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?

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.

Pumpkin-seeds pesto over Salmon, rice-noodles and white beans

The Secret Recipe Club is back!
This time I got assigned Melissa's blog: A Fit and spicy Life. In here Melissa, tries to reconcile her love for good food with a healthy lifestyle made of stress-relieving cardio and weight-lifting sessions. Among the healthy and simple recipes Melissa proposes us, my eyes were caught by her Salmon with Pumpkin seeds pesto.

Mediterranean onion-squash and sausage soup

Et voilà! A before and after shot....

What do I really want to talk about in this post, I still ask myself. I have been working on these pictures for the last days, a whole week actually, without really being satisfied with their appeal. I know I could have re-staged them but nah, that would be too easy nevertheless I ended up posting them here (not that I have any hope any of them will ever make its way on any of the food-porn sites we all know) but sometimes showing a failure can be more teaching than contemplating a perfect shot come out of Vogue's food section (if they ever had any that is).