salted croissant with ham and parmesan cheese

This little appetizer, finger food is delicious and fast, taken from "La cucina Italiana", made ​​at the table are literally selling like hot cakes even (and especially the children!).

For wine to match scroll down.

"I did this myself"

On Friday I recorded an episode on Gambero Rosso with Francesca Romana Barberini, presenting my  rustic chocolate cake, in front of the chef director of the school Gambero Rosso Francesca Riganati. Emotions such an examination at the university! Thank you Francesca, special person, and the chef and director Francesca; what a pride that diploma, I will soon hang in my beloved kitchen.

cassata chocolate strawberry and vanilla with a special combination...

Editor's Note!

The presentation of the sweets of this blog will be accompanied by the description of one or two wines to match, their history and composition, made by a very special person to me, who has a twenty-year experience in excellent restaurants in Rome, my brother Gian Luca Zacchia, sommelier enrolled in the Italian register of Sommeliers since 1990. His experience has been developed in restaurants like  Agata e Romeo as curator of the celling and tasting, the restaurant La Pergola and restaurant Alberto Ciarla in Trastevere, among only the most important. Now it is not his main activity, then accepted to cooperate with my adventure and passion for this blog, enriching it with his great knowledge in a field that I love much enjoy, but have few experience. We can then call it a "joint-venture" for affection and passion that binds us, for good wine and food, and the ability to combine them.



cassata chocolate strawberry and vanilla

italian puff pastry into ... slices or in glasses.

I finally tried the puff pastry, I did it with a chef, who taught me the steps of assembling the cake, which I did it here again with good results. I must say that I used a packed puff pastry, as there are excellent ready-made products, used even in the best restaurants. Yes it is! Then the dough for real purists I will do another time following the recipe of the chef Montersino, thatseemsthesimplesttodointheworld!!!   

scroll down for wine to match 

3-chocolate parfait

May is the month of birthdays (for me) and this gives me the opportunity to experiment and try new things, it takes motivation, pushing ahead the cart of new discoverings; so here it is, where I applied all chemicals, dosages and tricks of the pastry chefs. In this recipe there is a step taught by Montersino, that alone is worth the effort to prove, and the time to do.

For the birthday party of my son Alessandro, I found this explosion of flowers in my garden and the cake I chose for all children is a mousse (reminiscent of the ice, because they love it!) 3-chocolate (because they love the chocolate!). This recipe is taken from  L'arte-del-dolce, but I mentioned a chenge in order to "sanitize" the egg, because there were so many children.  The egg in the original recipe was assembled and added raw to the mousse, so I cooked the sugar in water up to 121° and added to the egg, while assembling.

marquise with yogurt and chocolate mousse

Yesterday I celebrated my dad's birthday, besides Mother's Day... so I prepared a special cake assembling some suggestions taken from the book L'arte del dolce.

strawberries tiramisu with chocolate for a music contest!

This is a variation of  glasses of tiramisu with strawberries  , rivisited at the request of my children; I have to add ingredients and decorations according to their tastes, and must admit with great results.

marble plum-cake