Articoli marcati con tag ‘bread’

Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: bread soup

mercoledì, 2 dicembre 2009

Bread soup, also known as black cabbage and beans soup, it’s one of the most popular dish in Tuscany, during cold months, it is an old recipe, typical of farmers of all times, one of those dishes you could make each and every single day for months!

It wasn’t so typical at home when my grandma was a child, as her dad didin’t liked it too much, but it was extremely appreciated by her mum and all her family. She used to make it with black cabbage, but she loved it with chard too, as the soup flavour gained sweetness and softness.

Making this soup has been a dive into the past, back to the end of the Nineteenth century, because this white and blue soup tureen belongs to Tommaso and Adele, my grandma’s grandparents, who inherited it when they left the house where they used to live with Tommaso’s brothers and sisiters and Maria and Giuseppe, the oldest ancestors we can reach in my grandma’s memories.

I’ve been witness of a powerful stream of consciousness, where pepole life were told through their objects and trasures, while my grandmother was making this dish.

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Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: pan co’ santi

mercoledì, 18 novembre 2009

Today’s recipe is the outcome of the mingled experiences of two great food experts in my family. One of the typical November cakes in Siena and sourroundings is pan co’ santi, that is sweet bread with raisins and walnuts (called Saints as you usually eat this cake around All Saints celebrations). The problem was that I have always eaten giftet or bought pan co’ santi… I have never attempted to make my own pan co’ santi, until I decided it was time to try.

So I started to ring up all my relatives, to find a trace of family tradition.

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Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: leaf cabbage crostoni

mercoledì, 4 novembre 2009

Have I ever told you my mus has a twin? Aunt Silvana, they are as like as two peas in a pod. In the family, we are totally aware of all the differences: they have different voices, different hair cut, different attitude, not to mention accent! Since she married, Aunt Silvana lives in Florence, so now she speaks with a nice Florentine accent, so different from my mother’s way of speaking! If people meet one of them just a few times, it’s always the same… questioning glance, whispering and question such: has she changed clothes? wasn’t she in the other room? don’t you recognize me? and so on!

They have another important difference: mum cooks because she has to cook, she’s good, now, but she doesn’t love it. Aunt Silvana, on the other hand, really loves cooking, pots and pans!

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