I have already told you that my big, noisy, lively and warm family comes – as regards my father branch – from Lucania, in the South of Italy: Grandpa Biagio, in fact, was born in Rapolla (PZ) and raised in Melfi, where still live many uncles, aunts and cousins. A branch of the family lives since many years here in the province of Siena, and I think I can adfirm, without doing an injustice to anyone, that Aunt Teresa is the most representative example of the cuisine from Melfi in Tuscany.
My aim today was to make a first course: choose a traditional recipe and make something new out of it. I decided to choose as starting point the most classic meat sauce, changing somthing on the way! First of all, the kind of meat: not veal nor pork, rabbit instead – white, light, Tuscan. Then, the cooking method: I decided to to use tomato as in the usual meat sauce. Finally, I cut rabbit with a sharp knife by hands, to have a rough and rustic sauce. My idea was to create a sauce similar for taste and look to a traditional meat dish we really appreciate in my family, pot roasted rabbit.
Good Morning and Happy Monday! The colour of my weekend was red! Red like my hair (I dyed my hair and now they’re like Julia Robert’s hair, a wonderful Tiziano Autumnal colour), red as my brand new car, a flaming red Kia Picanto, red as my bank account for the next 5 years…
Let’s hit now my weekend cooking experiments: as a good pupil I tried to get haed for next weeks, taking advantage of a quiet Sunday morning. The weather was wonderful, the sun warmed the air and tree colours were flaming creating and Autumnal and amazing vision. I was in search of the right ingredients to enrich a simple dish of spaghetti, when it came to mind! Nuts were the perfect ingredient, as I consider them autumnal and rich, perfect to enhance the magnificence of the day.
If Grandma were a dish, she would have been home made pasta, ravioli, actually!
Since I was young, Grandma used to make home made fresh pasta on holidays , she closed herself in her kitchen and she came out soon later with a wooden plate, lined with paper, dusted with semolina and full of spinach ravioli (fresh stuffed pasta, similar to dumplings).
I know, it’s strange, but if I think back at my mental shoot of those moments, the most lively detail is the tray: enourmous, strong, made by Grandad Biagio, a master with wood works.
Today we’ll hit the second episode of our Tuscan cooking session.
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