Avocado noodles

I saw some time ago an article about a very popular pasta recipe in Finland. So popular that it has been the most searched recipe in 2013 on google.fi.
According the info that I collected in the web everything started here.

For quite a bit of time I was like ”should I, should I not” but then why not to try it?!
Here is my version. In the original there should be lime, which I had not at home so I replaced it with simple normal lemon. Same with spaghetti that I did not have in house and I replaced by other whole wheat noodles. Recently we discovered bio whole wheat noodles and we enjoy them often (they give me the feeling I am eating healthy).
Coriander I saw it listed in some versions of the recipe, but I do not love it and so I skipped it as well.

My global feedback about the recipe? Different, especially for Italians it looks really weird :) but if you are a guacamole fan, than you should definitely try it!
I think it may be a good option for a cold noodle salad in a hot summer day. In this case, do not use the spaghetti, but go for a shorter pasta shape which fits much better to the salad.

For 2

A small ripe avocado
1 garlic clove
(Green) chili
2 tbs lemon juice
Olive oil as required
Parsley
Basil
30g Parmesan
250g Noodles (spaghetti recommended, but I used whole wheat fusilli)

Heat the salted water and when boiling add the pasta and cook according time and procedure
on the package.
Grind the garlic and the chili and place them in a big bowl (big enough for the whole pasta).
Prepare the avocado (remove the stone and the skin), cut in cubes and place in the bowl. Smash roughly with a fork.
Add the lemon juice, salt, pepper, herbs and grated cheese. Add a couple of spoons of pasta cooking water and mix well with the fork. Add then an amount of olive oil big enough to have a creamy soft sauce. (you can choose actually, if you like a more light version add a bit more noodles cooking water and a bit less oil)
Strain the pasta and blend with the sauce. Enjoy!

 

Paradisiac cream filling for cake

If you are already preparing the cake from my previous post, then it will be a good chance to try this yummy cream as well to fill it. I got the recipe from Misya webpage and as she is explaining it taste a lot like the commercial product Kinder Paradiso by Ferrero.

I really like the idea to replicate at home some famous commercial products but with more natural and healthy ingredients, eg no preservatives. I do it for several of them and sometimes the outcome is really positive, like in this case.

Other positive point: it is ready in few minutes without any cooking!

200ml fresh cream

1 ts honey

50ml condensate milk

(Powder sugar)

Wisk the cold cream until hard. Add then the honey and the condensate milk until homogenous (but still hard).

Cut the cake in half and spread the cream on the bottom half. Be more generous on the center and put only few close to the edges.

Cover with the other half and very gently press and tap it. 

Now sprinkle with the powder sugar and place the whole cake in the fridge to consolidate for few hours.

 

Different gnocchi: semolina dumplings

The most well known italians dumpling in the rest of the world are the gnocchi made with potatoes. Never the less we have some other very popular and tasty dumling. They are made of semolina and we call them "gnocchi alla romana", i.e. dumpling at the Roma style.

I have always loved them since I was a child and nowsadays they

are still very approciated at home :)

But now that I prepare them by my own I make a small variation to the traditional recipe and I add some ham to make them if possible even more yummy. If you want a vegetarian dish just skipthe ham.

For 2

½ l milk

125g semolina

30g butter

1 egg

Parmesan

3 ham slices

Salt

Ground nutmeg

Heat the milk with butter and a pinch of salt until boiling.

In the while wet a baking paper sheet and squeeze it. Fold with it a medium size baking tray (20x30cm).  
 

When the milk is boiling add the semolina and go on in cooking and stirring. At the beginning it will be very liquid but after few minutes the mix will start to get thicker. Wait until you have almost a solitd mass and it is not sticking to the pot walls any longer. 

 

Now remove from the heat and mix in while stirring quickly nutmeg, egg, parmesan and the ham cut in small pieces.

 Pour in the tray and level with your hands wetted by cold water.  Let it cool and solidify (approximately 30-60min).
 

In the while take out a smaller tray  and fold it with backing papaer or spread a bit of butter.

When the semolina mix is hard cut in your favourite shape (my Mom always cut them in round shape with a glass, but I am an engineer so I cut it in squares for space optimization) and arrange them in an other tray overlapping a bit each raw to the one before. Finish with some butter and some parmesan.

 
Oven bakeat strong heat  in the higher part aproximately other 20minutes or until crunchy

Whops.. I was too late for the final picture ;-)

Easy great potatoes

Back again finally after a long xmas break to talk about potatoes. In fact I really like roast potatoes but I often have the feeling I cannot prepare them at the best even if it takes ages. I then started a different approach, a slices approach. Here you see it.

I also like this approach because it offers several good variations. The potatoes can be prepared plane in a classic version just with salt. Or you can add some herbs like rosemary or a Provence mix for soft touch. Or you can add also a hot spices mix, like for Greek or Mexican food, for a more tasty result.

For this recipe it is pretty useful an oil nebulizer to distribute the oil more uniform, but if you do not have one just pour gently a small amount of oil maybe with the help of a spoon.

About 2 potatoes per person

Olive oil

Salt, pepper

Spices mix (eg Greek mix or Provence herbs) 

 

Heat up the oven at 250°C. Peel the potatoes and slice them in a thickness of 1-2mm.

Fold a tray with baking paper and spread a spoon of oil on it. Place the potatoes slices on the tray without overlapping them too much. 

Sprinkle the spices and the salt. Finish with a final small amount of oil. 

Place in the hot oven and bake at 220°C for a proximately 30min or until ready.

 

Some very healthy stuff: Passato di verdure

When I was a child I really did not like vegetables (surprising eh?) and there was a permanent fight during the meals between me and Mum because of this.

One of the most hated preparations was the vegetables soup. My Mum was smartly pureeing everything so that I could not recognize what was detail in my dish but this helped very limited because a piece of bean or half chard leave was always escaping to operation and floating in the dish. I was then refusing to go on in eating after the discovery. 

Only several years later I realized that a vegetable soup is in fact a very healthy food and that I was caring about healthy food. And that after few days of jag and revelry it is in fact a good idea. And that after all if I put in only the vegetables that I like in fact a vegetable soup does not taste so bad. 

This is one of the foods that I cook in a bigger amount and to store it for 1 or 2 more days in a fridge or deep froze for emergency times. Now in cold November evenings it is definitively a good solution for a warm dinner.

This recipe is also one which traditionally takes a bit of time to get ready. Because of this I find very convenient to make it in a pressure cooker.

Below I listed some ingredients, but the amount and the types are very indicative. You can put whatever you´d like or you have in the fridge according also the season. I just skip tomatoes because of acidity and potatoes because of high amid level. 

Ingredients below are for 4 persons

For me all of them are organic…

2 small or 1 big Zucchini

2 Onions

3 Carrots

2 clove of garlic

2 tbs Extra virgin olive oil

5 frozen cubes Spinaches or 1 Chard head

1 Broccoli

4-6 slides of bread (even 1 day old)

Salt, pepper and 2 ts Bouillon cube powder (I use organic monosodium glutamate free one)

Put the olive oil in the cooker and in the while it warms up start chopping in big pieces onions, carrots, zucchini and broccoli. Put them in the cooker, with 1 garlic clove too and let them quickly brown at strong heat.

Add the spinaches on the top. Then sprinkle with salt, pepper and bouillon powder.

Last add 2 or 3 water caps and cover. Cook under pressure for about 25minutes.

With the help of an immersion blender puree the vegetables.

Toast the bread and when still warm rub them with a garlic clove slightly crushed with the side of a knife blade.

Put 1 or 2 slices of toasted bread per dish and pour over the soup. Last finish with a bit of olive oil or spicy oil.

If you plan to serve it to young or older children not comfortable with vegetables a good trick is to sprinkle with parmesan or when still hot dip in small cheese cube which will melt. The cheese will tend to cover the vegetables taste and make it more acceptable. As you can guess this was one of my trials to eat the vegetable soup when I was a child.. 

Last summer feeling: Parmigiana

Summer is here definitely over, we have rainy and cloudy weather and leaves start to turn to yellow. In the end to buy good and fresh summer vegetables is almost a mission impossible, but last weekend I was in Italy and then I could still buy some fresh, tasty and yummy aubergines.

So, what is better than a juicy “parmigiana” to make the most of them?

Here is my version for 2!

Parmigiana 

Ingridients 

1 big aubergine or 2 small ones

Grated Parmesan

Cheese which melts easily 50g (traditionally is mozzarella, but this releases a lot of liquid and moreover I did not had it available)

1 can of tomato sauce

Clove of garlic

extra virgin olive oil

Salt, pepper, chili, basil 

Method

The best would be to purge at the beginning the aubergine, to get rid of the typical bitter taste. This means cut your vegetable in slices of 5-8mm thickness. Then place them in a colander in layers, cover every layer with a good pinch of salt (better thick grains) place a dish and a weight on the top and wait for 1-2hours. You will see a brown water drained out, that´s the bitter. 

But, as usual, I did the quick and dirty version and because of lack of time I had to skip this first step. But, especially if your vegetables are not very high in quality or not very fresh, this step really worth´s.

Now, again, traditional recipe would expect that you fry your aubergine slices, but I hate the operation of frying and moreover is not very healthy. What I do then, it is just to cook them simply in the oven. 

So, if you did the purge, previous next step remove the salt and squeeze gently your slices to remove the excess of liquid.

Otherwise just switch on the oven at 200°C. Then lay the slices on a baking tray and pour just a bit of oil above them. Bake them until they are cooked (you will notice a change in color and this should take aprox 15-20min). Then turn them and if too dry pour a second time a bit of oil and go on for other 10-15min or until the slices are cooked. 

In the while put a spoon of oil in a pan with a clove of garlic and some chili, add the tomato, adjust with salt and pepper and let sauce become thick. At the end remove the garlic clove and if you´d like add a couple of basil leaves.

Cut the cheese in small cubes. Warm up again your oven at 200°C.

Now, take out your oven pan and start to stack the layers. At first pour a couple of tomato sauce spoons on the bottom and a bit of oil and spread them, then go with aubergine slices, some tomato sauce, cheese and parmesan (be generous because the name parmigiana comes from parmesan ;-) ). Go on with the layers and finish with a good sprinkling of parmesan and a bit of oil.

Then place it in the oven for 30-45min until a brown crust start to form on the top. Then take it out and let it rest for further 15min. (no worry, it will be so close to lava boiling point that even if you wait it is still warm enough).

In the end, this is a parmigiana! :)