so I thought about making a pumpkin and potatoes soup with their fresh products.
It’s so rare if not impossible to find such as natural vegetables now days; just like heart gives them to us, that when you have the chance to have some of this product just dont miss the chance of eat them.

Here’s I’m going to explain the way i did a pumpkin soup:
Take a Pumpkin, some potatoes and some carrots, peal them, cut them ruffly and put the pieces in a baking tin, add extra virgin olive oil (my parents make their own), rosemary, garlic on its skin, salt, and a couple of chilies.

Cover the baking tin with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for forty minutes at 220 degrees.
In the mean time cut in small pieces a couple of onion and fry them slowly in a big pan with extra virgin olive oil.

At this point, take the pumpkin and the other vegetables from the oven, take a part the rosemary and the garlic and add them to the frying onion in the pan.
Squeeze a couple or more garlic out of the skin in the compound and stir it with a wooden spoon to help the vegetables melting. Add to the soup enough water with vegetarian bouillon in it , let it go for a little wile and the soup it’s ready.

Serve it with garlic bread and a tread of extra virgin olive oil.

Tags: recipe.

There’re different types of pizza, I also like to make the tick and soft one. This type is also good to prepare in a normal home oven since it doesn’t need really hi temperatures. The preparation of the dough is the same as for the pizza cooked on the stone:

Pane’s Pizza lesson n2, the dough:
For 1 liter of water:

2 Kg of flour

60 gr. of salt

60 gr. of olive oil

a little spoon of gist

Take present that this amount of ingredient is for 15 balls of pizza, so make your calculation to prepare the quantity you desire.
Mix the ingredients starting with the water, and work the dough out until is uniform and doesn’t stick on your fingers anymore, so you might need to add some more flour.
Let the dough rest for the all day in a bowl covered with a wet towel, prepare it in the morning so you can cook the pizza at dinner.
The dough will rise and become soft, that’s what we need to make this type of tick pizza
Take a metal tray, spread olive oil on the surface, than flat the dough in it, put your ingredients and leave the mozzarella at last. Since is going to stay for about 25 minutes at 220 degrees we don’t want the mozzarella to become dry, and we will add it the last five minutes.
The pizza should come if everything works thick, soft and hairy.

Tags: recipe.

Here’s my recipe for Italian polpette:

• Macinato
• One or two egs
• Enough parmigiano
• Prezzemolo
• Mollica di pane
• Milk
• Onions

I cant tell you exactly the proportions of the ingredients, I always do by feeling, when the mix is structured that means that the quantities are right, if it’s too soft it means too much onion or milk, too hard, one more egg or milk or onion, clear? So you start with the quantity of meat you want, it’s mixed half pork, half cow. In a bowl add the eggs to the meat, add the mollica of pane sucked with milk, grate a couple of onion in it, if you like, squeeze in it a garlic, add grated parmigiano, prezzemolo, salt and pepper. Work out the compound by hand and make than bolls of it, in a pan put enough extra virgin olive oil, make it hot and place the polpette in the pan, fry them on both sides for a little and than drop in some white wine, let evaporate it and add just plain tomato sauce and salt. Let the Polpette ultimate the cooking in the sauce and they’re ready. I love them next to puree and boiled green beans.
I put them in my menu, but again some diffidence, I understood that if your name goes around for being a good pizza baker than this is what people want. I had polpette four days in a row.

Tags: recipe.

Peperoni a la Wu-Tang.
Roast a peperone, pill the skin and hope the shape it’s similar to the Wu-Tang logo.

Tags: recipe.

This is a lot of work, especially if you don’t have a pasta machine and you do it has I did by hand; flattening the pasta with a wooden stick needs experience. It took to me quite a wile for having the dough thin enough.
Anyway, if you want to try here it is the way I made ravioli:
The quantity I did was for eight persons, 6 ravioli each portion. Cook the spinach and prepare the filling with spinach, ricotta and eggs, flavour it with salt, black pepper and lemon skin. To cook the spinach it’s just necessary to put them in a pan with the top on the fire, they will cook with the vapour of their on water. Smash the compound with an electric mixer.
The pasta it’s just flavour, eggs and salt, 100 grams of flavour each egg, so make your calculations. Make a hill with flavour and put the eggs in a hall in the middle of it with salt, work the eggs at first with a fork and little by little take the flavour in them, complete the compound by hand and work it well.
Now the hard part if you don’t have a machine, make it flat with a wooden stick, and notice, if the pasta is not thin enough, will result too hard in the mouth once cooked, so use all your techniques and flat it! My way was to take parts of the dough, flattening first with the stick and than roll it many times on it and release it, wile you do it the dough gets dry and more difficult to work, so you also have to be quick.
Ok if you pass this step you can work as a dish washer for me, and you can go ahead with the preparation of the ravioli. Place the compound in the measure of a walnut in the strip of dough you prepared in a distance that will be enough to each other, than use the white egg as a glue to stick another strip of pasta that you place over it, close in the two pasta each filling pressing with the finger around and than cut out each ravioli with a knife or the special cutter that makes pretty edges. If you pass this step you can work as a help cook for me.
Finally ready, now or you cook them right away or you place them separately on a board and freeze them. Once they’re frozen you can divide in bags portions of 5 or 6 ravioli, and keep them frozen to enjoy your lonely night at home, ones you do all that work you wont divide them with anyone.
Cook the ravioli in boiling and salted water for about 8 minutes, you can have them with butter and salvia or in a basic tomato sauce, grate parmigiano on top. Too see the preparation of this two condiments go to our chapter, sauces and condiments.

Tags: recipe.

A couple of days ago I did a classic roman dish: pasta e ceci (cheek beans). I’ll tell you the way I made it.
I didn’t have so much ceci, a can only, would be better with dry ones but also like this it’s very enjoyable.
Use a pot and start with a soffritto: Extra virgin olive oil, garlic, chilli, rosmarine and 2 or tree anchovies, they will help the consistency of the flavour, than be careful, don’t add so much salt.
Since I’m only using one can of ceci, to increase the substance I add to the soffritto quite some onions, 4 or 5. Let the onions and the rest wither in the oil and than add a couple of mestols of tomato souse. Take half of the ceci, smash them and add them into the soffritto. At this point let it go lithely for a little wile.
Add 1 liter of water you where for sure already cooking with half or even less dado of bouillon.
Than cut 3 potatoes into little cubes and put them in the pot.
Before the potatoes are soft add the rest of the ceci and the pasta, I like big pasta so that the ceci goes inside it.
Ok, when the pasta is coked the dish is ready, serve it in deep dish with a dusted of black pepper and a thread of olive oil.

ALL YOU NEED:

• Extra virgin olive oil, Garlic, chilli, rosmarine, boullion, 3 anchovies
• 4/5 onions
• 1 can of ceci (cheek beans)
• 3 potatoes
• Pasta grande

Tags: recipe.