Jump to content

Cooking, Baking and Painting in Italia

  • entries
    14
  • comments
    84
  • views
    3,291

About this blog

Worshipping my idols

Entries in this blog

June 2nd - Festa della Repubblica Italiana

Today here it's a day of Festa Nazionale or as you say a bank holiday. That must be the reason my daughter felt the compelling need to wake me up at 6am . Anyway this year's Festa della Repubblica is particularly felt because it marks 70 years since we got rid of the Savoia, elected a committee to write our Constitution and Italian women finally perused their right to vote. With this voting sheet we closed forever a chapter of our history not many are proud of. It was bilingual to accommoda

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Pumpkin gnocchi and potatoes gnocchi

Some time ago I made gnocchi.  I love gnocchi because I can make lots of them to store in the freezer. Gnocchi are my go to meal when I want something special but I have very little time to cook. I usually make both pumpkin and potatoes gnocchi. I cut a pumpkin in pieces and cooked it in the oven for 15 minutes at 180ºC. When it cooled with a knife I separated the pulp from the skin and with a fork I mashed it. I added a pinch of salt and lots of flour.  Pumpkins tend to absorb too much flour so

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Too Many Eggs

Yesterday I noticed I had too many eggs. My overly producing chickens haven't noticed yet that it's winter,  it's cold and they should slow down. Since even after giving away a lot of them, the eggs were still too many, I decided to make an eggs-consuming cake, here we call it Torta Margherita or Pan di Spagna (Spanish bread). It requires 8 eggs,  300gr of potato starch,  300gr of sugar, half an orange's juice, baking powder, some cinnamon,  dried vanilla and grated orange skin. I whipped the wh

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

And finally...not exactly painting

When I chose the blog title I hoped it could become a chance to start painting again.  When I was pregnant three years I gave up on it, I loved to use acrylics and oils so considering my habit of smearing colours all over myself and the risk of inhalating the solvents used to clean brushes I thought better just stopping. Since tthen I never painted again.  I miss it but you know...toddler!  However I am feeling the call of the colours pretty strongly lately ao today I decided to decorate a

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Baccalà alla vicentina, family recipe.

Baccalà in the whole of Italy but Veneto means salted cod. In Veneto baccalà means stockfish. Our baccalà can be cooked "alla vicentina" (Vicenza style) or "alla veneziana" (Venice style). In the past it was the food of the poors during lent, now it's an expensive treat (good dried cod from Lofoten Islands is priced little less than 30 €/kg). Vicenza is renowned for its baccalà and there's even a brotherhood to promote and protect the "original" recipe. Truth is every family has it's own recipe.

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Baccalà alla vicentina, family recipe.

Baccalà in the whole of Italy but Veneto means salted cod. In Veneto baccalà means stockfish. Our baccalà can be cooked "alla vicentina" (Vicenza style) or "alla veneziana" (Venice style). In the past it was the food of the poors during lent, now it's an expensive treat (good dried cod from Lofoten Islands is priced little less than 30 €/kg). Vicenza is renowned for its baccalà and there's even a brotherhood to promote and protect the "original" recipe. Truth is every family has it's own recipe.

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Pizza and spumiglie

Today was my father birthday.  So we organized a family dinner with pizza and his favourite treat: spumiglie (meringues). Yesterday morning I prepared the pizza's dough, I made 2kg of it, enough to make 4 big pizze, a dose for 6-8 people. I used a starter I did the evening before (with 50gr sourdough,  200gr water and 150 gr strong flour) and diluted it in 530gr of slightly warm water (24ºC), added a half teaspoon of honey and little by little 200gr of whole wheat flour and 868gr of medium-high

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Ciabatta bread. Messy delicious thing.

Hi everyone,  sorry for the delay but I got a busy weekend and then got sidetracked and fell into the Bergey's rabbit hole. However, as promised here is the recipe for the ciabatta bread. It's a food with an unusual story. Italian food often is a result of centuries of tradition,  this is especially true for breads. Ciabatta bread is an exception, it "was born" in 1982 in Adria, a town in Veneto, thanks to a great baker. It is renown for being crunchy and with tipically big "holes" inside, given

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Pasta: lasagnette

Today I cooked pasta with my mother's ragù (duck's stomachs and hearts) it was SEVERELY delicious. This type of pasta where I live is called lasagnette, in other places it's called tagliatelle or fettuccine or other names.  I am proud to show you it because I had to learn how to do it the hard way, making lots of mistakes.  It was a staple of my grandmother kitchen but she didn't have the time to teach me so I had to learn trying to remember her moves and comparing them to you tube vids. This th

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Baking to forget

Today, probably as many of you,  I felt the need to do something normal to forget that the world can be a shitty place. Creating something,  especially food, with my hands helps me to foster hope, with busy hands it's easier to fight fear. I made common bread, bread with walnuts and dried grapes, ciabatte and arab bread. I'll post all the recipes in the next days, promised. Since I am a bit tired I'm posting only about the bread with walnuts and dried grapes. The recipe is the same as for the co

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Leftovers Management. Teri Maxwell I am talking to you.

Anti-fast takes its toll, so many leftovers, and since our favourite fundie planner doesn't seem to know what to do with them,   put into my mind this idea of a recipe, NOT. My leftovers were some chicken breast and ham. I defrosted some puff pastrytook some shallots and some radicchio that in this season abounds here.  I sauteed the shallots with extra virgin olive oil and then added the radicchio cut in little pieces and cooked for 10 minutes with homemade bouillon, a little bit of water and h

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Birthday Cake: Torta Russa (Russian Cake)

After watching  Marc Marquez sabotaging the motogp championship I badly need a leftover slice of my birthday cake. Luckily the day after it tastes even better.  It's called Torta Russa (Russian Cake) even if it's typical of Verona because it looks like a Russian fur hat. It's not the most beautiful cake but it's my favourite,  it tastes like heaven for me. Ingredients: 150gr butter, 150 gr sugar, 4 eggs, 100gr flour, 200gr amaretti, 50gr non peeled almonds, 50gr chocolate. Start whipping the but

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Anti-fasting lunch: Risotto with radicchio!

To continue this fantastic anti-fast/feast I decided to make my favourite risotto. I don't know if radicchio is known and grown somewhere else in the world,  btw this is it It's a sort of red salad typical of Veneto. I used more or less the amount you see in the pic. Ingredients: radicchio, 2shallots, walnuts, butter, homemade bouillon, Carnaroli rice, half a glass of red wine, boiling water, Gorgonzola cheese, Parmigiano.  I put some butter in the pan to melt, cut two shallots in very little

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna

Let's SERIOUSLY start the anti-fast: breakfast!

Good morning everyone!  Happy anti-fast! And happy birthday to meeee. To seriously celebrate this important day (seriously, a milestone in the history of humankind!)...voila,  bread with nutella!  Apologies to everyone for the pisspoor quality of pics, you know,  I'm trying to un-follow Maxwell's footsteps, but Christopher's genuine talent for ruining any shoot just sticks with me... Directly from the Shelter, here is the recipe for the bread you see in the pic:  50 gr of sourdough, melt (s

laPapessaGiovanna

laPapessaGiovanna



  • Blog Statistics

    • Total Blogs
      106
    • Total Entries
      2,501
  • Recent Status Updates

    • Kiki03910

      Kiki03910

      https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/finally-engineers-have-a-clue-that-could-help-them-save-voyager-1/
      GO SCIENCE.
      · 0 replies
    • Kiki03910

      Kiki03910

      I love baseball but I'm dreading the new season because the White Sox ownership is THE FUCKING WORST. I watched Dominican League Baseball (Lidom!) over the winter and fell in love with their joy, spirit, and exuberance. The broadcasts were in Spanish and my Spanish is pretty weak but I loved catching phrases and repeating them. Bombe! I'm sad about MLB and Commissioner Idiota's busywork rules. But I love baseball, always and forever.
      I guess I don't have a point. Just bitching. Te amo mucho, Lidom!
      · 0 replies
    • WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?

      WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?

      Happy International Women's Day!

      Humanity may have some work to do, to improve gender equality, but I was glad to hear that France has taken an important step to protect healthcare for women (and people of other genders who can get pregnant). 
      (The links are just to a UN page and the AP News.)
      Anyhow, love to y'all!
      · 0 replies
    • Giraffe

      Giraffe

      Feeling ragey this morning. I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon in the hope of getting help for an ongoing injury. I went to a (different!!) doctor late last year who completely blew me off. He wouldn't do diagnostic testin, he refused to send me to a specialist, and he just told me to "take it easy" and "take ibuprofen." I'm hopeful for today's appointment but I'm also feeling a SEVERE amount of rage at that doctor from last year! 
      · 6 replies
    • BlackberryGirl

      BlackberryGirl

      Well, the rash is back with a vengeance. It never completely cleared up. I saw the derm yesterday and they did another swab and yup, raging infection again, still? It is definitely strep skin infection. I am getting so damn tired and run down from this. Who the f would immagine being hospitalized freaking TWICE for a rash? 
      · 2 replies
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.