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.

This was more than a food crush, it was a foodie crush. I discovered another stunning food writer whose words are worth a thousand pictures (I’m always the last one to get to know things): more or less a month ago Gaia suggested me to read Molly Wizenberg - Orangette‘s blog and book, A Homemade life. She was pretty sure I would have loved her. And so it was.

Man, she knows how to use words! Light, witty, ironical and fun, she tells you recipes interwoven with her personal life, she shows you with vivid images why you will eventually find yourself in love with a recipe, and it happens without fail. After a few pages or blog posts you consider Molly one of your friends, you find yourself sharing the same memories and emotions.

One of the first recipes of her book is a banana bread, I read the recipe smacking my lips and bookmarked it. After a few days I was shopping at the local supermarket to make one of Dolci Tradizioni‘s recipes, when I spotted discounted overripe bananas: they were calling my name, aloud.

It was a slightly dissolute pleasure. I was baking cookies, cakes and tarts ten hours a day, late as ever on my schedule of recipes for the magazine, when I suddenly felt a compulsive need to bake a banana bread, for me. I whip it up in 10 minutes and spent the following hour dreaming about the cake, rocked by the mellow banana smell coming our of the oven.

Then I took a few pictures, madly in love with the melting chocolate running lusciously from the thick banana bread slices. Then I had two of that thick slices, feeling not guilty at all. It was a blissful moment instead, with the golden hour light warming my skin and the banana bread melting in my mouth.

It’s the kind of thing that begs to be cut into big, melty slices while the loaf is still hot… and so I did. Here’s the recipe, slightly adapted from Molly’s banana bread with chocolate and crystallized ginger. Then, I added a good sprinkling of macadamia nuts, inspired by one of her last published recipe, a pistachio pound cake.

Link love

• Valeria, she’s my banana bread girl! on her blog you can find not one, not two but three different recipes for banana breads! Banana bread my way, Spelt date banana bread and my favourite, bra-nana bread, crammed with seeds!
• I love lemon, I love olive oil, how not to love Heidi’s Lemony Olive Oil banana bread? I’m already dreaming about this, too!
• I had a slice, well two slices, of Beth’s banana, rum and macadamia cake this January. The crumbly texture was light and delicious, and the smell… bring on the Tropics!
• Tender, with a crisp, brown crust and really intense banana flavor, it’s perfect for breakfast, or thickly buttered with a hot cup of tea. You had me with hello, Banana bread on Food52.

Bye for a while

I’m entering into the most intense week of my life: cooking classes, my pastry class course and a picnic wedding to make… I’ll be back in ten days, for the moment enjoy the banana bread and tell me how much you’ll love it!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Banana bread with chocolate and macadamia nuts

You should be interested also in:

1. Chocolate & banana muffins + rum! Forever Nigella #2 “Seduced by Chocolate”
2. Jamie Oliver’s Two-nuts Chocolate Cake
3. Banana muffins

Here I am, coming from the garden, or rather, from what one day might become a vegetable garden. At the moment it is just a piece of land that we try to make free from the weed, but it is a hard and thankless. Since I changed my life and decided to work from home on my dreams, I realized that it’s a shame to live in the countryside and not grow a vegetable garden, it’s definitely out of this world, especially in these days. Everyone’s talking about the importance of the local produce, let’s make it even more local!

Obviously my grandmother is trying to teach me the basics: how to handle the hoe properly, how to place the small salad plants at the right distance, how to sow the tiny rocket seeds… is a continuous process. She has been able to teach me to cook, but she failed with the knitting, crochet and embroidery, let’s see if she has more luck with the gardening…

This morning we transplanted the salad, yesterday I put my first rhubarb plant in the back garden, because if Mohammed will not go to the mountain… in London I fell in love with its tangy flavour, rhubarb and strawberry pie, stewed rhubarb with clotted cream: I wanted rhubarb to infest my garden, too! Time will tell if it is in the right place (half shadow, lot of water, I’m lovingly taking care of it).

Actually, today I wanted to talk about another ongoing project. I’ve been dealing with it in the last two months, it finally gave a meaning to my idea of ​​turning a passion into a job.

It’s a new magazine, you will find it in every Italian news-stand, 60 recipes, from breakfast to after lunch desserts to night sweet cravings… but don’t worry, I’ll make sure to publish a few of them here in English for you!

I spent weeks testing, making huge mistakes and trying them again until I got the perfect formula of 20 recipes that you’ll find in the magazine, I also tasted them all, if you want to know, that’s why I must work in the garden to burn all these sweet temptations…

If you happen to find yourself in an Italian news stand, please leaf through it and let me know what you think of my first important job! Here we are already working on the July issue. But remember, as Oscar Wilde said, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Ongoing projects: a vegetable garden and a new magazine

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1. My 7 links projects: leafing through my on line life
2. Dining out: vegetable and feta cheese cocotte

It happens often: when girls grow up, they start to resemble to their mothers, finding themselves saying or doing exactly those things that until a few years earlier they could not put up with. I realized this unspoken truth when, still a teenager, I took my sister for the first time to the kindergarten, my blonde tot, nine years younger than me.

Three annoying words: blow your nose. I’ve always had a running nose – you can still hear my nasal voice in the video recipes – so my mum used to pronounce those dreadful words every time she met my eyes. So irritating, yet so spontaneous: I heard those words slipping out of my lips while I was already raising a flowery tissue to Claudia’s nose. Bewildered, I left Claudia with her teachers and took the bus to school, realizing that this episode was just the beginning…

You unconsciously absorb attitudes, words and glances from your mother, tiny details you find oddly incomprehensible as a child. Then you grow up and, without realizing it, you find yourself sharing with your mother even the same liking for desserts.

Gradually the crostata, our jam tart, which usually left me dumbfounded as a child – com’on, mum, the crostata? you know I do not like it (it was true at all…) – became one of the cakes I bake more often. So simple to make, without a written recipe to be followed, it can be modified according to your inspiration, you can play with different flours, sugars, jams and decorations… and above all, it really tastes good, good as a mum’s smell.

The jam tart is definitely the cake I baked the most since the first clumsy attempts as a child: fully melted butter to make the short pastry (never ever!), caramelized jam, charred Nutella, scorched tart… all useful trials to eventually get a simple, good and reliable recipe, the one you immediately decide to bake for school parties, for your nieces’ birthdays, the one you wrap in aluminium foil for your sister’s breakfast at the university (she has come a long way from kindergarten!) or cut into sturdy slices for the afternoon tea.

Yet this is the first post completely dedicated to a jam tart… is it too ordinary? but the ordinary uniqueness lies in a common feeling, shared by everyone: who has never thanked his mother for a slice of buttery tart for breakfast? So here we are, not a recipe, but a video recipe made with TVedo.tv!

Click on AD to listen to the English translation of the salient steps

Link love

• Even though this is the first post dedicated to the jam tart, I’ve always had a soft spot for short pastry, as you can easily find out from the huge amount of recipes calling for the magic team flour-sugar-butter-one egg! Just to name a few of them: the tahini and chocolate tart, the Tuscan Nutella and meringue tart, or also an all time favourite, the rice tartlets of my childhood.
• check also the jam crostata recipe written and tested for Food & Wine by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a writer, journalist, historian, with a special interest in food & foodways, Mediterranean cultures & cuisines… in a few words, one of the best food writer ever!
• another version, another great woman, Elizabeth Minchilli‘s crostata di marmellata, if you want points the next time you go to someone’s house for dinner, bring this tart. You’re sure to be invited back.
• Rhubarb and raspberry jam crostata, by Gourmet Traveller, serve it with vinsanto and I’m yours!
• She spent about ten years in Tuscany, yet she knows Italian and Tuscan food better than me! Emiko has two genuine recipes for jam tart: the classic crostata di marmellata, directly from the pages of the Artusi’s cookbook, and a fig frangipane tart, served with the memories of her first days in Florence as a twenty-year-old art student.

Work in progress

I showed you our summer gazebo that would have turn into my ‘hand-made’ photo studio, and here’s the result of many evenings spent with my father cleaning, painting and moving the old kitchen furniture (those who saw the beginning of my food obsession). Well, actually, my father did most of the job and I simply moved all my props, tough work, though! A few square meters where there is everything I need to take the pictures you see on this blog: finally I do not have to climb on chairs or on the table, or stand crouched in a corner to find a little spot of light even in the evening!

Now I need a proper and well furnished kitchen, but I fear I must find a sponsor for that!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Basic (video) recipe: jam crostata, getting closer to mum’s taste

You should be interested also in:

1. Spinach and ricotta Tuscan ravioli, or when I made the first video recipe
2. DB Challenge: crostata with 2 fillings {chocolate & tahini and chestnut pastry cream}
3. A vintage (video) recipe: homemade mayonnaise and stuffed eggs

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.

Press AD to listen to the English translation of the salient steps.

Julia Child’s tips

Read Julia Child’s tips to get a perfect mayonnaise before you start beating your egg yolks:

• Mayonnaise is easiest to make when all ingredients are at normal room temperature, so warm the mixing bowl in hot water to take the chill off the egg yolks. Heat the oil to tepid if it is cold – I think I’ve been quite nagging about that on the video.
• Pour the oil in a thin stream or drop by drop until the mayonnaise thickens into a heavy cream. After this, the oil can be incorporated more rapidly. Use from 240 ml to 350 ml of oil per 3 egg yolks.
• The original recipe is for hand-beaten mayonnaise, but you can easily use an immersion blender or an electric beater on medium speed.
• If you follow Julia’s thoughtful advice you won’t have trouble with freshly made mayonnaise. Though, mayonnaise can go crazy – it happens! - when the sauce refuses to thicken or curdles. Do not panic and do not throw theatrically bowl and whisk into the bin! First, while making mayonnaise, beat 2 tablespoons of boiling water into the sauce: this is an anti-curdling insurance. Second, if it has already happened, add one tablespoon of mustard and one tablespoon of curdled sauce in a warm and clean bowl. Beat for several seconds until they cream and thicken together. Beat in the rest of the sauce by teaspoons, thickening each addition before adding the next. This always works.

Notes on the ingredients

1. Use organic free range eggs.
2. Choose the oil according to your taste: extra virgin olive oil or vegetable oil. I used an organic sunflower seeds oil, since I was searching for a less prevailing taste, but if you opt for olive oil, be sure to pour on your mayonnaise a mild fruity olive oil. Speaking of Italian olive oil, I would suggest a Ligurian DOP.

Link love

1. This is the homemade mustard I used to give a kick to my mayonnaise. Although it is not Christmas, it’s always a good time to make a jar of mustard and keep it in the fridge … for months!
2. These are Eleonora‘s tips to make mayonnaise, because homemade mayo rocks!
3. Vegan? My friend Alice has a recipe for no-egg mayonnaise, it works magic! (in Italian)
4. Not to miss anything, check David Lebovitz‘s Provençal version of mayonnaise, the aioli, a garlic sauce to serve with fish and vegetables, a persistent memory of my holidays in Provence.
5. Talking about garlic, my mind runs to my friend Beth and her recipes, here’s an idea for an explosive Lebanese garlic sauce: if you haven’t met Beth and tried her food you can not understand the full meaning of the word garlic!
6. Finally, a video with Julia Child to enjoy her manners, her wit, her mastery in the kitchen … bon appetit!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A vintage (video) recipe: homemade mayonnaise and stuffed eggs

You should be interested also in:

1. Basic (video) recipe: jam crostata, getting closer to mum’s taste
2. Spinach and ricotta Tuscan ravioli, or when I made the first video recipe
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: tomato eggs

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.

I enthusiastically agreed to take part to the event for two main reasons.

First of all, I had not visited San Vincenzo in the last 10 years, when I stayed at my uncle’s house for a short beach holiday during the first year of university, spending most of my time on the book of contemporary history rather than on the beach… Yet, my mum still remembers with fondness her holidays in San Vincenzo as a teenager, and one of my best friends, Emiko, has dreamy eyes every time she tells me wonders of the bonito festival, one of Tuscany’s best food festivals (her words!)

Second, I knew the bonito only by name, but I have never had the chance to taste it, what’s more fresh and cooked by the best restaurants of the town.

So I took my tiny car and drove through one of the most breathtaking and bendy road of the region, the old road that cuts through Volterra and brings you directly from my town to the seaside, thrilled to see the blue sea appear on the horizon after such a challenging drive.

We tasted the palamita again and again, for the whole day, cooked by different chefs according to their own sensibility and taste, eight different dishes aiming to represent the deep blue sea and the typical produce of the Tuscan land. I thought that I would have not eaten palamita again before a few months, but the day after I was strolling along my supermarket aisles with 2 kilos of fresh palamita in my shopping trolley.

In every dish there was creativity and passion along with fresh fish and seasonal produce, you could taste the effort every chef put not only to impress the jury but to communicate their personal interpretation of the central role of palamita in the local food tradition.

On the way back home, back down the same winding road, I unusually turned off the radio to rest my mind, crammed with words and images. One day spent with real and passionate people was enough to understand how the palamita festival is an event that you must live with open heart and full stomach, an example to follow in the scene of the Italian food festivals, the place to go to taste real food, a place where one bite of grilled sardines tells more than a thousand words and better explain why the oily fish is a key product of the food and history of the Tuscan coast.

The Tuscan Sea Palamita is a Slow Food Presidium. You can read on the Slow Food website a thoughtful presentation of this precious fish of our coastal area.

A relative of tuna and mackerel, palamita (Atlantic Bonito) is a streamlined, pelagic predator with a large mouth with sharp teeth even on its palate, small circular eyes and a body ip to 80 centimeters long covered with scales that on the back are dark blue to sky blue-green, with silvery sides and oblique blackish stripes. It is caught from late-Spring to early-Summer and again at the end of September, when it weighs up to five-six kilos. The fishing area extends along the entire coast of the Tuscan Archipelago, with several favorable points such as Capo d’Enfola, near Portoferraio, on the northern coast of Elba, where until a few decades ago there was still a tonnara dedicated to processing this fish.

The meat of ‘palamita fish’ has a strong flavor with a delicate hint of acidity and can be cooked in various ways: grilled with fine herbs, oil and salt, or steamed with tomatoes, parsley, garlic, capers, olives and chili pepper (known as ginger in Tuscany). Yet the best way to savor palamita is preserved in olive oil: the larger fish are boiled after cutting them into fillets and kept under olive oil with bay leaves, pepper and the ever-present ginger. The result is very delicate fillets similar to tuna.

This is how the story end and the reason why half of my palamita is now preserved in olive oil in a shelf of my pantry.

Where and when

You are all still in time to experience the Tuscan coast and its tasty oily fish: this year the palamita festival will be held in San Vincenzo on the 5th and 6th of May, and I’ll be there to report this amazing – and infinitely tasteful – experience.

On Sunday, restaurants, bars, clubs and shops will offer to all the ticket holders a mesmerizing tasting samples of bonito, oily fish and local produce, cooked and presented in a thousand different ways, as well as a rich selection of wines.

Link Love

1. Read the detailed description of palamita on the Slow Food website, where you can discover traditions, recipes and history of our must appreciated and diffused poor fish.
2. Visit the website of the Municipality of San Vincenzo dedicated to the event, www.palamita.com, check this year program, the restaurants taking part to the competitions, photos and news of the previous editions and find useful links to plan your staying in the area.
3. The agriturismo that hosted us in San Vincenzo is Poggio ai Santi, a paradise on earth. It is an organic farm producing honey, extra virgin olive oil and wine, overlooking the hills and the sea. You will discover peaceful and tastefully decorated rooms, hidden among the pine trees. It is the ideal place to write a book, who knows…
4. Loose yourself in the inspired photographs and writing of Festa della Palamita, a Tuscan food festival, written by Emiko for Honest Cooking. She’s already been there in the past year and now - even if she’s living in Australia right now - she would take a flight back to Italy just to enjoy the festival once more!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

When I fell in love with palamita – The fish food festival of the Etruscan Coast

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It is not the green nor the honey scented air. Shifts and shades are what makes the spring interesting, just as it happens in life. The green that gradually fades from hill to hill, the fields decorated with arabesques of yellow flowers or still the skies sailed by the heavy clouds of a quick-tempered spring.

Spring is made of surprising shifts from rain to clear weather, of shadows dancing over the fields following the path marked by the clouds above. It’s the variety and the unexpected surprise that make spring the most enigmatic of the seasons.

I made this salad for ​​the first time to use a bountiful amount of spring ingredients, then I tried it again, savoured it on many occasions with different people, with friends and students at a cooking class. As it happens with spring, the shifts and the shades are what makes the salad interesting: cold, warm and hot in the same dish, the metallic taste of the artichokes and the milky cheese, the fresh herbs and fruity olive oil. It’s a game, ingredients are playing hide and seek to represent spring in a bowl of warm salad.

Then it seemed natural to repeat the salad once again in my second video recipe, to give a deeper dimension to the green of fava beans, peas and asparagus, to make them alive.

We decided to try again to tell a recipe through moving images, spoken words and (strong) Italian accent, I hope you all will appreciate it as much as I appreciated your loving feedback last time… so this is the result, once again thanks to the precious collaboration with TVedoTV.

– Press AD to listen to my English translation of the salient steps. –

So what do you think? I tried to follow your advice and smile more, hiding the emotion behind an orange shirt to give even more colour to the video! I also tried to control the repeated words, but maybe this time a very simple would have been just perfect to describe the salad, don’t you think? Isn’t it the most simple and tasty warm salad?

To wish you an amazing weekend, a few pictures of the Tuscan countryside in the dancing springtime: just look how colours, shades and landscapes change within 20 kilometres and 20 minutes by car.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Shades of green ouside and in the dish: warm spring salad, the videorecipe

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1. Warm spring salad with grilled pecorino cheese
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3. A midsummer night’s dinner. Russian salad

Before Elizabeth David and Joanne Harris, before collecting cookbooks, memoirs of passionate cooks and any other book about food and the related world, before of all this there were two books that had unleashed persistent culinary fantasies that still come back to visit me.

The first is a book of my childhood, one of those first serious books that children read, one of those of the old times: it’s Heidi by Johanna Spyri. I still have here before my eyes the vivid images evoked in the chapter where Heidi arrives to his grandfather’s mountain cabin in the Swiss Alps, the precise words describing her first frugal dinner made of rustic bread, cheese and warm daily fresh milk. I still feel on my tongue the genuine taste of the cheese, of the buttery milk and crispy bread.

The second book dates back to my teenage years, two short lines in the book Voices written by Dacia Maraini, a writer who had already inflamed my imagination in the Silent Duchess and Bagheria, bringing me into a baroque world of Mediterranean flavours.

Voices it’s a crime novel dense of sensations and questions as well as the inebriant smells of a hot Roman summer. The protagonist is Michela Canova, a journalist trying to to shed a light on the murder of her neighbour. She invites some friends over for dinner and makes them a dish of lemon spaghetti.

The two sentences describing Michela cooking the spaghetti are not particularly evocative. Though, all my senses and perceptions were already kindled up by the highly sensory and vivid writing style of the author, so the yellow, the butter and the freshness of those spaghetti got impressed on my mind, as if I had actually tasted them, as if my task was to rebuild after years a map of primordial flavours to take as reference.

After ages, yesterday I entered into the kitchen with a precise purpose: make those zesty lemon spaghetti and give a real taste to an idea. Yet, I opted instead for delicate fresh pasta tagliolini made with a hint of black pepper in the dough, a generous dusting of grated Parmesan cheese and some freshly picked thyme, to light up the citrus freshness of the lemon.

This is an every day dish, one of those essential preparations that remind you how good simple things are.

Note. To make fresh pasta follow this recipe or watch this video!

And what about you? Do you have any recipe inexplicably impressed on your mind after reading a book that has nothing to do with cooking? I mean, maybe an elfic recipe from The Lord of the Rings, or the mindblowing butterbeer of Harry Potter (I need to find that recipe, too!)?

Link Love

1. My friend Emiko has the most simple and delicious recipe for tagliolini al limone, paired as usual with beautiful pictures of her dishes and the Tuscan seaside, don’t miss her post.
2. Jamie Oliver has another great recipe for Lemon linguine, spiced up with a bunch of balsamic fresh basil.
3. Which is your favourite recipe for lemon tagliolini? Link it here, I’m just craving for more zesty pasta!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

From the pages of an old book: fresh lemon tagliolini

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1. A midsummer night’s dinner. Fresh vegetarian lasagna
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In my other life, when I used to study and work in marketing and communication, there was a theory founded on the four Ps, namely to build a successful marketing strategy you have to work on the following aspects: Product, Price, Place, Promotion.

Then – as it usually happens – the theory was developed and they added a fifth P, People. The people working to sell a product or a service should know everything about what they are going to sell, be perfectly aware of the story behind a product, the advantages in buying it. In a few words, they should convey to the customers emotions, passion and experience.

In La Petraia the place was beautiful beyond any expectations, calm and almost mystic, the food was soulful and unconventional in its presentation, the idea behind the project revolutionary…

But I was sold on the people. It’s not that they knew everything about la Petraia and were brilliant in communicating this, all of them were enthusiastic about the place they were working in. You could sense from their words that they truly believed every single word they were spending on the project.

The road to get there is breathtaking, both for the views over the tumbling hills patterned with vineyards, and for the steep white road you meet on your way there.

Though, as soon as you spot La Petraia at the bottom of the hill, surrounded by a lavender field that will give its best in the blooming season of June and July, you cherish every single bend and slope you drove through to get there.

La Petraia is a Tuscan agriturismo, a country inn on a working farm of 67 hectares in the Chianti Mountains. The house was built in the XII century, while the Canadians owners, Micheal and Susan, bought it in 2001, breathing new life into a long dormant property. The core of the house is the vegetable garden beside the kitchen, then a henhouse came along to provide Susan, the chef, with fresh daily eggs.

So far, nothing striking new. The Tuscan landscape is flecked with small family run agriturismi, offering a real experience to their guests.

If you remember, I was referring to a revolutionary idea behind the project. They restored the house and gave new life to the land with an ecologic intent: organic, biodynamic, then a global system where is Nature to dictate the rules. They chose a sustainable and self-sufficient system, something natural and easy to maintain when there’s a great variety, namely chaos.

They produce their own vegetables, meat, fruit, milk and honey. The olive trees they planted are beginning to produce olive oil and the vineyards wine. They are rising animals like the Cinta senese pig and the Valdarno chicken that teeter on the brink of extinction. In 2006 they embarked on a project with the province of Siena to grow several varieties of heirloom fruit trees once indigenous to the area but now almost extinct.

The step beyond biodynamic means that they accept the illness as a part of the system: if the 10% of the apples production gets spoiled, it remains into the system as food for the animals or becomes compost to be used in the fields.

In the orchard they grow several local heirloom fruit next to more international and standardized ones. Well, they proved that the local Pera Volpina or Pera Casetta do not need anything to survive, is Nature who takes care of them, while the international species tend to die, if not properly looked after. What started as a brave experiment is now a confirm.

Then the food: humble as foraged herbs can be, soulful, inventive, comforting and far from the beaten tracks of pici al cinghiale and tagliata that you can find in every touristic restaurant in Tuscany.

Seasonal dishes created with skill and sensitiveness by Susan, a vegetable garden laying just outside the kitchen door and peeping inside through fresh herbs, fresh daily eggs and edible flowers. Then you finish the dinner with the honey scented mead and home-made pralines and fruit desserts: it’s like sitting at the Elves’ table, an unrivalled experience.

Agriturismo La Petraia
53017 Radda In Chianti (SI) Italia
www.lapetraia.com

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

La Petraia, Radda in Chianti – Sitting at the Elves’ table

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1. Sunday in Panzano in Chianti

Chiara has been my pen pal in the last 17 years, we started writing long and passionate letters with sharp colourful drawing pens and a round teenager handwriting, now we exchange quick messages and e-mails, to play along with the family busy schedule.

In seventeen years we exchanged a thousands of letters, e-mails and some photos, two phone calls and just one visit three years ago, then we managed to meet again eventually and we spent the Easter time together, in joy and disbelief, with her, her husband Luca and her two smiling babies, Sara and Davide.

We talked and talked, till we lost our voice, we talked in the car, at the table, on a seesaw, in the park and under the porch to skip the sudden downpour, while the kids run and run to fall asleep in the early evening, just after a quick dinner.

We pretended to be tourists – cameras, water and cap – in Colle Val d’Elsa and San Gimignano, where we ate the famous schiacciata (in this case a real savoury flat bread, not that schiacciata): fluffy and tasteful, with tiny puddles of olive oil and salt, still the same since I was a child and my mum was a child, too.

We played with the Lego, after years of silent and dusty rest in a wardrobe, we run after butterflies and pigeons, we searched for gnomes’ traces along a wood path and we hunted out with excitement their treasures, feathers and diamonds.

We foraged wild herbs to be serve as a side dish to the Easter roasted lamb, then we indulged ourselves in a thick slice of sportellina with a huge piece of dark chocolate Easter egg, with hazelnut, too.

In these days a fruit salad was served after every meal, spooned generously into colourful plastic bowls to gather the kids’ attention. They loved fruit anyway, but it was dressed in a festive way, sweeter and pink. The strawberry sugar cast its spell on every fruit spoonful, conquering kids and grown-ups.

Where to use the strawberry sugar:

• it gives colour and fragrance to fruit salads, enhancing the strawberry flavour,
• it adds a pinkish hue to cocktails and it’s a perfect decoration to trim the rim of a glass of cold lemonade,
• unusual but glossy, use it to sprinkle on strawberry muffins,
• it sweetens ricotta cheese and raviggiolo, turning it into a fresh spring dessert.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Pink and sugary after a family weekend: strawberry sugar

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1. Strawberry and mascarpone pound cake
2. Pink Post: pink chiffon cake
3. Strawberry tree jam

Its name is schiacciata (flat bread), but it is anything but flat. It’s the typical Easter sweet bread of my areas, popular in most of the Tuscan region with slightly different names and small changes that could allow an expert eye to attribute undoubtedly the schiacciata to the Sienese area, the Elsa valley or the empolese county.

To tell the truth I call it sportellina, the very same name they use in San Gimignano, because my grandfather Remigio had really a sweet tooth for it, and as soon as you entered the Easter period he began to send us thick slices of schiacciata, tightly sealed in plastic bags to keep it fresh. Mum usually took it home just in time for tea, she came in and put the sportellina in a dish with a knife, in the middle of the table already laid for the afternoon tea.

Its name is schiacciata (or stiacciata) because they used to break (schiacciare in Italian) many eggs: it’s spring and the hens begin to produce eggs at a fast pace. You make an omelet, you cook a fried egg, you make also a fricassee, but then you must find a way to use so many eggs… so the women baked the Easter schiacciata, but not just one or two, they kneaded them in large quantities with those arms accustomed to hard working in the fields, to give to their neighbours, relatives, the doctor, the pharmacist, all of the notables of the time.

My mum’s cousin, Gelsomino, as well as moral owner of the recipe that got me over my yeast performance anxiety, to this day still bakes about fifty schiacciate every Easter… what can I do, I know so many people…

He has generously given us well proved ingredients to use: I would say that after an annual output of fifty schiacciata they will guarantee for sure perfect results. As for the method to follow, the advice was to look at the dough. And so I did, and among us developped an old fashioned love story, one of those stories that followed the right rhythms and pauses, without hastening the steps.

As in any respectable love story, there is also a confidante, a friend now living on the other side of the world that shares your moods and experiences them at the same time. Emiko has rocked the same precious love for hours, and now she’s proudly presenting you the Fucecchio version of this classic Tuscan sweet bread.

This is how everything started.

Sunday, 6.30 pm, the started. While everyone was outside enjoying the last spring sunbeams, I was in the kitchen half hidden behind the largest bowl I found, almost a basin: lukewarm milk and brewer’s yeast to begin. I like to crumble the yeast with my fingers, my hands quickly become velvety and smell good. I slowly stir in the flour with a fork, then I can not resist any longer and put my hands inside, I caress the dough and knead it some more, just enough to make it homogeneous. I dust it with some flour, then put it to rest in the oven with the light on to create a bit of warmth inside.

Sunday, 8.30 pm, 1st rising. Mum, Dad and Claudia are having dinner, I meddle with the scale to add the first ingredients to what tomorrow might be my first Easter schiacciata: eggs at room temperature, raw cane sugar, extra virgin olive oil and some flour, then I knead it. I know it’s impossible, but I am sure I can already smell something good, I am proud and in love with this little ball of dough, slowly rising in the warm oven.

Sunday, 11.30 pm, 2nd rising. Had it not I was collapsing asleep, I would find this moment poetic. The house is now dark and silent, while I’m kneading my Easter sweet bread-to-be in a corner of the kitchen, with just one light on the counter. Kira sleeps in a corner, with deep and regular breaths, I do everything possible not to wake her up. But in the silence of the house even the cracked egg shells sound thundering. Again eggs, and sugar, olive oil, flour, orange juice, cherry liqueur and mint rosolio. Despite the fact that I cannot cope with the mint rosolio on itself – it tastes just like mouthwash – it adds incredible nuances to the Easter schiacciata, it is one of the secrets. I knead the dough for the last time for today, I soak the aniseed into the mint rosolio, stash the dough away into the warm oven, then I finally call it a day.

Monday, 7.00 am, the alarm goes off, 3rd rising. During the night the schiacciata has risen and now has a ripe smell, I cannot resist not to tear off a piece of raw dough with my hands and eat it, even before breakfast. I add the last ingredients: eggs, olive oil, melted butter, mint rosolio, cherry liqueur, flour, sugar, well soaked aniseed. Along with mint rosolio, aniseed make the schiacciata different from anything you’ve ever eaten for Easter.

Monday, 11.00 am, 4th rising. This time I do not add anything, my Easter schiacciata is already perfect in its smell, I just knead it with energy, divide it into three balls and lay them into paper moulds to let them rise for the last time. You need now a warm place, so I put them in my bed between two pillows, covered with the duvet. In the old days they used to put a brazier in the bed to gently warm it up, today I turn on the electric blanket to cradle the three sweet breads in a steady warmth, to make them double in size within a few hours.

Monday, 4.00 pm, the baking begins. The windows and the doors are tightly closed to avoid any draughts that could deflate the schiacciata in a breath. I go to my room with my grandma, we collect the schiacciate from under the duvet and cover them with a warm cloth to keep them at an even temperature, then we bring them down in the kitchen in an awkward procession. A quick brush of beaten egg white on the top, then I carefully lay them in the centre of the oven. I sit there and watch them rise.

Monday, 4.50 pm, the schiacciate are ready. I turn off the oven and I eagerly open the oven door: the smell of yeast, aniseed and mint rosolio runs over me along with the humid heat of the fragrant sweet bread. The only thing that beats their smell it’s their subtle flavour, but for to taste that you have to wait for them to cool down completely. This will be the longest and most tempting hour, this is yearning for love …

The Tuscan Easter schiacciata is not as buttery and almond sweet as the traditional colomba (another sweet bread shaped as a dove). It’s a bashful sweet bread, it takes some time to be completely appreciated. It has the same reticent character of certain Tuscan people, faintly rough on the surface, but generous as soon as you get to know them better. It is traditionally eaten with the Easter chocolate egg or soaked in a tiny glass of vinsanto, the ever present sweet wine on our holiday tables!

As usual, I upset all the rules: I do something that should not be done, something that could strike me off the Tuscans roll: I soak my thick slice of sportellina into a glass of water, just like I did and still do with the biscotti di Prato. I do it stealthily, when anybody can see me, a pleasure doubled by being unseemly. Traces remain in the glass and a smile on my face to witness this heresy.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

An old fashioned love story: Tuscan Schiacciata, sweet Easter bread

You should be interested also in:

1. The Tuscan pine nut cake – a recipe with a story
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: grape ‘schiacciata’
3. Summer fruit pie with Jamie’s old-fashioned sweet shortcrust pastry

The fact is, I just can not stand my recorded voice. Everyone tells me that I have the very same voice as my mum, and actually they keep on mistaking us at the telephone, but I like mum’s voice, it’s sweet and it is the voice of my mum, how can I not like it!

Then I hear my voice, and I would hide under the table, a Mickey Mouse’s tone and a strong Tuscan accent I cannot conceal.

When the TVedo.tv guys proposed me to film a video recipes series dedicated to Tuscan-inspired dishes with simple and seasonal ingredients I wavered a split second, thinking about how my recorded voice would have sounded, then I told myself that it was a such a fun chance to be missed.

Who cares if my voice sounds funny, who cares if my Italian accent is so strong I sound like a Sopranos’ character, who cares if in the English dubbing I made more mistake than in my first year studying English, who cares about the repetitions…

Yes, the repetitions. If you listen carefully to the video, you’ll recognize often those two words: simple and rustic. I used them as Homer did with the epic epithets: every time I was embarrassed and I was missing the words petrified by the camera eye looking at me, I threw in a very simple, which gave me the time to think about what else to say.

Filming a video recipe without ‘stooop, and… again‘ and without stammering in shame was a moral victory for me: I am the shy little girl who played Mary in the crib at the kindergarten during the Christmas play because it was one of the few parts where you were not supposed to speak, but only to stand silent with your folded hands and smile to the shepherds.

I’m the chubby girl who walked on the stage at primary school, during the annual play, with her cute Scottish skirt tucked into her white stretch stockings, realizing the awkward thing too late. I’m the one who opened a foodblog, and not a channel on Youtube, because words run fast through my fingers on the keyboard, not from my lips.

Diego and Leonardo from TVedo.tv, though, managed to calm me down and at the same time they made me feel like a pro, with a microphone, two cameras and a control room next door.  For a few episodes, they turned a shy country girl into a chatty and gesturing Italian on video!

Nuff said, I’m proud and very excited to present you the first episode, the ravioli alla Maremma, Tuscan fresh filled pasta with spinach and ricotta, a very simple and rustic recipe, if you had not figured it out yet… please be forgiving with my accent and mistakes, but be aware that this is only the first one and that it will every time more fun!

Click on AD to listen to the English version!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Spinach and ricotta Tuscan ravioli, or when I made the first video recipe

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1. Basic (video) recipe: jam crostata, getting closer to mum’s taste
2. Ricotta, ham and parsley ravioli
3. A vintage (video) recipe: homemade mayonnaise and stuffed eggs

Yesterday I was sitting at the table with my grandma, we were eating a wild herb omelette and talking about the times gone by, my plans for the future and my grandma’s memories of when she was young.

You need time to do make country food, that’s the reason they stopped cooking it. Herbs must be collected, carefully washed and rinsed more than once, cooked just for the time they need to get tender, chopped and then only at the very end you make an omelette with them. Can you imagine it now? You open the fridge, throw something into the pan and it’s ready.

These few words made ​​me realize the luxury of a morning spent outside in the sun. If it wasn’t for that piece of paper hung on the gate a few days ago about the stop of the electricity supply for maintenance work, I would have never spent lightheartedly so many hours away from the PC.

Yesterday morning at nine o’ clock, as notified, a still silence fell in the house, no vibrations from the fridge or the PC, there was just one clock ticking, the only clock left with true hands in the house.

Even though with a short notice, I had time to organize everything: paint, sandpaper and rough boards to finally make some backgrounds for the photos, a project sitting in the corner for over a year, then a book about native plants to forage our lunch with Grandma.

We have collected herbs far from the streets, in our little field, where we do not use herbicides and fertilizers, we washed them out in the basin, then grandma cooked them for a little while, enough to make them tender for the omelette.

What was the daily means of support in the former days countryside today has become a luxury and is based on two increasingly rare resources: time and knowledge.

Thanks to a few hours without electricity supply in the evening I felt richer, satisfied and with a nice hue on my cheeks!

Most of the herbs we collected can also be eaten raw in salads, as long as they are young and tender. You can obviously make and omelette with spinach, chard, turnip greens, kale … anything that comes in green leaves has an happy marriage with eggs.

Wild herbs, though, bring a deepest and slightly bitter flavour, with an unexpected buttery texture.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

An old-fashioned morning… wild herb omelette

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1. Omelette with herbs, from an Elizabeth David’s recipe
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: Onion Omelette
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: Pumpkin Omelette

I just noticed it, within less than a week I stepped from celebrating the good aspects of an alone meal, spent listening to your thoughts, to the celebration of a lunch with friends as the perfect time of aggregation, fun and good food.

I have been asked to produce a savoury recipe that could be a perfect match with a passito wine “La Bella Estate” Terredavino. So, sweet wine – savoury food. Oh well…

Blank expression. To get the right match of wine and food for me is like guessing the right combination of the lottery numbers. Even though you just need good luck with the lottery, with the combination of wine and food it’s enough to have a sommelier friend who loves to experiment and has in mind a complete table of scents and flavours combinations, and you’re done.

Add friends who love to interpret each recipe and you have also your favourite models for the photos. Undress yourself, it’s time to shoot the wine… I am not talking about X rated pictures, I just preferred a black t-shirt to a yellow sweatshirt as a background for the sweet wine glass!

The idea of the dish is simple, it comes from the need to let understand intuitively the wine, without too much thinking, using ingredients that naturally go well together.

The bread, the base of the crostone, is the result of another day of studying spent trying to become familiar with my sourdough. It’s a rustic breadloaf made with wholewheat flour with a soft and moist inner part, perfect to be toasted in the oven.

The lardo di Colonnata – cut into paper thin slices, melts with desire at the first contact with the warm crusty bread, releasing its sweetness.

Do not peel the pear, as the beautiful rusty peel will draw a nice classic pear shape over the bread, while the pulp, grainy and sweet-tart, will be a perfect complement to the sweet gorgonzola.

The gorgonzola, an Italian blue cheese, is the central pairing to the sweet wine and a drizzle of chestnut honey will gently glaze the crostone, not too sweet to break the balance of the dish.

I am neither an expert nor a wine lover, but the pairing highlighted the flavours and was so right that made me say: may I have another drop of wine, I have a few bites to go!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Lardo, pear, blue cheese and honey crostoni with sourdough bread

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1. A foodblogger sandwich: field salad, buffalo fresh cheese and sourdough country bread
2. Pear & Ginger Muffins
3. 5° World Bread Day – No Knead Bread with Fleur de Sel de Camargue 3 Poivres

Take a classic Italian family, made of parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters … or take for example my family: it is almost impossible to find yourself sitting alone at the table for lunch or dinner. We have dinner sitting all together commenting on the day, lunch is meant to be in a messy kitchen with my grandma or mum, or sometimes with Claudia when she’s not at university. Holidays are celebrated mainly at the table, sitting one next to the other, packed like sardines.

Then everything changed, the pace of work and my schedule, and I began to appreciate those lunches limited to a plate, a fork, a knife and a glass of water, those lunches where you take all the time you need to cook for a very important person, yourself.

The usual and so reassuring talks, pass me the cheese, may I have the last potato or mum is there still yoghurt in the fridge, are the soundtrack of the most appreciated moments of family life, but I must admit that even a meal by yourself has its charm, being it out in the sun stunned by the silence of your thoughts or curled on the couch watching the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

This is one of my private lunches, where I used a drop of balsamic vinegar, a slice of fresh tuna, the just-picked herbs from the garden and my most precious cast iron pot to make a kind of pilaf rice on the stove instead of in the oven. And, believe me, it turned out stunning.

As you can see, even a lunch alone has its good points: a bit of experimentation, the luxury of balsamic vinegar, the lightness of the rice, the salty tang of the tuna, the crunchy flakes of Maldon salt and my favourite herb, the sorrel.

I love fresh tuna, do you? These are other recipes to enjoy this tasteful fish:

• Tuna and avocado skewers, so summer like!
• Jaden’s Sesame Seared Tuna with Lime Ginger Vinaigrette, I can already taste the kick of ginger with tuna…
• Fuji Mama’s Tuna Tataki Summer Rolls, unusual way to eat tuna in Vietnamese summer rolls.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Pilaf rice with fresh tuna and herbs

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1. Tuna and Avocado Skewers
2. Guest post for Diana from A little bit of Spain in Iowa: tuna loaf
3. Chinese Fried Rice

Welcome back Spring, we’ve been missing you lately. Since it’s your day, we cannot start anywhere else but from love. What is that makes you say all of a sudden: here we are, this is the man (or woman) of my life?

It might be the physical appearance, it might be the fashionable outfit, it might be those seductive blue eyes or for someone it might be a custom-built car or an impressive bank account… you can buy me with words, the use of an adjective that bears within the meaning of a thousand speeches, by an accent (yes, especially the English one), by a subtle and never obvious irony. The seduction goes through the words and the brain. Just a few words said in the right way are enough to send me head over feet, as old Alanis Morrisette taught me as a teenager.

The same happens to me in the kitchen.

At first I used to buy random cookbooks, without paying any attention to the author or the theme, it was a kind of unconditioned reflex which responded to this idea ‘ I miss this, perhaps someday I will feel like North Korean food and this book will be useful to indulge my whimsical cravings‘.

Then came the time of the visual aspect – actually I am not over yet – when a book to gain my attention needed mainly to have bright, effective and true pictures. Now I am fascinated by words.

I bought almost all Elizabeth David‘s books on Amazon: they are second hand books, they have pages yellowed by the time and no pictures. I discovered that you don’t need photos when you leaf through an Elizabeth David’s book. She uses her words just like she does with the ingredients in the recipes, with moderation and sensibility, without exceeding, she searches for accuracy and a vivid picture.

She has a sensual and almost tactile writing, Elizabeth David makes you experience the scent of freshly baked bread, the first bite into crisp vegetables, a simple meal, an omelet and a glass of wine. You can read her books as they were novels, in fact they are to me.

Among the books I keep on my bedside table there is Elizabeth David’s An Omelette and a glass of wine, a collection of her best articles written in a 30-year career. I recently re-read what is one of her most vivid descriptions of French country cooking, a dream gourmet week spent in France Chez Barattero. She sketches with colourful brush strokes a week of fine dining, mentioning almost in a side note a dish of artichoke hearts dressed in simplicity with olive oil and lemon juice.

So today I wanted to make an artichoke and cheese flan with a silky béchamel, then Spring and Elizabeth David’s simple words playing their parts, it became a new season warm salad with grilled fresh pecorino cheese, with a citrusy citronette made with olive oil and lemon as dressing. Elizabeth David, I am sure you would have loved this…

My favourite recipes with fava beans:

• Fava beans with chorizo and pimentón, born after a short trip to Barcelona,
• Fava beans, salami and cheese muffins, the classic Tuscan appetizer seen under a new perspective
• Heidi Swanson’s Grilled fava beans, simple, smoky, perfectly cooked, and fun to eat

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Warm spring salad with grilled pecorino cheese

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1. Shades of green ouside and in the dish: warm spring salad, the videorecipe
2. A foodblogger sandwich: field salad, buffalo fresh cheese and sourdough country bread
3. A midsummer night’s dinner. Russian salad

We were in the kitchen in London, it was one of those rare mornings when the sun peeped out. We were sitting on the edge of our stools still wrapped in sleep and heavy sweaters. I had made a light breakfast, nothing special to me, although I secretly nourished the faith in the flattering power of butter and sugar caramelized on a high flame. You have to post it! What, this recipe? a stewed apple?

You usually stew an apple when you want a comfort food, to hold in your hands a steaming cup to warm you slowly, from inside out. The stewed apple is exactly like your old worn and soft robe that you hide in the wardrobe when someone comes home. Then you add a knob of butter, and everything changes.

French atmosphere, the fragrance of the pain au chocolat from the boulangerie on the corner down the street, La vie en rose resonating from an open window overlooking the town square with the white curtains fluttering in a subtle breeze.

The apple cooked with a knob of butter is a Tarte Tatin without the tart, many small caramelized fruity slices, an interesting contrast with a cup of plain yogurt as spring afternoon break, sitting by the window to smell the blooming flowers.

* Annurca apple is an IGP (Protected Geographical Denomination) apple from Campania, a beautiful region in the South of Italy. The Annurca apple is renowed as the Queen of Apples for its outstanding qualities, its juicy and crispy flesh and its sweet and pleasantly tart flavour.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Then you add a knob of butter… caramelized apples

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1. Roast pork loin with apples
2. Véronique’s crêpes with salted butter and raspberries
3. Tiny cakes with apples and carrots

I come back home with something new after every cooking class: a smart idea on how to use the leftovers, a warm handshake or different accents that make me happy.

On Sunday I went to San Donà di Piave, near Venice, for a cooking class dedicated to picnic food, and I brought home with me so much good humor and a renewed desire to travel by train, to visit many Italian villages yet undiscovered, to feel at home in different houses from mine.

It might be that I am an old fashioned woman, and the train retains that unspeakable charm made of old books and teary goodbyes, or it might be that train stations and airports are spaces with a natural propensity to create and  let stories develop in an unexpected way.

I really felt at home this time, like during a holiday with family in one of those bed & breakfast you really hope to find while travelling, plunged in an enchanted peach tree orchard about to explode in bloom, in a crystalline and spring light.

For those who missed the class on Sunday, here’s the recipe for the savory rice tartlets, a variation of one of my favorite recipes, the sweet rice tartlets of my childhood. These were born as an idea for a picnic: in a comfortable Parmesan and paprika shell a creamy risotto with smoked bacon and scamorza, all baked in the oven to make them crispy on top.

I bet you already see yourself lying on your favorite patterned blanket in the shade of an oak tree, with the rice tartlet in one hand and a book in the other, don’t you?

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Savory rice tartlets with smoked scamorza and pancetta

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1. Mum, could you buy me a rice tartlet? The Italian rice pudding tartlets
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3. Turkey and smoked bacon pie

The awareness came with the spring, after the London euphoria and the snow silent charm. I am doing for living what I wanted to do as a grown-up, I’m finally a full-time foodblogger. There is no glamour in this, or social events and sequins, I just get up and every morning I wear my home uniform (my comfy tracksuit) and an apron because I am pretty clumsy in the kitchen, then I decide what to cook, how to take my pictures, then eventually I sit down and write, with an increasing pleasure every day.

I decided to take a serious pastry course, which shall start in a few months, I put the bookmarks on every recipe I want to cook and on every photograph that has a style I like, I devote some time to learn to do new things – currently my goal is baking with my newly born sourdough starter – I try to slowly built a new rhythm and a tailor-made day.

Even though I truly strive for it, I’m not able to call it an organized day, yet!

I’m just at the beginning now, I used to have a time schedule marked by someone else, so it often happens that I start to cook and time slips out of my hands, while I am lost in my own world made of food, images and words. It also happens that after a morning spent baking and taking pictures of cakes, all I want is a simple sandwich.

But not just any sandwich, I thought as I made it, picking up the cheese crumbs with my fingers, and as I heard the crisp crust of the bread surrendering under the knife with a crackling sound, this is a foodblogger sandwich!

This is an essential sandwich made with just a few ingredients that stand out by themselves, a light lunch and a tasty snack for a picnic, waiting impatiently for the first warm days.

So, which were the ingredients of my panino?

# Sourdough country bread loaf, the third experiment made following Chad Robertson’s recipe from the Tartine bread book, a must have for any home made bread enthusiast, a book photographed by Eric Wolfinger - my last coup de foudre. Just don’t miss Sarka’s last post to learn how to make your own sourdough bread.

# Mixed wild fresh salad (misticanza), foraged in the morning by my grandmother, made with herbs with fairy names, such as dandelion and sorrel, a herb I absolutely adore, with its subtle cucumber flavour. You should chop it finely and dress your salad at least one hour before eating it, crushing the leaves with a fork to soften the harder ones. It’s a carousel of different consistencies, with pleasant fresh and bitter notes.

# Fresh creamy buffalo cheese, rich and milky, the right counterpoint to the field salad bitterness.

Behind the scenes: my work in progress.

Since the full time foodblogger adventure has also resulted in having to postpone the live alone idea, I decided to carve out some space for me. Or, viewed from my patient parents’s perspective, I eventually cleared the living room of the tripod, my wooden backgrounds and the reflector panels, returning the room to its original function.

Our summer gazebo and winter greenhouse will became my studio, doesn’t it sound exciting? I am extremely satisfied with the first results because the light is fabulous and above all it is sheltered from the wind: no more towels chasing all over the garden! Next step: a second hand cupboard where to store all the props and white curtains to shield the studio from the bright summer light!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A foodblogger sandwich: field salad, buffalo fresh cheese and sourdough country bread

You should be interested also in:

1. Lardo, pear, blue cheese and honey crostoni with sourdough bread
2. Warm spring salad with grilled pecorino cheese
3. A midsummer night’s dinner. Russian salad

Barley, hazelnut and cocoa biscuits for a relaxing coffee break.

I thought that once I had become a full time foodblogger, I would have had the opportunity to publish at least three recipes per week, with lots of details and photos of my trips. The more available time should have turned into an excuse to test and recommend local osterias met along country roads, looking for remote villages to discover the most characteristic festivals. I just hoped so.

But it looks like time has shrunk as a felted sweater and, maybe due to the red tape necessary to turn my passion into a profession, I found myself in the need of a pause, to recap my ideas.

Pauses are needed, they help to reconsider what has been already made ​​and to set new goals for what needs to be done. We should not be afraid to take a break, because even if everything seems to swirl around very fast, after a week the whole world is still there, and you can get back to your life even more enthusiastic than before. So here we are, with much more ease and less performance anxiety, let’s start again.

Let’s have a new start with our new family passion, coffee.

Dad has put back in action the old 1980 Baby Gaggia, painted in a beautiful bright red as befits the Ferrari of coffee machines. In our little vintage kitchen corner he tests new blends of Robusta and Arabica, trying to get cream, body, aroma and hints of chocolate.

You can perfectly understand how we treated ourselves with a lot of pauses, meant to savour and appreciate the last blends. A white thick ceramic cup to keep the coffee temperature for a long time, as to avoid a too pronounced acidity, and a white saucer. Too much white indeed, you need a cookie, too.

This is a cookie meant to double the pleasure of the coffee and to break the silent pause with a crunching noise. We usually sit in the kitchen with the coffee cup in front of us, staring blankly at dad who’s eyeing you up and down to understand how the coffee was, whether it is convenient to grind it finer or to apply more pressure. The coffee, though, is supposed to remain the main character, so you need just a simple not too sweet cookie to enhance the roasted notes of coffee: hazelnut, cocoa and barley flour, nothing else is required.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Coffee break. Hazelnut, barley and cocoa cookies

You should be interested also in:

1. Coffee break
2. Olive oil cookies + some notes on the use of olive oil in confectionery
3. Cocoa No Knead Bread

Sometimes it is worth to stop, even just for a coffee and a biscuit. Sometimes it’s worth to pause in order to better understand where to go and orient the compass toward your North Star. Sometimes it is worth to stop and spend some quality time with friends.

I’ll get back in a few days with the recipe for these cookies, born to glorify the coffee break.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Coffee break

You should be interested also in:

1. Coffee break. Hazelnut, barley and cocoa cookies
2. Experiment with agar agar… coffee and chocolate cubes
3. I’m a Food Ninja! Coffee and Cardamom Creme Brulée