Castagnaccio - Tuscan chestnut "cake"

Chestnut flour is still an unusual ingredient in our kitchens, unfortunately.
To mill chestnut into flour, they are first dried over wood fire and this imparts the resulting product with a delicate and distinctive smoky aroma that make this flour pretty unique.
Being a nut´s flour, it doesn't contain gluten and so it is an useful ingredient for gluten-free pantries.
In Italy, chestnut flour is a traditional ingredient of the center-north portion of the peninsula. In Tuscany, notably, chestnut flour is used in a savory-sweet cake called Castagnaccio (castagna being the Italian for chestnut).
This cake is usually enriched with flavorful extra-virgin olive oil, pine nuts and rosemary but the main variation point in local recipes revolve around the use of cocoa powder in it.
Chestnut flour, with its deep rich sweet and smoky aromas, is just a perfect companion to chocolate and the use of a little cocoa powder in the Castagnaccio can only do it good, in my opinion.
I personally, simply adore rosemary in my Castagnaccio. When baked to crispy perfection, this herb lends its heady green-field aromas to this earthy densely satisfying cake; a perfect reminder of Tuscan sunbathed fields.
Try it once, and you will be hooked. You have been warned!

Penne with pumpkin-sage sauce crispy bacon and amarettini crumbs

Penne with pumpkin-sage sauce, crispy bacon and amarettini crumbs by Alessio Fangano on 500px

For one of my cooking class I wanted to develop a recipe inspired by the famous "tortelli di zucca" done in Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Pumpkin, sage, bacon, amaretti is what I came up with. Inviting enough? What do you think?

Mom Francesca's eggplant and onion casserole

Traveling always improves our lives; a rich baggage of memories and images can change us more than we can actually realize.
Oral stories sung by bards and grandparents have left the place to printed works and the ominous prescriptions of altarpieces and religious friezes.
Printed and visual experiences continously pull and push us around like little creatures on our shoulders whispering in our ears words of alternate realities populated by far away but somehow familiar beings. Invisible silken threads connect us nowadays in ways almost unimmaginable to our immediate ancestors.
"Practice makes us perfect" they used to say, practice is all they had to learn by, to improve, to debunk myths and legends, when they weren't meant to accompany us in the sweet kingdom of Morpheus.

Swiss-chard and almonds gnudi and a book review

At the beginning of the past week I was surprised to receive a phone-call from a delivery agency who communicated me that they had a parcel from England to deliver.
The hours went by and the sun rose again, around 10am the delivery man rang the bell and I had my mysterious pouch in my hands.
It was Giuliano Hazan's new cookbook "Hazan Family Favorites". I immediately brought it with me in my usual coffee shop and started my reading meal. Page after page, I wanted to get a clear idea of this book so to write a proper review that you all would appreciate.

They do say to never judge a book by its cover but in this case you should. The book design has been so cleverly done that right from the front cover you have a taste of the warm oranges and dark terracotta colors you will meet inside.

Daring Bakers at travel

Challenges, the life of a foodie are full of them; even more if you are a blogger. We apostrophize ourselves as Daring and caring. Being it savory or sweet, we meet up each month in two occasions to share the results on a chosen challenge.
The sweet challenge that us, Daring Bakers (DBs), have been presented with this month was Tiramisu. Thanks to this choice, we were able to make an ideal travel starting from India, reaching USA with a little touch of Italy.
The hostesses for the monthly DBs’ challenge were the lovely Aparna and Deeba from the colorful India. They chose the recipe for Tiramisu proposed by pastry chef Carminantonio Iannaccone. Major part of the challenge was the making of mascarpone and ladyfingers biscuits from scratch. Frankly speaking, this was not the hardest part of the challenge; the recipe itself was quite long to finish. The entire process took a whole of 3 days with 2 days dedicated strictly on the tiramisu cake.
Have you ever tried to make this Italian dessert? I am sure though that you have tasted it: soft, spongy biscuits soaked in strong coffee and layered with a fluffy and delicate mascarpone and egg cream; a dusting of cocoa powder crowns it all.
It is not a really difficult cake to make and it is always a great success with guests.
Here there is the recipe we were asked to follow.

And the winner is…..

It’s already 1 week since when I got that email.

The story begins though some months ago, in September. After reading my first book written by Herve This “Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor”, I decided to look for more information about his academic activities and the possibilities to follow some of his lectures.
Through his web-page at the INRA I found information about his monthly seminar at the Ecole Supérieure de Cuisine Francaise. At that time, I had enough money to allow me a trip to Paris to follow the course of September.
Along with testing the effect of freezing on the growth of baked layer pastry (btw not many differences between the frozen and the fresh specimen were observed), madame Renaudin announced the 4th edition of the Rencontres Science Art et Cuisine. I decided to participate. My first gastronomical competition!
The theme of this year was: Modernize our Tradition, with a second module on innovation centred on the use of the Methylcellulose.
It took a couple of months to finally sketch the projects that I wanted to develop as submissions. Naturally I wanted to focus on my Italian origins but more precisely I wanted to research a bit of Sicilian cooking traditions.
I decided to submit two savoury dishes:

• Rosemary Tiramisu with Pink Pepper and Caraway-Chocolate Rose Window shards



• Meat and Ricotta Cassata cake with Almonds glaze, Candied Orange peels and Eggplant Cracklings.