Speck Fettucini

Last night I came to the conclusion that sometimes, despite all the carbless and protein focussed diets out there, besides chocolate, a woman needs pasta.... and the requisition of this pasta must always be 'GOOOOOD and fulfilling'!!!!
Moreover, there is way too little pasta on this blog... so let's get some change into that.

Chef Raffaella made a good and rather healthy fettucini for me a couple of months ago and it didn't get lost in my database of mouthwatering pictures of food, it was just on hold for the right moment. Its moment has come to shine!

Ingredients:

• 400 gr fettucine or tagliatelle
• 4 zucchini
• 200 gr mushrooms
• 150 gr bacon cubes (Italian call this speck, which is a gourmet version of bacon)
• olive oil
• garlic 

How to make it:

Heat up a pan of water with a fist of salt for your pasta and bring it to a boil. When it boils, add the pasta and cook it according to what is written on the packaging. Keep the indication for 'al dente' pasta as you will be cooking it some more in the end together with the sauce in your frying pan.

Cut up the vegetables in little cubes and slices.

While you cook the pasta you heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan, fry the garlic and add the zucchini for a couple of minutes until they get tender. Then you add the mushrooms and some salt. Add a couple of tablespoons of pastawater and let it simmer for circa 5 minutes with the lid on. After which you add the bacon cubes. Give it a good stir and let it simmer for another 10 minutes but keep an eye on the pan as you want to avoid the sauce of getting dry. If it does, add some of the pasta water into the sauce.

Once your pasta is cooked al dente, take it out of the pan with a pastaspoon or a pair of pincers as you want the pasta to remain wet while adding it to the sauce. Pastawater contains starch that will densify the sauce a bit. Stir the whole for a couple of minutes on a low 'fire' and then you are done!

Outcome: Italian mamma approved fettucine!!!

Speck Fettucine

Baci
Chef Raffaella

Raffa's Quiche di Zucchine

Mi mancerete girls!!

Remember Chef Raffaella's Foccaccia di Pomodoro?
Did you make it already?
If you haven't you must.... if you have, then you're ready for step number 2: Raffa's famous Quiche!
She has made this twice for me now and each time it has been deluhcius! Like mouth-licking-give-me-another-piece-subito-if-not-I-will-kill-you goodness.

I do hope that Chef Raffa will keep up the good work by helping me post her recipes on the blog, because seriously, how do people keep up blogging EVERY single day? First of all, it takes time to create a good post, and second, where do they find the time to make all the food and then the pictures?? Don't they work????? Oh wait, it might be actually their jobs! In that case... lucky you!

My case is not as fortunate, it might become one day but until then, please cookers out there, enrich this blog with your national, international, healthy, unhealhty, original, traditional, vegetarian, meat, fish, good & bad recipes! This blog is here to share and learn from each other.. that's the goal anyways!

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• 1 small white onion
• 2 small zucchini (summer squash)
• 1 pastry dough (pasta brisè)
• 2 yolks (the yellow of an egg)
• 200ml culinary cream
• 50gr parmigiano
• pinch of salt

How to make it:

Heat up the oven at 180 degrees Celcius.

Slice up the onion and the zucchini in thin slices.

Heat up a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet and fry the onion and zucchini golden for 5-6 minutes. Add a pinch of salt.

Put the pastry in a round shape and cover it up. If the pastry goes 'overboard' cut it around the edges and add it where there is some room left or just double the pastry wherever you like it! (I like thick pastry in the corners...) Make some tiny wholes with a fork in order to avoid the pastry to blow up when it's in the oven.

In a bowl, mix the vegetables, the cream, yolks, parmigiano and a pinch of salt all together. Fill the pastry with the mixture. 

Put the quiche in the oven for circa 30 minutes. At the end heat the oven only at the bottom for a couple of minutes.

Outcome: Voila...

Keep tuned for more PicNik episodes.... I still have some in store for ya! Can you guess what the filling of these quiches are????

Baci

Chef Raffaella

Italian Classic: Raffa's Focaccia al Pomodoro

Springweather is the perfect weather and timing to go to the park.
Sun, grass, good company, wine - preferably including an opener and glasses - and some food = equal to a perfect afternoon or evening. :)

But the park has some limits in what kind of food you can bring and you could consult books, magazines, sites etc that are dedicated to what you can bring, but you can also slowly start consulting this blog, or the cooking club members for some tips.
Chef Raffaela brought a really yum homemade focaccia last time we went to the park. She claims it's easy to make, I still have to experience this (which I will soon) - but most of all it's easy to take to the park and eat it there, with your hands. No forks, knives or plates needed! Genious. Especially if you have plans afterwards: you eat the whole thing, and throw out whatever you wrapped it in and basta, you're good to go wherever you want... me like! Because usually after a pic nic, the night has just begun!

Ingredients:

• 500gr white flour
• 1 pack of dried yeast - a cube is fine too
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 225ml semi-warm water - circa 40 degrees Celcius
• 200gr tomato passata
• 150gr mozzarella 
• 70gr green olives
• 70gr black olives
• salt

How to make it:

Heat the oven at 200 degrees Celcius.

Put the flour in a big bowl and mix it with the yeast. Make a little hole in the middle of the flour and put the sugar, salt and olio in it. Mix it all with the help of a fork, adding the water bits by bits at a time.

Work the dough on a slightly floured work basis for at least 10 minutes with your fists.

Once you are done, put the dough in a floured container, cover it with a humid kitchen towel, on a cool and humid place for the dough to rise twice its size. This needs at least 2 hours! 

Take the dough out and separate it in two equal pieces and start making two pizza shapes. 

Use a round pizza plate - grease it with some oil to avoid sticking - and add on of the pizza shapes.

Now you are ready for the topping: spread the passata on top of the dough, then put on equally the mozzarella, olives and salt. You can also add some herbs if you like. 

Put the focaccia in the middle of the oven for circa 15-20 minutes.

Outcome: Impressive home made focaccia.... because really it seems easier than it is! Enjoy the park!!!

A tip from Chef Raffaella: to make the dough rise better, you can also place the dough in the oven that has been heated until 50 degrees Celcius. Turn it off and add the dough covered with a kitchen towel. 

Focaccia al Pomodoro

Baci 

Chef Raffaella

Cook to impress: Raffa's Tiramisu

Hey foodies! Sorry for my absence once again but I have been out and about for work with a van called the FIGHTVAN! And what happens in the Fightvan, stays in the Fightvan!!! So no can say, nor reveal any other information on where, how and what we did :) But it was FUUUUNNNN, and... I got a tan.

In the meantime, I gave Chef Cathinka the assignment to post her one person pizza on the blog, yet she has been too busy as well I guess to do so which means we all left you hanging for a couple of days without any recipes. I am truely sorry for that. Thank god we have a new Chef that has sent in something highly postable to make up for it....

I present to you: Chef Raffaela!!! She will get the colour bright pink as she and her sister Sabrina (they come as a unit :) ) are the most pretty, fashionable and amazing ladies out there! So whenever you want to find one of her recipes, just look for the pinkness.
She is introducing herself with a good Italian classic: TIRAMISU!!! Yeah baby... prepare your running shoes for after; you'll need to be working off the whole tray of the yumminess, as you won't be able to stop after one serving!

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 60gr Sugar
• 1 pack of vanilla sugar - vanillina
• 200gr of Mascarpone
• 6 espresso cups of coffee
• 28 savoiardi (finger cookies... the long light cookies)
• pure dark cacao

How to make it:

Prepare the coffee and cool it down in a big cup.

Separate the egg whites from the yolks. To the egg whites you add the sugar and the vanilla sugar, and then you start beating it up until you get a nice fluffly foam. At this point, you add the mascarpone to the foam and continue beating it in order to get a silky and thick cream (hmm sounds like a poem...).

Now you are ready to start the layering process of the Tiramisu into a rectangular tray.

Spread a first layer of the cream into a rectangular tray, on top of which you gently place the cookies that have been soaked one by one into the coffee. Don't soak them too much or they will crumble into the coffee. On top of the cookies you spread another layer of cream and you finish the layer off by dusting it generously with the dark cacao. 

Create another layer like this and finish it off with lots of cacao again.

Cool in the fridge until you serve.

Chef's tip: the number of cookies depends on the tray you are using, but seen the fact the tray shouldn't be too big, you would need a pack of cookies more or less.

Outcome: HEAVEN

Tiramisu

Baci 

Chef Raffaela