raspberry parfait with vanilla Bourbon

What is not made for a kitchen robot... red and beautiful: I made this parfait.

the last strawberries...delicious cups with strawberries, yogurt and pistachios

Given the high temperatures (which I love!) the strawberries do not disappear ...and before we begin the quarantine of 7 winter months (sigh!) pear-apple-banana-apple-pear, treat yourself to savor the last sweet strawberries. Here you find a recipe of Luca Montersino, changed and simplified, you can also read in the Magazine  Open Kitchen.

This Summer to the Ma....



La Pentolaccia



...rche! You thought the Maldives?!? Nooooo, Well Dustin Hoffmann, excellent sponsor of this region, was right! I admit I wasn't ever been there, I admit it took me five hours to arrive from Rome to Civitanova Marche, because taking the old road in the inland instead of the highway, we came across beautiful countryside and villages; we met exquisite people,

pumpkin risotto

Ingredients for 4/5 people:

• 4 etti rice Carnaroli
• 200g pumpkin
• 1/2 onion of Tropea
• 1/2 purple eggplant
• 50 gr. caciotta of Siena (cheese)
• 50 gr. bacon cut into cubes
• 5/6 small tomatoes
• chili powder  (to me Garofalo)
• 1 lt. vegetable stock (I used an organic stock cube)
• parsely

Method:

Chop the onion and put it with the bacon to fry in a wok with 4-5 tbs of virgin oil. When they are golden brown, add the pumpkin and eggplant both cut into cubes, the small tomatoes and a few grains of coarse salt, cook for 10 minutes with 2 tablespoons of hot water with the lid. Add the rice and stir with a wooden spoon for a few seconds until it has absorbed well the seasonings; start adding a ladle of broth, stir and wait until the rice absorbs it before adding another one, proceed this way until the rice is cooked: it will take about 18 minutes. When it's ready turn off the heat, add the cheese cut into cubes, the chili pepper and chopped parsley. Turn out on individual plates with a coppapasta.    

Bon appetit!

comfort food .... or biscuits!

You cannot ever deny friendship to a cookie, it's a sweet with a few claims, requires no saucer nor fork, does not dirty and you should not be hungry to eat; like when you were a child and took in your little hands your first cookie and chewed it slowly more to pamper you than to taste its flavor; and more than any other sweet has the power to bring you back in a nano-second into the perfumes and flavors of your childhood. And, as it's said now, it's the ultimate comfort food for me, it's perfect after dinner, for breakfast, as a snack food like no other, except maybe the chocolate when you need it, it cannot be replaced with no other. These biscuits are the result of a surplus of short pastry I made for the tart I prepared for my Friend Diana.

the French "quatre-quarts" with blueberries, grapes and chocolate pastilles

Quatre-quarts, ie in the French pastry the same weight of the 4 key ingredients to make a cake: egg-flour-butter-sugar (180 grams). This cake is suitable to be filled in with fruit, jam, chocolate, whatever we like. In the book "sweet and savory cakes" Ilona Chovancova gives a lighter version, which I filled with...what I had: grapes, blueberries and chocolate pastilles from Ecuador. It's a delight to be savored in small bites, because like all the French pastries, it's superb, but it should be granted sparingly. My motto is: less but good!