Paccheri with Pomodorini and marinated Red Onion

Paccheri with Pomodorini and marinated Red Onion by Alessio Fangano on 500px

For my upcoming cooking class I wanted to create a recipe that would highlight the sweet richness of Paccheri pasta. As it is often the case, simple is best, when you have such great pasta to start with.

My Magic Wintery Gazpacho Chez Fahad's

It has been quite some time since I had guest posted for a friend and this time I am very happy to be hosted at Fahad's land of delicious treats SimplyFahad-istic.

When he approached me asking to guest post, he mentioned that it would be for his "Liquid Friday" series. As the title says, this series concentrates on drinks and this is a first for me. My original idea was that of using the Vitamix blender I had won at "Food Blogger Connect" back in September and create something around almonds. One of my culinary dream project is that of perfecting home-made almond milk and the Vitamix seemed like the most perfect kitchen appliance to help me; but what do you know, I still haven't received my blender....

Destiny wants that, for one of my sessions at FBC12, I had created a Wintery Gazpacho to show a special technique of clarification. Normally gazpacho is a soup item but thanks to this technique it can be now promoted to the category of drinks (and cocktails) furthermore I bet it would be a great addition to your Thanksgiving table!

Without further ado, let's head to Fahad's to fetch a cup of my Wintery Gazpacho.

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.

Top 24 recipes of 2011

And this year is gone and it is almost my blogversary too! Many (but not too many) are the recipes I have proposed you across the past 12 months and it was very hard to choose some that have stuck in my flavors library.

After skimming my picture catalog I have reduced them to a Top 24. With one new recipe every two weeks may this list help you bringing a little more happiness into your 2012.

Top 24 of 2011

Risotto with broccoli, poached prawns, roasted sesame seeds oil and dark chocolate shavings

Duck breast with caramelized onions & Sicilian orange sauce

Does Photography really steal souls? Probably not steal but capture it. Capturing, stealing, what's the difference? Probably the fact that we can't capture the whole soul of a place but just bits and pieces of it. So when we go on a holiday, visit a new restaurant, bar or anything alike and take snapshots of it, do we really capture its soul or just what resonates with us, what we already know and are able to recognize. To me capturing through photography tends to be the harder and more isolating day after day I try doing it. Isolating in the sense that often I'd like to be invisible sitting on a bench or at a cafe so to be able to observe for as long as I need without causing concern (or being asked to pay the bill).
Probably this is what it's all about, snap and snippets of a place, of a history, of a soul.

Meatloaf o the Rant

Time passes by faster than we realize and it is July already.

Half year has slipped through my fingers with probably nothing concrete to show that I have made the most of it. The past days have been pretty gloomy in this side of the world. Weather has turned itself into November mood as did I.
Closed as a clam shell, surrounded by a silent and quiet sea of apathy I find myself cornered in dark places. It is hard to escape reaching for the surface. No baits or fisherman plunging his hands into these waters to bring me to a different future and I can't swim.
In these days of senseless sadness I just wish to retire under the blankets and sleep, hoping for dreams depicting a better reality, a more meaningful one perhaps.
Eventually the sun comes lurking out of the clouds warming up our bodies and hearts.
Today the sun is out.

Crispy pork belly gyros of many traditions

I guess somebody was in a street food mood lately, yeah I think so.


This round of Velveteers has been brought us by the eclectic mind of Asha from Fork Spoon Knife. Amidst her blog birthday and the plethora of guest posts she managed to put together for the occasion, she came up with the idea of challenging us in making Gyros ourselves....
What is Gyros? Come on, you know that! Oh wait, you might know it as Doner Kebab perhaps. In effect they are essentially the same thing and that is a huge conical pillar of meat roasted vertically on a skewer.
If you didn't know that Germany is famous for its sausages and sauerkraut, you would call Doner (contraction from Doener Kebab) the national dish. You find a "Doener Haus" almost every second corner around here and I would bet that 1/3 of the middle-aged to young part of the population almost entirely survives on it. If well done this fast-food item can be in effect quite a balanced meal.

Sicily Sweet and Sour

When at the Velveteers tavern we planned the hosting calendar, I chose the month of September when I would have been in Sicily.
Despite the good propositions, life in my family house can get easily out of hands. Too lazy, too relaxed, with rhythms other than my owns and the possibility that at any time somebody could drop in my room startling the hell out of me; it is not an easy environment where to concentrate in front of a screen, let alone that the TV right there, beside me. TV is indeed a strange beast, if you don’t have it you don’t miss it, but if it is around it will inevitably attract you like a magnet and so you are lost zapping between channels trying to find something watchable; settling often over a re-run of decades old TV-series (god bless Angela Lansbury and her Murder, She Wrote series!).
Days pass by like sand between your fingers; a coffee and chat with mom, some TV, some more chat with sis, more TV, brainstorming with mom about dinner, more TV. You don’t even notice and it is already dinner time and for me that means that I get to cook when all the others are already sit to dine (we have got only 3 working hobs). And so here I am, rather late for my monthly Velveteers post.

When I proposed to cook Caponata as the September Velveteers’ dish, I wanted to make it a family business but actually only I ended up eating the plated dish at the end of the shooting since we had already planned a chilli con carne night. I did though brainstorm with mom about the traditional way we are used to make this dish in my household so it still involved all the needed family members.

Bluefin Tuna "alla Siciliana" with grilled Saffron Polenta wedges

Again today it was ugly and gloomy, less rainy than yesterday at least. Daddy was on his way to the fish market in Syracuse quite early this morning and brought back nice treats for our weekly meals. He found some more fresh sardines, some calamari and a special treat, fresh Mediterranean tuna steaks.
Mommy doesn't eat much fish but fresh tuna is among the few she likes, especially cooked the way I am going to show you.
It is a traditional way of cooking meaty fish like tuna and it uses the best of the sun gifts: fresh tomatoes and basil. We don't eat this dish very often, at most twice a year, tuna is rare thankfully since it is an endangered specie; the days of the old "Mattanza" are over...

As side, I needed a starch (since I am in a no bred period) and spotting an half used package of polenta cornmeal, while reaching for it I saw also that mom had bought some saffron. So my side dish was set: grilled saffron polenta wedges.
Back to the recipe, are you ready with your tissue papers? You are going to have a watering mouth, I advised you ;-)
Here we go!

Bluefin Tuna alla Siciliana (aka in fresh tomatoes and onion sauce)

The pistachios post

We in Sicily are quite blessed by the production of yummy almonds and pistachios. The city of Agrigento has a festival for the blossoming of the almonds tree that grow in its countryside and in the Noto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto valley. Pistachios are instead grown on the sides of the Etna volcano in the city of Bronte. We use both nuts quite a lot both in savory and sweet recipes but while almonds are more assertive, pistachios are quite subtle in taste (and more expensive too).
Almonds are omnipresent in my pesto sauces but I have not worked extensively with pistachios before; I have then decided that it was due time to face the nut.
In this post, you will find a series of experiments I made with them, mostly savory with a great classic as sweet. Let me know what you think of them.

Double potato salad with green onions and pistachios