Warming up for the BOLOGNESE: home made tomato sauce

When I used to have that little quadrangle of soil called back-yard [I shell recall it in some other post!], and a Summer worth of its name, it was a pleasure to relax from late Spring on having some plants to cure and to care of. It is amazing how distant we are from a gardening mentality and how terribly accustomed we became of supermarkets. Last year for example I planted some cherry tomatoes when they were too many for a salad I had the idea of producing my own tomato sauce. Delicious.

I like them especially for their imperfections

As soon as June delivered us a fully rebirth of Nature, so nice that some robins made their nest next to the boiler pipe, I felt a yearn for this sweet red ambrosia. Casually, I found some intense red tomatoes on the wine in Tesco, and they were also Finest, if I am not mistaken, and so I made this Caledonian attempt. 

Produce a cross at the bottom of the tomato, 

and drop it for 15 seconds 

in boiling water: 

a trick to peel them faster.

Tomatoes will naturally produces their juice,

a sort of homage to the chef, encouraged by

basil leaves, a pinch of salt, 

a sprinkle of black pepper and a clove of garlic,

and roll of drums

a tear drop of honey, 

to mitigate acidity.

As soon as the sauce is ready, embellish with 

a silent river of extra-virgin olive oil 

and

KEEP TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN UNTIL COLD,

and it will produce the vacuum effect!

It is excellent on Penne, Spaghetti or Macaroni (Maccheroni),

but it may also be 

a very non-expensive but largely appreciated

gift to a person you praise.

Delicious on tortelloni ricotta & spinach:

add just some butter and they will become

(tortelloni burro & oro)

Woods promenade, wild mushrooms & friends

Preliminary remarks: if the mushrooms are growing on your friends, your friends may be dead. Silly jokes apart, a great pleasures derives and springs out from the chance of walking with your friends in the wood. It is a relaxing way to approach a trip out of town. The contact with nature both on the Apennines and scottish the Low Lands is gorgeous:

This may interest those in Scotland who wish

to know more and amuse themselves

 [https://sites.google.com/site/scottishfungi/]. 

The city chaos is remote, distant, inexistent. You have with you some good provisions: such as water, perhaps some chocolate, and a biscuit, and of course a basket, a license to pick mushrooms up and a proper mushroom knife with brush:

With the practical case it can be fixed to the belt

[http://www.worldknives.com/types/mushroom-knives-11.html]

Anyways, along with Zinga (my Fungi guide) and a couple of trustworthy friends, 

Isa & John (reborn) Lennon,

the best couple of just married friends ever

http://www.mymatrimonio.net/

we had a fortunate hunting and we came back with three baskets full of craterellus cornucopioides or black trumpet. I am afraid it has nothing to do with Shrooms. The pleasure of this discovery is that of sharing time with your friends, understanding how difficult is to find food in the forest, as our ancestors did, and how beautiful is to live nature not only as an exploitable source, but as a prolongation of your soul.

A mushroom form Puglia (the italian heel):

there is a mountain called Cornacchia (Rook)

where you may find amazing varieties of mushrooms

Lethal but really splendid in the beam of the camera

Hunting baskets ready to be washed and cooked

Reserved mushroom

Hit by a ray of light: 

the pop singer Madonna would praise this definition

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAolCtofOtA]

In the dark underwood, on the 

pine-needle carpet of a pine forest, where

everything else was dead,

these incredible manifestations of yellow life.

The ox tongue

Mushrooms in a ceramic pan:

fry a clove of garlic in some extra-virgin olive oil;

add the cleaned mushrooms;

let them stay five minuted at medium hob;

add a glass of white wine;

adjust black pepper, finely chopped and salt;

dress your pappardelle.

Home made pappardelle

At Zinga's an helpful dish of pappardelle 

(similar to tagliatelle but thicker)

with our cooked mushroom pray:

Coffee, Bialetti Moka and the golden cup: deserved ritual pauses

When I came to the UK the first time I was doing an Erasmus, it took me four months to realize I should have brought a moka machine. Thus the second semester was more related to a coffee addiction, so that my Japanese flatmate, the day of my birthday, presented me with one of the best gifts I have ever came into possession: a Wedgwood espresso cup from the designer Vera Wang [ http://uk.wwrd.com/en/uk/wedgwood/icat/wedgwood/ ]. A present, which is now also a deeply rooted memory:

Vera Wang lace gold bond collection:

coffee cup with saucer,

which remained safely home

in a display cabinet

On the other hand, this time, I knew I was coming to study hard (true) and party harder (false), and one of my first purchases before leaving Italy was just the moka. Actually, it has to be said that after to the colour of the moka machine I then chose the rest of the kitchenware.

Her name is Fiammetta, 

three people size and 

with a definite touch of 

personality

[http://www.bialetti.it/uk/index.asp]

The coffee I fancy is Caffè 14 Luglio:

 http://www.caffe14luglio.it/dove_siamo_it.php?lang=en

yet also Illy and Lavazza red 

can be assessed with a high rate

(if you are curious, please, feel free to ask for tips)

I could not spot until now a proper cup for my coffee, but I think I will start hunting for it soon in a charity shop, and not because I am an hipster searching for heirlooms, but because I realized how many beautiful objects are thrown away in this country when people move house. For me coffee is not just emotional, but ritual, as the tea ceremony used to be in the UK. I am attached to a certain protocol, a certain cup, a certain brand of coffee, a certain coffee spoon, a certain sugar (fewer and fewer, I wish I could drink it plain), a certain amount of milk (yes I milk coffee, I apologize).

Actually a honey - jam spoon with pearl handle

 from a cheese set, but it has gradually become 

my favorite stirring companion,

here on a David Abulafia's work

My sister as well is keen on having the following mug, of a dark blue, at home with a robust tea spoon:

UFO Ravioli with Black Poplar mushrooms

Especially in Scotland the Fall is one of those seasons that lasts for 12 month a year. So, even if it is full July, two days ago, a thick fog came in from the sea and suddenly the town vanished inside this incredible cloud.

Edinburgh castle with a woolen fog scarf

In Italy, the fair city of Ferrara (still in Emilia-Romagna, but close to Veneto) has a similar problem: in some days of the year, when the fog is too obnoxious for driving even cycling is discouraged or even forbidden. There is the serious risk that people may bump across others causing severe accidents and the police officers won't find them in the mist, albeit they are following the moanings.

Ferrara lamps and random pedestrians,

lost in translation 

(from the Latin translatio)

And Fall reminds me, of course, of one of my favorite aliments: mushrooms. I prefer wild mushrooms, but sometimes I also indulge in cultivated ones: a specie I enormously worship is that called agrocybe aegerita, that mortals may call Black Popular mushroom. They are close in resemblance to Honey mouhrooms, and they are excellent with fresh-egg pasta (tagliatelle, UFO ravioli, tortelloni).
The recipe I am suggesting today won my friends approbation:

After having rolled out the pastry, 

obtain these disks using a glass!

Fill with ricotta cheese, 

grated Parmigiano, 

and chopped basil leaves,

black pepper, salt and nutmeg.

Don't they look like UFO ravioli:

the grooves are made with a fork.

Dress them with Black Poplar mushrooms,

previously cooked according to your pleasure,

but feel free to ask which my recipe was.

Tagliatelle [taʎʎaˈtɛlle]: the Italian answer to Japanese Ramen (noodles)

How (the hell) do Tagliatelle would match something with Ramen?

Well, both Tagliatelle and Ramen derive from the same Chinese dish 拉麺 (la mian),  which roughly mean hand made noodles. There actually are three other interpretations of the same word as something related to «ancient noodles», «saucy noodles», «stirred up noodles»...the concept is barely the same. Apparently then the Platonic concept of noodles spread horizontally from Imperial China to Europe and to Japan.

Soba Ramen in broth

with chicken thigh, aubergine and leeks,

if my memory serves me correctly

[these dishes belong 

to the Mark&Spencer collection

2007-2008]

My best friend is Japanese, an astonishing man, a superb fellow-lodger, and he introduced me to the fancy world of Ramen. I found it extraordinary fascinating. What we, in Italy, had basically drained up and dressed with whether juicy meat, or mushrooms, or cream, or fish, in Japan is still preserved as the origin prescribes.

You can imagine this food-evolution as what occurred to some leaving beings, when they came out from the sea: whereas some others, as the shark, kept themselves faithful to their undisturbed purity.

Tiger shark

What it's close to perfection rarely is also willing to produce inside itself a change: Japan 1 - Italy 0 then! So, let's just say Tagliatelle and Ramen are remote cousins.

Roll the pastry very thin with a wooden

rolling pin on a wooden bread board

Roll onto itself the pastry...

...and cut it with a knife

Tagliatelle always resembled me the blond hair of a goddess who left them as a divine gift. And here a possible story goes...

There is also a trick you may find interesting:

Atlas model (on amazon.co.uk) 

Imperia model (on amazon.co.uk)

The right question would now be: how should I dress proper tagliatelle? The next two posts are about to develop this difficult argument: wild mushrooms and bolognese sauce (the real one!)

Purple fascinations: mulberries tart & bresàola

Very often the visual spur conveys an immediate intuition that any long-time rational reasoning may not help producing. In my view, the little backyard garden I used to call "my lands" offered me an unexpected show: there are some flowers belonging to looked-down plants, such as the French bean or chives, that are among the most beautiful manifestations of grace and harmony. The chives ones can be very ornamental, especially if you produce a dish that may mirror the flower themselves, for instance with bresàola, a beef ham from the Alps [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bresaola ] :

Dress it with lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, 

a sprinkle of black pepper, some flakes of Parmigiano, 

and some chives leaves

(decorate with chives flowers)

Today I am suggesting a gradation that will progress from a darker purple nuance to a milder one. From the Willy Wonka's dark-purple sarcasm, to the light relaxing shade of the garden flowers. Passing by some preparations and ideas. I strongly think that the colour is able to guide your mind

Self-irony, sometimes helps! 

(here you can do your own memes

http://memegenerator.net/Willywonka/caption )

Have a break, have a cherry:

relaxing, refreshing, tastily repetitive

Mulberries tart: gorgeous with black fruity tea

For the pastry:

300 gr of organic flour;

100 gr of unsalted butter;

100 gr of granulated sugar;

the juice of half a lemon;

1/4 tea spoon of baking agent;

2 eggs.

Home made redcurrant jelly, 

although I prefer mulberries preserve, 

cause it is thicker and creamier at the same time

(home-made goods are tastier and real.

Try the farmers' market in your home-town

http://www.edinburghfarmersmarket.co.uk/ )

Chives in blossom, aren't they astonishing?

The Micky Mouse headed French bean flower

Zinga's titbit: THE green tomatoes compote

Zinga is a friend of mine, a drear friend, one of those people that might set on fire the Louvre (abstain yourselves from doing that, please!) and you still wish to hang out with them. He is generous, smart, and kind, and an extremely good eater, that's why he is experimenting the tortoise-reverse...his belly never experiments the low tide! In Italy we would say a «buona forchetta», an idiomatic expression related to the talent of praising good food

Zinga introduced me to the magic world of mushrooms, no, not those mushrooms and we used to organize nice trips on the Apennines hunting for these taste saprophytes. Yet, the present post deals with another dainty that Zinga adores, no matter how big the jar of green tomatoes compote you present to him is like! The kind of tomatoes you need are the following:

San Marzano variety tomatoes 

(grow them yourself!)

Chop four 3-4 green tomatoes and 2-3 reds:

the Russian shape of the composition

is totally causal

(it should be around a kilo)

 How beautiful the cane sugar crystals are?

Add the juice of a squeezed lemon,

organic cane sugar (not less than 300 gr)

a dripping table spoon of honey.

Medium hob, medium flame, almost half an hour

according to density, and astonishing

result

The catimer meows:  «keep them down until 

they are cold and they shall

produce the vacuum effect»

(use sterilized cups & jars)

IT IS seriously EXCELLENT, 

especially ON TOP OF BREAD AN BUTTER 

OR WITH medium CHEESES

(I recommend it as a starter)

ps: Weitrose, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, Tesco and ASDA offer some delightful caramelized onions, for instance: the principle is the same, but this preserve is home-made, it takes half an hour and impresses both self-palete and guests...and it can also be an original gift.