I Love Red Peppers

Here's a shot from our trip to Venice last weekend. It sounds so cliche, but it's a magical place. Everyone in my family is happy when we're there and believe me, that doesn't happen very often. We don't even care that we usually end up paying way too much for a mediocre meal while we're there, because we're in a magical land with canals instead of streets. Italians always tell us that there are good restaurants in Venice, ones that aren't way too expensive, but they always seem to tell us about them after we've come back. I think it's a conspiracy to keep these good and well-priced restaurants a secret, but as soon as I find one, I'll let you know.

On the home food front, I've been cooking up a lot of red and yellow peppers lately. I can't seem to get enough of them and my family seems to agree. They are easy to prepare, match well with a variety of meats and fish and are packed full of vitamin C. And don't forget that they're really pretty too. Here in Italy, they are widely available and affordable, but I know that's not always the case in the US. I guess it really depends where you live in the US. My lucky relatives in California probably have no problem finding them year round, but for those of you that can't, there are some pretty good roasted, canned peppers that you can use in a pinch.

Roasting peppers is an easy way to prepare them ahead of time and after they are roasted you can do a bunch of things with them. Our favorite way to prepare roasted red peppers is as follows.

Roast 2 red or yellow peppers and peel the skin off and deseed.

Chop the peppers into 1/2 inch slices and saute with a whole garlic clove and 2-3 tbs olive oil.

After the peppers are heated through, add 1/3 cup of black olives and 1/4 of plain bread crumbs. Saute until heated thoroughly, salt and pepper to taste.

Easy, huh?

Another super easy way to prepare peppers is to simply saute them with onions. I usually use a 2 pepper to one onion ratio. You could play with this depending on how much you love or don't like onions. The recipe goes like this:

2 red peppers, chopped thinly long ways

1 onion sliced into 1/2 moons

2-3 tbs olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, but not smoking, add the peppers and onions. Saute for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally so it cooks evenly. When the peppers and onions are nice and soft, its done.

This is great served with sausages or to make a fritatta with the left overs. It's also really good to make sandwiches with. Oh, I'm getting hungry! Bon Apetito!

Something Fishy

First of all, here's a picture of my two fish. This summer they started to grow gills, but now that the weather has turned cold, they seem to be back to normal.

I love to eat fish, but I really am not so hot at cooking it. I can do shrimp, clams and salmon, but beyond that I get a little lost and usually turn the cooking duties over to my husband, who is braver than I. Last weekend, the husband came home with this beautiful fish called an Orato here, but I have no idea what it is in English (please help me out if anyone out there has any ideas). Even he was stumped by what to do with the pretty fish, so we turned to the Encyclopedia of Italian Cooking and found a super simple recipe for cooking the fish in parchment paper. It was simple and delicious and I think that you could play with this recipe a lot.

Here's all you need to do. If your using a whole fish, insert lemon slices and tomato slice and what ever herbs you prefer, we used parsley, into the inside of the fish. My husband added some chopped olives to this and it was good. On top of the fish, layer the same ingredients and add a dash of olive oil, salt and pepper. Wrap the fish up in parchment paper, similar to a present, and cook at 350 for about 50 minutes.

This recipe can be adapted for fillets of fish as well. Put lemon slices and tomatoes on top of the fillet. Salt, pepper and oil and wrap fillets in parchment. You only need to cook for about 10 minutes if your doing fillets.

Bon Apetito!

Here's Something to Get You Through the Weekend

Here are a few wine recommendations. Please keep in mind that wine is a personal taste, one man's pleasure is another man's poison. In other words, don't hate me if you buy one of these and hate it. These are all pretty easy-to-find, decent priced wines. Salute!

Monte Antico-Red wine- this is a consistently good Sangiovese blend from Tuscany and you can usually get it for around $10

Bertani Secco Bertani Valpolicello- Red wine- pairs well with meats and poultry, its a great sipping wine

Bertani Due Uve- White wine- a blend of Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon blanc, its nice and crisp

Melini Chianti Classico Isassi- Red wine- a very approachable Chianti that pairs well with almost any kind of Italian food

Santa Anastasia Nero d'Avola- Red wine- My aunt's favorite wine, its a great value, packs in a lot of fruit and flavor for around $10

Argiolas Vermentino- White wine- pairs great with sea food

Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina-White wine- One of my all time favorite whites, it was meant to be paired with sea food, there's nothing better with pasta and clams

Zardetto Prosecco-Sparkling white wine- yummy bubbles that don't cost too much

Simple, but Good

Sometimes, we just don’t have a lot of time or energy at the end of the day to make a well rounded meal, but we know we need to eat our veggies, don’t we? This time of year the problem seems to e compounded by the fact that the veggies that are in season can be less than inspiring. Gone are the beautiful tomatoes, asparagus, red pepper and other colorful veggies that made our mouths water. Now, they’ve been replaced by a less colorful palate of veggies, like cabbage, squash and cauliflower. Not to disrespect these delightful fall and winter vegetables, it’s just that it’s a little harder to make a quick and healthy meal with them. Here are a couple recipes that can hopefully help you with your post summer doldrums.

Cabbage with Prosciutto

2 tbs olive oil
1 onion (less if you’re not a big fan of them)
1 head of green cabbage
2 slices of prosciutto cut into matchstick sized pieces
salt & pepper

Slice the onion into ½ circle, thin slices. Remove the core and thinly chop the cabbage. Add the oil to a Dutch oven and heat on a medium flame. When the oil is hot, add the onion and sauté until they start to soften. Add the cabbage and continue cooking for about 10 minutes or until the cabbage is cooked, but not too soggy. If the cabbage starts to stick, just add a little water to the pan. Add the prosciutto and cook until it’s warmed through. Salt and pepper to taste.


Pasta with Zucchini, mushrooms and tuna

3 tbs olive oil
1 clove of garlic, sliced into thin disc
½ tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1 zucchini
6 mushrooms
1 can tuna (in olive oil is best, but in water will work too)
1 tbs chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper
grated parmesan cheese
¾ package of pasta (spaghetti, linguine, there’s a lot that would work for this)

Put a large sauce pan full of water on to boil. Add pasta and cook for recommended time.
Drain pasta in a colander.

While the pasta’s cooking, quarter the zucchini long ways and slice very thinly. Slice mushrooms thinly. Add oil to a skillet on medium flame and when the oil is hot, add the garlic and pepper flakes. When the garlic turns a pearl color, add the mushroom and zucchini and sauté for about 5 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and the zucchini is translucent. Add the parsley and the drained can of tuna and heat until tuna is warmed through, but don’t over cook the tuna. Salt and pepper to taste. Combine the sauce and the pasta and serve with grated parmesan cheese.

The Lentil

So small, but so mighty. They are easy and quick to prepare. They are versatile and are extremely healthy, full of protein, iron and fiber. As I was doing research, I came across an article that proclaimed the lentil “the world’s healthiest food”. You can’t beat that can you? Now I know some of you out there are thinking “She’s posting about lentils? Can you be more boring?” I have to respond that lentils aren’t boring. I could talk all day about them. It seems that almost every corner of the world has some way of preparing the lentil. They are even referenced in the Bible, so obviously people have been digging them for a long time now.

My experience in cooking lentils has mainly been with Italian recipes. Every region here has a different way of preparing them. Here in the Veneto, they are put into risotto and down in the south, they are made with tomatoes. All over the country they are put into soups and thrown into salads. Lentils are one of the few things that Italians agree on. On New Years Eve, Italians eat lentil for prosperity. The more lentils you can eat, the more money you’ll make the next year. I guess Giuseppe and I have proved that theory wrong, because we should be billionaires by now with all the lentils we’ve put down on New Years Eve…

Lentil are cheap, healthy and filling. There’s absolutely nothing better on a cold winter night than a nice bowl of lentil soup. I also enjoy the French recipe of putting fried eggs on top of a pile of warm lentil salad. It’s sublime. I found that recipe on Epicurious.com. Do a search for lentils and eggs. Oh I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

Here’s a very basic lentil recipe. It makes a good side dish or sometimes I add some spinach and pancetta and it makes a nice lunch by itself. This is also a good base to a soup, just add some broth and some rice or even some sausage. I really could go on and on, but we’ll start with this. Bon Apetito!

Lentils with Tomato

2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs chopped carrot
2 tbs chopped celery
2 tbs chopped onion
1 cloved minced garlic (optional)
1 cup tomatoes, I use passato, but if its not available use crushed or chopped
1 ½ cups lentils
parsley
salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and add the carrot and celery. Sautee for 3 minutes and them add the onion and garlic. Sautee for another few minutes, until softened and add tomatoes and about 3-4 cups of water. Bring the mixture to a boil and then add the lentils and parsley. Cook 35 minutes or until lentils are done and then salt and pepper to taste. If the lentils start drying up during the 35 minute cooking, just add about ¼ of water and repeat if necessary.

If you’d like to make a soup, double the amounts and chop the vegetables larger. Add broth instead of water and use your best judgment on amount. When making a soup, nice add ins are spinach, which you can add toward the end of the cooking cycle, cooked sausage, potatoes or brown rice. Serve the soup with grated parmesan.

Hello Sweetie

Well, we've eaten our way through another weekend here in Italy. The weather has suddenly gotten cold and what better way to warm up than next to a warm oven. Better yet, a warm oven full of cookies! That's what I did Friday night. I haven't baked much since moving here, partly because I didn't bring all my baking gear with me and partly because delicious sweets are readily available here. I posted some pictures here so you can see for yourselves. Every where you turn here there is a bakery with a window full of goodies or and ice cream store filled with homemade gelato and then you go to the supermarket and there's aisles full of the most exquisite chocolates you've ever eaten. I've really tried to quit the sweets since I'm getting older and all, but its a bit like wearing a wool sweater on your Hawaiian vacation, it just doesn't seem natural!

I made the cookies from a recipe I found in the Denver Post ages ago. I used baking soda, peanut butter and chocolate chips that were brought over from the States, so there's absolutely nothing Italian about them at all. To be honest, baking Italian style intimidates me. They use a different method of measuring (grams instead of cups), different ingredients (potato flour is a common cake ingredient), different pans (they're very fancy here) and different leavening agents(it comes in little packages here and I have not idea what's in them). But I decided to take the plunge after a year of living here and I went to the supermarket and bought all these mysterious ingredients and the pan and tonight I'm going to do it! I'll try to document the occasion with some pictures and if it turns out OK, I'll try to translate the recipe for you and post it tomorrow. I believe its called "Cake of Yogurt and Chocolate". In the meantime, I'll leave you with my entirely American, super easy cookie recipe.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips, but I use more

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a small mixing bowl until well blended. Mix in the chocolate chips. Using a teaspoon, space balls of cookie dough about 1 inch apart on a baking sheet. Bake for 9-10 minutes. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet before removing because the cookies will be very soft when they're first out the oven.

Finally, Some Good News

When I checked the news yesterday on CNN's website, I was so happy to see this article about how wine is great for you. Yeah! One less thing to feel guilty about! I love wine and probably drink more than the average person, mostly due to the fact I'm around it more than the average person. My husband works for a wine producer here in the Veneto and it seems we are constantly talking about it, drinking it or hiking around vineyards and wine stores looking for it. It definitely plays a large part in our lives. Even our kids have begun to take a abnormal interest in it, but we think that's cool. They'll either be very sophisticated wine drinkers or raging alcoholics by the time they're 20, let's hope for the first one. Wine in our home is just about as important as the food we serve it with and I can't imagine having a nice dinner without a nice glass of wine to accompany it.

Yes, I drink wine almost every day and I cook with it a lot too. When I first started cooking with wine, I was really shy about now, but now I'm shameless, throwing it in when ever a sauce, soup or risotto call for liquid or starts to look the teeniest bet try. It adds nice flavor and I just love the smell when you first add it to your sauce. We invented this recipe this summer and we use quite a bit of wine in it, but if you don't drink or don't have wine on hand, you can substitute another liquid such as broth or water. This recipe is very much about what you have on hand, so just take it as a general idea and play with it all you want. It always manages to come out good.

Drunken Chicken otherwise known as Chicken with Vegetables

1 chicken, cut into about 8 piece, you could do more or less, just change the size of your pan
2 potatoes, 1/2 inch cubes
2 or 3 carrots, 1/2 inch chunks
1 onion, quartered and then sliced in 1/2
2 or 3 stalks of celery, 1/2 inch chunks
optional additions: artichokes, peas, shallots, leeks, parsnips, red or yellow peppers, what ever you have on hand or that's in season
1/4 cup olive oil
white wine or broth
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Arrange the chicken in a 9x11 baking pan. Arrange the vegetables artfully around the chicken pieces. Drizzle olive oil onto chicken and vegetables and then pour enough wine into the pan to fill it up about 1/3 up the sides. Salt and pepper. Put pan into the oven and cook for about and hour and a half or until the chicken is cooked through, stirring occasionally.

If you are using peas or something that will cook faster than the vegetables, add them in later in the cooking time so that don't get overcooked.

Serve it with a glass of a light red wine, like Valpolicello or a Cotes d'Rhone.

How to Dress up a Green Bean Real Pretty

Green beans are something that almost everyone likes. Even as children, we tolerated canned green beans and the slimy ones they served with school lunches. And who can say no to green beans at Thanksgiving with all those yummy crunchy things and soup concentrate in them (actually, I can). Here in the north of Italy, green bean season is just about to end. The ones you see in the market now just aren’t as pretty as the ones a few weeks ago and pretty soon you won’t see them around anymore. I’ll miss them because they are the one vegetable every member of my family likes and I don’t have to hear any whining when I serve them. On the other hand, green beans can become a little tedious. I always serve them with olive oil and salt or if I’m feeling wacky I’ll add some balsamic vinegar. Don’t you think the green bean deserves more than that? Sometimes I do and I dress them up real fancy, like the recipe I’ll share with you today and sometimes I even throw them into the tomato sauce recipe of yesterday and serve them over pasta or rice. There’s actually a lot you can do with them, you just have to get out of the rut. If anyone out there has other ways to fancy up a green bean (unless it’s that casserole thing) please share it with us. Three cheers for the green bean!

Green Beans Fiorentina
1 ½ to 2 lbs of green beans
2 cups of crushed tomatoes
4 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
salt and pepper

Chop or break the ends off the green beans and put into a large pot of boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water.

Thinly slice the onion, leaving it in ½ circles. Put the oil in a large skillet or dutch oven and heat over medium heat and then add the onion. Sautee until the onions soften and them add the tomatoes and the green beans. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir it up and cover and continue to cook on a low flame for another 10-15 minutes. Add water if the pan dries up while its simmering. Serve it hot.

The original recipe for this calls for the addition of anise seeds. I personally can’t stand them so naturally I ignore that, but if you like them, throw in 1 tsp when you are adding all the ingredients for the last 10 minutes of cooking.

I also want to mention that cooking times for green beans always varies with their size and type. I like mine barely cooked, but the rest of Italy disagrees with me and likes theirs really cooked, so I guess its just a matter of personal preference. Keep an eye on them and use these cooking times only as a guide. Bon Apetito!

Yes, you can!

You like the picture? That's a castle, there's a lot of those here. This particular one is on the island of Ischia and I think its fascinating the way it was built right onto the rock like that. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm going to post about, but I thought it was way more interesting than a can of tomatoes to look at.

I love fresh and seasonal produce, but unfortunately some vegetables are only at their peak for a short period of time. One of those is definitely the tomato. When its peak season, tomatoes are to die for, but the other 11 months of the year, they can be just OK. That's why its important to find a really good brand of canned tomatoes and you can have your yummy tomato sauce all year round. I know imported Italian tomatoes are more expensive, but when the sauce is the center piece of your meal, its worth the extra buck. San Marzano tomatoes are from the area around Naples and Mount Vesuvius. They are long and thin for a tomato and get their great flavor from the volcanic soils of that area. They are pretty easy to find at specialty and fancy markets all over the place. I highly recommend you at least give 'em a try and if you don't think they're worth the extra buck you can go back to your regular ones and I won't be offended.

I love tomato sauce. It's so versatile and easy to make. Once you learn to make it, you will never ever go back to that stuff in the jar. This simple sauce can be the platform for anything in the kitchen to jump off of and into your pasta or meat. That was corny, sorry. Seriously though, you can add other vegetables or meats and put it on pasta or rice. You can use it as a sauce for meats or vegetables to make something like eggplant parmesan. You can throw in a red pepper if your feeling spicy or a can of tuna if your feeling fishy. Isn't it great! Ok, here's the breathtakingly easy recipe....

Tomato Sauce
2-3 TBS Olive Oil
1 clove of garlic, sliced into thin disk
1 can of tomatoes, whole or chopped
2 tbs fresh parsley or basil (optional)
2 tbs wine (optional)
salt to taste

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, but not smoking, add the garlic and sauté until it turns pearl colored. Add the tomatoes, carefully so the oil doesn’t splatter and turn up the heat a bit until the tomatoes are bubbling. Add the wine at this point if you want. Lower the flame to a simmer and add the herbs. Let the sauce simmer for at least 12 minutes and up to ½ and hour, stirring occassionaly.

Add ½ a tsp of red pepper flakes with the garlic if you want a little spicier sauce.