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

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

Thanks for your fabulous feedback on the pomarola sauce post. It opened an interesting debate on Italian food and why foreigners appreciate it so much: authenticity, quality, respect of nature and traditions. All these aspects can be found in this photo recipe.

Yes, a photo recipe, because you just have to look at the picture to steal the idea and make it again right away, playing on the match of flavours and fragrances. And obviously tomatoes again, since we are just in the middle of the week completely dedicated to the sun ripened tomatoes.

This is not a stylistic and perfect dish, but it has that rustic and improvised character that puts everyone at ease and makes every lunch or dinner a special occasion, whether served as an appetizer or as a side dish, with a roasted pork, for example.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

[Photo Recipe] Oven roasted tomatoes

You should be interested also in:

1. Ricotta and eggplant tart with slow roasted cherry tomatoes
2. Mafalde with roasted tomatoes. Food bloggers pasta party.
3. Summer fest: Quinoa tart with baby zucchini & sun dried tomatoes dressing

A dish of pasta, a good deal of intense red and glossy tomato sauce, a generous sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top and some basil leaves, a charm to give that extra balsamic touch to turn a simple dish of pasta into a memorable dish of spaghetti, a dream come true for many foreigners passing through Italy. Someone will fall in love with the incredible food tasted in a hidden restaurant, someone with the white country roads, someone else with smiling deep brown eyes, another one with the magnificence of the ruins of ancient cultures, someone will eventually decide to stay. The others will go home bearing in their hearts a warm and happy feeling due most of the time to what they’ve seen or, more often, eaten and drunk.

Why foreign people are so fascinated by the Italian gastronomic culture, or rather, by the Italian food? Yes, let’s keep it simple, not grand theories and systems, but what will concretely be in the plate in front of their eyes, with that good smell that evokes many memories, all different but all equally comforting.

I have often asked this question: I found the answer a few weeks ago during a cooking class with some people from Los Angeles.

I was holding a class on fresh pasta making and I lost control of the situation, so following the enthusiasm we made ravioli with butter and sage, spinach and ricotta dumplings and a zucchini risotto. We had also some leftover fresh pasta, so we made some fresh tagliatelle, served with a tomato sauce made on the spot: just sweet and juicy tomatoes, fresh garlic and basil.

A gentleman approached me and told me that he really liked the tagliatelle, that he had never tasted anything so fresh, light, where you could recognize all the flavors. There I had the light.

Maybe foreign people appreciate Italian food so much for the freshness and quality of the ingredients, for a cooking procedure that respects the raw materials and enhances their quality. That’s why a dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce is so appealing, to foreign people and to Italians, too, to tell the truth.

I do not want to mention just stereotypes, or just glorify in all and for all the current panorama offered by the Italian food… but this is the answer that came to my mind, perhaps simplistic, but certainly related to the expression of bliss painted on the faces of many tourists in front of a dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce.

What do you think? Do you like Italian food? And if you do, what do you find of so fascinating in Italian food? 

But now, eventually, the protagonist of this so fascinating Italian spirit, the pomarola, a tomato sauce made with many vegetables, the first recipe of a week completely dedicated to tomatoes!

Other tomato sauces on the net and in my heart:

• grandma’s Rina tomato sauce, my best friend’s Laura grandmother, it was extraordinary good, and had a special ingredient that made it unique;
• Carolina’s mum tomato sauce, good and simple as only home-made sauces can be. Just like her, I use the trick of a piece of butter melted into the pasta to make it special;
• Paula’s sauce, made with 5 basic ingredients for an exceptional result.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Italian spirit and the pomarola, the Italian tomato sauce

You should be interested also in:

1. My big fat Italian meat sauce
2. Tomato purée, or, as we call it, The Preserve
3. Ravioli filled with tomato bread soup

When we come to dress the salad, mum and I are always very frugal with olive oil, perhaps because we are on a diet year after year, while my dad is extremely generous with seasoning. When mum and I point this out very politely (hit by the fact that despite this love for seasoning he doesn’t need to control his diet and has the physique of a young man), he replies saying that olive oil is good and healthy. And we are silenced.

The fact is that dad is right, olive oil (and when I say olive oil I always mean high quality extra virgin olive oil) is good, it has scientifically proven antioxidant and anticancer effects and it is the basis of the Mediterranean diet, recognized as part of the Intangible Heritage List by the UNESCO.

A few weeks ago I took part to a class held by Luca Montersino – the most famous Italian pastry chef –  on the use olive oil in confectionery. I was stuck by his professionalism, friendliness and courtesy. So, after a first attempt with olive oil cookies, I decided to give a chance to the special technique I learnt from Montersino, and this is result. A result that exceeded all expectations.

[NOTES - HOW TO USE OLIVE OIL INSTEAD OF BUTTER IN CONFECTIONERY]*

Let’s start from the composition of the two elements. The olive oil is 99.9% fat while the butter is made of 83% of fat and the remaining percentage is buttermilk. Hence the basic assumption: never replace the butter with an equal weight of olive oil, you must always take into account the percentage of water present into the butter. To do the math, then:

100 g of butter are equal to 83 f of olive oil and 17 g of water

The second point to consider is related to the consistency of the two fats. Visible to the naked eye, the butter is solid and the olive oil is liquid: a brilliant but obvious conclusion, isn’t it? Though, consider we’re talking about confectionery, not general cooking. You need technique and chemistry more than instinct, so the consistency is a key variable to assess. It is therefore necessary to firm up the olive oil, as to replace the butter consistency. Montersino listed some possibilities, including the use of cocoa butter, a noble fat.

The easiest method – the one we can reproduce even being ordinary people with an ordinary kitchen and an ordinary pantry – is mayonnaise. I rubbed my eyes when I saw Montersino making mayonnaise, but it is a brilliant idea in its simplicity and effectiveness. Olive oil, water and eggs are emulsified together with an immersion blender following the mayonnaise procedure. In short, the egg yolks are stolen from the recipe and are emulsified with olive oil and water, used to replace what is missing from the butter. What you get, though, is a semi-solid fat, suitable for many recipes such as pastry and shortbread, but not to be used for puff pastry.

* Please take these just as personal notes and not as sturdy truth. This is what I have saved from Luca Montersino’s class. Using this technique in short crust cookies has given extremely good results, therefore I’m sharing my notes with you!

OLIVE OIL COOKIES WITH A SUBTLE LEMON SCENT

Ingredients for 60ish cookies:

• 330 g plain flour
• 200 g rice flour
• 200 g caster sugar
• grated peel of 1 lemon
• 1 g vanilla salt
• 250 g light extra virgin olive oil
• 50 g water
• 80 g egg yolks

Sieve the flour and put it on a working surface, make a well in the middle and add the sugar, the salt, the grated peel of one lemon and the seeds of half of a vanilla pod.

Pour the egg yolks and the water into your immersion blender container. Put the hand blender to the very bottom of the container, start pouring the olive oil in a thin stream and blend until it thickens into mayonnaise (it is a matter of just a few minutes).

Pour the mayonnaise into the centre of the flour and mix it with the sugar using your fingers to make a soft dough. When it is totally mixed, rub all the ingredients with your fingertips and make crumbles, then start kneading until you have a nice and smooth ball of dough. Roll it out roughly between two foils of parchment paper and place it in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 175°C. Take the shortcrust pastry out of the fridge, unwrap it and roll the dough out to 5 mm thick and cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. I chose to cut out simple rectangular cookies. Place the cookies on a baking tin lined with previously greased parchment paper. Prick the cookies with a fork.

Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes, until slightly golden. As soon as you remove them from the oven, they are still quite soft, so allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

How to store them. Store the cookies in an airtight container with a vanilla pod (no need to use a new one, you can use an already opened vanilla pod, it will have a persistent scent as well). You can keep the cookies crisp for about a week, greedy thieves permitting.

Tasting test. My friends’ remark would be enough to describe them: “Hmmmmm, go figure how much butter there’s inside a cookie!” The tasting test was completely overcome, there was no perceptible trace of the olive oil but a subtle fruity scent that suited harmonically with the citrus flavour. This match makes the cookies fresh both for the nose and the palate. The afternoon break comes to a new life if you serve these lemon olive oil cookies with a floral green tea.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Olive oil cookies + some notes on the use of olive oil in confectionery

You should be interested also in:

1. You need “spirito” in your life… wine doughnut cookies!
2. Long pepper and red fruits olive oil cookies
3. Gifts, Christmas swaps and short pastry citrus cookies

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).

In your life you need spirit of adaptability. The second time I went to London I found myself in a hostel with a tiny bathroom. It was so tiny that, when you wanted to brush your teeth, you could spit the water on your feet or beat your head in the mirror. Well, it’s okay! I enjoyed London with a bump in my head for the entire weekend, bu my breath smelled of mint! London is well worth a bump.

In your life you need team spirit. This can be testified by my colleagues when the three of us moved one of our cars that had stopped at 100 meters from the office. Once understood that the hand brake had to be released, it was much easier and with synchronous pushes and labor room encouragements,we were able to bring the car in the parking lot. Girl power!

In your life you spirito – wit – to not take yourself too seriously, to laugh of yourself!

… and if you need wit and spirit in your life, you definitely need my Aunt Teresa’s wine doughnut cookies! They are the easiest cookies I have ever done, fun to mix and shape. The recipe calls just for very few ingredients that you can always easily find at home, you can customize them as you prefer, adding spices and nuts, and, moreover, they are light and suitable for those who are lactose intolerant, not to mention that they are really fun for children.

They can be considered an old-fashioned afternoon break, like the traditional and ever green sugar, wine & bread. Or you can munch on them after dinner, cuddled up on your favourite armchair reading a book that takes your breath away. They can be stored in a tin box for several days. With these ingredients you will get a hundred little doughnut cookies, ideal to slip one per finger on each hand (yes, you counted correctly, 10 doughnut cookies! but come on, they should last for a while otherwise you’ll run out of nibbles just at the climax of the book!).

Ingredients (make approximately 100 – 120 cookies):

• caster sugar, 1 glass + extra sugar to sprinkle over cookies
• extra virgin olive oil*, 1 glass
• white wine**, 1 glass
• plain flour, all the flour the dough will take (I used 6 glasses)
• baking powder, 15 g
• grated lemon peel

Pour the sugar, the olive oil and the wine in a large bowl and whisk. Add in the grated lemon peel and begin to mix in the flour with a wooden spoon. After the first glass of flour, sift in the baking powder, then keep on adding flour until the dough becomes plastic and silky, as to let you roll it into small ropes (I used about 6 glasses of flour). Let it rest 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll the dough into small ropes. Coil the ropes into round doughnut shapes, leaving a small hole in the middle. Sprinkle the cookies with caster sugar and place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes and remove from the oven as soon as they get a slight golden colour on the top. Let them cool and store them in a tin box.

* The extra virgin olive oil: I used a sweet, fruity, delicate and light extra virgin olive oil, produced on the Tuscan hills overlooking the sea. It is perfect to use with fish and sweet pastry.

** The wine: Chardonnay Maschio, a sparkling wine with a scent of musk and almond blossoms and a fresh and gentle aftertaste of golden apple (wine description taken from the back label, as you know I”m not and expert of wine!)

Alternative flavour mix: you can use red wine instead of white one, or a sweet wine, vinsanto or passito. You can add other flavorings such as anise seeds, orange peel, cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla or ginger. You may enrich them with dark chocolate chips, raisins soaked in rum, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pine nuts. The possibilities are endless. The mix I chose (a sparkling and flower scented white wine + lemon peel) has proved to be particularly delicate and gentle. The two flavors enhance each other in a fresh and spring harmony.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

You need “spirito” in your life… wine doughnut cookies!

You should be interested also in:

1. Olive oil cookies + some notes on the use of olive oil in confectionery
2. Robert’s Absolute Best Brownies: a life-changing minute
3. Christmas cookies, III episode

I believe that 2011 will be the year of the first times, I can feel it! On January the 1st I got up early (early given the dinner and party the night before), and I made my first ragù, the well renowned Italian meat sauce, with my grandma. I can see the scandal in your eyes: how can it be possible? you have been blogging for almost two years now, you hold your own Tuscan cooking classes and you dare say you have never made a meat sauce before? Candidly I will answer: no! No, because, in my opinion, the meat sauce is something that requires the dedication of a Sunday morning or of a holiday, it requires you to get up early and it necessitates your total attention.

They are mum or grandma who make ragù. I generally enter the kitchen and the meat sauce is already there, simmering on the stove. A pot partially covered, a mystery to me until a few days ago. Thanks to the time I had as a gift for Christmas (time, precious time, one of the most beautiful gifts, a little time for me and my passions), I decided it was the right moment to learn how to make our family meat sauce.

This is not the Bolognese sauce by the book… this is just the sauce I feel mine, the sauce of my mum, of my grandma and of those who sit at table with us. Now I’ll tell you how to make it step by step, as my grandma did with me in that wonderful morning!

This is the modern meat sauce, made according my grandmother’s likes. My great-grandmother Pia used to make it adding the chicken livers, or, more often, the rabbit livers. Apart from this particular – and the fact that this time I added dried mushrooms, following again grandma’s advice – this is the meat sauce that has been made in my family for over 80 years! They used an enamel pan, the deepest pan, but today I’ve used my reliable Staub pan, perfect for the meat sauce.

The ragù was the sauce that was used to dress the pasta on holidays or special occasions, such as threshing or harvesting. On a daily basis there was always a broth or a soup, but on that special days! They used the  homemade egg noodles, made right on the moment, or very rarely bought pasta.

While my grandma was explaining me how to make the meat sauce step by step according her own rules, she began to tell me about her memories related to this sauce. Shortly after her marriage, Aunt Valeria used to visit regularly my grandma. Aunt Valeria, my grandfather’s sister, was from Melfi, from the South of Italy, therefore belonging to a rich food culture, a very different culture from the Tuscan one, but of course not less fascinating.

Every Sunday Aunt Valeria used to hear a noise in the kitchen, a continuous tac tac tac tac she couldn’t define. It was grandma who was using the two-handled chopping knife on the chopping board. I can still remember that chopping board, over used and with a small hollow in the center made by the past time and the rhythmic movements of the blade. Aunt Valeria loved that meat sauce! She understood that to make it she needed the ground meat and the chopped vegetables, so she decided to try it. She wanted to overdo herself and make the best ragù ever, so she decided to increase the amount of meat and instead cut the presence of vegetables… but it was not even remotely similar to grandma’s one, and she was so disappointed!

As my grandmother told me, that’s not how it works! To save money and increase the final volume of the meat sauce they used a lots of vegetables… that’s the trick to a successful meat sauce, along with, of course, a wooden spoon and a very slow cooking!

Ingredients:

• red onion, 1 or 2 red spring onions finely chopped
• carrots, 2 large finely chopped
• celery, 3 stalks finely chopped
• extra virgin olive oil
• butter, 20 g
• mixed dried mushrooms, 100 g
• ground pork, 300 g
• ground beef, 700 g
• salt, about 1 tablespoon and 1/2
• pepper, 1 teaspoon
• red wine, 1 glass
• tomato sauce, 1.5 l

Cover with extra virgin olive oil the bottom of a heavy large saucepan and add in the butter and the chopped vegetables. Sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. Pay attention not to overcook the vegetables: they should get lightly golden and soft.

Soak the mushrooms in a cup of hot water until soft.

Add into the meat and sauté on a medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to break up any meat lumps. Stir continuously to let the meat cook evenly and mix it to the chopped vegetables. Cook for about 20 minutes, until the moisture from the meat has evaporated. Scrape the bottom of the pan with the wooden spoon while stirring. Season with salt and pepper.

Pour in the red wine, bit by bit, not all at once. Grandma recommended to add it in three times, stirring with the wooden spoon and letting it evaporate before pouring the remaining wine. You’ll need about 10 minutes.

Add the tomato sauce, stirring thoroughly to mix it with the meat. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes, then add in the squeezed and finely chopped mushrooms and the strained mushrooms water.

Partially cover and simmer for at least 1 hour and a half. Stir frequently to prevent the sauce from sticking.

Meanwhile, mum peeped out from behind my shoulders and, while I was stirring my ragù, she whispered: it will be ready when it will be covered by a few spots of grease. And it was true!

Some tips. I know I used a large quantity of ingredients! It’s better to cook a good supply since it calls for time and dedication, isn’t it? We usually use a part of the meat sauce to dress pasta, spaghetti or lasagne on the very same day, a part is kept to be stored for a few days in the fridge, closed in a glass jar, and a part is frozen. You can use ice-cube trays to freeze single portions of meat sauce or small aluminium muffin size moulds if you want to have two large portions of it.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

My big fat Italian meat sauce

You should be interested also in:

1. Italian spirit and the pomarola, the Italian tomato sauce
2. Pasta with rabbit meat sauce, lard and lemon peel
3. The meatloaf of the Tuscan peasant cooking

Jasmin and Manuel’ s contest, Taking roots, organized to celebrate their first Labna blogiversary, was definitely my cup of tea for two reasons:

- the roots are essential for all of us, your family build them up for you day after day, they give you the sap to grow, the minerals from the home soil to fortify you and the strength necessary to let you fly;

- the roots are magical, they contain the power of Mother Earth, they are used in potions and spells, in fairies’ decoctions, they are the basic ingredients of the people of the woods diet, the long legs of the trees supposed to defend the forest.

If I had to choose my favourite vegetable among the roots and tubers, the subject of this little culinary contest held by Labna, I would definitely go for the Jerusalem artichokes. They remind me of the magical mandrakes, tubers with the appearance of a newly born baby with wrinkled brown skin, met by Harry, Ron and Hermione during the Herbology class with Professor Sprout. The juice of the mandrake is precious to help those affected by the Petrifiation spell. The properties of Jerusalem artichoke, however, are somewhat different… they are rich in insulin and probiotics elements, useful for intestinal health, vitamin C, phosphorus, potassium and a good source of iron.

When to buy it and how to store it. You can buy and use Jerusalem artichokes in November, December, January and February, during the harvest season. When you buy them, roots should be free from soft spots, wrinkles or sprouting.  You can store them up to two weeks in the fridge. Jerusalem artichokes can be served with or without the skin, raw or cooked.

Some interesting facts about this root. Jerusalem artichokes are native to North America. They were brought to Europe in the early XVII century along with potatoes, but at the beginning they were more widespread than these, thanks to their pleasant artichoke flavour. Then, slowly, the potatoes got the better of Jerusalem artichokes and their production decreased less and less, except getting back to the fore in times of famine. For a long time, Jerusalem artichokes were avoided because of an old wives’ tale: it was said that they were related to the leprosy, because of the similarity of the tuber to the gnarled fingers of those who suffered from this scourge. Their English name, Jerusalem Artichokes, derived from girasole, the Italian word for sunflower to which they are related.

Ingredients (as appetizer, serve 4 – as soup, serve 2):

• white onion, 1/2
• extra virgin olive oil
• Jerusalem artichokes, 500 g
• warm water, 500 ml
• kaffir lime leaves, 2
• salt
• freshly cracked black pepper
• basil, a few leaves to garnish

Rinse the Jerusalem artichokes under running water, rubbing them to remove any traces of soil. Leave aside two small Jerusalem artichokes: you will use them later for decoration. Cut the tubers into small cubes about 1 cm per side. Peel and finely chop the white onion. Sauté the onion on low heat with a tablespoon of olive oil in a thick-bottomed pan. When it begins to soften, add the Jerusalem artichokes, stir and cook for few minutes to mix all the flavours.

Season with salt and pepper and add two kaffir lime lives. Pour in hot water to cover the Jerusalem artichokes and let it simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes, until they get soft.

Remove the kaffir lime leaves and purée with a hand mixer the Jerusalem artichokes. You must obtain a velvety and quite thick purée, but if you want, you can add water until you get the desired consistency. If you add more water, return the pan to the heat and let it simmer again for some minutes, to mix all the flavours.

To garnish the dish, deep fry some basil leaves and the leftover Jerusalem artichokes, sliced into 2 mm thick slices, in steaming olive oil until golden brown.

Tasting test. This soup has a delicate artichoke flavour, enhanced and made interesting by adding some kaffir lime leaves, with a fresh and pleasing citrus aroma. If you can’t find kaffir lime leaves (I usually buy them - desiccated - from my local ethnic shop), you can substitute them with some basil leaves and the zest of one lemon. I know basil leaves are just as difficult to find in winter as kaffir lime ones: I usually freeze them in summer in a plastic bag, once cleaned and pat dry, and store them for months in the freezer.

May this 2010 have given you roots, strong and secure, to let you fly in 2011! Do not be afraid to jump in the air, your roots are there, well dug into your family soil, and they will be your safe haven when you want a break from your adventurous flights.

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

The roots. Jersusalem artichokes soup

You should be interested also in:

1. Cosy winter soup: spelt and roveja with thyme
2. Acquacotta, the Tuscan stone soup
3. Artichoke omelet

To have a blog, what does this mean? It means to have the chance and the opportunity to meet special people and spend a beautiful day feeling like teenagers on a school trip. We were three, like the three musketeers, like the Three Graces … or rather, seeing what we were able to eat, buy, think… I would say more like the three little pigs!

After a day spent with Caro, from Semplicemente Pepe Rosa, the girl in Technicolor, and Fra, a foodblogger-to-be, who sooner or later will decide to open her own blog, I came home with a bundle of precious ingredients! Long pepper – so long known but smelled fot the first time, real and fragrant vanilla essence, tragacanth gum, candied fruit …

Thanks to these ingredients, and due to the sudden lack of butter exactly when I decided to prepare cookies for a friend, I dared my first approach with the pastry made with olive oil. That was love, love at first sight! It seems that the butter can be replaced with a quantity of olive oil equivalent to its 2/3. Mostly it is probably an oversimplification, but with these cookies, the proportion has worked magnificently!

I am usually a fierce supporter of the use of butter into desserts, but in this case the result was truly beyond expectations, creating cookies that were very different from the original shortbread, with their own well-defined and very unusual character. I also used the candied fruit and long pepper.

The only care is to use a proper extra virgin olive, light and fruity: you may prefer then light extravirgin olive oils such as those pressed in Liguria and Lombardy, or you can choose other olive oils where the bitter or the spicy are not predominant features. In my case it was an extra virgin olive oil DOP Laghi Lombardi.

Ingredients:

• organic flour 00, 350 gr
• caster sugar, 150 gr
• egg, 1
  
• light and fruity extra virgin olive oil, 100 gr
• vanilla salt, 1 pinch
• baking powder, 1 tablespoon
• candied red fruits (mostly strawberries, then cranberries and cherries) about 150 gr
• vanilla essence, 1 tablespoon
• grated long pepper, half berry
  

Preheat oven to 180°C, static. Sift flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Combine sugar, salt, red fruits, vanilla essence and grated long pepper berry. At this time pour in one beaten egg and extra virgin olive oil and stir with a spoon, then roll the dough into a cylinder shape. It will be very crumbly and soft. You will sense, smell and taste extra virgin olive oil a lot at this point, but after baking, it won’t be so dominant.

Dust a work surface with plenty of flour and roll out the dough with the help of a rolling pin to a thickness of about 5 mm, but not less. Cut out biscuits with cookie cutters and with the help of a spatula put them in a pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the edges of cookies are lightly golden. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

Talking about cookie cutters, I made large cookies (using the butterfly cutter), which are perfect for a quick snack, and tiny and pretty cookies (using my wonderful bunnies, kittens and turtles cutters) which suit very well the afternoon tea. From the leftover dough I made irregular lozenges – I was fed up with the knead/roll/cut operation: at the very end, this really seemed the most suitable shape for this kind of olive oil cookies, giving their simple and refined taste.

Tasting moment. I think I can safely say that these are the best biscuits I’ve ever done: I really loved them, yep! Crunchy, light, defined by the resinous aroma of long pepper that marries beautifully with the sweetness of red fruits and vanilla. You can store them in an airtight container for several days, the problem is that you won’t be able to save the for long time!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

Long pepper and red fruits olive oil cookies

You should be interested also in:

1. Olive oil cookies + some notes on the use of olive oil in confectionery
2. You need “spirito” in your life… wine doughnut cookies!
3. Christmas cookies, III episode

11 novembre, Saint Martin Summer, here in Italy. When I was young I really loved this legend:

It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold (Wikipedia). It was so cold and rainy, but Saint Martin was so kind and generous that Someone up in Heaven ended the cold and windy weather and gifted this generous gesture with sunny and mild weather.

Today it’s sunny, bright and you feel like smiling every minute. Let’s use these days to organize ourselved to face the winter… this is what I did to save a gleam of sun in a jar!

I picked up the remainig thyme, chive and mint from the summer and layed them out on old newspapers to make them dry out for the winter. In between sun and oven warmth, in a few days they were completely dessiccated. No problems with thyme and mint, but my chive became like hay… I need to find a better solution to save it for wintew time.

I dipped my chillies, once essicated, into good extra virgin olive oil, with some garlic cloves and a spring of rosemary.  Close the bottle, shake it and keep it in a coll and dry place for a month.. then if you’re brave enough, you can taste it!

Post di: Juls' Kitchen

A gleam of sun in a jar