Take an evening with friends, put the passion for the American food… and compose your burger as you like!
To me, I love it like that: toasted fresh bread, mayo, 200gr of meat flavored with herbs and onions, Asiago cheese, sliced bacon, ketchup, fresh tomatoes and caramelized onions… and of course home-made chips!
Perfect evening.
All posts tagged food
16 PostsHamburger della casa
Traditional Christmas cookies with cinnamon
This year the traditional Christmas cookies are made in France. I visited a friend there and this is the result of our cooperation. Surely this recipe by Christophe Felder will spread cinnamon and anise fragrance in your kitchen. Actually mostly in the northern part of Europe cinnamon is the base flavor for many cookies, by years for me this smell has became a synonymous of Christmas days!
This recipe is very easy to make, and you can have cookies in any shapes simply by using cookie cutters… for Christmas there will be stars for sure!
You can find the recipe and all direction also from my friend’s website at RoadToPastry.
Ingredients
250g Pastry flour
125g Granulated sugar
65g Almond flour
125g Unsalted butter
1/4 Orange zest
1/4 Lemon zest
1 teaspoon Ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Baking powder
1/2 teaspoon Ground anise
1 Egg
1 Egg yolk
1 teaspoon Kirsch liqueur
1/2 pinch Salt
Directions
1. Place the sifted flour, sugar, ground almonds, baking powder, cinnamon, anise, the fruit zests and the cold, diced butter in a bow.
2. Work the ingredients quickly with the tip of your fingers until they are all mixed and of a sandy texture.
3. Incorporate the eggs and the liqueur with your hands or (better) with a spatula.
4.Try to make a ball and then knead twice by crushing the dough in small pieces with a dough-cutter or the palm of your hand. This will allow to give consistence to the dough without over kneading it.
5. Wrap in plastic, flatten and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
6. When the dough is cold, roll it out to a 4mm height on your slightly floured work surface. Cut the cookies in different shapes with cookie cutters or with a sharp knife.
7. Place them the cookies in a buttered and floured pan.
8. Bake at 180° for 13-15 minutes
Brownies
I can’t imagine life without chocolate. This autumn I discovered how easy and gratifying it is to make a typical recipe from the United States recipe. I am talking about brownies, this traditional American baked cake, that is a cross between a cake and a cookie.
The ingredients are few and it really takes a short time to make this tasty!chocolate cake. Also by combining and adding nuts, frosting, whipped cream, chocolate chips, or other ingredients you can obtain really nice versions.
In this case I took the recipe and all direction from a friend’s website at RoadToPastry.
Ingredients
250g Unsalted butter (room temperature)
225g Chocolate (70%)
250g Eggs (~ 4)
560g Granulated sugar
225g Pastry flour
1 pinch Salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1 teaspoon Coffee extract (optional)
100g Pecan or walnut pieces
Powdered sugar (optional)
Directions
1. Melt the chocolate and butter to 49° in a bain marie
2. Whip the eggs and sugar in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium speed for 10 minutes. Add the salt and extracts at the end.
3. Scrape down the bowl, then add the melted chocolate, blending until well combined
4. Add the flour and mix until combined
5. Fold in the nuts
6. Spread the batter onto a paper-lined pan (don’t tap it after filling it). Bake at 160° until the center is set, approximately 40 minutes
7. Cool completely before cutting. Dust the brownies with powdered sugar if desired.
Supplì di Riso
Everybody knows that fried food is always good, and I agree. Today I made this typical Italian dish that comes from Sicily. My Supplì are made with Rise, grana padano, mozzarella and then eggs, flour and bread crumbs to make that delicious crispy crust! Served hot with melted mozzarella are the best!
pistachio ice cream + marshmallow
Yesterday I had a really nice afternoon snack 😀 nothing to say more. 😀
Salmon Tartare
This salmon tartare is a special version of tartare. Sometimes when just you have the desire of something and you can not resist, what you do is just open the fridge and look in it!
So what I could find this time has not be a fresh salmon! That was a problem… but if you, as I, wish to have the tartare you can make it also with smoked salmon. I fond many recipes on the web and I combined in order to obtain a good one with the ingredients I had! And the result is a fast and fresh tartare.
What you have to do is to just to cut in small pieces the slice of salmon, than add oil, salt, pepper, fresh onion and dill than mix up all and add some lemon drops. That’s it!
P.s. I would remind that this in not the original and fully taste tartare!
Seitan
This time I made one of my favorite vegan food the seitan!
I state that I am not vegetarian, as u can see from my older posts 😀 but I usually like to try different kind of foods and so I enjoy also vegetarian food.
Seitan is a food made from gluten, the main protein of wheat. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starch dissolves, leaving insoluble gluten as an elastic mass which is then cooked before being eaten. Wheat gluten is an alternative to soybean-based meat substitutes such as tofu. Wheat gluten was first developed in China, and historically has also been popular in the cuisines of Japan and other East and Southeast Asian nations. In Asia, it is commonly found on the menus of restaurants catering primarily to Buddhist customers who do not eat meat. [wikipedia]
When I cook it I use to buy directly the flour because it’s easier to do, cheaper, and I get more satisfied! The process it’s really easy, you have just to mix the flour with water (the quantity is written on the package) until u can make a plastic consistency ball. Than knead, for like 20minutes, to activate gluten. Than knead under decreasingly warm water to wash out starch, repeat until the water runs clear.
After that turn on a work surface and form it in to a log. Left it rest. Than cut it in to small peaces (or left it together) and put them in hot water with vegetable and boil together. I used onion, garlic, carrots and zucchini. Cook for 45 minutes. Now the seitan i ready for every recipes!
I like to make a stew with sauteed vegetables and seitan pieces! Maybe because after the process to make seitan I always get hungry and I can not wait to eat it!
Calgionetti Abruzzesi with my Mom.
This holidays I have been following my mom while she was making the typical Christmas Foods. As every year she started with some days in advance to make the typical Christmas cookies. Yesterday she was making the Caggiunitt’, also known as Calgionetti. They are a typical cookies in Abruzzo region, traditionally made during Christmas time.
Calgionetti are basically a stuffed pastry in the shape of ravioli (square) or tortelli (half circle) filled with hazelnuts, chocolate, cinnamon, cooked Must (grape juice) and orange peel.
The cookies are often fried but, as my mom do, they can also be baked for the more health-conscious.
The pastry dough what my mom make is a Shortcrust pastry made from water, flour, butter, yeast, sugar and cinnamon to the filling.
The only think is just that, when they are pulled out of the oven the smell of cinnamon and Must expands to the whole house: Suddenly is Christmas and… they are truly tasty!
Pistachios Nougat
It is almost Christmas time and also in Milan it is the time of the “Oh Bej! Oh Bej!” that is a traditional fair. It is held from 7 December (day of the patron of Milan Saint Ambrose) until the following Sunday.
I have been walking through this colorful and picturesque market and with a lot of pleasure I found out an interesting Pistachio Nougat.
Maybe it is nothing new, nothing special but those who know me, knows that I like pistachios (especially in ice cream) and moreover I love green things… so how could I resit to this green “Torrone ai pistacchi” pistachios nougat!?
So I couldn’t resist and I bought this very traditional food of Christmas season in Italy and I enjoyed it!
*Nougat is a variety of similar traditional confectioneries made with sugar and/or honey, roasted nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, and recently macadamia nuts are common), whipped egg whites, and sometimes chopped candied fruit. The consistency of nougat can range from soft and chewy to hard and crunchy depending on its composition, and it is used in a variety of candy bars and chocolates. The word nougat comes from Occitan pan nogat, from nux gatum, which means nutbread. [Mention Wikipedia*]
