Red wine risotto

Risotto al Vino Rosso. You need to use a good, full bodied red wine – the best you can afford. The basic rule applies. If you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it 🙂 I used a Primitivo di Maduria , but next time I’m flush, I’ll try it with a Barolo.

Red wine risotto ingredients

Serves 4

• 400g risotto rice
• 2 glasses full bodied red wine
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• About 1 1/2 litres vegetable sock
• 40g parmesan, grated
• 25g butter
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

1. Fry the onion in the olive oil until they start to become transparent.
2. Add the rice and stir for few moments.
3. Add the red wine and cook over a medium heat, stirring all the time, until the wine has been absorbed.
4. Add a ladle of hot stock and continue cooking as per the standard risotto recipe.
5. When the rice is cooked al dente , remove from the heat, season and stir in the butter and parmesan.
6. Allow to rest for a few minutes before serving.

Red wine risotto

Rabbit alla cacciatore

Coniglio alla Cacciatore or Huntsman’s Rabbit. When I lived in Bergamo the Sunday lunch was usually roast rabbit with polenta. I was regularly woken at seven in the morning by my neighbour grinding his polenta under my bedroom window. I’m sure he did it on purpose (we didn’t get on that well 😉 ) I see that rabbit is coming back into fashion in the UK, so I thought I’d share this recipe. It’s not roast rabbit, but another common Bergamasco dish. You can use any type of mushroom, even porcini if your bank balance will stand it. Serves 4

Rabbit with mushrooms ingredients

• 1 rabbit cut into portions
• 400 g mushrooms
• 100 g passata
• 1 carrot
• 1 stick celery
• 1 onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tbsp flour
• 100 ml chicken stock
• 1 glass dry white wine
• 5 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper

1. Chop the carrot and celery into small strips and thinly slice the onion.
2. Add to a pan with 3 tbsp of olive oil and cook over a medium heat until the onions start to go translucent.
3. Add the rabbit pieces and brown. Sprinkle them with the flour.
4. Thinly slice the mushrooms and sautè them in a separate pan with the rest of the olive oil and the whole, lightly crushed clove of garlic. Cook until they are well coloured and start to give off their juice.
5. Add to the pan with the rabbit and add the wine. Cook over a high heat until the wine has reduced by half.
6. Add the passata and stock, season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook for about and hour over a low to medium heat.
7. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve with polenta.

Rabbit with mushrooms

Tomato sauce

This is a really simple recipe for an Italian style tomato sauce.  In the UK we tend to dress our pasta with a lot more sauce than the Italians do (dare I say too much? ). If you can’t find really ripe fresh tomatoes, use tinned. You won’t get good results with supermarket ‘bounceable’  toms. This recipe is makes enough sauce to dress 4 portions of pasta. Really! Trust me!  🙂 On this occasion I served the sauce with linguine, but it goes equally well with many other short or long pastas (e.g. spaghetti, bucatini , sedani, penne, cavatelli etc.)

Tomato sauce ingredients

• 250g tinned tomatoes or peeled fresh tomatoes
• A pinch of sugar (optional)
• 2 cloves of garlic, lightly crushed
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 10 fresh basil leaves, torn
• salt

1. Put the tomatoes and their juice into a saucepan along with the garlic, sugar and a good pinch of salt. Cover and heat gently for about 30 minutes without stirring.
2. Remove the garlic and mash the tomatoes with a wooden spoon. If you’re using tinned tomatoes cook uncovered for a further 15 minutes  until the sauce has reduced.
3. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
4. Immediately before serving, stir in the olive oil and the basil.
5. Use to dress pasta

Tomato sauce

Linguine with tomato sauce

Carbonara – Authentic recipe

From Lazio.  What is Carbonara? If You ask an Englishman they’ll probably tell you it’s a dish prepared with cream and ham! Nooooooo!!!!! 😉 More crimes against Italian food have been committed under the name of Carbonara than any other dish.

So, in an attempt to set the records straight, I present the authentic recipe (as deposited in the archive of Acadamia Italiana della Cucina). No cream! No ham! And don’t you dare cook the eggs! 🙂 Serves 6.

• 600 grams spaghetti or bucatini
• 120 grams guanciale or pancetta — diced or cut into strips
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 medium eggs (very fresh)
• 100 grams mixed Parmesan and pecorino Romano (or all pecorino) — grated
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

1. Cook the guanciale in a pan along with the whole peeled garlic clove and a little oil, until the guanciale is well coloured. Discard the garlic.
2. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a little of the cheese and a pinch of salt.
3. Cook the pasta until al dente, drain and add to the pan with the guanciale.
4. Lower the heat to a minimum and add the egg mixture. Mix well. Be careful not to let the eggs set. If the dish is a little dry, beat in a little of the pasta cooking water. This is not mentioned by the academy, but some people say it’s essential for the “creaminess” of the sauce.
5. Remove from the heat and add the rest of the cheese. Mix again and serve immediately.

Here’s a quote from Kate/Susan over at Kate, Katie, Susan, Sue who cooked the recipe as part of an Italian evening.

“That carbonara was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, certainly the best pasta dish I’ve ever eaten. I would rank it above lasagna in my estimation.”

And this one’s from Cui at Equipoised.

The bottom line… carbonara typically feels too heavy and sickening after a while because of the addition of cream (an American adulteration). The egg way produces a much lighter, more palatable dish. And it was really the best carbonara I’ve ever had, ever. I tend to serially order carbonara at Italian restaurants because it is by far my favourite pasta, and I’ve had a lot of carbonara, but I feel like I can’t have it with cream any more after trying this.

Spaghetti amatriciana

Spaghetti all’ amatriciana. From Lazio. This is another Italian classic. Pasta with pancetta (or guanciale if you want to be really authentic), tomatoes and chilli. It is more traditionally served with bucatini, but is just as often served with spaghetti. Serves 4.

Spaghetti amatriciana ingredients

• 360 grams Spaghetti
• 100 grams pancetta — cubed
• 1 onion — thinly sliced
• 500 grams tomatoes — peeled, seeded and chopped
• 1 fresh (or dried) chilli — seeded and chopped
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• Parmesan or pecorino Romano cheese to serve (optional)

1. Grease a flameproof casserole with oil, add the pancetta and cook over a low heat until the fat starts to run.
2. Add the onion and cook until lightly browned, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the tomatoes and chilli, season with salt and pepper, cover and cook for about 40 minutes. If it looks like drying out, add a little water.
4. Serve with the cooked spaghetti.

Spaghetti amatriciana finished dish

Spaghetti with tuna

Spaghetti con il tonno. This is a good store cupboard standby. Serves 4

Spaghetti with tuna ingredients

• 360 grams spaghetti
• 1 clove garlic — peeled
• 80 grams tin of tuna — drained and flaked
• 3 tablespoons concentrated tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper

1. Heat the oil in a pan, add the garlic, cook until browned and remove and discard.
2. Add the tuna and mix well.
3. Loosen the tomato puree with a couple of tablespoons of warm water and add to the pan and stir well. Cook over a low heat for 15 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat, stir in the parsley and season with salt and pepper.
5. Serve with the cooked spaghetti.

Spaghetti with tuna finished dish

Sausages in tomato sauce

Salsicce al pomodoro. This is a great way to turn the humble banger into something special. Use the best quality sausage you can find – at least 90% meat. This dish is often made with chipolatas and served cold as an antipasto. Serves 4.

Sausages in tomato sauce ingredients

• 8 sausages (preferably Italian but any high meat content sausage will do)
• 100 milliliters dry white wine
• 250 milliliters passata
• salt and pepper

1. Prick the sausages with a fork, put the in a pan and add 2 tablespoons of water. Cook over a low heat, turning occasionally. When the water has evaporated the sausages will start to fry in their own fat. Continue until they are golden brown.
2. Add the wine and cook until it is completely evaporated and the sausages are just starting to fry again.
3. Add the passata, season with salt and pepper, cover and simmer for around 15 minutes.
4. This dish can be cooked with small sausages and served cold as an antipasto.

Sausages in tomato sauce finished dish

 

Rabbit fricassee

Coniglio in fricassea. There are many recipes for rabbit in fricassea but this is the simplest and most straight forward I could find. It’s basically rabbit served with a sauce made from egg yolks and lemon juice. Serves 4.

Rabbit fricassee ingredients

• 1 medium rabbit — cut into portions, washed and dried with kitchen paper
• 2 egg yolks
• plain flour
• the juice of a Lemon
• 1 whole Chilli – fresh or dried
• olive oil
• 1 knob butter

1. Lightly dust the rabbit with flour.
2. Fry the pieces in a little olive oil to which you’ve added the knob of butter.
3. When the rabbit is nicely coloured, season with salt, add a ladle of water and cook over a low heat for around an hour and a half. If it looks like drying out, add a little more water.
4. When the rabbit is done remove to a serving plate and keep warm.
5. Beat the egg yolks together with the lemon juice and add the mixture to the cooking liquid left in the pan. Stir rapidly until you have a smooth sauce.
6. Top the pieces of rabbit with the sauce and serve.

Rabbit fricassee finished dish

 

Farfalle with pancetta

Farfalle alla pancetta. Serves 4.

• 360 g farfalle
• 100 g smoked pancetta, diced
• 250 g tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 fresh chilli (or dried), seeded and chopped
• 200 ml double cream
• 25 g parmesan cheese, grated
• olive oil

1. Heat a little oil in a pan. Add the pancetta and chilli and cook until the pancetta is lightly browned.
2. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and cook over a low heat for around 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to minimum and stir in the cream. Cook very gently until the sauce starts to thicken – about 5 minutes.
3. Cook the pasta, drain and add to the sauce. Cook for 30 seconds or so, stirring all the time, to allow the pasta to take up the sauce.
4. Serve topped with the parmesan.

Spaghetti with raw tomatoes

Spaghetti al pomodoro crudo. This is a really good dish for a hot summer’s day. It’s only worth doing if you can find really ripe, tasty tomatoes though. If all you can find are the usual UK supermarket version ie. hard as a golf ball and flavourless – don’t bother 😉 Serves 4.

• 360g spaghetti
• 500g ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 10 basil leaves, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic,peeled
• salt and pepper

1. Put the tomatoes into a large bowl along with the oil, whole garlic and basil. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.
2. Cover and leave in a cool place to allow the flavours to develop – at least 1 hour but the longer you can leave it the better. Remove the garlic before serving.
3. Cook the spaghetti until al dente, drain and mix with the sauce.

Spaghetti with courgettes

Spaghetti con le zucchine. Serves 4

• 360g spaghetti
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• 1 small onion,peeled
• 2 fresh sage leaves
• 1 stick celery
• 3 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
• 350g courgettes, thinly sliced
• 150g mozzarella, diced finely
• 25g parmesan cheese, grated
• salt and pepper

• Heat the oil in a pan. Add the whole garlic clove, the whole onion, the sage leaves and the stick of celery and cook over a low heat for about 5 minutes.
• Add the tomatoes and increase the heat to medium. When boiling add the courgettes. Season with salt and pepper, cover and cook for around 15 minutes.
• Remove the garlic, onion, celery and sage and discard.
• Cook the spaghetti, drain and the toss first with the sauce, then the mozzarella and finally with the parmesan.

Ragu alla Bolognese – Authentic recipe

In truth there probably isn’t one authentic recipe for Ragu alla Bolognese, but this one is close enough. There are however countless inauthentic ones. It bears little or no resemblance to the dish known as Bolognese or Bolognaise found outside of Italy. It is also never served with Spaghetti!

On October 17, 1982, the Bolognese chapter of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, “after having carried out long and laborious investigations and conducted studies and research”, announced the following recipe to be the official one. I’m sure that every family in Emilia Romagna has their own version though. Serves 4.

• 400 grams fresh tagliatelle or fettucine
• 300 grams minced beef – The recommended cut is thin flank aka skirt (finta cartella in Italian) but any good quality mince will do.
• 150 grams unsmoked pancetta — minced very finely
• 50 grams carrot — finely chopped or minced
• 50 grams celery — finely chopped or minced
• 50 grams onion — finely chopped or minced
• 30 grams triple concentrated tomato purée(if using double concentrated, increase the quantity by about a third,  purée is known as “tomato paste” in the US)
• 1/2 glass red or white wine
• 180 ml fresh milk
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

1. Fry the pancetta gently in a little olive oil until it starts to release its fat. Be careful not to burn.
2. Add the vegetables and fry until the onions are transparent, stirring from time to time.
3. Add the beef and cook until it is lightly browned. When it starts to make popping noises, it’s done.
4. Add the tomato puree and the wine and mix well.
5. Add the milk, little by little until it is completely absorbed.
6. Season with salt and pepper, cover and cook very slowly for 3 to 4 hours.
7. Stir occasionally and if it looks like drying out, add a little more milk.
8. Serve with Fettuccine or Tagliatelle (NOT Spaghetti!)
9. Serve with Parmesan cheese on the side. Alternatively toss the pasta first in a little butter and then in Parmesan before adding the meat sauce.

• Variation: The Academy allows the addition of Porcini mushrooms.

Bolognese finished dish

This is a more detailed explanation of the dish from Bologna Cooking School

A ragu Bolognese style is a meat sauce that is slow simmered for at least an hour to develop a complex flavor and proper thickness. Cooking the ragu in a heavy-duty enamel or similar pot will hold the heat steady and help to give a velvety texture to the ragu. Bolognese ragu is a classic sauce for lasagne and tagliatelle. The sauce also freezes beautifully.

Bolognese sauce (ragù alla bolognese in Italian) is a meat- and tomato-based pasta sauce originating in Bologna, Italy. It is typically made by simmering ground meat in tomato sauce, white wine, and stock for a long time (often upward of four hours), so that the meat softens and begins to break down into the liquid medium. The original sauce is not done with minced meat; instead, whole meat, usually beef or veal, is chopped with a knife.
Spaghetti alla Bolognese, or spaghetti bolognese which is sometimes further shortened to spag bol, is a dish invented outside of Italy consisting of spaghetti with a meat sauce. In Italy, this sauce is generally not served with spaghetti because it tends to fall off the pasta and stay on the plate. Instead, the people of Bologna traditionally serve their famous meat sauce with tagliatelle (‘tagliatelle alla bolognese). Outside the traditional use, this sauce can be served with tubular pasta or represent the stuffing for lasagna or cannelloni.

While “Bolognese” is undoubtedly the most popular ragù in this country, it is also the most misunderstood.
The ragù you get by that name is usually a characterless tomato sauce with pea-like bits of ground beef floating in it, bearing little resemblance to anything you’d find in Bologna.
And not, in any sense, a ragù.
True ragù alla Bolognese contains no tomato sauce — just enough fresh or canned tomato to add a hint of sweetness and another layer of flavor to a subtle, complex mix. Like all ragùs, Bolognese is characterized by its long, slow cooking, which in this case starts with simmering the meat in milk (to mellow the acidity of the raw tomatoes added later) and wine (some use white, others red), after which the tomatoes are added. The whole lot is cooked together for about two hours

Fusilli with mushrooms

Fusilli Ai Funghi. This dish works best if you use a mix of different types of mushrooms. To all my Czech wild mushroom hunter friends – this is the perfect recipe :-). It works with any type however, and on this occasion I cooked it with standard field mushrooms. Serves 4.

• 320g fusilli
• 800g mushrooms (as many different types as possible), chopped
• 250g tomatoes (tinned, pasatta or fresh – skinned seeded and chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 sprig parsley, chopped
• parmesan cheese, optional
• 1 knob butter, optional
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

 

1. Wash and chop the mushrooms. How finely you chop them depends on taste and the varieties you are using. I could only get standard field mushrooms, so I chopped them quite finely.
2. Fry the onion and mushrooms in olive oil until the mushrooms start to release their liquid.
3. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, cover and cook over a low heat for 45 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and add the parsley.
5. Cook the fusilli in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain and toss with a knob of butter (optional).
6. Mix the pasta with the mushroom sauce and serve with parmesan cheese on the side.

 

 

 

 

Carpaccio

Carpaccio Di Carne. The original version of this dish comes from Venice. According to Arrigo Cipriani, the present-day owner, Carpaccio was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice, where it was first served to the countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo in 1950 when she informed the bar’s owner that her doctor had recommended she eat only raw meat. It consisted of thin slices of raw beef dressed with a mustard and mayonnaise sauce. The dish was named Carpaccio by Giuseppe Cipriani, the bar’s former owner, in reference to the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio, because the colours of the dish reminded him of paintings by Carpaccio.This lighter version is far more common nowadays.

Carpaccio ingredients

• Beef, veal or horse fillet, sliced very thinly
• Lemon juice
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Aromatic herbs, chopped – optional
• Parmesan cheese, shaved – optional
• Green salad leaves, optional

1. Marinate the meat in the lemon juice for around an hour.
2. Remove from the marinade and arrange on a serving plate.
3. Season with salt and pepper and dress with olive oil.
4. variation: Add some chopped aromatic herbs (parsley, basil, mint etc.) to the marinade.
5. Variation: Top with shaved Parmesan
6. Variation: I like to serve the carpaccio on top of some green salad leaves.

Carpaccio finished dish

Bavette with fresh herbs

Bavette Al Prezzemolo. This is a really nice, fresh tasting, summer dish. I first had it over ten years ago in Bergamo and have only just got around to tracking down the recipe.
Serves 4

• 320 grams bavette
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• olive oil
• salt
• a small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• a small bunch of basil, finely chopped

1. Heat plenty of oil in a pan, add the garlic and cook over a medium heat until it is well coloured.
2. Remove from the heat and add the herbs. Leave to infuse for a minute or so.
3. Add the cooked pasta to the pan and mix well.
4. Variation: You can use other fresh herbs eg. mint, chives, dill etc. Whatever you fancy. Don’t try it with dried though.