#not really italian recipes - this one isn't traditional

[milla984]

Today I found amazing portobello mushrooms at my local grocery store so I decided to cook some sauce: it's very easy to make and it's suitable for vegetarians, vegans and for those who simply want to try something different and meatless!

- ingredients, recipe and images of food below the cut -

Portobello mushrooms and walnuts sauce

- three big portobello mushrooms (approx. 300g) - half an onion (quantities may vary, depending on your taste) - walnuts, soaked in hot water for 30mins (for this recipe I used about five) - plain tomato sauce (approx 3 cups) - a pinch of sugar - salt and pepper - spices and herbs (I like cloves, nutmeg and thyme) - extra virgin olive oil - half a glass of water - white wine (optional)

You will need: - a food processor/blender - a large pot

Start by slicing the onion and roughly dicing the mushrooms. I prefer a thin cut for the onions but that's totally optional, since they will be put in a food processor together with the mushrooms.

Cover the base of a large pot with extra virgin olive oil and put it over medium heat, then add the onions when the oil starts heating up but it's not too hot; when the onions become translucent add the mushrooms, half a glass of water (or a splash of white wine if you feel fancy) salt & pepper and let them cook over medium heat until they shrink to approx half their size.

While the mushrooms are cooking, put the walnuts in a food processor and set them aside. I always make sure they're finely chopped 'cause that's how I like it but if you don't mind a bit of crunch you can make bigger pieces, it's all a matter of personal taste.

When the mushrooms and onions are ready put them in the food processor. The original idea behind this recipe was to make a vegetarian/vegan ragù sauce using mushrooms and walnuts to recreate the small pieces of minced meat but you should find out which size works best for you!

Once the mixture is ready put it back in the pot, add the walnuts and the tomato sauce, stir everything together and cook over low heat for about 25-30 mins. I like to add my herbs and spices halfway through but they can be added only at the end, with a pinch of sugar to contrast the acidity of the tomato sauce.

My own two cents: there really isn't a right or wrong quantity of tomato sauce you can use but if the final result turns out too runny it won't stick to your pasta the way it should.

Also, imho the best choice for this sauce would be a rough type of fresh pasta (such as pappardelle or tagliatelle) in order to create the perfect 'grip'.

This recipe is also perfect for lasagna!!

Buon appetito!!!

[anopenbookunderlockandkey]

The 118 Sauce Chat

Eddie: I definitely make spaghetti sauce extremely wrong but I’m not going to stop

Chim: please elaborate on the wrong way to make spaghetti sauce; it sounds highly entertaining?

Eddie: 1 chop onion and put in a pot

Eddie: Add 1 or 2 cans of diced tomatoes. Whatever makes the ratio of onion look right.

Eddie: Add a ridiculous amount of frozen peas. Peas should make up a notable portion of this sauce.

Eddie: Add frozen corn also if you wanna be real fancy. If I have bacon I’ll ad that too. But I very rarely have bacon.

Eddie: Cook on HIGH

Eddie: While sauce is cooking, grab the nearest bottle of mixed spices that isn't obviously for desserts. Add some. How much? I dunno, enough that you feel like you've added seasoning so it's technically cooking. (For me this is most often a mix called Moroccan, but it could be anything. Buck reorganised my kitchen recently so tonight it was something called Pizza Topping.)

Eddie: If you happen to have green herbs lying around, add those too. Whatever you have on hand that's green

Eddie: Let the sauce boil on HIGH until all the water is gone. Stir occasionally so the saucepan will be easier to clean later. Serve on cooked spaghetti noodles with no cheese

Eddie: Today I added a new step called "while the sauce is cooking, duck out for 15 seconds to text the group chat about spaghetti sauce, then get distracted and forget you are cooking." This adds a novel Extremely Burnt edge to the flavour profile.

Chim: I am not Italian, or of Italian descent by *any* stretch of the imagination.

I am also not one of those "cooking purists", who believes that everything must be done in a specific/ traditional way (unless you are making a cooking video with the title "how to make x" in which case if you don't specify mid video that your way is not traditional god help you).

I am a firm believer in "If it tastes good, then it is correct for you".

Chim: Except in this case

Bobby: This hurts every cooking bone in my body. The latent ancestors in my soul. The judgmental elf in my brain just bit a cyanide capsule

Hen: Why? The spices.

Using a different spice mix every time, based on what is ready at hand just ... hurts

Eddie: *sends SPICE IS SPICE meme*

Ravi: absolutely deranged, Eddie. Food crimes.

Bobby: Hey Eddie, looks like you forgot to mention the part where you obviously sweated the onions, because nobody would make spaghetti sauce that had straight up raw onions boiled in tomato juices.

Bobby: RIGHT????

Bobby: Please Eddie

Eddie: I don’t know what sweating the onions means

Hen: It means. It means you cook em a little in a pan with a bit of oil first

Eddie: A pan? How many dishes do you want me to have to wash here?

Hen: I mean you can also do it in the same pot you're making the spaghetti sauce in! The important thing is the onions get a little cooked before the wet stuff goes in, so they're not so wet and limp and boiled....

Eddie: Honestly this depends entirely on whether I remember to chop an onion first or I find the can opener for the tomatoes first. The ingredients go in in whatever order they go in.

Ravi: Eddie, who hurt you???

Eddie: A pack of wild chefs herded my mother off a cliff

Chim: Theres probably a hit out on you for this

Eddie: What kind of stupid idiot would waste money assassinating someone who's so clearly going to accidentally poison themself for free at some point

Bobby: hi Eddie, big fan of your firefighting, this is the sauce equivalent of the running up a metal ladder in a lightning storm to try to pull up a 6’0” tall man instead of lowering him to the ground

-Athena

Eddie: Athena, that is the meanest review my cooking has ever received

Chim: congratulations you found the worst way to do it! this feels like a spaghetti recipe made by AI before it got really sophisticated

-Maddie

Eddie: this group chat’s hate mail game is insane

Ravi: at this point please just eat every ingredient raw… please

Eddie: Do I look like Tony Abbott to you

Buck: As a former Committer of Food Crimes, I have decided to make this sauce this weekend after I have a chance to go to the store. I will report back.

Eddie: Excellent, I look forward to vindication.

Hen: No one's going to vindicate your boiled onion in cinnamonny tomato juice on noodles, Eddie

Eddie: Not cinnamon. Cinnamon is a dessert spice. You use the nearest non-dessert spice.

Ravi: cinnamon is absolutely not a dessert spice

Eddie: Yes it is! It's for muffins and pancakes and fruit pies!

Chim: Cinnamon powder is absolutely a dessert “spice” and Eddie if your cooking is this bad I can’t imagine your baked abominations

Eddie: I put lemon juice in everything I bake that isn't bread

Written for the only two gremlins (endearment) who find this as entertaining as I do @professionalprocrastinator22 and @gravelyhalversobbing

Inspired by:

[formulapisces]

I have the opposite problem. I struggle to roll my rs consistently :( I've been working hard at the dutch "sch" consonant cluster and that funky g too, and I'm really pleased with my progress. but some vowel combos are giving me trouble still :(

I did french, german and italian in hs but carried on with none of them bc ✨problems✨ but I enjoyed all 3 and would like to pick up one of them again one day. I need to find some kids tv shows to watch bc everything I have is beyond my listening level

sorry your current gp isn't so helpful :( switching is pretty easy at least. what recipe did your friend send you? 😲🦇

my favourite sound in any language is the gn- sound in italian, it’s SO satisfying. it’s like a ñ (nya) sound and i LOVE it 😭 italian is generally quite easy (in my opinion) because it’s phonetic, so if you learn the sounds and phonics then you can say anything - then it’s all down to memorising vocab and grammar. (and we have less letters in the alphabet 😉😌)

i desperately want to learn abruzzese but there are NO resources to learn because it’s a dialect which is so rarely talked about. some of my family are from sicily too so it would be nice to learn sicilian, luckily that’s a lot easier to learn than abruzzese which basically only the village nonna™️ spoke… 😂

the best kind of kids tv shows are the ones that spend a whole episode on a word, sound, or letter (for example like: “can you say house?” and then they teach you sounds like -ou, -h, -se, etc). i just do as much as possible in the language i want to learn, so i switched the language in apps i use often to italian, etc.

oh i actually forgot about switching gp’s, thanks for reminding me 😅 i’ll look into that RIGHT NOW. hopefully it’s all good and easy, i’ve been with this gp for a while now so i think a change would be good.

(this is the recipe: https://www.olivetomato.com/traditional-tiropita-greek-cheese-pie/ i want to make it sooo bad but i haven’t got around to it, i might do it when my parents go to the netherlands 🤗)

[awed-frog]

Hi! I remember from one of your posts that you are from Italy? If so, I was wondering if you could name a classical Italian dish that isn't very well-know in the rest of Europe/the world. I am doing a dinner tour through Europe, with authentic recipes from 36 European countries (I am Dutch) and I don't have one for Italy yet, since we eat a lot of pasta and other Italian dishes, and for this I would like it to be something a little more special. Thanks!

Hello! What a great idea, I hope you’re having a lot of fun with it! There are so many good dishes in Italy, it’s hard to pick something... 

Tbh the main problem with niche traditional dishes is always going to to ingredients, as regional recipes rely heavily on specific tastes? When I lived in the UK finding some things was a nightmare, but maybe it’s easier to find stuff abroad today? And you can also swap things in some cases, it’ll still be very good. So maybe you can try:

If you can find the ingredients, cecina is very good and simple to make. It’s basically focaccia but you cook it in a pan and use chickpea flour instead of normal flour, which makes it a lot more nutritious. You can serve it with a salad or yummy roasted vegetables. 

Depending on the season and when you’re planning your Italian night, you can also try caponata - it’s a traditional Sicilian dish, but imo there’s no point in making it now because it relies on ripe tomatoes and aubergines to be really good.

Pizzoccheri is something else that’s really good! You just need potatoes and savoy cabbage - and ideally the buckwheat pasta that’s central to the dish. You can find recipes online to make pizzoccheri (the pasta, I mean) from scratch, but it’s a bit of a hassle. If you can find them ready-made, it’ll cut your cooking time considerably.

Nutritionally speaking, you can’t go wrong with risi e bisi or pasta e fagioli, which combine starches and beans so you can absorb all the nutrients from both. They are ‘poor’ dishes, but I like them a lot. 

Testaroli are another ‘poor’ dish something nobody knows about - they got some Slow Food prize, and they’re so good! But again, I’d wait until the summer because they’re usually served with fresh basil and they’ll lose a lot without it.

If you have a pasta maker, try a Sardinian dish, culugiornis: it looks amazing but it’s actually very easy, if a bit time-consuming.

Gnocchi di zucca are incredibly good, just be careful and choose the right pumpkin or you’ll make a mess.

Finally, like everyone else, we’re also fond of frying stuff. If you have a fryer, or are willing to sacrifice your entire living space with oil fumes, you can try arancini, supplì, latte fritto (sweet), mozzarella in carrozza, struffoli (sweet)...

I hope you’ll find something you like! Buon appetito! 

(And if people have suggestions, please add them in the notes!!)

[sunaddicted]

James' Italian Ricotta Tarts

(Drabble + recipe)

Whenever James started whipping up anything in the kitchen that evidently wasnt part of the British traditional cuisine, Q wasn't even surprised anymore: it just made sense that James would pick up a taste for foreign food and either look for the recipes or attempt to replicate the dishes following his palate's indications, considering how much time he spent eating around the world, hopping from one continent to another.

That morning, like many others before it, Q settled down to watch, lured into the kitchen by the rich scent of butter that suddenly was permeating their flat "Shouldn't you knead that longer?"

"The less you handle shortbread, the easier it is to roll it out after you take it out of the fridge"

"Weird"

James rolled his eyes as he closed the door of the fridge, a plastic box in his hands "Do you want to help or just watch?"

"I want to taste" Q grinned, scooting closer to the spot of the kitchen island that the other man was occupying, so that he could peer into the bowl where, he presumed, James was going to mix the filling "Oh, ricotta"

"I'm so proud of you, two months ago you didn't even know what it was"

"Oh, shut up"

"Me? Never" James put a fork in Q's hand so that he could quickly weight the sugar and pour it in "Mix them together, you need to break down the ricotta"

"What exactly are we going to eat? Because that was a lot of sugar" he inquired, quickly bringing the fork to his mouth before the other turned back around and scolded him for snacking instead of working. How James had the strength not to dip spoons and fingers everywhere and eat what he was cooking halfway through, Q didn't really know.

"So, you don't want me to add chocolate to it?"

"Don't you dare: give me chocolate or give me death"

"Dramatic" James commented, pouring a liberal amount of chocolate chips in the bowl before taking over the fork from Q, knowing he would be much faster at the job "Grab me the coconut flour"

"Exotic"

"Not really, it's just gives a touch of freshness"

"I wasn't complaining"

"To answer your question, we are making ricotta, chocolate chips and coconut Italian tartelettes"

"Oh, yummy. The coconut doesn't sound very Italian, tough"

"Italians love it" James shrugged and grabbed a spoon, offering the thoroughly mixed filling to Q "More sugar?"

"Are you insane? No" it was perfect, not too sweet and perfectly balanced "I'm hungry now"

"Tough luck, you have to wait"

"Evil, you're so very evil"

James leaned in and kissed Q's forehead, distracting him long enough so that he could smear ricotta on his nose "You love me though"

This is what the tarts look like!

***

Ingredients (for roughly a dozen tartelettes, it mostly depends on how thick you like to roll your shortbread crust):

300 gr white flour

150 gr sugar (for the crust) + 100 gr (for the filling)

150 gr butter

2 yolks + 1 whole egg

400 gr ricotta

100 gr coconut flour

A liberal amount of chocolate chips

The crust: first things first preheat the oven at 180°. Now you can mix the ingredients for the shortbread - which isn't the appropriate name because there aren't any eggs in shortbread but tbh it's the most similar thing to the Italian pasta frolla. Anyway, mix the white flour and the room temperature butter together (yes, all of it) - you will get something that resembles sand, no worries about that. Add the sugar and, one at the time, add the two yolks and the whole egg - now it gets tricky: once you have the eggs in the dough, you have to be quick to knead it and make it into a ball because the bitch crumbles (that's why it's called pasta frolla, because it crumbles). Once you have the dough, wrap it up and stick it in the fridge for at least half an hour but the longer you leave it, the less you'll cry when you have to roll it out.

The filling: while the dough chills in the fridge, grab the ricotta and the sugar and beat them together with a fork until it's smooth, then you can add the coconut flour (the kind that has shreds of coconut, not the kind that is ground to powder) and the chocolate chips and mix everything together. That's it, that's the filling. The amount of sugar, coconut flour and chocolate chips really depends on how sweet or coconuty or chocolaty you like your food to be - these proportions work for me but follow your taste!

Putting the tarts together: okay, hear me out: if you don't have small pie pans (I have silicone ones that aren't bigger than a hand) you can roll the dough in a big pan - it changes nothing, you will just have a big tart instead of baby ones. Remember to butter your pans and roll flour around in them or the pie will stick. Now, get the dough out of the fridge and cut it in two parts: a smaller one for the stripes on top and a bigger one for the crust - handle it as little and as quickly as possible to avoid it breaking and crumbling. Once you have rolled it out on your pans, stab the bottom with a fork here and there, pour the filling in and refine the edges with a knife (put the scraps aside, you can use them for the stripes) and put the filling in. Cut your stripes the width of your finger and put them on top. You are ready to put them in the oven, BE CAREFUL:

If you're making baby tarts, cooking them for 20-30 minutes at 160° should be enough

If you're making a big tart, cooking it for 40-45 minutes at 170° should be alright.

The truth is that pasta frolla is a bitch (in case you didn't realise yet) and that it needs you to watch it like a baby. How long it takes to cook, it largely depends on how thick you rolled it and no, we Italians can't agree on that nor on how long it should cook. The main rule is that when it's golden on top, it's ready.

This is it!

If you don't want to make a big tart or a dozen tartelettes, the dough keeps for 4-5 days in the fridge and up to a month in the freezer.