Category: Cooking Time

Spaghetti alla puttanesca

Jul 03 2011

This is a very easy recipe, whenever you get tired of the simple spaghetti with tomato sauce, add some tuna, olives and capers and here it is, the puttanesca…Do not mistaken puttanesca with puttana, which means slut LOL!

Anyway, I know that for American people it’s a little bit weird to have tuna in some kind of pasta sauce, but I ensure you it’s delicious! Try it!

INGREDIENTS (4 people):

  • 1lb spaghetti
  • 1 small can of tomato sauce or petite dice tomatoes
  • 3 small cans of tuna (doesn’t matter if it’s in water or oil) or a large one
  • kalamata olives
  • capers, the original recipe contains them, although variations exist
  • olive oil
  • half onion
  • red hot pepper flakes
  • oregano, some people like to add some
  • salt

Farinata- no translation

Jun 23 2011

This is a very traditional dish from Liguria, known for Cinque Terre, pesto and focaccia. This is one of the simplest dish if you look at the ingredients, but it took me some practice to find the right amount of each ingredient and the cooking time and temperature…anyway here is the final version. The most important thing to keep in mind is to use good quality ingredients: olive oil needs to be a good one, same for the chickpea flour, otherwise it tastes “terrible”.

Ingredients:

  • 200g, about a cup chickpea flour (not the Indian one)
  • 3 cups of water
  • salt (9g)
  • olive oil
  • rosemary
  • black pepper

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Ragu’ alla bolognese- Italian meat sauce

Jun 23 2011

Hello my friends, it’s been a long time since I wrote the last time….lots of things have changed in the meanwhile, but my passion for cooking never dies.

Here I am, trying to write about my recipes in a comprehensible  English. This recipe is about the Italian style meat sauce, made with ground beef, but of course there are so many versions and variations…some other people like to mix different types of meat, I don’t. This sauce can be used with dry pasta, fresh pasta like tagliatelle or fettuccine or in lasagna.

This is my version, as usual I’m gonna try to be precise about dosage etc, but when I cook it’s rare that I weight everything, you know how it goes…

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Rigatoni alla Norma

Nov 11 2009

This is a recipe from the South of Italy….the main ingredient is eggplant. Even if you don’t like it, you have to try it once.

INGREDIENTS (4 people):

  • 1 pound of rigatoni (short pasta)
  • 1 big can of finely diced tomatoes
  • 1 purple eggplant
  • 1 onion
  • hot red pepper (powder)
  • extra-virgin live oil
  • leaves of basil

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Spaghetti alla carbonara

Nov 11 2009

Who would deny a dish of pasta? This recipe is quite heavy, but don’t worry with a long nap you’ll be ok.

Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS (4 people):

  • 1 pound of spaghetti
  • pancetta or sliced bacon
  • 3 eggs
  • parmigiano
  • olive oil
  • black pepper pwder
  • salt
  • 1 onion

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