biglietti di auguri per le Feste fatti a mano / handmade Holiday cards

December 9, 2014 | Simona

IMG_2283 / handmade Holiday cards and envelopes

stones, shells and paper on linen (from La FABBRICA del LINO)

The New Year lies just ahead, inviting and insidious.

It will bring us an assortment of joys or sorrows punctuating a sequence of blessedly uneventful days, which we will fill with the wonder of being alive.

L'anno nuovo si avvicina rapidamente, invitante ed insidioso.

Ci porterà un assortimento di gioie e dolori che punteggeranno una serie di giorni benedettamente ordinari, che riempiremo del nostro stupore per la vita.

An afternoon walk on a favorite beach

On a recent afternoon, I went for a walk on a favorite beach and collected polished stones and shells.

Un pomeriggio di recente sono andata a camminare su una spiaggia del cuore e ho raccolto ciottoli levigati e conchiglie.

the precious gift of a glorious sunset

I stayed until it was time to wish the sun Good night. I saw it slowly glide below the liquid horizon, leaving behind a joyous explosion of orange light.

At home, I painted the new year's name on stones and shells and filled the zero with color.

Then, I chose suitable paper from my stash of hand-decorated sheets, cut it into strips and folded them into square pockets.

Sono rimasta fino al momento di augurare la buona notte al sole. L'ho visto scivolare al di sotto dell'orizzonte liquido, lasciandosi dietro un'allegra esplosione di luce arancione.

A casa, ho dipinto il nome del nuovo anno su ciottoli e conchiglie e ho riempito lo zero di colore.

Poi ho scelto della carta adatta dalla mia riserva di fogli decorati a mano, l'ho tagliata a strisce e le ho piegate a formare delle taschine quadrate.

some of my paste paper

I made the paste paper above during a workshop with artist Ellen Golla…

Ho decorato la carta qui sopra durante un workshop con l'artista Ellen Golla…

paper with various textures

and the textured paper above during a workshop with artist Randi Parkhurst.

e quella qui sopra durante un workshop con l'artista Randi Parkhurst.

IMG_2267 / handmade Holiday cards and envelopes

stones, shells and paper on linen (from La FABBRICA del LINO)

Finally, I stamped my wish on the front of the pocket: "May all your wishes come true" is my wish for all of you.

Per finire, ho stampato il mio augurio sulla taschina: "Che tutti i vostri desideri si realizzino" è il mio augurio per tutti voi.

The short video below shows my hands folding a strip of paper to make a pocket.

Nel breve video qui sotto le mie mani piegano una striscia di carta e formano una taschina.

I contribute my handmade Holiday cards to the Handmade Holiday event I launched for the Holidays 2014.

You have until December 24 at midnight Pacific Time to share images and words.

Contribuisco i miei biglietti di auguri all'evento Feste fatte a mano che ho lanciato per le Feste del 2014.

La scadenza per partecipare è il 25 Dicembre alle 9 del mattino.

FTC disclosure: I have received the linens free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting them on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

FTC disclosure: Ho ricevuto le tovagliette gratuitamente dall'azienda produttrice (la FABBRICA del LINO). Non ho ricevuto e non riceverò alcun compenso per presentarli sul mio blog. Le opinioni espresse nel post sono interamente personali.

croccanti / a family recipe for a special sweet treat

December 23, 2011 | Simona

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In the days leading up to the Holidays, my aunt Lucia would bake special cookies and apportion them among family members: my uncle, my father, my cousins. My father visited her before Christmas and brought back the package allocated to our family. I never saw my aunt making the content of that eagerly awaited package, but in my mind’s eye I can reconstruct the scene: the kitchen, the table, the fireplace, my aunt and my father chatting. What came out at the receiving end were diamond-shaped torzetti and half-domed croccanti (croccante means crisp, crunchy).

I regret that I did not ask my aunt for any of her recipes. I guess in my mind I thought I had time, until one day, time suddenly ran out. For years I had been making meringues (meringhe) enriched with walnuts inspired by my aunt’s croccanti, but I knew they were different. A few years ago, I asked one of my cousins whether a record of the recipe existed. A few days later, I received an email with the list of ingredients and a set of instructions that provided a starting point to develop my own version of the beloved croccanti, a variation on a theme of egg whites (albumi) and walnuts (noci) dedicated to my aunt.

Print-friendly version of briciole’s recipe for croccanti

Ingredients:

2 extra-large egg whites at room temperature
1/2 cup super-fine or granulated white sugar (zucchero)
8.5 oz. (240 g / 2 and 1/2 cups) shelled walnuts
2 tablespoons (30 ml) all-purpose white flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) vanilla extract

My aunt started with walnuts still in their shells, and I often buy whole walnuts, because I enjoy cracking them. Shelled walnuts are readily available and also convenient. However, they should be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, as they are prone to become rancid, due to their high fat content (including nutritionally-valuable alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, an omega-3 fatty acid).

In her “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone”, Deborah Madison gives instructions on how to treat walnuts to improve their flavor when they aren’t freshly cracked, and make them less irritating for people who are sensitive to their skins. Bring a pan of water to a boil, add the walnuts and let them stand for one minute, then drain them and absorb the excess moisture with a towel. Finally, spread the walnuts on a baking sheet and place them in the oven preheated to 300 F until they have dried out, 15-20 minutes. Remove them from the oven as soon as they are dry.

After you take the walnuts out of the oven, let them cool, then spread them on a cutting board and chop them finely using a knife. At the end you should have a bit more than two cups of fragments.

Place two egg whites (I use pastured eggs) in a mixing bowl and let them rest until they reach room temperature. Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 F.

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites and continue beating until it is well incorporated. Sift flour over the egg whites and fold it in with a spatula, using light, slow movements. Add the chopped walnuts in a few batches and fold them into the batter with the spatula, again using light movements. Add vanilla extract and gently stir in.

Line one large baking sheet or two small ones with parchment paper (in this case, a silicone baking mat is not recommended). Drop the batter on the sheet by spoonfuls (i.e., use a soup spoon to scoop up the batter and let the spatula help you in the dropping phase), leaving 3/4-1 inch between mounds. You should have 24 of them, of 1.5-2 inch diameter.

Bake for about 20 minutes, carefully overseeing the process. Check the cookies after 18 minutes. They are ready when you can pick one up delicately with two fingers without a disappointing structural failure. The bottom should be a light tan color and upon applying a little pressure, the surface should feel delicately crisp. If otherwise, bake for an additional two minutes, then check again. Be careful because it is easy to burn the cookies. Do not touch the cookies when they come out of the oven, but let them cool on the baking sheet. To accomplish this, you may consider closing the kitchen door to prevent the sweet smell to waft out and become an irresistible magnet on other inhabitants of the house.

When you bite into a croccante, you hear the light crackle of the crisp outer layer. Your teeth sink into finely chopped walnuts supported by a framework of egg white and sugar. The latter dissolves and creates a substrate over which the walnut bits dance and overlay their nuttiness on the prevailing sweetness. As you chew, the nuts’ crunchiness is slightly offset by a stickiness that encourages slow motion.

This original family recipe, made mostly of white ingredients, is my submission to the White Christmas Challenge on Very Good Recipes. Follow the link to see all the recipes submitted to the event… and also to see that my croccanti were selected for 5th place: Thank you!

White Christmas in Italian is bianco Natale.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

croccanti

Or launch the croccanti audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

White Christmas Challenge, cookie, walnut

pistacchi ricoperti di cioccolato / chocolate-covered pistachios

December 20, 2011 | Simona

I cannot honestly say that the package arrived unexpectedly, but its content was unknown until I opened the box and removed the packing material to reveal a beautiful long bar of chocolate 64% cacao content, made by SOMA using cacao beans from Peru (as an aside, the cacao nibs I featured in my most recent post were also from Peruvian beans). I don't know whether Jerry of Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants! read something on my blog that suggested the gift or simply divined it: I was certainly happy to get a food that is an integral part of my daily diet (in moderation, of course).

In the package I also found a glass jar with an elegant label describing an intriguing content: Bacon Marmalade, whose ingredients include, besides bacon, sautéed onions (cipolle), balsamic vinegar from Modena (aceto balsamico di Modena) and spices. In the note accompanying the gifts, Jerry tells me that the marmalade is fabulous as an accompaniment to cheese. If you are curious to hear me describe how the pairing with some of my cheese works, I need to ask you to be patient, since I have decided to postpone opening the jar until a dinner with a friend of ours with whom I would like to share the experience. So, more on this at a later date.

Back to the chocolate, serendipity worked to suggest a pairing with pistachios. A few days before the chocolate arrived, we had received as a gift a bag of pistachios roasted (tostati) and lightly salted (salati). Having previously tasted and appreciated the pairing of chocolate and pistachios, and of chocolate and salt, I thought that putting together chocolate, pistachios and a bit of salt would be an interesting test. I recently made delicious chocolate-covered pecans, so it was easy to apply to pistachios the same technique. Preparation of the nuts involved only shelling and rubbing off the skin. Preparation of the chocolate consisted in finely chopping 3 ounces or so and then melting it according to the directions in this post. (In case you are wondering, a few pieces of chocolate found their way to my mouth while I was chopping it, as a sweet reward for my labor. All right, all right, chopping chocolate probably does not count as "labor.")

I used a teaspoon to make small clusters and deposit them on a tray lined with wax paper (carta oleata). Once the chocolate was completely set, we tasted the clusters and were delighted by the combination of crunch, sweetness and light saltiness of the ensemble.

The special delivery was not unexpected, because last month I signed up to participate to Season's Eatings, an edible gift exchange event engineered by Katie of Thyme for Cooking, the Blog. Many thanks to Jerry for the thoughtful gifts and to Katie for organizing the fun event.

Katie will have a roundup of the exchange some time after Christmas.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

pistacchi ricoperti di cioccolato

or launch the pistacchi ricoperti di cioccolato audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

pistachio, chocolate

pane alla zucca / pumpkin bread

December 15, 2011 | Simona

The cart in the foreground contains the result of our visit to the Warren Creek Farms pumpkin patch last October. Besides three pumpkins for carving, we chose several other specimens, like the Cinderella pumpkin indicated by the arrow. Since it is partially hidden, I have drawn two arrows to indicate two others that were on display. The original name of this variety of pumpkin is Rouge vif D’Etampes, but Cinderella pumpkin (literally, zucca di Cenerentola) fits it perfectly.

The pumpkin was so pretty, I could not bring myself to cook it. I have a cold room that is perfect for storing squashes, but even there they don’t last forever, so one day recently, I decided it was time to bake the Cinderella. I pierced it in several places with a blade and put it in the oven preheated to 375 F for about half an hour to slightly soften it. When the pumpkin had cooled a bit, I cut it in half and scooped out the seeds (a grapefruit spoon is perfect for this task). I did not discard what I had removed from inside the pumpkin (see below).

I put the two pumpkin halves back in the oven, cut side down, until I could easily pierce the flesh with a blade. I took out of the oven the baking sheet and let the pumpkin cool. I discarded the water that was released by the cooling pumpkin. I then scooped out the flesh (again using the grapefruit spoon) and put it in a colander set over a bowl. By the time I was finished with the two big pieces of cooked pumpkin, a bit more water had been released and I discarded that as well. On this page, you can see some photos of the process I somewhat followed. Note the color of the roasted pumpkin in the photos: it resembles that of oranges, and it is lighter that that of canned pumpkin. This has an impact on the color of the bread (more on this at the end of the post).

At this point, knowing that I would use the pumpkin to make bread and also ice cream, I put it in a bowk and processed it briefly with an immersion blender. I immediately froze more than half of the purée and refrigerated the rest until ready to use it. I also rinsed the seeds I had removed from inside the pumpkin and roasted them at 375 F until they were crisp. The seeds (semi di zucca) were larger than those of the pumpkins my husband had carved for Halloween and very tasty. In the part of Italy where I grew up, roasted and salted pumkpin seeds are called bruscolini.

As I write, I have already made this pumpkin bread several times. The photo above shows it accompanying some roasted applesauce. It goes really well with cheese and it is a pleasure to nibble a slice au naturel. The recipe for the bread comes from the King Arthur Flour website. I always halve the quantities to make one braid. Originally, I was worried that the spices (spezie) would be a bit too intense, but that is not the case. I weigh the flours and some of the other ingredients, so my list is as follows:

5 3/4 ounces (165 g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (this is not an advertisement: I always use this flour to make bread)
4 1/4 ounces (120 g) whole-wheat flour from my grain CSA
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) cinnamon (cannella)
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) ground ginger (zenzero in polvere)
1/8 teaspoon (0.625 ml) ground cloves (chiodi di garofano in polvere)
3/4 ounce (20 g) diced uncrystallized candied ginger (zenzero candito; see the Note below)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon instant yeast
7.5 ounces (210-215 g) puréed roasted pumpkin
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce / 30 g) melted butter

The original recipe calls also for 1 1/4 ounce (35 g) brown sugar. A few times I used 1/2 ounce (15 g) of honey (miele), but the last time I made the bread, I skipped the sweetener altogether and I liked the result better.

Note: according to this page, the difference between crystallized and uncrystallized ginger is only that the former is rolled in granulated sugar after being candied and the latter is not. I don’t like the coating, so I prefer uncrystallized ginger.

Making the bread following the instructions on the KAF recipe page is pretty straightforward. The only thing I did differently is the use of convection baking. Since my oven adjusts the temperature automatically when selecting the convection baking option, I still set it to 350 F. And in my oven, the bread bakes in 25 minutes.

The photos I had of previous realizations of this bread, apart from the one with the applesauce, were not satisfactory. The photo above shows the unsweetened pumpkin bread I baked yesterday, together with some candied ginger: it was made with another one of the pumpkins in the cart at the top, the oblong green one to the left of the Cinderella. Unfortunately, I failed to ask the name of the variety. The color of the roasted flesh is lighter and more yellow, which explains the different color of the bread. When you make your own, consider that the color of the pumpkin will have an effect on the color of the bread.

I am submitting this recipe, bookmarked on the King Arthur Flour website to the December edition of Bookmarked Recipes, an event originally started by Ruth of Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments and now hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

I think this bread makes a great breakfast option, topped with preserves or cheese or used to make French toast, so I am submitting the post to the December edition of Breakfast Club: an event started by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours. Guest-host Krithi of Krithi’s Kitchen has chosen Bread as the theme for the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

pane alla zucca

or launch the pane alla zucca audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

bread, pumpkin