Queen of Hearts Queen of Spades

One of my favorite characters from Disney's Alice in Wonderland is, of course, the magnificent Queen of Hearts: she is so mean, so pushy, so overbearing, so merciless that it's a real pleasure to watch her punishing a very annoining Alice!
To the contrary, in the book, I stand with Alice against the dictatorial Queen...
And now my mind is wondering in the realm of how wrong are some adaptation, especially for young minds, ready to be shaped and that will never read the original book...
But back to the recipe!!!
It happens that I own those cute cutters in the shapes of the symbols of a deck of cards, and sometime I remember to use them!

Carrots and courgettes pie

Puff pastry
1 courgette
1 carrot
1 onion
1 glass of milk
Salt and pepper
Egg yolk to brush

Preheat the oven at 180° C.
Lay the puff pastry and cut it to cover completely a cake mold (remember that you need to cover this pie, so cut wisely!).
Dice the vegetables. Warm the salted and peppered milk.
lay the vegetable inside the covered pan, cover with the milk, then cover the pie with the remaining puff pastry. Decorate the pie with the shape of your choice, brush with the egg yolk and bake until golden and puffed.

Mushroom soup/pâté

Well, I love mushrooms, any and all kind! As I live in Italy, in autumn is quite normal to find fresh porcini at the market, altogether with many other wood mushrooms. Of course the most widespread mushrooms that you can find everywhere, all year long, are champignon. And as we produce so good dried porcini, the most simple way to have a porcini taste even when porcini are not available, is to mix champignon with some dried porcini. And so I did for this soup.

2 celery stalks
1 carrot
1 onion
30 g of dried porcini, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes (do not throw away the water)
500 g of champignon
3 potatoes
2 tablespoon of extravirign olive oil
1 glass of Marsala wine or Porto wine
Thyme

Clean and slice the champignon. Pell the potatoes and cut them in chunks.
Clean and mince celery, carrot and onion. Stir fry them in the oil. Add the drained porcini, then the sliced champignon and the potatoes. Add the Marsala, the drained water form the porcini, the thyme and cook for 30-40 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
Serve it straight away (upper pic) or blend it (like under here) to make an interesting pâté for your appetizers!!!

Green Sformatini

“Again? She made sformatini again???”
Oh yeah! And you know why? Because they are so simple I’m not ashamed to show them on this blog forever and ever.
“Yeah, ok, but she could choose not to publish them!”
And why???? The way I made them is absolutely the same, but I slightly changed the ingredients and they are superb!!!

Last week, reading a post by my friend Ilva, I realized that cauliflower and broccoli stalks are edible and you could do something with them, something tasty, and something edible!
So I boiled them and I mixed them with a mozzarella, some stracchino, half a teaspoon of red curry paste, two egg yolks and some Parmesan. That’s it! Oven and it’s cooked, edible, tasty, healthy and good!!!!! And if you don't put the egg yolk you can enjoy it like that, maybe with pasta or over bread...

P.S. The picture is always part of the set "Piperita bought bargain linen napkins"...

Give me my soup!

Have I already told you my childhood story about my eternal hate for minestra???
In Italy we call minestra any souplikestuff with vegetables, diced and cooked in some kind of stock or just water… In classical culinary Italian there are two different type of minestra: in brodo (in stock or water, anyway something soupy) and asciutta (dry, and we classify in this section any pasta or rice dish). What I always hated was minestra in brodo, and especially minestrone. Just thinking about it I wince… And along with my hate for minestra goes my hate for cooked celery… In fact the only thought of the smell of boiled celery make my face change in a grimace…
Anyway, all this nice useless information, just to tell you that I’m now over my hate for minestra (although I’m not over the one for boiled celery) and now I can eat soupy stuff, but do not make me see a single dice or piece: I want them smooth, velvety thick, creamy…
And as much as I like to play with what I have in the fridge, I do even like to transform cheap ingredients in something “chic” (I’m so hilarious thinking that something chic can come out of my kitchen!!! Especially on purpose!!!) or maybe “shabby chic” (my real aim in this life…)!

4 carrots
1 fennel
1 potato
Salt
Pepper
Orange zest

Clean and dice carrots, fennel and potato. Place them in a saucepan, cover with water, add salt and bring to the boil. Let it cook for 20 minutes.
Blend everything. Serve with freshly grind pepper and the orange zest.


P.S. This picture is part of the set "Piperita bought bargain linen napkins"...

Sformatini di catalogna

My ode to catalogna wasn’t a joke: I really love this greenery! Last time I went to the market I bought a huge tuft, cooked the outer leaves and ate raw the inside (puntarelle) following a great recipe.
As I can’t always eat catalogna with pasta (for the good of this blog), I made this little pies (albeit I’m not sure you can call them pie, as they are something between pie and soufflé).

300 g of cooked catalogna
250 g of ricotta
100 of stracchino
3 tablespoons of parmesan
2 eggs
1 clove of garlic
Salt and pepper

Mix everything in a food processor until smooth. Butter few little moulds or a big one, cover with breadcrumbs and fill them with you mixed mixture. Cook in a preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden.

P.S. This picture is the first of a huge set that goes under the title: Piperita bought bargain linen napkins. Be ready for more!!!

Mange-tout soup

Yesterday night I opened the fridge and all I saw were some sad vegetables that screamed, “Cook me or kill me!”
I cooked them…

1 red pepper
1 leek
1 fennel
1 courgette
1 little pumpkin
2 potatoes

1 teaspoon of red curry paste
Salt

Tarragon to decorate

Clean and cut in chunks all the vegetables. Throw them in a saucepan, add 2 litre of water, curry paste and salt. Bring to the boil and cook it for 30 minutes, or until all the vegetables are cooked trough.
Blend everything. Serve hot with some Tarragon leaves.

Ode to catalogna (or chicory catalogna)

I LOVE CATALOGNA! I just boil it, add some flaked chilli pepper from Sicily and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and use it as a pasta sauce… It’s good, healthy, bitter and still wonderfully tasty. I like to leave it a bit crunchy…
I could eat it forever and ever…

Various

Coleslaw

Sformatini di carciofi

Frullato di pesche

Guacamole

Sformatini di asparagi

Bellini sbagliato

Involtini con maiale e zenzero

Baba Ghanoush

Strudel (o meglio, rotolo) di verdure

Fiori di zucca ripieni

Insaltina di germogli di soia e gamberetti

Frullato di mango

Verdure ripiene

Ratatouille

Pomodorini confit

Verdure al forno

Pappa col pomodoro

Mixed salad with peaches and Roquefort

Crispy scamorzine

Carrot, leek and potato soup

Horseradish sauce

Roasted potatoes

Roasted fennels



Recipes Index