Eggplants, tomatoes & pecorino: the last taste of summer

It’s always sad come back from holidays and it’s even sadder if you leave sand, sea and sun and find yourself already in autumn! So, even if outside it’s raining, I love to cook something that keeps my mind on the beach, that reminds me of blue sky and lazy afternoons. One of my favourite summer ingredient is eggplant: my love for them is quite an addiction! They are so full af flavors that it’s enough to mix them with simple ingredients, like tomatoes and pecorino, to get a dish able to surprise everyone, like this one… hope you like it!

Ingredients:

– 2 eggplants

– 5 tomatoes

– 2 cloves of garlic

– 2 tablespoon of oregano

– extra virgin olive oil

– salt and pepper

– 3 tablespoon of pecorino cheese, grated

Focaccia with cherry tomatoes & black olives: comfort food for mom’s thoughts

I suppose that something like that happened almost once to everyone: you wake up in the morning, look back and ask yourself how it’s possible that your life has changed so much in so little time. If you are a new mother like I am, this probably happens almost once a week! In few days my little daughter will be 16 months old and I’m really astonished: she changes everyday and everyday is a new challenge. Then of course there’s the “mother trick”: if you are back to your job you miss the baby so much but, if you are still at home you miss your job so much! You know, when we decided to have a baby, I knew that my life would have been different but I was a little bit scared: what, I thought, if motherhood will change not only my life but also myself? After 16 months I’m happy to quote my best friend that, speaking with my brother, told: “Cristina? Noooo, she’s not a mother… she’s just Cristina with a child!” So, after all, I’m the same old witch I used to be…. still in love with shoes and bags (stroller walk with heels should be an Olympic sport), still interested in politics and literature and art, and food of course! And if you’re asking yourself why so much time passed since my last post now you have probably guessed that the little adorable monster took all my time in the last weeks… haven’t I deserve a spectacular comfort food like this focaccia? Trust me: this is the perfect end for a hard day! Buon appetito!

Pumpkin & Cognac cream: a Renaissance tale about a diamonds palace…

When I think about fairy tales sometimes occurs to me that Italy was probably a perfect setting and a truly source of inspiration. There was a time when the country was divided in kingdoms an duchies. Dynasties as de’ Medici, Gonzaga and Visconti spread their power over territories and people. They used their money to build palaces and finance works of art that would make their power visible and would make them immortal, that’s the reason why in every corner of Italy you can find beautiful things. Apart Rome, Florence and Venice there are hundreds of small towns enriched by architectural gems. One of this is Ferrara, a small city in the middle of Italy, surrounded by a fertile countryside and by rolling hills. The splendour of the Estense court during the Renaissance has left an indelible mark of beauty and harmony and since 1995 the city is Unesco World Heritage. I really think that only in fairy tales and in Italy you can find a place called PALAZZO DEI DIAMANTI (literally “diamonds palace”). This poetic name derives from 8000 pink and white marble ashlar  in the form of diamonds that cover the 2 main facades. This building is of course just one of the magnificent things you can visit in Ferrara and its surroundings: you can chose between castles,  churches, abbeys and towers… and the better part is that you can visit all this enjoing some of the best food Italy has to offer!  As I wrote near Ferrara there’s a fertile countryside and it’s exactly from there that comes the pumpkin I used to cook this cream. I know, like in a true fairy tale I should have probably tried to transform it in a carriage…but it was dinner time and even princesses have to eat something every now and then!

Palazzo dei Diamanti – Ferrara (Italy)

Ingredients:

– 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

– 1 clove of garlic

– 1 small leak, finely chopped

– few springs of thyme and marjoram

– 400 g (14 oz) of white potatoes

– 500 g (17.6 oz) of pumpkin cleaned and cut in small cubes

– 1/4 of a glass of cognac (or brandy)

– 1 liter ( 1 cup) of vegetable broth

– salt & pepper

Cook the potatoes in boiling water then peel and cut them into small pieces. Put the extra virgin olive oil in a pan, add a clove of garlic and thyme and marjoram Fry lightly then remove both the herbs and the garlic. In the pan with only the spicy oil add the leak. Fry for 2 minutes, add the pumpkin and cook over high heat for 5 minutes. Deglaze with cognac and when it’s evaporated add the potatoes. Cover with 1 cup of vegetable broth. When it starts to boil, reduce heat to minimum, cover with a lid and let it cook for about 20 minutes. You know that is ready when the vegetables are so soft that melt in contact with a fork. Season with salt and pepper and blend with a hand blender. Buon appetito!!

Ratatouille, Halloween & a French cemetery story

Breaking news: Halloween is coming! It’s really strange for me think at this event especially because it wasn’t common at all when I was young in Italy. In this very same period in Italy we celebrate the Saint (1 November) and the death (2 November), but it’s a really serious celebration, strictly connect with Catholicism and faith. So, even if I never did “trick or treat”, it’s nice think that, now that thanks to marketing Halloween is common also here, my daughter will have something fun to do. Unfortunately I’m not ready to create a skull cake or something frightening (I have to study so I will be ready next year!). I decided instead to follow the spirit of this blog and cook a French recipe while tell you the story of a French cemetery.

Cemeteries are an important key to understand civilizations. Since Mayan and Egyptian pyramid, to the Etruscan catacomb till today they talk about our fears and our believes. When I was in Washington I spent few hours visiting Arlington: it was a touching moment and I really believe that this place tells about American patriotism more than every political speech. I visited a cemetery also when I went to Paris: I’m talking about the world famous Pere Lachaise.

Ricotta & pumpkin verrine, a farm & a love story

Hallo world, seems that the great pumpkin season has started! For me this vegetable has never been such a special ingredient until, around one year ago, I had a very nice moment while eating a pumpkin! I was pregnant and both me and my brother  were back in Italy, so my father organised a lunch in a restaurant. This place isn’t of course a simple restaurant, but it’s an old farm, the farm where my grandma and my grandpa fell in love. It’s really difficult to find the right words to describe the emotions that  I felt listening my father telling how my grandpa walked 7 km long just to see his loved, and how he was actually the second boyfriend, because the first grandma’s fiancé died during the war. How they spent long time separated because also my grandfather had to go to war and how, while he was fighting far away from home, the Nazis often went to the farm searching partisans. Luckily, like in every Hollywood movie, they had their happy ending and get married and  had 4 sons. All this happened in Franciacorta, one of the most beautiful countryside in Italy. You can only be enchanted by the mildness of the hills and the vineyards that produced some of the best Italian wines.

Cauliflower & tuna balls: the Italian passion for “polpette”!

Confession: every time I make a travel I leave my house saying: “No, this time I swear I won’t go to eat Italian!”… and every time I end up in an Italian restaurant asking myself  “why do they have spaghetti with meatballs in the menu??!!”

The reality is that we in Italy love “polpette” (that is of course the Italian name of meatballs) but I had them for the first with a dish of spaghetti only when we saw Walt Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp”. My brother loved so much the movie that he asked my mother to have a dish like the one in this picture …

Mediterranean crispy chicken, Pericles & a special football match

As you probably know, football is a preatty serious thing in Italy and I love it especially because it’s the perfect excuse to organise a party with friends. But football matches sometimes represent something more… and that’s the case of this evening match: every European journal and tv is talking about the game between Germany and Greece that perfectly represent the internal conflict that is destroying Europe.   But this is a too much sad theme for my blog, kitchen for me is a place for a light heart and for happiness and I really don’t want to tell you the story of how Greeks are knocked down by this economic crisis.

For me tonight it will be only a football match and I suppose that my choice to cook a “mediterranean chicken” probably already told you that this evening I will cheer for Greece, but I will do that not only because in this match Greeks are like Dave against Golia (Germany is really good in football!) but because I fell in love with Greece when I was a student and I discovered that we owe them the democracy idea . It was 461 b.C. when Pericles did the famous speech to the Athenians, and after more that 2000 years these are still the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard about democracy and freedom. Click read more if you want to read some quote from the text and the recipe!

Mini pie with smoked salmon & zucchini, because summer is a state of mind

Yesterday was, again, a rainy day. After a long and cold winter and such a rainy spring I have to say that I had enough! So I started thinking at what I could do to let summer start..at least in my head! You know, a bit of positive thinking never killed anyone!

I’m really happy to say that I reached 2 results: the first one is this pie with smoked salmon, zucchini and lemon. It has really a fresh taste that reminds me open air, sun and free time! The second one, that is if it’s possible even better, is that today seems really a summer day here in Switzerland! So this morning I took my baby and we went to Basel town, we waited for my husband and we had a kind of picnic on the river…I’m just wondering: are these mini pie magical or something?

Ingredients:

100 g smoked salmon

1 big zucchini

2 pie crust

zest of 1 lemon

4 spoon of heavy cream

3 spoons of olive oil

salt and black pepper

Put 3 spoons of olive oil in a skillet and add the grated zucchini. Cook for 10 minutes at low flame. Adjust with salt and let cool. Chop the smoked salmon in small stripes and put them in a mixing bowl. Add the zucchini, the 4 spoon of heavy cream and the zest of 1 lemon. Mix well and adjust with black pepper. Line a pie plate with the bottom pastry and add filling. Roll out the remaining pastry to fit the top of the pie. Cook for 20 minutes in preheated oven at 200 °C  (392°F)

Days of fishing and picknicking: frittata with vegetables, cheese, bacon and sweet memories

Spring has always been my preferred season. After the long and cool winter months the sun returns, the nature wakes up again and, in my childhood, the trips finally started! Dad has always had a marvelous hobby: go fishing! A contagious one (also my brother fell in love with fishing and it’s beautiful, now that we are adult and some grey hair has taken place on dad’s head, to still see them joke on who has fished more) that has given us so many happy moments.

With spring’s arrival dad programmed the fishing days: alarm clock before dawn and everybody in the car toward the lake or the river. While they fished, the “not fishermen” played cards, caught the sun, read books or newspapers…the day before mother had already prepared lunch and in the car there was always a purse full of good food…We were a modest family, we have never been able to do great vacations (I perhaps remember 4 of them in all my childhood) but those marvelous days on a river’s shore, spent all together laughing and joking, never seemed to me the poor men’s holidays solution.

This story  is mine, but  is also the story of a lot of other families as mine that in the years of the economic boom lived with lightheartedness and delight, enjoying even small things…today, even if we can allow trips with lunch in good restaurants, it’s still beautiful prepare a picnic basket full of good food, like a frittata that, like life does, mix so many things together….

Ingredients:

1/2 onion diced
7 eggs
1 or 2 zucchini
7 or 8 cherry tomatoes
bacon
half a cup of mozzarella or other cheese
olive oil, salt and black pepper

Put 4 spoon of olive oil in a saute pan, add the bacon cut in small cube and cook it till it takes a good color. Take it off and in the same pan fry lightly the onion diced. Add grated zucchini and the cherry tomatoes cut in 2 parts. Cook for 10 minutes, add salt and black pepper and let cool down. Beat the eggs, add the cooked vegetables, bacon and diced mozzarella. Anoint an oven bakin-pan with olive oil and pour the mixture. Cook for 40 minutes in preheated oven at 180°C (350°F)