Tag Archives: Italian

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Prosciutto and Pine Nuts

22 Sep

Multicultural Inspiration from…

Italy

I was the fussiest eater as a child. Seriously. I hated almost everything. Ham sandwiches for lunch? Not unless they were toasted. 2 minute noodles? Are you crazy?! That’s not pasta! Baked beans? Ewwww!!! Cereal with milk for breaky? Please, pass me a cupcake (seriously, I ate cake for breakfast for years).  Pumpkin? Ohh, gross!!! Yeah, I was a massive pain in the neck for my poor parents. But, as I’ve gotten a little older, and become ever so slightly less stubborn and intolerant, I’ve started trying things that I hated as a kid, and have found that I’m really liking them! Salmon, prawns, Asian stir fries, ginger, pumpkin! So, I decided to try my hand at an old favourite made with a new favourite ingredient – pumpkin gnocchi.

It’s actually a fairly simple recipe; you’ll need:

  • 600g butternut pumpkin, skin removed, and cubed.
  • 300g potato, peeled and cubed
  • 2 level cups plain flour
  • 1 egg, whisked

First up, boil a pot of water, throw in the potato, then add in the pumpkin 5 minutes later. Let them boil for approximately another 10 minutes, or until you can easily spike them with a fork and they fall apart a little. Strain them from the water and allow them to cool enough to touch.

Next up, pass the pumpkin and potato through a potato ricer. You can also mash it if you don’t have a ricer, but the ricer really just makes for a beautifully soft and light batch of gnocchi.

Once they’ve passed through the ricer, try not to touch them – just let them cool on their own (or put them in the fridge to speed up the process!), and you won’t touch them again until they have completely cooled! Understand?! Good! Because this is very important!

Ok, now that it’s cooled, you can add to it the flour and egg, as well as a sprinkle of salt. Now, work it together into a dough…

… until it looks a little like this!

Ok, from this dough, cut off little sections..

… roll into long sausage-like logs…

… slice into little dumplings, and indent with a fork.

And there ya have it! Gnocchi!

And now, the easy part. Load your gnocchi onto a tray with a little sprinkle of plain flour, cover them with a tea towel, and let them sit for around 30 minutes.

While you’re waiting, you can prepare your next lot of ingredients – sage leaves (fresh = torn, dried = crushed), toast some pine nuts, and tear up some fresh prosciutto.

Ok, once your gnocchi have rested, boil up some more water in a large pot. Once the water is boiling strongly, gently put the gnocchi in the pot. You’ll know they’re ready when they start to float to the top of the pot.

Once cooked, drain and set aside. Then, grab out your largest non-stick fry pan, and throw in some butter – if you cook the entire batch (enough for 4 people), you’ll need to do this in 2 batches. I’d use around 50g butter each time, add more if you have no calorie concerns! Once the butter is melted, in with the gnocchi, in a single layer.

Flip them over once they start to brown, and add in your sage – as much or as little as you like, fresh or dried (I only used dried sage because I couldn’t get any fresh stuff at the supermarket :( sad!)

And now for the best part of all – pour it all out into a bowl, top with the prosciutto and pine nuts…

… sprinkle with some freshly grated parmesan cheese…

… and enjoy :) They really do come out as soft and fluffy as clouds on the inside, with a beautiful, crisp, buttery shell. Perfection!

Over to you, lovely readers – any foods that you grew up hating, but find yourself loving now?!

Casa Farro

16 Sep

 Multicultural Cuisine of…

Italy


 
Casa Farro
161 Nicholson St,
Carlton
(03) 9437 2112
Given that my family is Italian, it’s never particularly easy to find a really, truly good pizza restaurant. I find a lot of them come out way too greasy and oily, or with poor quality toppings. So, when mum gave me a call and told me about this great pizza place that she really liked, I knew it must be pretty good. With that, off to family lunch we went!
We strolled on it on a sunny Sunday, meeting up with mum, dad, my sister and her boyfriend. We’re immediately met with a cluttered front room, with various wines and random little knick knacks lining the walls and counter.  As we wait for our table, behind us reveals a little collection of wooden bread boards – cute!
While everyone else takes a seat and begins studying the menu, mum shows me around the restaurant, stopping to point out the mirror room (aptly named)…
… and the nice, big, fiery oven. Some darn good smells coming from here, let me tell you!
Anyway, enough sightseeing thanks mum, get me to the table and menu!
Our old wooden table is by the window, bathed in sunlight, and surrounded by… old wooden rolling pins, old ladles, and empty bottles. Yup. Actually, I kinda like them!
But, onto the food… we studied the menu, all 6 of us, and finally agreed on a few appetisers to share. First up were the sea salt and rosemary wedges with aioli.

Thick cut rosemary & sea salt wedges with aioli, $8.50

Unfortunately, they weren’t as crisp and golden as I was hoping – they were soft wedges. But, they were delicious, helped along by the generous amount of rosemary and sea salt. And the aioli… wowww!

The wedges were followed out by my family’s personal favourite; the polenta and pecorino chips, accompanied by more aioli (yes!!!) and romesco sauce.

Polenta and pecorino chips with romesco sauce and aioli, $11.50

Towered up Jenga-style and dusted with sea salt, these looked veryyy impressive coming out.

And after taking a bite into these golden little treasures, let me tell you – they did not disappoint! They were perfectly soft, like clouds, on the inside, housed in a beautiful, deep fried, crispy shell. They were beyond words – not sure why we only ordered one serve between 6 though… won’t make that mistake again!

Onto the pizzas… unfortunately, Casa Farro lost big marks for keeping us waiting… for around an hour… when we were just about the only customers in there. Disappointing. But, the epic wait aside, the service was friendly and helpful, and the pizzas (when they finally did arrive) were delicious. Having them made with spelt flour did make a big difference, I thought. The bases were light, crisp, and really very simple – they let the toppings take the stage and make the big impact, with the base being merely the edible service platter. And the toppings were magnificent, so I was glad the base wasn’t so strong as to take away from them! Here’s what we ordered…

Caprese (Basil, marinated tomato, bocconcini, olive oil, sea salt, sticky balsamic), $15.00

The sticky balsamic with the sweet bocconcini was so different, but worked perfectly! Highly recommend!

Zucca (Whipped ricotta, roasted pumpkin, walnut basil pesto, rocket) with prosciutto, $16.50

 This was my pizza – bloody delicious! Although there was wayyy too much rocket and not enough ricotta for my liking! But I think the prosciutto was a good last minute addition – added a bit of saltiness to a fairly sweet pizza.

Salsicce (Napoli, bocconcini, spicy pork sausages, roast peppers, spring onion, shaved parmesan), $17.50

This was (naturally) Sous-Jeff’s choice – it had the magic word “spicy,” as well as Italian sausages, which he loves. Tasted great, by all accounts!

Melanzane (Napoli, fior di latte, grilled eggplant, roasted zucchini, olive tapenade, red onions, oregano, sea salt), $16.50

Got a piece of this one, luckily dad was feeling generous! Again, delicious (broken record, I know)!

Paesan (Napoli, mozzarella, basil, hot salami, bocconcini, chilli), $15.50

And lastly, chosen by the sibling’s BF, another hot, spicy plate. Wasn’t game enough to try this, but he seemed to enjoy it!

All in all, the food really was very impressive. You could tell that the pizza toppings were all fresh, quality ingredients, which is always important to me. I was also surprised at the fact that their entire menu was available gluten free as well – for those who are gluten intolerant and still want a good old pizza, you really must get yourself here! Just cross your fingers that the wait isn’t so long!


Would rate it 7 out of 10.

Casa Farro on Urbanspoon

Coconut Panna Cotta

11 Sep

Multicultural Inspiration from…

Italy

One of the many things I love about being Italian is the dessert. I have a sweet tooth, courtesy of my dad, and I’m learning to make peace with that and all it brings (including having a perpetual layer of fat around my formerly flat stomach). After all, it was a wise person who once said “life’s too short to skip dessert.” With those wise words in mind, I decided to attempt a fairly traditional Italian dessert that I’ve only ever eaten once or twice; panna cotta.

I’ve typically avoided panna cotta in the past because my stomach hasn’t always agreed with desserts of the creamy or custardy nature. Not sure why, but I always ended up feeling incredibly sick after eating anything with a lot of cream in it. Never ice cream though, only ever cream. I know, I was a weird child. How ever, I’m finding that the older I get and the more in love I fall with all things food, the more willing I am to try things that have previously not agreed with me. After flicking back over a few photos from a work function around a year ago and noticing a little lump of white, I remembered that little lump was, in fact, a white chocolate panna cotta. And I loved it. I wasn’t super confident in my abilities to replicate it and not let myself down, so I decided to try a coconut panna cotta instead (as you know, I am ever so slightly obsessed with coconut!).

The inspiration for my recipe came from dessert king David Leibovitz’s recipe for the Perfect Panna Cotta. But, of course, with my own twist. Here’s what you’ll need for your own coconut-infused piece of heaven (makes 6 small cups)…

  • 400ml coconut cream
  • 40g caster sugar
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 2tsp powdered gelatin
  • 3 tbsp cold water
  • 3tbsp desiccated coconut
  • coconut spray oil

Yup, that is seriously all you need. This really is very easy, no tricks – I swear!

Ok first things first. Put the coconut cream and the sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, until the sugar dissolves.

Take it off the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water in a medium bowl (don’t go too small, as you’ll be adding the cream mixture into this bowl later), and let it just sit for 5 minutes or so.

Ok, once the gelatin has rested, gently pour the warm coconut cream mixture into the gelatin, and stir until the gelatin dissolves.

Next, add in the desiccated coconut, and mix that in too.

Lightly spray 6 little ramekins with the coconut oil spray, and pour the panna cotta mixture, evenly splitting the mixture between them.

And guess what? You’re done! That’s literally all there is to it! Put them in the fridge, let them set for at least 5 hours (overnight is better if you can wait!), and then dig in!

First up, I sprinkled mine with a little shredded coconut, because in my world, there’s no such thing as too much coconut!

I nervously dug my spoon into my panna cotta, and got ready to potentially be quite sick…

… and WOW!!! It was delicious!! It was soooo soft and silky smooth, studded with the tiny, little bits of desiccated coconut. I was really surprised, actually – I didn’t think I’d be able to make something that I hadn’t ever really eaten before!

The only thing I thought I could have improved on was the coconut I topped it with – toasted coconut would have been much better… so, I justify my second panna cotta with that reasoning.

Yeah, winner. Massive winner. The toasted coconut just brought out the coconut flavour so much more, and the crunch really added another dimension of yum to it all! I was really glad I finally gave it a try, and since then, have being trying even more foods that I never really liked before – and guess what? I really like a lot of them now! Yay!!

Over to you guys – what have you grown up hating to eat and now love?!

Nonna Gemma’s Veal Scalopine

12 Aug

Multicultural Inspiration from…

Italy

It’s common knowledge in my family that mum’s mum, Nonna Gemma (Nonna is Italian for grandmother) is bloody fantastic in the kitchen. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve following Nonna around the Preston Market to gather all of our ingredients, then going back to her house, putting on an over-sized apron, and helping her make a big fat pot of risotto, or crostoli (traditional Northern Italian biscuits), with Nonno (grandfather) watching on and telling us we weren’t doing it properly. Unfortunately for me though, Nonna rarely records any of her culinary genius on paper – she just knows what to do. So, you can imagine my excitement when one of Nonna’s recipes was bestowed upon me at my Kitchen Tea party a month before our wedding last year! And not just any recipe – one of my favourites; Nonna’s veal scalopine!
Luckily for me, I’m getting much better at cooking by instinct, because Nonna’s recipes have absolutely no quantities or measurements. They’re also written completely in Italian. Poor Sous-Jeff hasn’t the foggiest idea what he was looking at when I got ready to cook this up. Thankfully, I understood every word!


My very treasured recipe is for veal scalopine – veal pieces coated in flour, and grilled in a fry pan with garlic, olive oil, mushrooms and white wine. I also like to serve it with polenta, because polenta brings back some of my most comforting and loving childhood memories :) And I threw some roast veggies in for the healthiness factor! Given that this recipe isn’t technically a recipe, I haven’t listen everything I did and used… but here’s how it turned out…

And to my utter and complete joy, it tasted just like Nonna’s!! I guess I must have been paying more attention than I thought when I used to watch her make it! If only I’d recorded how much of everything I’d used… must make it again!

And while I took a break in typing this up to grab some lunch, Kitchen Bug decided he’d keep my seat warm and try to contribute a bit too…

Over to you guys… do you have a famous family recipe that you’ve been able to successfully recreate? Or a pet who likes to help you blog?!

Mum’s Dessert Masterclass: Tiramisu and Brutti Ma Buoni

5 Aug

Multicultural Inspiration from…

Italy


It is a rare day that my mother and I share a kitchen. We are polar opposites, but both very strong, typically stubborn, Italian women. We also both love cooking, but often have very different ideas on what works well in the kitchen. I learnt almost all I know about cooking from my mum, her mum, and my dad’s mum. The women of my family are all incredibly talented cooks, and I feel blessed to have been able to learn from the best! Where we differ, however, is that mum is very traditional in her approach to cooking, especially proper Italian dishes, whereas I like to experiment a little and try lots of different things in the kitchen. So, when I randomly decided it was time for me to learn to make some traditional Italian desserts, mum was the first person I called to help me out and teach me a few tricks (because she knows them all!).

The first thing we made are Brutti Ma Buoni biscuits. These are favourites of mine that mum usually makes at Christmas time, and for other big family gatherings. Brutti ma buoni translates to English as “ugly but good,” which they are. They’re not the prettiest sweet, but they are certainly delicious! They are a crunchy, meringue type of biscuit, and mum’s version is chocked full of hazelnuts and chocolate (yum yum yum!). Here’s how we made them…

First up, turn the oven on to about 180°C and line a cookie tray with baking paper. Next, get out the food processor and throw in 80g of toasted hazelnuts and 100g of roughly chopped dark chocolate. Process them in quick 2 second pulses until they’re roughly chopped up and well combined, and set them aside.

Next, put 2 egg whites and half a cup of caster sugar into the bowl of your Kitchen Aid, Mix Master, or just a bowl that you can use an electric hand mixer with. Whisk the whites until they are white, stiff, thick and fluffy.

Throw in the nuts and chocolate mix, and gently fold in.

Using one tablespoon, take a spoon full of mixture out of the bowl. With a second tablespoon, push the mixture off, and gently onto the baking tray:

Now, here’s the easiest part – into the oven they go, let them bake for 5 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave them in there! If you can leave them in overnight, that’s the best case way to go, otherwise leave them in for a good 5 hours or so. If you’re like me, you might also enjoy them soft and gooey and fresh out of the oven after the 5 minutes and another 10 minutes rest. Damn good.

They come out like little meringue biscuits, crunchy shelled, and with lots of chocolate and hazelnuts packed in. LOVE them!

Next up, mum decides it’s about time I learnt to make tiramisu (meaning, “pick me up”). I have a confession to make; I’m a terrible Italian. I don’t really like tiramisu. Because I hate coffee. Yup. Worst Italian ever… sorry mum and dad!!! But, just because I’m not such a fan of it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know how to put this iconic Italian dessert together – and hey, I might eventually grow to love it! My favourite part of cooking with mum is going through her dozens, possibly hundreds (no joke) of cook books. A lot of which are hand written. Somehow, mum quickly locates the exact book and page where we can find her tiramisu recipe. This is a very traditional Italian dessert and makes an appearance at almost every single one of our family celebrations.

We grab out the ingredients – all very Italian: mascarpone, coffee, and UNIBIC sponge finger biscuits! What you’ll actually need is:

  • 250g mascarpone cheese
  • 200ml thickened cream
  • 3 eggs, seperated
  • 3 tbsp caster sugar
  • 3/4 cup Marsala
  • 1/3 cup of strong black coffee
  • 1 x 250g pack of sponge finger biscuits

First, beat the mascarpone and sugar in Kitchen Aid (or other device) (and yes, mum is very, very much in love with the Kitchen Aid!).

Then, add in the egg yolks, and beat them in.

In another bowl, beat the cream for a few minutes, until thick…

In yet another bowl, put in the egg whites and 1 tbsp of sugar, beating until thick and fluffy. I’d just like to point out that at this point, the kitchen has turned into a screaming arena, as I need to remind mum constantly (read: every 45 seconds) to slow down, as I’m writing everything down and taking photos. Unfortunately, she works at 10000 miles an hour, and somehow keeps forgetting about me. Anyway, once the egg whites and sugar are all fluffy and thick, put them into the mascarpone mixture, and fold them in gently.

Now, add the cream into the mixture, and again, fold it in very gently.

Ok, leave that mixture for a moment, and grab out your coffee, Marsala and biscuits next (Marsala is an Italian wine, produced in Sicily).

Combine the coffee and Marsala in a bowl, and grab out a big (sorry, not sure of the exact measurements!) dish. Dip the biscuits 2 or 3 at a time in the mixture, and let them soak it all up.

Very gently squeeze out the excess liquid from the biscuits…

… and lay them down in the dish, side by side and tightly packed.

Spread a layer of the creamy mixture over the biscuits, completely covering them.

Add on the next layer of biscuits…

… and another creamy layer.

Half way through making the tiramisu, mum decides that I’m doing such a good job in between taking photos that she’s going to take it with her to the dinner party she’s going to that night. She passes me a little dessert glass dish for me to make a miniature version. Thanks, mum.

Her final touch is dusting some very good quality Dutch cocoa on top…

… and here you have it! A favourite in my family, and many other Italian families too, I’m sure. From all accounts, it was a hit at the dinner party, so I guess I’ll count that as a win for my first attempt!

With a bit of a headache from the constant “MUM! Just slow down!!!!”, a handful of brutti ma buoni, two new cook books that mum wasn’t using any more (because she has a billion), and a big hug, I head back up the driveway to my car, and have a giggle. I was so determined not to be like my mum when I was younger. I was sure I’d be different. We fought a lot in my younger years, because I was a stubborn, introverted, frustrated and confused teenager, and she was a tough, strict, Italian mum trying to deal with her eldest of three daughters growing up. But, here I was, cooking alongside mum in the same kitchen, and ready to embark on a new career as a travel consultant. The same career my mum started out in. And I couldn’t be prouder to be like my mum now :)

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