Category Archives: Comfort Food

Minestrone: food for the soul

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Minestrone is the Italian word for vegetable soup. Vegetables are cut in small pieces, and to make it tastier a soffritto is added. Soffritto is the base for a lot of Italian dishes. It consists of a small amount of vegetables, thinly chopped and saute in few spoons of olive oil or butter. The vegetables vary from recipe to recipe but the two classics are of onions, carrots and celery for dishes like the ragù alla bolognese, and butter and onions for risotto dishes.

I usually prefer to consume my vegetable soup pureed, and in this case it’s called passato di verdura (pureed vegetable soup). When I saw this recipe on Sale & Pepe Magazine (February 2010), I didn’t think twice and I made it right away. This dish is a complete meal and has all the nutrients you need. The quantity of vegetables and legumes is well balanced and neither of them has an overpowers the complete dish. Continue reading →

Sweet Millet Porridge by Brothers’ Grimm

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……when she said, “Little pot, cook,” would cook good, sweet millet porridge, and when she said, ” Little pot, stop,” it stopped cooking. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and now they were freed from their poverty and hunger, and ate sweet porridge as often as they chose………

…………”Little pot, stop,” and it stopped cooking, and anyone who wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.

Sweet Porridge by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Sweet Porridge is one of my child’s favorite tales and he keeps asking me to tell him the story again and again and again, you know how children are when they like something. Anyway he enjoyed the story but he was interested in the sweet millet porridge too. Continue reading →

My fried focaccine

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Fried focaccine (little focaccia) is a recipe that I invented when I was about 10 years old only to find out years later that it actually is a recipe. Unfortunately I forgot the name so you have to call it by the name I used  when I was little. There are other similar preparations some add eggs some add baking powder, they’re more famous than this basic recipe but I still love this one best.

The whole thing started from my great love for fried zucchini flowers, if I could I would have eaten them every day. I used to experiment in the kitchen in the afternoons when my mom was outside. I prepared this simple batter, the same for fried zucchini flowers, I fried it giving the “focaccine” a nice and round shape. Continue reading →

Riso e latte from my childhood

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Rice with Milk

Fall has definitely arrived and my desire for warmer dishes is increasing. I especially need what I call, “comfort food” which in this moment means some particular dishes that I used to eat when I was a child. I started to think about those times and I came out with so many dishes that I had almost forgotten. I’m sure I wouldn’t eat some of them anymore, but all of them them brought back some nice memories.

One of my favorite dishes was, and still is, Riso e latte, rice and milk. When my sister and I wanted to feel “cuddled” we asked my mom to prepare us Riso e latte. We always followed the same ritual before eating it  we used to pour it in our bowls and let it sit until it firmed up a bit and the milk would form a thin film over the top.  I can tell you it was hard to wait because we wanted to taste it so bad and it was difficult to resist that long but we always did it. Lately I started to prepare it for my own child and he’s definitely one of the Riso e latte clan too. Continue reading →

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