One of the most famous dishes in Tuscany is Crostini. Crostini is a must have for every Sunday lunch, like Yorkshire puddings in the UK. Nowadays you can buy the crostini spread in the supermarkets, and I must admit that most of the Tuscan maids do so. Why? It is so easy to prepare crostini and they are much better (and cheaper) when home made. I once had a family drama when I was at lunch at my in-laws and my mother in law had prepared the crostini at home. My nephew, who usually is very fond of crostini, refused to eat them because they were home-made and in his opinion were not good. I know that children can be picky at times, but this is the results of being used to what I call “industrial taste”. I think that the best crostini in the world were those prepared by the grandma of my husband. She was a tiny woman called Italia, who had survived two wars, and had her head full of long surpassed ideas and superstitions. She had only a few kitchen tools, among them a knife and a chopping board made of heavy and thick wood, that over the years had developed a deep groove by the number of crostini she had prepared. But they were the best ever.
So to prepare your crostini you need onions, butter, chicken livers, anchovies (filets in olive oil) and capers (in vinegar). Of course salt and pepper at wish.
Chop the onion and fry it in butter. Calculate one onion of the size of a fist every 4 chicken livers. When golden, add the livers, season and leave them to cook slowly with a cover. Finely chop with a knife the anchovies and the washed capers and add to the chicken livers when ready. Cook at mild temperature for other 10 min and then smash everything with a potato masher. Stir and serve hot onto white crusty bread. Two variations are possible to this. The first one is that you put everything in a food processor the capers, the anchovies, and the livers. This is quick, however it the spread will not have the coarse texture that I think is the best part of it. The way Nonna Italia used to do, was to chop everything with her knife. It takes ages and if you are good at it, it provides the best results. However, I think that using the potato masher (which is not known much in Italy), provides a good compromise.
An alternative to the bread could be slices of deep fried polenta. A bit heavy, but really good!
This is typically a Tuscan starter, where crostini are served together with ham (raw ham like Parma ham but we have our own type), finocchiona, salame, lardo di colonnata. I like also to serve the spread in a pot (those with a candle underneath) and just put the bread in a basket, so that the guests serve themselves with it. But be careful that it will disappear within seconds!!!!
domenica 6 dicembre 2009
sabato 5 dicembre 2009
Pasta e Fagioli
One of the reasons for me starting this blog is that a lot of people think they are eating Tuscan, but it is not true. Just the fact that a dish has some Tuscan ingredients, make them think that it is a Tuscan recipe! But what makes those dishes non Tuscan is their complexity. Tuscan cooking is very simple, it gains its flavours by the quality of the ingredient rather than by their amount and complexity. Just to give you an overview on how simple our cooking is, one of the snacks that has characterized my childhood afternoons, when the homework were ready and just before meeting my friend for playing, is Pane e olio, which means bread and oil. So cut a slice of Tuscan bread, season with olive oil and salt and you will have the best snack ever! In the summer rubbing a ripened tomato to it would make it even tastier!
Going back to Tuscan which is not Tuscan, this came into my mind when a British colleague of mine told me he had prepared a Tuscan dish: pasta e fagioli, by copying the recipe from a Tuscan cookbook. And he started to describe all the vegetables that he used for it. Wait a second. Pasta e fagioli is just pasta and beans. There is not much more in it! So Stephen, if you want to prepare a good pasta e fagioli just follow this:
For 4 persons
300 g of dry cannellini beans
200 g of pasta
4 tablespoons of olive oil (please I mean extra vergin olive oil, do not make me repeat this over and over, there is no other olive oil to us)
Fresh rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.
Cook the beans (see over) and keep the cooking water (broth). Smash them and add the pulp to the broth. In case it is too thick add some water. The thickness should be that of a soup, not more than that. Liquid but firm! Adjust the salt and add some pepper. In a small saucepan fry the rosemary (1 stem) and the garlic (2 cloves) in the olive oil. Make sure that the temperature is not too high so that you can fry for a few minutes without burning the garlic. In this way you pass all the garlic and rosemary aromas to the oil. Throw the oil into the soup (be careful in doing so) being careful not to add the garlic and rosemary. Bring the soup to the boil and then add the pasta. Pasta has to be short and small. I would suggest ditali, or spaghetti or tagliatelle cut to 3-4 cm length. Stir continuously as the broth and the pasta tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Once the pasta is cooked, serve hot with a C of olive oil and at wish garnish with some rosemary leaves and some black pepper.
Variations:
Someone puts also some whole beans to the soup, but I like it creamy as described above.
Someone adds some chilli to it, but again I do not like like that.
In other parts of Italy, pasta e fagioli is prepared with Borlotti beans. I do not mind that, even I like the delicacy of Cannellini beans.
You do not have time to cook the beans and want to prepare pasta e fagioli in a few minutes? I have not told you that but before buying a frozen ready meal to put into the microwave you can:
Get a can of cannellini beans (with no sauce). Throw away the water, wash the beans and smash them! Add water until you get a creamy soup. Bring to boil with a small bit of vegetable stock cube to it, adjust the salt afterwards and then proceed as above with the oil and the pasta.
Going back to Tuscan which is not Tuscan, this came into my mind when a British colleague of mine told me he had prepared a Tuscan dish: pasta e fagioli, by copying the recipe from a Tuscan cookbook. And he started to describe all the vegetables that he used for it. Wait a second. Pasta e fagioli is just pasta and beans. There is not much more in it! So Stephen, if you want to prepare a good pasta e fagioli just follow this:
For 4 persons
300 g of dry cannellini beans
200 g of pasta
4 tablespoons of olive oil (please I mean extra vergin olive oil, do not make me repeat this over and over, there is no other olive oil to us)
Fresh rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.
Cook the beans (see over) and keep the cooking water (broth). Smash them and add the pulp to the broth. In case it is too thick add some water. The thickness should be that of a soup, not more than that. Liquid but firm! Adjust the salt and add some pepper. In a small saucepan fry the rosemary (1 stem) and the garlic (2 cloves) in the olive oil. Make sure that the temperature is not too high so that you can fry for a few minutes without burning the garlic. In this way you pass all the garlic and rosemary aromas to the oil. Throw the oil into the soup (be careful in doing so) being careful not to add the garlic and rosemary. Bring the soup to the boil and then add the pasta. Pasta has to be short and small. I would suggest ditali, or spaghetti or tagliatelle cut to 3-4 cm length. Stir continuously as the broth and the pasta tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Once the pasta is cooked, serve hot with a C of olive oil and at wish garnish with some rosemary leaves and some black pepper.
Variations:
Someone puts also some whole beans to the soup, but I like it creamy as described above.
Someone adds some chilli to it, but again I do not like like that.
In other parts of Italy, pasta e fagioli is prepared with Borlotti beans. I do not mind that, even I like the delicacy of Cannellini beans.
You do not have time to cook the beans and want to prepare pasta e fagioli in a few minutes? I have not told you that but before buying a frozen ready meal to put into the microwave you can:
Get a can of cannellini beans (with no sauce). Throw away the water, wash the beans and smash them! Add water until you get a creamy soup. Bring to boil with a small bit of vegetable stock cube to it, adjust the salt afterwards and then proceed as above with the oil and the pasta.
giovedì 3 dicembre 2009
Cooking Beans
Beans are a traditional dish in Tuscany. It goes back to the nice old ages when meat was a dream and a regular intake of proteins was provided by this fantastic product of nature. They also had the advantage that once dried they could easily be stored for long periods when frigdes and freezers were not available.
In Tuscany beans means CANNELLINI beans. The traditional way of cooking them is “al fiasco” which comes from the old times when the only heating in the house was the fireplace. So before going to bed, the Tuscan maid would think about the next day meal by putting dry beans in a fiasco(a bottle with a large tummy and a small neck) to fill around one third of it, and then by adding water and a little bit of oil to it. The fiasco would have been closed with some rags (fundamental tool at that time). The fiasco was then placed in the hot ashes of the fireplace, whose fire would have estinguished over the night. Not right in the middle, but on a side, where the temperature is milder and the beans would have slowly cooked overnight. And the next morning they were ready to be poured into the dish and eaten!
I tell you this just out of curiosity, as central heating has replaced the fireplace (thanks God!) and fiascos are almost impossible to find nowadays. However the tricks behind cooking beans al fiasco are the mild temperature, the long cooking and the impossibility of beans to move around. So if you want to cook beans properly (Tuscan way) you have to make sure that you respect all three rules. Not respecting these would result in a mushy mixture that you do not want to eat!
The way I have developed to cook Cannellini beans is the following:
I put them in a saucepan (make sure that it is much bigger than the volume occupied by the dry beans, as they grow!) and add water just to cover them. Put the saucepan onto mild heat (the smaller plate in your stove at the minimum temperature) and let them cook. I make sure that I have hot water available and each time that the beans absorb the water I add a small amount to them. Depending on the beans, this can go on for hours, usually 2-3. Very important: do not stir the beans!
You can serve the beans hot, seasoned with olive oil salt and pepper, and at wish with some, chopped onions and tuna. You can also use them for further preparations such as pasta e fagioli, ribollita, etc.
In Tuscany beans means CANNELLINI beans. The traditional way of cooking them is “al fiasco” which comes from the old times when the only heating in the house was the fireplace. So before going to bed, the Tuscan maid would think about the next day meal by putting dry beans in a fiasco(a bottle with a large tummy and a small neck) to fill around one third of it, and then by adding water and a little bit of oil to it. The fiasco would have been closed with some rags (fundamental tool at that time). The fiasco was then placed in the hot ashes of the fireplace, whose fire would have estinguished over the night. Not right in the middle, but on a side, where the temperature is milder and the beans would have slowly cooked overnight. And the next morning they were ready to be poured into the dish and eaten!
I tell you this just out of curiosity, as central heating has replaced the fireplace (thanks God!) and fiascos are almost impossible to find nowadays. However the tricks behind cooking beans al fiasco are the mild temperature, the long cooking and the impossibility of beans to move around. So if you want to cook beans properly (Tuscan way) you have to make sure that you respect all three rules. Not respecting these would result in a mushy mixture that you do not want to eat!
The way I have developed to cook Cannellini beans is the following:
I put them in a saucepan (make sure that it is much bigger than the volume occupied by the dry beans, as they grow!) and add water just to cover them. Put the saucepan onto mild heat (the smaller plate in your stove at the minimum temperature) and let them cook. I make sure that I have hot water available and each time that the beans absorb the water I add a small amount to them. Depending on the beans, this can go on for hours, usually 2-3. Very important: do not stir the beans!
You can serve the beans hot, seasoned with olive oil salt and pepper, and at wish with some, chopped onions and tuna. You can also use them for further preparations such as pasta e fagioli, ribollita, etc.
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