Monthly Archives: August 2008

Vacation Travel Food: Couscous with Vegetables

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These days I’m really busy  preparing my luggage and organizing, because I’m finally going on vacation. I’m heading down South, to Calabria to be exact, so I’ll be posting from there for awhile. I’m already dreaming about the dishes I’m going to taste soon. I’ve been to Calabria many times but each year I learn something new.

I usually don’t do it when I travel, but when I go to Calabria I always pack some food like rice to prepare risotto not that I miss my Northern cuisine, but my friends down there love to eat risotto the way we prepare it so I can not disappoint them. I also bring wine, the Veneto region where I live is one of the biggest producers of Italian wine but Calabria still has to grow so in the meantime I bring some from home.
As much as I’m looking forward to going on holiday I feel bad about leaving our garden still full of tomatoes, basil and salad. In these last days I’m trying to make and freeze  as much pesto as possible, but I don’t know what to do with my cherry tomatoes. I suppose I’ll bring some of them with me but for the rest I think I’m going to let my neighbors have them. Continue reading →

A trip to Piedmont: Potato and Tomato Salad

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I went to visit my relatives in Piemonte (Piedmont) for a short holiday. They live in a little village close to Turin where I spent many of my summer vacations as a child. The village is in the Pellice Valley surrounded by high mountains, rich with water springs and a thick vegetation: hazelnut trees, chestnuts trees, wild berries are all part of the landscape.

This time instead of going only to the mountains I decided to spent one day in Turin. It was a long time since I’d been there and I rediscovered its beauty. It’s really a wonderful city, once the residence of House of Savoy and later the capital of Italy (1861 – 1864), and  has not lost its grandiosity still reflected in its royal castles, elegant palaces, immense squares, churches, museums which are famous world wide like the Mole Antonelliana that now houses the National Museum of Cinema and the Egyptian Museum second only to the Egyptian Museum in  Cairo, universities and the Italian automobile industry. Continue reading →

Cassata alla Siciliana to go

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Last night I had friends over for dinner and I prepared a typical meal from Calabria, the region where I often go on vacation. The menu was as follows: fried eggplants balls, pasta with ‘nduja, Pecorino cheese and onion marmalade, but up until the last minute I didn’t know what to prepare for dessert. I was thinking about some sort of dessert with ricotta I would have like to make Cassata alla siciliana but I didn’t want to work too much and also use the oven in this hot weather.  Then I had an idea to prepare only the Cassata filling and serve it in glass cups. I thought that it could be a great alternative, much faster than the classic recipe and less complicated even if the ingredients are the same except for the Pan di Spagna, sponge cake, the glaze and the almond paste. I’m usually against modifying original recipes but in this case I was just using the filling. If you want to see the real Cassata alla Siciliana check out this video. Continue reading →

Eggless Ricotta and Zucchini Cake

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In these days I’m in a ricotta kind of mood, so today I prepared this savory cake for dinner. I used sheep milk ricotta, which I prefer to the cow milk ricotta, and fresh zucchini just picked from the garden. A little gift from our neighbor. I tried to make it without eggs and it came out just perfect.

I hope you can find a good fresh ricotta cheese. In Italy is pretty easy to find it, but I don’t know abroad. In the States I’ve never been lucky enough to find a good fresh ricotta, so if you find a good quality one please let us all know here where you got it. Also, if you can avoid it, don’t buy the partially skim milk ricotta for this recipe. Continue reading →

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