Muir Woods

When Crissy was with us, we went altogether to visit Muir Woods for a few hours. Muir Woods is an amazing place where Redwood trees have been growing for thousands of years. (Redwood trees sono della stessa famiglia delle sequoie, non penso ci sia un nome specifico in Italiano). It's very close to where we live, only about 45 min drive. This is the Richmond-San Rafael bridge we crossed to get there:
I love the structures of the bridges in the US :)
Once you get there, you feel small, and full of respect for these old creatures.
You can feel the sense of peace and of awe especially when you start living the main beaten path. Lucas, Crissy and I went all the way up the 'Ocean view' path, which only a few people hike on because it's pretty steep.But it's really worth it, it's a wonderful walk, and once at the top of the hill you can see all these trees below you, and very far away (hidden by the haze) there is the ocean:
Then the path goes down hill again, and you pass through a zone with a few dead trees, where you really realize how big they are. There are a few places for cool shots:
(Crissy and I in the tree.. it's hard to capture good pictures because there is little light).
(Lucas a bit tired from the walk?)
And this is a section of one of the biggest trees that died in 1930: you can count from the rings that the tree was more than 1000 year old!!!

Pane integrale alle noci

One more bread. Are you getting tired of bread recipes?!? :) I'm not tired of making it and eating it :) So, now I'm completely independent on recipes, and I just play around with flours and ingredients. A few days ago, our Italian neighbor who lives upstairs gave me some of his bread to try (he's also a bread-maniac). He has a sort of sourdough starter that he keeps using to make all his bread, so his is usually denser than mine. I like his very much too, and I loved in particular this last one that he made me try, which had walnuts in it. So of course I had to try to make my version of it, and I came up with something that again is within the top breads I baked.

Pane integrale alle noci / Whole wheat bread with walnuts
I wanted to try to make a bread using just whole wheat flour, without mixing it with regular flour. I used similar flour/water/yeast proportions as always (see this recipe, for example), with maybe a tiny bit more yeast because I thought this was going to be a heavier type of flour to work with. I added about 1 cup of walnuts roughly broken by hands to the total dough (~ 6-7 cups of flour, I think). I kneaded for a bit longer than usual (~ 15 minutes instead of 10), because this dough didn't seem to be as easy to make elastic as usual. Of course the whole wheat flour behaves differently than white flour. I had some more time than usual, so it rose for ~2 hours, then I divided it in two shapes and let it raise for another hour. I cooked it at 400 F for ~25 minutes, with a pot of water in the oven, and then took it out and let it cool down on a wire rack for a few hours before trying to cut it.
It was a real delight, and not hard to make at all.


I recently found out that the next 'Waiter, that's something in my.. basket' is going to be about bread!! And I'm still within the deadline. So I'm going to put this as an entry for the event, together my other two bread recipes that I decided are the 'best three' of my recent production: 'pane con zucchini' e 'pane al formaggio'.
The event is hosted by Spittoon extra, check out the link here.

Pani di mais

Recently I decided to just try to mix different flours and see what would happen of my bread. I was into corn, so I made two different 'corny' breads :)

Pane con farina di polenta / Cornmeal bread
To make this bread, I mixed about 1/2 and 1/2 regular white flour and cornmeal. As usual, dissolve 2 tsp yeast in 1 cup warm water, add a little sugar and let it foam. Add flour to this mixture until it's workable with your hands (start with 2 cups white flour and 2 cups cornmeal and keep adding). Add about 2 tbsp salt. Knead for 10 minutes, let it rest for 1 1/2 hour, knead for 2 minutes and divide in two shapes. Make nice and deep lines on the surface of the loaf, to obtain the drawing you prefer, and let it rest for another hour or so. Bake at 400 F for ~30 min leaving a pot of water in the oven. Cool down on wire racks.
This bread looked really nice and the taste was also very good. I just didn't like too much some of the cornmeal grains that remained too crunchy. It improved when toasted. Anyway, thus, I tried with a finer corn flour.

Pane con farina di mais / Corn flour bread
This was a really really good bread, probably ranked among the best breads I made recently. The procedure is similar to above, except for the fact that I used 2/3 corn flour and 1/3 white flour, more or less. The bread was soft but not fluffy and the taste delicious. It really reminded me of eating polenta, although it was a bread!

Pane con la pasta della pizza

What do you do if you have some pizza dough left? Well. If you want to make more pizza the day after, you can definitely do so. But if you're tired of pizza, just deflate the pizza dough, make it into bread shapes, let it rise again, and there you go! Wonderful bread the day after the pizza odissey :)
To have this type of bread loaf, shape the dough in elongated pieces about 3 inches in diameter, you choose the length. Before the shapes start rising again, cut them with two-three sharp and deep cuts on their surface, almost parallel to the bread. This will produce the nice lines on top of the bread crust. As usual, bake at 400F in an oven containing a pot of water to humidify and make a hard crust, for about 20-30 minutes, and once cooked, let cool on wire racks.

L'odissea delle pizze

It's already been two weekends ago, but I couldn't not post about this. Jeff, i.e. Lucas's boss organized a pizza party at his place, inviting about 50 guests. Guess who was going to make all those pizzas? Well, of course, the Italians! Giancarlo and I were the most experienced, so we leaded a team of brave people (not only Italians) and produced about 20 large pizza pans. We also made ice cream (with my wonderful ice cream maker), two tiramisu, and Ellif brought some delicious Bakhlava.
It was a really intensive experience (I guess this would be my first real 'cheffing' experience, I never cooked for so long and for so many people). We made all this dough in the morning:
And while it was rising, we prepared the sauce, the ice cream, and the tiramisu (in the meanwhile I left for an hour to prepare my Torta Pasqualina and my Crescia, since the day after it was Easter). Then we starting rolling it down and preparing the pizza toppings at 3 pm.
Unfortunately I was so busy cooking that I couldn't take many pictures. I stopped in order to take at least the picture of the first pizza that came out from the oven, a pizza with various types of cheese on top:
As I said, we made 20, with lots of different ingredients (some were focaccia, without tomatoes, some had grilled zucchini, some had onions, pesto, capers, olives, some had cheese, some didn't, some had grilled peppers.. so, anything our fantasy was inspiring us).
Here are few snapshots of the party, mostly taken by Vardha (thanks!!): the table with the rolling-down and pizza-cutting section.. at last the cooks get to eat a few pieces!
Lucas rolling down one pizza :)
And here is me in the middle of the big mess making all the toppings.
This big operation was really possible thanks to the fact that Jeff has a very nice house, with a big kitchen where we could cook even though there were plenty of people around.. and two amazingly good ovens that could bake about 5 pizzas at a time!
Everyone loved the pizza. In the end, we didn't use all the dough.. there was too much even for all the guests. The desserts were also very appreciated (actually, the strawberry ice cream was delicious, I'll have to make it again soon :).

Uova / Eggs

Frittata di pasta / Pasta omelette

Torta Pasqualina / Easter savory cake

Uova all'occhio di bue con fagioli e sedano / Sunny side up eggs with beans and celery

Crissy e' venuta a trovarci a Berkeley!

One week ago, Crissy came to visit us because of a meeting in San Francisco. It was really really nice to have her here, and be able to talk again as in the old times in Raleigh!!
Also, I took advantage of her presence to go around Berkeley campus and take some more pictures, which I want to share with you.

This is 'Il Campanile', i.e. the bell tower in Berkeley campus. It's copied from the belltower in Venice (hence the Italian name for it) - but of course it's three times bigger, at least.. eh-ehm, yes, everything must be bigger in the US.. :) Every hours the bells play some nice little music, and in particular, every evening at 6 they play quite a concert! Usually Bach pieces. I like it a lot.
Here are Lucas and Crissy in front of the magnificent main library:
And to conclude, a snapshot of the beautiful nature that surrounds us. The trees blooming are everywhere, it's a joy to see and to smell.

Pane al formaggio

Here is another of the many breads I've been baking recently. This bread contains some cheddar cheese in the dough, which gives it a nice yellow warm color, and a very good taste. The dough is extremely interesting to make, because it doesn't require kneading: it's so soft that you can only mix it with a wooden spoon for a while, and then just let it raise. Honestly I think it's one of the best breads I baked in this period.

Pane al formaggio/Cheese bread
Ingredienti
4 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 cup milk, scalded
3 tbsp sugar (I put only 1 1/2)
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp butter, melted + some to glaze
1 cup tepid water
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
Preparazione
Add sugar, salt, melted butter to milk and let cool until warm. In the meanwhile put the water and the yeast in a bowl, let it rest. Then add the milk mixture, the cheese and the flour. Beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes or with a wooden spoon for ~ 300 strokes (I tried this and I must admit I was done at 200.. it's quite tiring!!).
Cover the dough and let it raise for ~ 1 h. Then stir it down and beat it for 30 seconds. Put the dough in 2 glass oven proof pans, buttered (8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inchese, or ~20 by 10 cm). I actually used some round and oval ones that I had. Bake at 350 F for 30 to 40 minutes, then remove the loaves from the pans and brush some melted butter on their top. Let cool on wire racks.
The recipe is from my usual beloved 'Breads' book, from 'The good cook' series.

I put this bread as one of my entries for the next 'Waiter, that's something in my.. basket', which is going to be about bread!! After baking lots of breads, I decided this counts within the 'top three' of my recent production, together with : 'pane con zucchini' e 'pane integrale alle noci'.
The event is hosted by Spittoon extra, check out the link here.

Colomba

This is my last late Easter post, finally :) But I do have to write about this.. it's really THE Easter dessert in Italy, everyone buys it from the best brands that produce it.. 'Colomba' means 'Dove', and it's a sort of panettone, although it's risen less, and it has almonds on top. Since my panettone was improving year after year, I decided to try to start making a yearly Colomba too. This is the first time.. The result looked very similar to how a colomba should be, except for the shape: I didn't have any dove mold to bake it, so my colomba was an oval approximation to a dove :). Still, the interior was not like colomba should be. I took the recipe from the usual website that I like, for Italian recipes, but I think I must have not followed it close enough. I cannot find the exact link anymore, so we'll never know :( Anyway, I'll give you the recipe I used, because it's a really good cake/bread to make, if you want to try it. I'll let you know when I find the real recipe for Colomba, though.. :)

Colomba
Ingredients
1 lb flour
1/2 cup milk
1 stick butter
1 cup dried candied fruit (I found dried exotic fruit, it should be candied orange and lemon...)
2/3 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
3 tsp yeast
1/2 cup almonds,2 tbps sugar, 2 eggwhites, for the decoration + a few almonds

Procedure
Dissolve yeast in a bit of warm milk, add sugar, let it bubble. In the meanwhile, add the egg yolks, the sugar, the butter (softened), the fruit and the milk to the flour. Mix. Add the yeast, and knead for a while. Let the dough rest overnight. Blend the almonds with the sugar and add 2 egg whites to it. Spread this mixture over the colomba, then place a few whole almonds for decoration. Bake at 350 C for ~1h, cover with aluminum foil the top if it starts burning.
If you know how colomba should look like, you'll immediately understand that this is less aery as it should be. Still, as I said, it was very good.

Crescia

At last I have a little time to finish to post my Easter recipes! This 'crescia' was a great success, so I'm going to give you the recipe even though Easter is long gone. In the end, it's just a bread, you can make it anytime.
Traditionally, though, it's eaten for Easter breakfast in Naples region, with cheese and ham (that's how you should serve it).

Crescia
This recipe was taken from Cooker.net and it was written by Clamilla.
Ingredients:
1 lb flour
1 cup parmigiano grated
2/3 cup olive oil
5 eggs
2 tsp yeast
1/2 cup warm milk
1 tsp sugar
~1 tbsp salt
pepper
Procedure:
Dissolve yeast in milk, add sugar. Mix flour and cheese, make a hole in the center and pour the oil, salt, pepper, eggs, and the dissolved yeast. Mix, and then knead for ten minutes. Add flour if you need, but you shouldn't need too much of it.
Make a ball with the dough, put it in a buttered and floured pan with high borders. Cover and let raise in the oven at the lowest possible setting (200F or so) for 2 hours. Now, pay attention: I didn't realize how much it would raise. I should have, I know: 'crescia' in Italian is related to 'crescere', which means 'to grow'. So after two hours my 'crescia' almost reached the top of the oven, and I had to lower the rack in a position closer to the bottom. This messed up the rising a little bit. You should not have to move the crescia once it started raising. Anyway, the result was still delicious, but I guess it could have been even fluffier. So, don't move it, and after two hours increase the temperature to 250 F for 10 min, and then bring it to 350 for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out dry if you poke it. When you take the crescia out from the oven, flip it and let it deflate. Mine was harder on the outside, and it was alrady deflated because of my earlier move, so I didn't have to do this step. I guess mine wasn't the best crescia ever, but considering that neither I nor my guest ever tried the original one, we were all very satisfied of the result. Let me know if you try this!

Weekend Cookbook Challenge n.15 - Spring / Easter food roundup!!!

I'm so excited! Many people sent me delicious recipes for this WCC and I'm really happy to write down a summary of all of them here on my blog! I feel very honored. :)
So, as you know, the theme was 'Easter/Springtime food', food for physical and spiritual rebirth. I'll post the recipes in the same order I received them, because it would be hard to choose otherwise.

The first post arrived from Bradley at Sauces and Stuff. It's his first time to participate to the WCC.. Welcome! He writes a recipe taken from
Chuck Williams 'Simple American Cooking', for Baked Chicken with Honey Lemon Glaze. He said raisins, honey and lemon remind him of spring. That's true! And the Chicken looks delicious :)

Another Springtime recipe comes from Julie at Veggie Chic: Sesame Asparagus from 'Vegan with a Vengeance'. Looks yummy!

Sara at I like to Cook, the mind behind the Weekend Cookbook Challenge, presented anothe Springtime recipe from Atco Blue Flame Kitchen Holiday Cookbook 2002, i.e. Pear and Onion Strudel. She gives us the recipe to try, but she warns us that she didn't like the one she made... Mmm.. if someone tries, let us know!

And here we start the list of Easter related recipes! Ulrike from Germany from Küchenlatein prepared Ginger choc chip cookies taken from the Good Food Magazine. Look at what a nice presentation she prepared for us.

Lis from the wonderful 'La mia Cucina' posted about Tyler McCheffy Florence's Rockin' Rice Pudding, after realizing that she didn't take any pictures of her Easter Rice and Ricotta pie. Her post is a must-read if you are feeling blue for some reason :) - and the rice pudding looks really good.. I hope she will share the Easter Rice and Ricotta Pie recipe with us sometime!

Breadchick from The Sour Dough proposes a Springtime recipe from the menu served on the Titanic! Which was appropriate also because the anniversary of the tragedy occurs right these days. She proposes the intriguing Asparagus Salad with Champagne Saffron Vinaigrette, taken from Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner by Rick Archbold and Dana McCauley. Her post is very interesting to read also if you want to learn about the Titanic.

Young and talented Evelin from Bounteous bites presented this super nice recipe for the Easter theme: Saffron-hearted truffle eggs in white chocolate (from Maria Öhrn's Godis).. so cool!!!!

Melissa from Cooking Delights presents an Easter Lemon Merengue Pie that looks wonderful and delicious! I'm really impressed, I always heard merengue is the hardest thing to bake.

Haalo from Cook (almost) Anything at least once made a wonderful and I'm sure delicious Pandolce taken from Ursula Ferrigno's La Dolce Vita: Sweet things from the Italian Home Kitchen. I will definitely have to try to bake this. It has saffron in it!!!

Steph from A whisk and a spoon made a Lemon Yogurt Cake that is making me feel hungry just looking at it:

Back to the Spring theme, Brilynn from Jumbo Empanadas presents an intriguing recipe: Mango Wrapped Thai Shrimp, taken from Food and Wine magazine, Summer 2002. Such a wonderful idea!

Meeta from What's for Lunch, Honey? presented Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese and Avocado taken from a German cookbook called 'Lecker'. So colorful and fresh, she suggests to prepare a lot of it because it goes away really quickly!

At last, here is my contribution. This Easter, I tried a few Easter recipes tipycal of different regions of Italy (Crescia, Colomba, and so on - I will post the recipes soon). For this WCC, I decided to present my 'Torta Pasqualina', with eggs and a vegetable similar to spinach in it. I took the recipe from an Italian recipe exchange website, cooker.net.

Ok, that's it for this time! Lots of interesting ideas to try. I'm sure you can try all these recipes even if Easter is gone (Spring just began..) - and I'll keep a note of them for next year!
As for the next Weekend Cookbook Challenge, Sara at I like to cook will be the next host and the theme will be 'Something new'... Very intriguing! Lots of possibilities here. The deadline will be May 12.

Torta Pasqualina

Torta Pasqualina literally means 'Easter cake' in Italian. It's a typical Easter dish from Piemonte and Liguria. You can recognize it from the other many savory cakes that we have in Italy because it has whole eggs that are baked in it. The dough is a layered dough, a bit like 'fillo dough', but thicker. It's called 'pasta matta' (i.e. crazy dough). Here is the recipe, adapted from Gianfranco's recipe at cooker.net.
Ingredients:
1 lb flour
1/2 cup water
5 tbsp oil
1 lb spinach (it should be biete, a long leaf green vegetable that I couldn't find here, and spinach is a good substitute for it).
1 lb ricotta
1 cup parmigiano, grated
5 eggs
Procedure:
Mix the flour with the water, the oil and a pinch of salt. Knead the dough for ~10 min, then let it rest for at least one hour (I did overnight). In the meanwhile, make the filling: boil the spinach for five minutes, then sautee them in some butter (I added a bit of garlic because I like it). Add salt, ricotta, parmigiano, a pinch of pepper and one egg, and mix well.
When you're ready, divide the dough into ten parts (the more the better, it's supposed to be 33 like the years of Christ!!! - but I opted for ten.....). Roll the dough down as thin as you can. You should obtain discs to cover your baking pan with each piece of dough. I wasn't able to roll them down so much and it was still ok, so don't worry if you can't. Put the first disc of dough in the baking pan, spread some olive oil on top, put the second disc on top, and continue for five (or half) of the discs. Now put the fillingon the dough. Make four dips in the filling, and break the four eggs in them. Sprinkle some extra salt on the eggs.
Add the rest of the discs, still putting olive oil between each of them, and add olive oil also on the last one. Fold the ecces dough on top of the cake.
Preheat the bread at 400 F and cook for ~1 hour. Cool down before serving (it can be eaten a bit warm, but not too much). It's DELICIOUS!!!!!
This is also my special entry for the 15th Weekend cookbook challenge, hosted by me for this edition with theme 'Easter and Springtime food'. The deadline is tomorrow (I'm on Pacific time so you're not late yet!!!). I'll post the summary in one week.

Buona Pasqua!!!

It's Easter!!!!!! Happy Easter to everyone!! This was a very nice weekend. I will post about it as soon as I can, but for now, I have to write first my post for the Weekend Cookbook Challenge that I'm hosting myself! Today in fact I invited some friends over for a 'merenda sinoira', which is an 'afternoon snack' that continues into a dinner, in Piemonte, in order to let our friends try some typical Italian Easter food.
So here is the food I made - you will see, eggs are the main ingredient. Eggs are the symbol of life and rebirth, and that's why they are so important in the Easter menus.

Crescia
It's an Easter savory bread typical of Naples, made with cheese and egg, eaten with cheese, ham and salame for Easter breakfast.
Torta Pasqualina
It's a savory Easter cake typical of Piemonte and Liguria. It's made with a layered dough, filled with a vegetable similar to spinach (I used spinach here), and it has cheese and whole eggs inside!
Uova pasquali
Eggs filled with mushroom and parseley

Carciofi con parmigiano
It's a typical way of eating artichokes, which are a typical Easter food.
Colomba
This is a typical Easter dessert, it's a bread similar to panettone, but it usually is shaped like a dove (that's what colomba means). I didn't have the colomba mold, so we had an oval dove :)

Ok, now that you have the menu, I'm going to write the posts in separate recipes. I decided that the best thing I made was the Torta pasqualina, so that's going to be the WCC entry!

Un altro tipo di pane: panini integrali al latte

As I said, I'm now determined to try many of the recipes from my 'bread' cookbook. I decided I will alternate and make some 'rich' bread followed by some 'simpler' bread. So last time it was the 'rich' bread, with zucchini. This time I wanted to try these small breads with milk, supposedly of Italian origin.

Panini integrali al latte / 'Homemade Italian Milk Bread'
Mix 1 1/2 cups milk with 1 1/2 cups warm water. Take a little bit of this mixture out, and dissolve 2 1/2 tsp yeast with a little sugar in it. Let bubble. Add 4 cups white flour and 2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour, knead for at least 10 min adding salt, and more flour if necessary. Divide into 20 rolls or 2 big loaves and let them rise for at least 1 1/2 hours (as a matter of fact, I let the dough rise for 1 hour as a whole ball, and then I devided it in the 20 rolls and let them rise for another additional ~1.5 hours). Glaze with milk. Bake at 425 F. The recipes says 25-30 min for the rolls and 50 minutes for the loaves. I noticed they were done after ~20 min, and actually I had to pay attention because some of them were burning on the bottom. They're so tiny.. It's good if you have the baker's stone, it keeps the bottom from burning, otherwise you should put them a little bit higher in the oven than usual.
The result was a nice soft bread, but not the best bread I ever made. The crust was harder when I took it out of the oven, but it softened a lot after the bread cooled down, even though I was using a wire rack for the cooling. So, it's a bit 'spongy' to eat it by itself, although it's perfect to soak the olive oil in your plate after you have tomato salad, and it's nice to make tiny panini (sandwiches) with it.