febbraio 3, 2011
Tuesday the 1st of February was Juls’ Kitchen second blogiversary.
In these two years I discovered how essential is to blog for me – I would say almost vital – although I had never written a diary before, except for brief moments while I was suffering from a mild form of graphomania.
I discovered that, along sophisticated recipes made with unusual ingredients and preparations, I wanted to find my culinary roots in Tuscany and Lucania, with the help of my family.
I found out that I like photography, as well as cooking: time to confess a deep fondness for colourful paper napkins and white dishes and bowls, along with a primitive, almost pagan, reverence for light.
I discovered that I love writing more than I remembered, both in Italian and in English: it is my favourite manner to to fix not only recipes, but also moments, thoughts, stories and memories, myself into words.
I discovered that through these pages you can make true and very important friendships, because a shared passion gets people together and deletes distance (and RyanAir helps, too!)
I discovered that my favourite thing to make, being it early morning in a kitchen softened by the first daylight or a slow drowsy afternoon, is fresh pasta. Grandma taught me the basics, the movements and the patience. Grandma lent me indefinitely the pasta maker to roll out pasta, the very same pasta maker that my grandad gave her more than twenty years ago. Now, grandma looks at me proudly when I roll out the fresh pasta and says: you’re very good in making fresh pasta, dear! but now it’s time for you to learn how to make cream puffs as well. You’re not yet good enough in baking them!
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Posted in Autumn, First course, Fresh Pasta, Spring, Summer, Winter 
23 Comments »
gennaio 31, 2011
It was August 2006. We went there for the European Swimming Championships, to follow the steps of the Empress Sissi, to visit the spas, the Imperial palace and the zoo. We returned from Budapest totally in love, drunk with so many gold medals and fascinated by the Hungarian cuisine.
There are many moments carved in my heart from that holiday: beautiful gardens, elegant spas with affordable prices, friendly people, a well-organized subway with the longest and steepest escalator I’ve ever seen, the most hot fresh paprika salad (Laura still cries thinking back at that salad!), colorful markets overflowing with products, where we are also able to explain us with signs and buy three whistles to cheer at the competitions, breathtaking night views of the Danube.
Beside this, we lived the most exciting sport experience ever (obviously as spectators): gold medals won scream after scream, encouragement after encouragement, painted faces and posters designed with markers on the hostel floor. The stands were shaking beneath our jumps when we were singing out national anthem with tears in our eyes. We were suffering from supporter’s fever, and we did our best not to recover from it!
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Posted in Autumn, Baked Good, Cakes, Chocolate, Desserts, Spring, Travel, Winter 9 Comments »
gennaio 27, 2011
This has been a real challenge, a double, triple challenge. The first time the pattern was perfect, elegant, a real designer masterpiece! But the filling was definitely too liquid, so the external biscuit mould got soggy in a few hours, loosing its perfect and regular shape. Beside this, I decides to use two different fillings in the same time, a brandy & vanilla Bavarian cream in the bottom and a coffee and cardamom Bavarian cream on the top. Giulia, aren’t there too many flavours in the same time? But my answer was nothing else but disdainful: Mum, com’on! I’m a foodblogger, I have to experiment, I took the oath over the sacred Nigella’s book! Silenced, she went away shaking her head.
I kept on adding elements and ingredients. A layer of whipped cream, spread on the top, to cover the soggy biscuit and the way too liquid Bavarian cream. Uhm, what else? Got it! I need something fanciful to capture the eye and conceal the flaws. I melted some sugar to make a hazelnut brittle, like an elegant stained glass. My idea was to decorate with refinement the top of the Entremet, diverting the attention from the melting bottom. As soon as I brought it to the table, my guests asked: what are them? broken glasses?? We need a spoon to serve the dessert? Mmh, sweet, but, which is the main flavour here? Total failure! My mistake? Exaggeration! So I decided to keep it simple with my second attempt and the result was definitely a huge success!
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Posted in Autumn, Baked Good, Desserts, Spring, Summer, Winter 19 Comments »
gennaio 25, 2011
I have fallen in love. I tried to hold it back, telling myself: ok, that’s fine, but would the others care about it? What does it matter? But I knew that sooner or later this love would have found the right key to access the pages of the blog, as it happens with all the important things in my life. Juls ’Kitchen is, in fact, a blog that is a mirror, a personal diary, a castle in the sky crowded with dreams, hopes and illusions. So, this love was supposed to reach this place, to gain in truth from being put on paper, being transformed into words.
Yes, words. This love began from his own words. Calm, ironic, never predictable or expectable words. Then the fits of freedom, of passion, words running riot with no punctuation, his name repeated a hundred thousand times, just for the thrill of seeing it pronounced, of hearing it written down. Who is he? Or better,who are the interlocutors of this modern epistolary dialogue? The protagonists are Emmi and Leo, the main characters of the novel “Love Virtually” and the long-awaited sequel to ”Every Seventh Wave“, written by Daniel Glattauer.
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Posted in First course, Tuscan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes, Winter 9 Comments »
gennaio 20, 2011
The Italian word spirito (spirit) has many meanings. Whatever meaning of spirito you’re considering, you definitely need spirito to face your life. Why? Let’s have a look!
In your life you need (spirit) power of observation, because the opportunities, such as trains, often stop where you are only once, so you must be well prepared to grab them, even if you have to run after them, losing on the road the heels, the scarf and even your hat (do you remember that old black-and-white films with those beautiful steam trains on which you can jump onto at the very last moment? Well, forget them, have you ever tried to hop onto a high-speed train?).
In your life you need enterprise spirit, that is, you need to be enterprising, said the girl who – to ask a guy out – loses herself in the international waters of words (yes, I admit, I believe in gender equality but if only you could go back to the ’60s, when a girl was supposed to be sitting with a skirt balloon, a string of pearls, a pastel twin sets and ribbon shoes and a guy was supposed to ask her to dance… oh! everything would be much easier).
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Posted in Autumn, Baked Good, Cookies, Desserts, Spring, Summer, Winter 22 Comments »
Chestnut flour and chocolate drops biscotti
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