When in the afternoon I need a break to lighten up my mind and warm up my hands and my spirit, I put the kettle on the fire and brew a flavored black tea. The cardamom black tea is my latest passion.

When it comes to food, I am a fairly daring person, I taste with pleasure and a hint of challenge every kind of food, even those I might not like at first glance. Basically I am very curious and this pushes me beyond my comfort zone.

The same can not be said of my attitude towards drinking. You already know that I am basically a soft drink person, but do not be surprised if I tell you that I had the first sip of Coke when I was more than 25 years old, and obviously I did not like it. My friends laugh at me, saying I’m definitely more English than Italian as my favorite drink, at any time of the day, is tea.

I usually drink from 2 up to 6 cups of green tea a day – sencha or jasmine bancha tea – but in the morning or afternoon, when I need a boost of energy, there is nothing better than a strong cup of black tea flavoured with different spices accordingly to the season.

Shortly before Christmas Claudia and I decided to dedicate some time to the DIY, creating our favourite shades of  flavoured afternoon black tea. We bought a wonderful Chinese Keemun black tea and we divided it into two glass jars: one turned romantic and feminine with dried rose petals and vanilla bean, ideal for slow afternoons and rice biscuits.

The other one was enriched with cardamom, a spice that goes well with tea, coffee and chocolate, to turn it into a fresh and energizing drink with a subtle Arabic tone. You can make it in a minute and then leave it to rest patiently for a while.

If you want some tips on how to brew a perfect black tea, which is the right water temperature and the time of infusion, I suggest you to take note of this useful graphic scheme.

After two weeks of care-free life in London I found myself in the Tuscan countryside, completely covered in snow, silent, peaceful and fairly isolated. A cup of steaming tea is the perfect antidote to the piercing cold and the freezing wind.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A steaming cup of cardamom black tea for a snowy afternoon

You should be interested also in:

1. Black tea wafers with mascarpone filling
2. Apricot Jam with Cardamom, Vanilla & Lime
3. I’m a Food Ninja! Coffee and Cardamom Creme Brulée

When I’ve found my groove and I’m not hung up on traffic and number of comments and whether I’m going to quit, it’s so gratifying. It brings me so much in terms of interaction and feedback and ideas and inspiration. It’s really worth every ounce of energy I pour into it. It has grown with me. It’s really the key to everything else that I do.”

Clotilde Dusoulier, Chocolate & Zucchini - from Will Write for Food, Dianne Jacob

… I wouldn’t be able to express my feelings in a better way or to find better words to celebrate my first 3 years of blogging today. Today, when I’m back home from London full of ideas and inspiration and I am ready to put everything into practice, today, when the snow has covered everything in white, softness and quietness, today, when the new life has finally begun.

And I want to thank you, because Clotilde’s words are true, true because I do appreciate your feedback, the love and the friendship, the interaction that grows constantly and makes me grow, an everlasting spur to do better not to disappoint you.

Therefore I decided to make this special treat for you, my Mum’s tiramisu, the basic version, still missing here on the blog… I could not wait any longer to publish it! As we are celebrating, I decided to make it a little bit more special with a step by step video: thanks to Valeria for being such a patient actress and to Laura for being a perfect assistant director!

P.S. Click on YouTube for a larger video!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A tiramisu to celebrate 3 years of blogging

You should be interested also in:

1. Tea Tiramisu
2. The Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Tiramisu
3. Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake – Are you a cook or eat person?

More than a week has passed since I first came to London and in a few days I’ll be back in my mansard over my family kitchen overlooking the woods and fields, waiting for the wheat to turn pale green to announce that the spring has finally arrived.

You may wonder what I have been up to in ​​this first week… if your answer is mostly eating, you are very close to the truth! Being it Indian, English, Turkish or Italian, being it home-made, eaten sitting in a restaurant or standing up waiting for the best Beigel ever tasted or even perched on a rock by the sea, we ate and celebrated the power of food, the best way to communicate, to get to know each other and become friend.

In this never ending feast of abundance, imagination and creativity, there was a sandwich, a very simple one but generous in flavour, that is worth sharing with you. Let’s say it’s an excuse to bring you with me to Beachy Head, but believe me that the sandwich has more than a reason to be celebrated.

Beachy Head, an hour’s drive south of London, is a place that leaves you speechless. Breathtaking is not only the view of the cliffs on a gray winter day, so bright white that it hurts your eyes when kissed by the sun. Breathtaking is also the steep climb back from the lighthouse, against the wind and with a large bag weighed down with camera, gloves, hat, scarf and other bare necessities.

You can tell who is trained and who is not. I am not, but definitely Beachy Head is worth of being short of breath and being almost lifted up by the gale that swept away the clouds and any existential doubts…

But let’s get back to that sandwich, eaten sitting on a white rock looking out to the sea with a thermos full of hot Earl Grey next to us. In these moments, essence wins over anything else: two slices of fresh store-bought organic bread made with caramelized onions, Tuscan salted cured pork shoulder and home-made butter.

To purists it may seem quite an unusual combination, but it reminds me so much of the Tuscan bread, butter and anchovies, the easiest holidays appetizer or one of the most typical afternoon snacks from my childhood.

The salty anchovies – and in this case a few knife cut slices of tasty Tuscan cured pork shoulder or ham – are balanced by the creamy butter, that smooths the edges and softens the flavours. If you have high quality ingredients, there’s really no need to over complicate.

It is just an idea, but try to follow me. You are cutting the fresh bread on a wooden board lit by a slanted sunbeam entering through the kitchen window. The bread is a freshly baked sourdough loaf and the knife makes that tempting sound as it plunges into the crust, that for a while resists then breaks into a crackle, yielding to the softness of the well-leavened bread.

Then there is a small glass dish with the home-made butter, that tastes just like cream and is made only with fresh double cream and a few flakes of Maldon salt. The butter surrenders to the bread slices and creates a melting contrast to the tasty slices of Tuscan pork shoulder, marbled with fat.

You are bringing to the beach all these memories and sensations, wrapped in a paper towel along with the sandwich: there is the crackling sound of the crusty bread, that ray of sunshine that came across the window, the cured Tuscan pork shoulder I brought from home, the silky butter made ​​by a friend and the person who taught you how to make that sandwich. Try it, read inside the sandwich your own story and memories, then tell me if it is just a sandwich or not!

** If you want to make your homemade butter, buy the best double cream and check Sarka’s blog Cook your dream, where you’ll find a recipe beautifully illustrated in its simplicity… marvelous!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Picnic at Beachy Head

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1. An eco-friendly picnic
2. Cocoa No Knead Bread
3. Véronique’s crêpes with salted butter and raspberries

I like San Gimignano in the early morning, when it is still not crowded with tourists, when you see the local people passing along the streets almost incredulous to have San Gimignano for themselves, yet still for just a few more minutes. I like it when the footsteps echo on the cobbled shady streets, resounding between the high walls of the houses.

I like the gray colour of the stones, especially when they have just been washed by the rain of the early spring. In San Gimignano, along the main street that goes to the Cathedral from the park outside the walls, just after the main gate on the left you find the Pasticceria Armando e Marcella, one of my favourite pastry shops in the world. Every time that mum took me there as a little girl, just entered my question was always the same: Mum, could you buy me a rice tartlet?

The subtly lemon scented rice pudding tartlets were my favourite sweet treat as a child, whether bought by mum on a common Saturday when we went to visit my granddad Remigio who lived there, or by my aunt Silvana in an early morning before going to the market when I used to spend in San Gimignano a few days during the summer holidays.

It might depend on their special character or in their essence interwoven with childhood memories and flavours, but they are still my favourite choice on the rare occasions when I have breakfast in a bar, or when I enter in a baker’s shop and they have just been baked and are still warm with a gentle creaminess inside.

I baked them just before leaving for London, in one of those days when you need comfort from food and memories, using my grandma’s rice cake as basic recipe and working on it.

I scribbled down the recipe, took a few pictures and came to London meaning to write this post from here, from the warm and cosy kitchen in South East London, where there is always an Italian coffee. But then, as it always happens to me abroad, I felt like cooking home food and I baked again my rice pudding tartlets for breakfast along with minestrone, my mum’s veggie soup (not for breakfast!). The rice pudding tartlets, changing the country, have changed as well.

In Italy they are and should remain the tartlets you buy in a pastry shop, or better, in your favourite baker’s shop, round or softly oval, wrapped in a paper towel. They are supposed to be eaten standing up, perhaps with a coffee if you’re a grown-up or with a thick pear juice if you are a child, they are covered with icing sugar, that icing sugar that will inevitably dust your best dress in sweetness in the most important morning of your life.

Here in London, in the foodblogger headquarters, where any excuse is good to take new pictures or experiment a new combination, we played around with flavours and presentation. No icing sugar but a spoonful of thick greek yogurt and a drizzle of raspberry sauce, cooked with just a hint of sugar, to add a nice tart note. It goes well with our plans for tomorrow and a cup of Earl Grey.

Now you are spoilt for choice on how to serve these subtle lemon scented rice pudding tartlets, I already tried and tested the recipe for you!

Behind the scenes

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Mum, could you buy me a rice tartlet? The Italian rice pudding tartlets

You should be interested also in:

1. Light rice pudding
2. My Greek dinner: rice pudding
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: rice cake

Hello from London! Today I’m sitting in a cosy kitchen in London, the sky as you can easily imagine is leaden gray and it is also fairly cold. What am I doing here? let’s step back a few months…

As soon as I knew that my contract wouldn’t have been renewed I bought a ticket (a return ticket, don’t worry Mum) to London, to turn at least one of my many projects into reality: I wanted to work on my blog for a while from here with my friend Sarka, because every time we meet with her and the other friends from the Foodblogger Connect network interesting ideas are developed and I feel recharged, filled with life blood.

The plan is simple: I will keep on living the usual life that I would have had at home, but from a different point of view for two weeks, plus there will be some interesting meetings for my future work, fun, friends and so much food!

So here I am, trying to look at things from the outside, because thinking out of the box helps to streamline the projects, put them in order but even sometime make them more risky, or hopefully to see tiny back lanes you wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

When English people want to relax and find inspiration, they come to Tuscany, they visit the Chiantishire and live a gratifying experience under the Tuscan Sun, getting willingly lost in our rolling hills. On the contrary, I bought a ticket to spend some time under the British rain, to immerse myself into the buzzing city life of London, but also in the peaceful English countryside… My focus remains the same, my country, but sometimes it is useful to abstract yourself and look at your life with different eyes, or simply see what’s out of your kitchen garden, to come back home crammed with popping energy.

Thus, being focused on genuine country cooking dishes, I cannot offer you nothing better than this hearty and cosy winter soup, made with a fruity extra virgin olive oil from Umbria and roveja. The Roveja wild pea was grown for centuries on high altitude terrain in the Sibillini mountains in Umbria where it was part of the staple diet of the local population. It almost disappeared from tables completely until it was recovered by a Slow Food Presidium. Roveja is a small wild pea with a dark brown, reddish or dark green colour (you can find more info here).

Add a sprig of thyme for a touch of pungent green and a generous handful of sourdough bread croutons for a crispy crunchiness.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Cosy winter soup: spelt and roveja with thyme

You should be interested also in:

1. Acquacotta, the Tuscan stone soup
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: bean soup
3. The roots. Jersusalem artichokes soup

Mum has a sweet tooth for whipped cream. Sweet tooth may be simplistic to describe her relationship with whipped cream and the speed with which her spoon speeds under my eyes when I make a cake, returning to her full of whipped cream.

This said, she loves simple and traditional desserts: tiramisu, mantovana, rose cake with almonds, cream puffs. Simple, caring, reliable, reassuring, good, just like she is for me.

Saturday was her birthday and as usual, in a hurry and trying to fit everything that needed to be done, we could not celebrate properly her special day, apart from a huge bowl of real homemade fries, crunchy and sprinkled with Maldon salt crystals.

Though, since I am foodblogger and a daughter, I could not play dumb longer, and yesterday I made a simple cake to celebrate her in the afternoon with the rest of my large, noisy and happy family, you know perfectly all the adjectives that usually come along with my family on a Sunday afternoon!

Yesterday morning I had little time and a great desire to take a walk out pretending it was already spring, so I needed an error proof cake. In these crisis moments I always have an ace up in my sleeve: the pound cake is the basic recipe I bake every time I want to create something from scratch, avoiding disastrous side effects. You just need eggs, flour, sugar and butter in your pantry, you can replace butter with yoghurt, cottage cheese, mascarpone cheese, olive oil… and the cake is ready to be baked.

Yesterday I substituted butter with plain whole yoghurt and I added two heaping tablespoons of intense unsweetened cocoa in the dough. The result was a deep flavoured and light chocolate cake, moist and soft inside. Then, since we’re enjoying the citrus season, I have enriched the cake with lemon custard (the same I used for the Tuscan pine nut cake) to give a marbled effect and add a citrus freshness to the cake.

You can replace the lemon custard with lemon curd or make a simple cocoa pound cake with no other additions, now you know how it works with it! Do you have other tempting ideas for the marble effect? I would suggest also a good strawberry jam…

Happy birthday Mum, I love you!

I told you that the sunny countryside was tempting me in a walk outside, so as soon as the cake was ready I run out (ok, I walked out, I still have to exercise more after the Christmas feast to be able to run avoiding a heart attack!) to see which surprises the Nature had reserved for me. I was not wrong.

On the way back home I saw something moving in the fields in the valley: there were three roe deer running into the woods nearby. In the picture they are nothing more than spots of colour, but I believe you can still recognize them! A little farther on there was another herd of seven deer, but this time my fixed lens could not take a picture of them, so I simply watched them graze peacefully.

Searching for other ideas for a pound cake?

• my first attempt with pound cake was the mascarpone and strawberry pound cake, bookmark it for the upcoming strawberry season!
• this is one of the cakes I loved the most, the lemon and white chocolate pound cake. Since we’re not in season yet, use frozen berries for the topping, or just whipped cream.
• the persimmon cake, bake it with apples or pears for a wholesome afternoon cake.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Cocoa pound cake with swirls of lemon custard

You should be interested also in:

1. Strawberry and mascarpone pound cake
2. Lemon & White chocolate cake
3. Dutch cocoa cupcakes

During those old times the vagabonds were still crossing the country, living by their wits to get once in a while a hot meal to give them strength during the long and frozen moonless nights. In those days a witty vagabond was wandering near to the village, spending lonely hours at the edge of the forest and in the beech clearing. In his wanderings the Vagabond met a peasant, a poor widow who lived in poverty in her old hut near the river, and asked for some benevolence and charity, a soup and a warm place for the night.

The poor woman gave reluctantly a shelter to the wanderer, immediately pointing out that there was nothing to eat, since the pantry was empty. The Vagabond said he knew the secret of a magic recipe, the stone soup, so all he needed was just some water and a stone taken from the riverbed. Put a pot of water on the fire, Grandma, I will take care of the soup.

And so the Vagabond walked up and down along the bank of the river until he chose a beautiful gray stone with red veins. He rinsed the stone and brought it to the kitchen where a pot blackened by the years was already simmering over the fire. The Vagabond threw the stone into the pot and sat down to wait, under the unbelieving gaze of the old woman, who was knitting by the fireplace with an air of indifference.

In the silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, the Vagabond said, as to himself: Certainly, if we had a pinch of salt the soup would be even better… And the old woman, crawling to the cupboard, sought out a pinch of salt at the bottom of an old jar.

The Vagabond added: Certainly, if we had a potato, even old, the soup would be even better. The old woman went to the vegetable garden behind the house with a torch and returned with an old and wrinkled potato and a cabbage leaf, burned by the winter frost.

Not satisfied, the Vagabond , stirring the stone soup, said to the old woman: and now, if only we had an old ham bone, the soup would be really good! The old woman remembered the old bone with no meat in her pantry and gave it to the tramp, who added it to the stone soup that, to be honest, was already smelling good. And now, Grandma, the soup is ready! If only we had a morsel of stale bread, the…

I see, I see… interrupted the old woman. She rose again from her straw stool, rummaged in the bottom of the cupboard and found a morsel of dry bread, from which she cut two thin slices to put at the bottom of the two bowl.

The Vagabond poured a generous portion of soup in each bowl, and sat at the table with the old woman for a tasty and warm dinner. At the end, before going to sleep in the barn, he went to pot, picked up the magic stone, washed it, wrapped it in a rag and put it in the cupboard, then said to the old woman: Grandma, whenever you feel like a good stone soup, all you have to do is to simmer a pot of water over the stove and add the magic stone! Goodnight and thank you for your gracious hospitality!

This is well-known folk tale, sometimes the Vagabond is a beggar, sometimes a wily monk, sometimes a soldier… but the long and short of the story is always the same: with just a little you can really do something good, being it considered literally or as a metaphor, perfect of those days of big dreams!

The first time I heard this folk tale, it immediately reminded me of the acquacotta, literally the cooked water, a soup typical of the Maremma, a Tuscan area which was once very poor. It is another good example of peasant cooking along with many other recipes that have as main ingredients stale bread and some seasonal vegetables. It is a nomad dish that followed the people from the mountain Amiata who moved in winter to the plain of Maremma in search of work, bringing with them a few ingredients, among which there were always onions. The basic ingredients of acquacotta are indeed water, bread and onions.

I made a richer version, the kind of soup that at the time of the lean was reserved only for holidays or lucky days. In addition to bread, water and onions, there are the tomatoes, a can of peeled tomatoes that Mum made ​​during the summer, the egg cooked in the soup itself and a good deal of grated pecorino cheese, which is just divine as it melts with the liquid egg yolk!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Acquacotta, the Tuscan stone soup

You should be interested also in:

1. Cosy winter soup: spelt and roveja with thyme
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: tomato-bread soup
3. Ravioli filled with tomato bread soup

I wish I had enough words to thank you for your comments, e-mails, laughs and moved tears on my last post. I knew I would have found support and friendship in you, but – believe me – I was not expecting such a cheerful feedback! The crisis and the redemption desire sadly are common issues in these days, but on the other hand everyone of us, even if you do not want to admit it, somehow believe that dreams come true.

Last time I mentioned the thought about the crisis of one of the greatest geniuses of the last century, Albert Einstein, but today I want to use the melodious words of a romantic heroine of my childhood, Cinderella. She sings: A dream is a wish your heart makes, When you’re fast asleep (…) Whatever you wish for, you keep Have faith in your dreams and someday Your rainbow will come smiling thru No matter how your heart is grieving If you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true.

Since we are down-to-earth women here, we know that the situations are to be created and the fate sometimes needs a little help. My humanities studies at high school influenced me to believe that the best way is to study, so I made ​​a bibliography of books on Tuscan cuisine and gastronomic culture, which will become the basis of my days.

One of these books is Cucina Povera – Tuscan peasant cooking, by Pamela Sheldon Johns, who teaches cooking classes and workshops throughout Italy and is the author of sixteen books, many of which are dedicated to the Italian cuisine. But these few words are reductive to describe her, one of the most important connoisseurs and ambassadors of the Italian gastronomic culture abroad.

The book is engaging right from the cover and the kind of paper and binding used, since it recalls old time books. As from the title, it is about cucina povera, peasant cooking, the art to do with what you’ve got, the cooking of the times when you do not throw anything away, but you were able to cook with just a few ingredients hearty and tasty dishes to support the farmers working in the fields. The recipes belong to the times when the local produce was not a fashion issue, but a reality and a need, when you cooked with what was in the pantry in a given time of the year.

Among the many mouth-watering and typical recipes of the book – pigeon, carabaccia, necci, ribollita – I chose the one that is usually stamped with a family mark, bearing the flavours of a specific kitchen, the meatloaf: I wanted to savour that very special flavour of another family. It aroused shared memories, dragging me in a reality that I have not personally experienced, but of which I have heard so much about in my grandparents’ words or in my mum’s memories as a child.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

The meatloaf of the Tuscan peasant cooking

You should be interested also in:

1. My big fat Italian meat sauce
2. Pork sirloin with milk and white truffle
3. Irish Beef Stew with Guinness

On the first day of the new year I took a walk around the house, smelling the fresh air blowing gently over the hills. It was the first day of my new life.

From January 1, 2012, in fact, I am no longer an employee with a relatively safe job, my contract expired and recklessly believing in my dreams I decided to take a sabbatical year and devote myself to my passion and a personal project: Juls’ Kitchen.

From January 1, 2012, when asked about my job I should answer unemployed if I wanted to stick to the truth, but I’d rather say I am a full-time foodblogger, food writer and food photographer, I organize gastronomic tours in Tuscany and I teach Tuscan cooking classes for foreigners.

It might be not the best moment, due to the severe economic crisis that Italy, Europe and the whole world are facing now, I reckon, but Albert Einstein said: Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born from the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. I trust him, don’t you?

I want to take decisions, I don’t want to be overcome by the routine, I won’t choose the easy road for the fear of the steep climb, the brambles and rocks. I am a country girl, these are not the things that scare me. Am I reckless? maybe a little bit. Do I dream too big? I’ve always done that.

I want to make it, I’ll make it, not only for me, because finally I could have the life that I dream of, but for all those who believe in me and support me: first of all for my family, who took my decision philosophically, because for them the most important thing is to see a smile on my face, and I can understand them, since they taught me how to smile.

I owe this to my oldest friends, to those who were friends even when I wanted to be a forester, a marketing manager or a sport expert (no, if you ask, I have never wanted to be a model, to be honest). I changed my mind many times, but now I have found my way, and I am ready to follow it.

I owe this to the new friends I met in the last years, to those who are surrounding me with love, trust and enthusiasm, who laugh with me and at some of my foibles, encourage me with their presence every day with light hearted email correspondence and patiently explain the mystical mysteries of technology, listening seraphically to my passionate rants about the difference between muffins and cupcakes.

I owe this to those who share with me the same passion, the same job or the same dream of a job, and generously took me under their wing, showed me a way, weaved their dreams with mine to make them even more real.

I owe this to you who have followed me, leaving a trace or in silence, for almost three years, or maybe who have just found me, and do not understand what all this has to do with a cooking blog.

I’m happy. Happy, happy, happy, because now I can finally devote myself – body and soul – to my projects, even more than before. So there will be more recipes, more Tuscany, more daily life, more Giulia. It almost sounds like a threat…

So let’s start with some news!

• a new about me page, telling who I am now and showing a new haircut (new year, new life.. new haircut for a woman!).
• an up-to-date page with my projects: cooking classes, food tours in Tuscany and a special week dedicated to cooking and gastronomy at Verrocchio Art Centre.
• a video showing me, my strong Italian accent and my projects: Juls’ Kitchen

This is just the beginning: follow me here, on Twitter and on my Facebook page to see how things are evolving and to support my life project. Keep your fingers crossed and send me good vibes… Now more than ever I need to know you are with me in this adventure!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

New year, new life project

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My wish for 2012 is to connect the dots.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever – because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

Steve Jobs

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Happy New year and connect the dots

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On Christmas day it was really cold here in Tuscany: the sky was clear of clouds and the sun seemed to shine more than usual, but just left the house, warmed by the fire, the freezing air quickly reddened the cheeks and pricked the nose.

The clear winter day was too tempting not to attempt an afternoon stroll, enticed by the bright air and by the sun going down in an almost fairy-tale scenery behind the hills.

The hills in the dusk had turned purple, gradually fading into the deep blue and the moss-green. Then suddenly the nearest trees lighted up in warm colors, red and brown, and the air began to beam in the twilight tones, vibrating of life with the last leaves on the trees.

In these moments you feel the magic of Nature, its power and its mystery. In these moments you value what remains of the day.

What remains of the Christmas day, though?

After a lunch with more courses than a wedding feast there are many leftovers in the fridge: small pieces of cheese from the festive platter, a tiny pot with some good chicken stock used for the homemade cappelletti and few spoonfuls of mustard made for the bollito misto.

If you happen to have also half a glass of dark beer and a few slices of bread, do not miss the chance to make a creamy soup with a rich and deep flavour, to be eaten steaming hot in these winter days of frost and crystal clear air.

Searching for other ideas to mix cheese and beer in a comforting soup, I found this Anthony Bourdain’s video, look at that soup, sounds divine! Do you have any interesting recipe to share? I am curious to try other versions!

If you feel like mac’n'cheese instead, try the basic version or the pumpkin mac’n'cheese, one of my favourite dishes ever!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

The remains of the (Christmas) day: beer and cheese soup

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Merry Christmas to all of you, special friends, thank you for stopping by on this very special day and all the other days, looking for recipes or just to chat a little bit, thank you, you are essential to me!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Merry Christmas

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My ghost of Christmas past would bring a Tom and Jerry sweatsuit, a big yellow bag which contained the gifts the whole family, a baked fillet of salmon and a spinach flan. If I had to identify in every Christmas past, flipping through my memories album, an element that is always present, that tastes of home and that is repeated every 25th December, I would choose the spinach flan.

It is reassuring and cosy in its creaminess, intriguing thanks to the crunchy crust, the most desired bit at the table. The spinach flan is a side dish that doesn’t steal the scene to the main course, but accompanies it, dressing whatever it is on its Sunday best.

I remember those Christmases past: Mum and Aunt brought to the table a never ending lunch made of appetizers, two starters, a nice fillet of baked salmon and then a generous spoonful of spinach flan. Margherita, the almost-sister-cousin with whom I grew up, and I waited impatiently for that green and creamy spoonful of deliciousness, much more greedy of that than of the classic pandoro or panettone.

The height of success of the spinach flan was during the evening at home in your pajamas, only the four of us. We used to talk about the day watching a Christmas movie and having a “light” dinner with the leftovers. At that time I didn’t even need a dish: Mum put me in front of the mould with the last portion of the spinach flan and I licked the mould clean patiently, savoring the creamy center and the crispy and golden brown crust.

The spinach flan can be an ’80s style dish, perhaps a reflection of my Christmases past, but this year it has the right to enter into the game of the Christmas present.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

The spinach flan of the Christmas Past

You should be interested also in:

1. Chicken and spinach patties
2. Gifts, Christmas swaps and short pastry citrus cookies
3. White Christmas Meringues

They came home gift-wrapped as only Santa’s elves would be able to do: two kilos of intense Caffarel dark chocolate. They came home along with a shower of chocolate stars, wrapped in a shiny yellow and red paper. As you can see from my pictures, I was put in charge of the 20th of December in the Advent Calendar, a game started on December the 1st with Kja’s chocolate pudding, a festive treat you would’n miss!

I had more than a month to think about my chocolate recipe to perform my part on the 20th of December, and I was perfectly aware of what I was going to make with my two kilos of chocolate, a smooth chocolate spread.

A chocolate spread, especially if made ​​with extra virgin olive oil, can be stored for some time and is a good idea for a gourmet Christmas gift. Make it precious with a beautiful handmade label drawn with old pencils in shades of brown, use a Christmas napkin to cover the lid of the jar and tie it with a velvet ribbon.

The simplicity of the recipe is redeemed with the high quality of the ingredients: choose a light and fruity extra virgin olive oil, a not too strong or pungent one as could be an olive oil from Apulia, fabulous with burrata and orecchiette but not in pastry. The cocoa powder I used is from a local chocolate shop and artisan confectionery, De Bondt of Pisa, so intense that it made ​​me forget the love for the Dutch cocoa. The hazelnut cream is organic, made ​​exclusively with blended hazelnuts, which means that, if you want, you can blend the same weight of shelled hazelnuts into a cream.

Despite my psychological and material preparation and the bags with the best ingredients arranged on the table, my chocolatier’s Apprentice thermometer abandoned me when least expected, so I went to a rule of thumb.

Christmas is really close now, so take a few hours for yourself, chop the chocolate in a warm kitchen, inebriate yourself with its dark smell while melting it in water bath, indulge yourself in mixing it slowly with the hazelnut cream. Pretend to be Vianne Rocher for a night, lost among puffs of cocoa and dark chocolate flakes, you deserve it!

P.S. Try this chocolate spread on warm bread, then you’ll tell me what you think!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Hazelnut and olive oil chocolate spread

You should be interested also in:

1. Chocolate & Tahini Truffles
2. Olive oil cookies + some notes on the use of olive oil in confectionery
3. Chocolate, cream and mascarpone trifle

We are all talking about Christmas lunches, dinners, gourmet gifts to impress people we love, chocolate afternoon treats in front of the fireplace, lit by the lights of the Christmas tree and the flames of the fireplace. But what about breakfast? This year I want also an lavish Christmas breakfast, slightly different from the usual milk and cereals, soft and fragrant.

I want to start greatly the day that for me is one of the most exciting of the year with a soft tiny cake, whose flavours and fondant heart remind the typical Sienese ricciarelli. This is a very special tiny cake, where the lager beer gives a light malty aroma.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Almond and orange tiny cakes for breakfast

You should be interested also in:

1. Tiny cakes with apples and carrots
2. Ricciarelli, Siena’s almond cookies
3. The Italian breakfast, spelt flour and cocoa ring cake. Guest post for Kulsum of Journey Kitchen

My granddad Remigio used to walk with a cane, more for habit than necessity, and often waved it like Charlie Chaplin. He also had the same funny walk, and loved to wear his hat at a jaunty.

Once in a while, when mum was at work, I spent an afternoon with him in San Gimignano. Our main activity was going to the park to pick up the pine nuts. The park was right outside the city walls, with gravel paths surrounding the shady flower beds and big pine trees, huge.

Now the park is unfortunately different, they cut down my huge shady pine trees, but if I close my eyes I can still hear the gravel crunching under my child feet, and the balsamic smell of the pine resin, the birichicchero, as my granddad called it.

After the walk with my eyes pointed down in the winding gravel paths searching for the tiny precious gifts, I sat in the entrance of my granddad’s house, on a marble staircase, and opened the pine nuts with a small hammer that he kept just for us grandchildren. The hammer blows, a bit insecure, roared into the hall and the pine nuts shells flew everywhere.

I ate one pine nut after the other with my hands blackened by the fairy pine nut shell dust, leaving just a tiny handful for a possible cake. That’s why I waited so long to make my first pine nut cake! This is a recipe with a long story, my favourite kind of recipes as you may already know, just like last year Laura’s Sacher Torte.

This year the protagonist is Rita, Laura’s mother. This is Rita’s pine nut cake, passed on by Giuliana, who seems to have had the recipe from a famous Sienese pastry shop… here the mystery deepens, but since it is Christmas I want to tell you this perfect recipe. The pine nut cake recipe had all the credentials to succeed, I had tasted it several times at Laura’s and I really wanted to bake it again, that’s the result!

The recipe, tried and perfected for years by more than one family, is a reliable one: it is simple to make and gives a tremendous satisfaction to take it out from the oven, hot and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts, not to mention to eat it, with a fondant custard heart dotted with juicy raisins soaked in sweet wine. Talking about the silky custard, don’t miss the recipe, it has become the standard procedure to make custard at home!

Now just have a look at this slice of pine nut cake, it looks exactly like the cake showed in the San Gimignano pastry shop windows I looked at  with greedy eyes coming back home from the park with my granddad, with one hand secured into his huge hand and the other one holding tightly my bag of pine nuts.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

The Tuscan pine nut cake – a recipe with a story

You should be interested also in:

1. Cocoa pound cake with swirls of lemon custard
2. Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake – Are you a cook or eat person?
3. Lemon & White chocolate cake

I received a gift. I was living one of those moments in your life when you need to find a goal, something to commit for, something so important to deserve sacrifices and long hours of work. I wanted to find out who I was, I wished to be able to define myself through a dream. In that moment, a few years ago, my passion for food, Tuscany and writing lighted up and showed me what was meant to be made.

I realized I had received a gift, I had been living for my whole life in the Tuscan countryside, one of the most beautiful areas of the world. I could share this passion, the love for my region and for our food and our traditions. That could be the goal I was searching for in the past, that could be the reason that would lead my actions, giving a meaning to my everyday life. This will be my job from January, I couldn’t ask for a greater gift than passion!

This was the ultimate gift, this is the first mental image I had when Gloria asked us to talk about gifts for the Italy blogging roundtable. Don’t miss, on the 14th of December, the posts about gifts written by Gloria and by the other participating writers, Alexandra from ArtTrav, Jessica from Why Go Italy, Melanie from Italofile, and Rebecca from Brigolante.

This said, I am also a material girl and I adore simple gifts, received and made. I love the rustling of decorated paper, untying glittered ribbons or wrapping home-made gourmet gifts with care and imagination for my dear ones and friends.

This is one of the reasons that made me sign up to the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, hosted by Lindsay of Love & Olive oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen:

The premise is this: sign up. Receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. Send each of them one dozen delicious homemade cookies. Receive three different boxes of scrumptious cookies from other bloggers. Eat them all yourself (or, you know, share. If you want. No judgement either way.) Post your cookie recipe on your blog. See everyone else’s cookie recipes. Salivate. Get lots of great ideas for next years’ cookie swap. Rinse and repeat.

How not to sign up? Rossella asked them to extend the chance to take part to the swap to Italy as well, and we managed to reach the critical number of required foodbloggers and we largely exceeded it. Just add foodbloggers, cookies, Christmas and swap into the same jar, shake it up and you have one of the most exciting event of this Christmas!

I received buttery and decadent ginger and chocolate cookies from Nathalie, crunchy Sicilian cookies with pistachios and chocolate from Claudia and original chestnut shortbread cookies from Rossella.

My cookies, instead, travelled all the way to Luisa, Alessandra and Annamaria. Curious to know my recipe? It was a simple short pastry cookie, made with organic flour, butter and eggs and flavoured with the most fresh and natural essences: orange, lemon and mandarin peels, a citrus Christmas for everyone! They are the perfect treat for the afternoon tea, slightly crunchy and fruity. My favourite ones were the lemon and cardamom cookies, amazing with a cup of steaming black coffee.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Gifts, Christmas swaps and short pastry citrus cookies

You should be interested also in:

1. Christmas cookies, III episode
2. Cookies: Christmas reharsal
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: cavallucci, typical Tuscan Christmas cookies

Here I am, I’m sorry if I am a bit absent in these days but Juls’ Kitchen is eventually moving. After many and repeated problems with my Italian hosting company, Tophost, I am finally turning to a new hosting service on the advice of a blogger friend, Jaxies. I cannot thank her enough, I am already deeply in love with Host Duplex!

Stalking chatting with the founder who tells you what’s wrong and how to solve it, and who also takes responsibility for fixing all your problems, has no price: it is the first totally unexpected Christmas gift. In these moments you really realize the importance of courtesy and professionalism.

Here I come to today’s theme, another quick idea for a Christmas gift: White Christmas meringues. They are meringues, absolutely simple meringues, but, trust me, just write white Christmas meringues on the label of your nice gift bag and you’ll see happy faces all around you!

This is Jamie Oliver’s tested meringues recipe, this time flavoured with organic lemon peel and organic vanilla essence, a sweet and fresh cloud, a delicate as crystal gift for your loved ones.

Sorry, I lost all your comments in this post, but finally my blog has a reliable American server and a beating Tuscan heart: we’re ready for great things!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

White Christmas Meringues

You should be interested also in:

1. Gifts, Christmas swaps and short pastry citrus cookies
2. Ginger Meringues
3. Jamie Oliver’s Christmas cake

Those who know me now does not understand how I could have been such a picky little girl as a child. Unfortunately my skinny season lasted only up to 5 years old, when, after the tonsils operation, the enticing world of tastes and smells of the kitchen unrolled in front of my greedy eyes, turning me into a constant seeker of the most tasty and appetizing titbit, often even at the expense of Claudia.

She was born nine years after me, she was picky as a baby, lazy in eating and she really didn’t need much to feel full. I was different: every time it looked like I hadn’t eat for a week, and often – I am almost ashamed to tell you this – I used to keep a look-out for what she left in her dish, because ’Grandma she has finished, right? She’s not hungry any more, isn’t she? ‘

Grandma and Mum did their best to cook things that Claudia might like, to mark at least once a circle on the calendar, a prize for the rare days when my little blonde sister finished all the food in her plate (maybe those were the days when I was not at home).

Slices of tender meat coated with breadcrumbs and stewed in tomato sauce, custard, chocolate sponge cake rolls: they were harmless-looking dishes hiding very nutritious ingredients, so that Claudia could stock up a little weight even though she was not able to finish her dish.

One of those innocent-looking dishes were these chicken breast meatballs. Tiny and with a simple flavour, they were made with meat, potatoes and cheese: 3 or 4 meatballs would be enough to cover up a whole meal. I was so happy every time mum cooked the chicken meatballs for Claudia, and so convinced of their light and harmless aspect that I was always demanding for them, deeply sure they were a light dish… blissful innocence!

For children, the best side dish is a warm and creamy bowl of mashed potatoes, with lots of Parmesan in it: light colours, delicate flavours and easy to eat meatballs, how more can you ask for more?

Looking at the meatballs from the perspective of the grown up Giulia, however, I felt the urge to make them more interesting, playing with textures and seasoning: instead of mashed potatoes as a side dish I’ve served fresh fennel cut into wedges and drizzled with the same extra virgin olive oil I used to season the meatballs, this made to add the crunchy note I enjoy in every dish. Not content with the fennel, I decided to season the meatballs with three German mustards, Karin‘s gift, one with chestnuts, one with apples and one with peaches, so yummy! Obviously any type of mustard will do, provided it is not too pungent to cover the delicate flavour of the chicken.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Chicken breast meatballs

You should be interested also in:

1. Butternut squash soup and chicken meatballs
2. A midsummer night’s dinner. Chicken galantina
3. Chicken and spinach patties

Every time we indulged in the entranced reading of the menu as if it were a Michelin starred restaurant, evaluating with interest pairings and news: tacos, flat bread with Nutella, bruschetta, wraps… The strong point of the pub were the panini, though, hot and cold, 18 for each category. When I was unsure about what to order, I went on with my favourite one: a hot 16 and a lager beer, a small one or I won’t be able to drink it all!

The 16 was the panino I used to choose when I wanted to be reassured, when I could not lose myself in the contemplation of the menu because I was telling Laura word-for-word the developments of one of the many unrequited loves, which needed to be analysed in great detail from every point of view.

The 16 was the panino with artichoke sauce, smoked cheese and cured ham: it’s a combination that worked so well with the lager beer that I turned all the ingredients into a winter risotto, which still has the taste of those long Saturday nights of chats and great expectations.

What made this risotto so special?

# spalla cruda, that is cured pork meat from the shoulder of the animal instead of the leg, from which you make ham, a traditional Tuscan product, tasty, perfect accompaniment for our Tuscan bread without salt, with an aromatic and tasty fat that goes well with the savoury and dry meat.

# organic smoked goat cheese, brought here in Tuscany by Zita, a much appreciated gift from Hungary.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Beer and artichoke risotto with crumbled goat cheese

You should be interested also in:

1. The remains of the (Christmas) day: beer and cheese soup
2. Marinated goat cheese and life alone!
3. Home made goat ricotta cheese and roasted fruit