Happiness is baking a banana bread and having a thick slice of it during the golden hour

I am a Tuscan girl but I do not eat pappa al pomodoro every day, even though I could easily survive on that for a week. I try to blog mainly about Tuscan food, because it’s what I know better, what made me who I am now and what gave me a reason to believe in dreams. But if you want to impress me, bring me to a sushi bar for a dinner out, or even a Spanish restaurant could do the trick. Let’s have a gourmet hamburger with homemade ketchup and smelly cheese before heading to Bruce Springsteen’s concert (YAY, less than one month!) or surprise me with a spicy Thai take-away to take my breath away.

So forgive me if today I’m posting a banana bread recipe, no childhood memories related to this moist loaf, and no, you won’t find it in an old grease stained paper menu in a crossroad trattoria in Tuscany. This was my last food crush, and it’s worth of a few words.

I thought you were a banana bread girl, told me Emiko when I sent her an excited message about me baking the very first banana bread of my life (yes, we chat a lot). I was. I even bought a small bag of highly expensive and not at all local macadamia nuts a few days earlier: I knew I would have used them in a banana bread, I just didn’t want to admit it, even to myself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mayonnaise like hollandaise is a process of forcing egg yolks to absorb a fatty substance, oil in this case, and to hold it in thick and creamy suspension. - Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking – 1961

In my family we have always bought mayonnaise for only two reasons: to make summer roasted peppers crostini and a tuna sauce to spread on thinly sliced veal. Full stop. We got through the ’80s unharmed: no shrimp cocktail to be served in withered lettuce leaves when my parents’ friends were over for dinner, no sliced white ​​bread topped with pickles, hard boiled eggs and jelly, no sandwiches spread with mayonnaise and patterned with small and round frankfurters as morning snack at school. Actually I was the weird one, the chubby girl who used to pull out of her schoolbag bread and ham, a slice of jam tart or red apples.

Then, out of the blue, I got the urge to make stuffed eggs with tuna and mayonnaise, deep plunged in a vintage revival made of ’50s pin up style lingerie, bright red lipstick and checkered aprons. I wanted to be in the shoes of a modern Marion Cunningham, or rather, in the high heels shoes of a Mad Men star: nothing better than that to feel womanly and attractive!

So I made stuffed eggs, yet in a contemporary style, with real homemade mayonnaise, good quality tuna and a bunch of fresh herbs picked in the garden. Following the leading vintage thread, who better than Julia Child could teach us to make a perfect mayonnaise? I took the chance and – with the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in hand – we filmed with the guys from TVedo.TV a video recipe dedicated to Julia and her homemade mayonnaise, followed by some tips on how to make stuffed eggs with a modern sensibility.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you happen to be born in the inland Tuscany, you do not have that much confidence with fish. Or at least that goes for me. I asked my grandmother for evidence since I wanted to understand which was my family tradition, and she confirmed that fish was eaten only on Friday, when you were supposed to fast, and it was mainly dried salt-cured cod. Then, when she married my grandfather, our relationship with fish slightly changed, because on Friday he would come back from the office with some fresh fish bought at the weekly market, smooth dogfish and little more.

Yet, I’d rather feast on fish than on meat, not to mention raw fish. That became clear to everyone last Saturday, when my dear friend Daniela got married: I sat with glistening eyes on the couch in front of the seafood buffet – oysters, red and gray shrimp, tuna tartarre – and they had to drag me away to bring me to the table, otherwise I would have spent the whole evening there until the cake had arrived (chocolate and raspberries, that is classy!).

My problem is that I am not a great fish connoisseur, so I am usually quite a bit intimidated when I approach to the cooking of the sea bounty: I know that with fish less is more, nevertheless I desperately miss some family tradition under my belt to make me feel confident even on the most slippery situations.

So, what am I doing in the kitchen with 2 kilos of bonito to clean and different ideas on how to use its oily meat?

Everything begins a few weeks ago, when I was invited to take part to the Palamìta fish food festival in San Vincenzo, a charming seaside town on the Tuscan Etruscan coast.

The palamita festival is held every year at the beginning of May on the town streets and the seaport of San Vincenzo. The town celebrates not only the palamita (the Italian name for bonito) but also the bountiful catch of pesce azzurro – the oily fish, namely blue fish for the bluish reflection of its skin -, the ‘poor’ fish that has always been so typical of the peasant cooking of the Italian seaside.
Read the rest of this entry »