Easter pastieri

In a previous post I mentioned how pastieri is one of my favourite Easter dishes to make simply because it's so easy. This dish was passed down to me from my Calabrese Nonna Filomena. Other than our family, I've never seen it made by anyone else. 

Mix all ingredients together before baking.

In Naples they make something called pastiera, which is completely different from our recipe. Go to the Napoli Unplugged blog for a mouth-watering collection of recipes. The Sicilians make a pastieri but it's a stuffed pastry, which looks fantastic, but still not like ours.

From what I've been told, after immigrating to North America, my Nonna's cooking was greatly influenced by her Neapolitan sister-in-law who was a wonderful cook. Could this be where the name came from? I'm guessing this recipe is a combination of influences of Italian immigrants from other regions, along with the availability of ingredients in a small city at the time they immigrated. 

Whatever the reasons, it's a lovely food tradition that finds its way onto the table at family reunions reminding us of how we're connected.

If you've made pastieri or recognize this dish, please leave me a comment. If you try this for the first time, let me know about it. 

Cut in rectangles and serve cold. Eat with your hands.

The recipe

Pastieri makes an interesting addition to an Easter Brunch. It keeps well in the fridge, making it a good prepare-ahead dish.

• Cook 1 lb (or 500 g) linguini in salted water. Once cooked, rinse in cold water to cool (so it won't cook the eggs when they’re mixed together). Drain well.
• Beat 1 dozen eggs
• Add:

- Ricotta, 1 container (16-ounce or 500 gram)
- Grated cheese, 1 cup or more of parmesan, use romano if you like a stronger cheese
- Italian parsley, chopped, 1 bunch or 1/2 cup (to your liking)
- Black pepper, to taste

• Mix all ingredients together and let rest for about 20 minutes.
• Pour into a greased 9x13 baking pan. Press down on the pasta mixture with your hands (to get the air out) and smooth the top.
• Bake at 350°F for 1 hour.
• Remove from oven and cool.
• Serve cold, cut into rectangular pieces. Eat with your hands.

Enjoy!

Mushroom (funghi) memories

I don't know of anyone who has a middle ground position on mushrooms. You either love them or you hate them. I love them.

While digging out dandelions and mushrooms from the garden, thinking I should be making a nice insalata with them, I realized I had no idea how to pick a "safe" mushroom. The backyard mushroom yield reminded me that two years ago we were in Calabria during funghi season.

On our way to Bocchigliero, we stopped for lunch at La Tavernetta, an upscale restaurant outside of Camigliatello Silano, which is a charming ski resort with small shops selling the wonderful old-world foods Nonna Filomena used to make.

La Tavernetta specializes in local foods including fungi Silani. We savoured shaved porcini in olive oil while watching gigantic mushrooms being brought into the restaurant's kitchen.

After a very expensive but fabulous lunch, we returned to the winding road and forests of the Sila. We kept seeing guys smoking cigarettes, leaning against their trucks with a scale and basket on the ground. They were waiting to buy the haul from mushroom harvesters.

We decided to make our own trek into the forest in search of prized mushrooms. It was easy pickings rummaging though leaves and around tree roots. Sadly we had no idea what was edible and what was poisonous. I wished my Uncle Nick was with us.

For me, Uncle Nick is synonymous with mushrooms. One of my fondest childhood food memory is eating his amazing marinated mushrooms. Sadly, Uncle Nick died last month. I will never know his secret and I'm sure I'll never taste mushrooms like that again.

What I did on my summer vacation

I've neglected this blog for far too long. If you've come back, I thank you so much for your patience. Now that fall is approaching I will dedicate more time to keeping up to date. In the meantime here are some snippets of things I've seen or done over the past four months, or "what I did on my summer vacation."

On the outskirts of El Paso, I fell in love with fresh fruit popsicles at Flautas y Paleteria Tepalca in Canutillo, Texas. When I say fresh, mmmm, I can't come close to describing how deliciously orgasmic they were. Take a look at the pinons in the creamsicle below; then I went back for mango. This was an unusual discovery due to road work on the Interstate but it will now be a regular stop on my trips to that part of the US.

I saw a sonoran gopher snake and heard coyotes howl in the desert of southern New Mexico.

I found a metal tray decorated with actual hotel stickers. Not a replica. Not massed produced. The real deal. Looks like someone had a better summer vacation than I did, 60 years ago.

I discovered more treasures amongst the wonderful things that were once my Nonna Elvira's. Here's a carefully preserved stencil that she used as a pattern for her cutwork linens.

On a quick trip to Nelson, BC and a lovely walk along the lake, I came across a playground for adults fitted with outdoor fitness equipment. Best of all, t's FREE.

In Vancouver, the BC Place stadium roof deflated and the new retractable roof is under construction.

In keeping with the roof theme, the Canada Place (convention centre) roof is being "rehabilitated." Looks like a hazardous job.

I went to Alaska and saw humpback whales bubble net feeding. A humbling experience.

And, finally, while the weather is still nice, this is my favourite coffee place.

While I'm having my coffee please leave a comment letting me know what you'd like to hear more about.

Ciao.

Christmas Biscotti

This is my holiday spin on our traditional Italian biscotti, or what we used to call "Auntie Inesse cookies." The dried cranberries and pistachios give the cookies a lovely holiday feel. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup chopped pistachios

3/4 cup dried cranberries

Method:

Cream butter and sugar until light.

Beat in eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture. Mix until blended.

Divide the dough in half. On a greased and floured baking sheet, shape into two logs (1/2-inch high, 1 1/2 inches wide, about 14 inches long) and place two inches apart.

Bake at 325F for 25 minutes (until lightly browned).

Transfer from the baking sheet to a rack for cooling. After 10 minutes, move to a cutting board and, using a serrated knife, slice diagonally about 1/2 inch thick.

Lay the slices flat on the baking sheet and return to a 200F oven for one hour.

Once cooked, let cool o

n a rack. Store in a covered container.

Makes about three dozen.

Looking for other Christmas cookies?

Here are some of my past Christmas cookie postings:

• Scalille: traditional Calabrese honey cookies.
• Pizzelle: anise cookies.

Eat Christmas Cookies, Season 3!

I've submitted this recipe to Food Blogga's Eat Christmas Cookies, Season 3! event.

If you have awesome holiday cookies, find out how to participate.

Check out all the great cookies on the round-up page.

Zucchini Sousa

Zucchini sousa is a traditional family dish that's made with large zucchini during the height of the season when you don't know what you'd ever do with one more zucchini. This dish was a highlight of my childhood summers, made with zucchini from the gardens of nonnos, zios and neighbours.

I don't know what the word "sousa" means or if it's even a real word. And I don't know of anyone outside the family who makes this recipe. If you've heard of it, please leave a comment.

This is a fabulous summer side dish or picnic dish. It's served cold and tastes better the next day. If you like wine vinegar, you'll love this dish. My dad doesn't know this but he makes the best red wine vinegar ever. Don't ask about his wine.

Here's the recipe handed down from my nonna and mom. In true nonna fashion, it has no quantities. And in true Deb fashion, my sweetie makes it for me.

Ingredients

- medium or large zucchinis (not gigantic ones because they're too seedy)

- soft bread crumbs

- grated parmesan cheese

- fresh peppermint leaves

- red wine vinegar (use a lot)

- batter (flour, egg, milk, salt, baking powder)

- oil for frying

- salt

Method

- Slice zucchini into 1/8-inch rounds

- Salt and then drain (put them in a colander with a weight -- a jug of water on a plate -- to drain the liquid from the zucchini)

- Dip the zucchini rounds in your batter and deep fry

- Put the fried rounds on a paper towel to drain off the oil

Assemble while the zucchini is still warm

On a serving platter, layer:

- fried zucchini rounds

- grated parmesan cheese (sprinkle onto the warm zucchini)

- pieces of mint leaves (make sure there's enough for every bite)

- bread crumbs

- sprinkling of red wine vinegar (sprinkle liberally with each layer)

Continue layering until all the zucchini is used.

Refrigerate (overnight is best) and serve cold.

Delicious! Thank you nonna!

It's smoking hot and I decide to bake

What was I thinking? We're in the middle of heat wave and instead of sitting in a tub of ice water, I turn on the oven to bake a cake. And you remember that I don't cook a lot. 

Well, I had the kitchen to myself and wanted to bring something memorable to our friends' crabfest. And we had a fridge full of rhubarb.

This is a no-fail recipe but sweetie says I make it better than anyone. For that reason it makes my "signature dishes" list.

I love that this recipe breaks all the baking rules that I learned in my high school home ec class. You don't need to separate the wet ingredients from the dry ones, and you don't need to cut the butter into the size of small peas. You simply mix everything up, bake and serve. 

Rhubarb cake recipe

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup butter (melted is okay and easier to mix)

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup sour milk (to make sour milk, mix 1 cup milk with 2 tablespoons of white vinegar or lemon juice)

2-3 cups of chopped rhubarb

Topping: 1/3 cup white sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all but the topping ingredients together and put into a greased 9 x 11 baking pan.

Sprinkle with the topping mixture.

Bake 45 minutes in a 350 F degree oven

That's it. Enjoy!

Easter Eats

Growing up in a Calabrese-Canadian family Easter was a big food holiday after the long fast of Lent. Even with Nonna reciting "Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi" -- spend Christmas with your family and Easter with whomever you want -- we stuck close to home for all the great food.

Both sides of my family immigrated to Canada from Calabria well over 50 years ago so what we consider Italian traditions are more likely family microcosms of traditions that no longer exist in Italy or with other families. Our food traditions have evolved based on ingredients available in small towns, culinary skills, and individual tastes, likes and dislikes. Today we celebrate our food mash-ups.

The names of foods I claim as our own, based on dialect, faint memories and the influence of Italian neighbours from Abruzzo, Tuscana, Friuli, and other regions. If you share any of these food traditions I’d love to hear your stories.

Pastieri

This is a favourite of mine because it falls in my category of one-pot cooking, that is, it’s really easy to make. For us, pastieri is a cold pasta square made with eggs, ricotta and parmigiano or romano cheese. It’s great for Easter brunch.

Baskets & Paparelle (Ducks)

Nonna Filomena would make these for her grandchildren. The paparelle or ducks were made for the girls and the baskets were made for the boys. Making these decorative breads requires a lot of skill and patience. Our family has preserved these traditions through the family cookbook that I mentioned in a previous post.

Straw Poll

Straw poll isn’t an Easter delicacy, it’s a quick poll I put out to my Facebook friends and family asking what they were making for Easter. Here’s a sampling of responses:

TB: I am making the traditional Perugian/Umbrian? Pasqua dinner -- lamb. I was thinking about making a nice Easter Bunny stew, but my butcher said agnello per Pasqua

JA: Matzoh with charoset and smoked salmon salad (not combined, and in lieu of Gefilte fish).

PH: perogies

CM: Veggie patties and veggies grilled on my baby Weber...and a few ice cold beers to boot. 

WA: those new pre-made Easter cookies ... (grin)

I love my family’s diversity!

Easter Pizza

This is my favourite Easter food, probably because of its off-the-charts fat content. The Easter pizza is bread dough baked around layers and layers of sliced meats and cheeses, evenly stacked to make a geometric pattern when cut. The pizza is served cold and feeds a large extended family. I’m working on a version made in a loaf pan.

Easter Bread

All my nonnas made sweet Easter bread often with whole eggs baked into them. Sometimes braided, sometimes shaped into an alphabet letter to represent your first name. I ran into my Italian neighbour the other day and asked her if she makes Easter break. She said, “I don't make the Easter bread with the eggs in it anymore. No one eats them, it's a waste.” I don’t recall eating the eggs either.

Do you want more?

If there’s any interest in recipes or how to make these family delights, leave me a comment.

Buona Pasqua!

One pot: Baked oatmeal

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't cook a lot and when I do, it's not very complex. That's because I live with an amazing cook who is also my culinary slave as well as a recipe tester-at-large for America's Test Kitchen. My one-pot dishes and "bean delight" don't stand a chance against my sweetie's creations.

About a month ago, Cream Puffs in Venice [don't click on that link or you'll never come back -- she kicks my butt] blogged about a baked oatmeal breakfast dish that caught my attention. I read it three of four times finally convincing myself that I could do this, after all it was all in one pot. 

My sweetie was out of town and, honestly, I have no idea what a rolled oat is and how it's different from other oats. I saw we had a bag of flaked oats in the cupboard and that's what I used. 

This is a great little recipe and now that I've found it I'm less likely to skip breakfast. Here's my adaptation:

1 cup whole rolled oats (I use about 1 1/3 cups flaked oats because Sweetie likes the density. What's the difference between whole & flaked?)

1 tsp. cinnamon
a pinch of nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. maple syrup (Sweetie says to try 1 1/2 tbsp of honey if you don't have maple syrup. We'll try that next time.)
1 tbsp. grated orange zest
2 medium apples, peeled and diced (I use whatever I have on hand, usually a crisp eating apple)
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts (I use pecans, because we have lots of them)

1/4 cup fresh frozen blueberries (I freeze them in August and enjoy them through the winter. Once the raspberries ripen, I'll try a handful of them instead.)
1-1/4 cups milk 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9-inch pie plate or baking dish with butter or cooking spray

Combine all the ingredients in ONE (I love this part) large bowl and mix well.

Pour into the greased pie plate.

Bake in the centre of the oven for about 30 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed (don’t overcook or it will dry out).

Remove from the oven and let cool. Serve warm with yogurt (I like vanilla yogurt). Add extra honey or maple syrup as desired.

YUM!

Sick Days

I've been away from blogging for awhile due to a lingering cold/flu bug. I've now entered the world of the walking sick like so many of my friends, co-workers and neighbours. It seems like the longer I'm sick the more I retreat into my Italianism. 

I started off thinking healthy: "eat miso soup with lots of vegetables." So I made delicious udon soup from my friend Eric's recipe. I ate it every day. No change. 

Vegetables were clearly not the cure for my Mediterranean DNA. So I finished off my Polish chocolate hoping an interlude would help. Yummy, but no change.

Then I wondered "What would my nonnas do?" How about those olive oil cures? I wasn't sure how to do this, so I channeled Nonna Fausta and imagined what she would do. I don't think she would have used a microwave to warm the olive oil but it was fast and I was obviously delirious.

The warm olive oil felt really good in my ear (don't tell my doctor) and on my swollen throat but it didn't cure me either. 

I spent a week curled up in front of bad daytime TV. To my surprise there were no less than three TV commercials using Italian songs as their soundtracks. One was a pizza ad with Dean Martin singing C'e la luna mezzo mare. Another was a guy in love with his digital phone singing "senza te" and a third was a mozzarella ad featuring Umberto Tozzi's Ti Amo. If anyone knows the connection between daytime TV and Italian soundtracks, please enlighten me.

A nasty side effect of being sick was not getting my hair cut when it was due. Now my hair has grown wildly out of control and looks an awful lot like my great-Zia's hair when she was a Calabrese youngster in the early 20th century. The higher the hair, the closer to heaven...?

Getting back to soup. I shifted from Japanese udon to pasta fagioli, using my cousin Donnie's recipe from our family cookbook, "Cucina di Cugini."  Mmmm good comfort food. I had it two days in a row and I'm actually feeling better.

There must be something to that curative olive oil, but I was supposed to EAT it. Tonight, continuing with the success of the Italian theme, I made salsiccia e peperoni. On Mark Bittman's recommendation, despite believing that it's a mortal sin, I spread mustard on my Italian bread. 

I think my sick days are over.

Moose cookie in the snow

The snow seems to be making most people happier: more smiles, hellos and head nods as we slip and slide along the sidewalks together. The snow has made our household absolutely giddy causing us to release our moose cookies to their natural habitat.

More moose photos on Flickr.

Pizzelle

Pizzelle are one of the few traditional Italian cookies that I can make on my own. But this year I was lucky to have my mom's help with them. We traditionally make them for Christmas. This year we added a "secret ingredient" we picked up in Calabria. Any guesses on what it is?

Making scalille

It's been far too long since my last post. I'll try to get back into the weekly swing and catch up with my Europe trip stories and photos.

About a week after we got back home, mom & dad arrived from their trip to Egypt. They stayed with us for a couple of weeks so they could come to our annual cousins' party. Lucky for me, mom was able to show us how to make scalille (or scaledde, literally, little ladders).

I have fond childhood memories of the epic making of scalille by a kitchen full of nonnas and zias. One of the few things I wanted from my last nonna's house was her board and her scalille stick.



It's a very simple recipe but requires great skill to wind the dough around a stick, creating the final design. These are traditional Calabrese cookies that my family makes at Christmas time. They were a hit at the cousins' party. Yum!

Find my recipe here.

I'm submitting this cookie to Food Blogga's Eat Christmas Cookies event. Check out the amazing cookies on the round-up page!

Free meat

During our afternoon stroll through Warsaw's Old Town, we stepped into a small, local shop to buy some meat & cheese for tomorrow's train trip to Inowroclaw. It's probably the only shop in Old Town that's specifically for locals and where no one spoke English. The woman helping us rattled on and on in Polish but we couldn't understand a thing, except for her cheese chopping hand signs. After we had picked out a few things for our snack bag, she went into a great passionate monologue of which we could only understand "telephone" and her pointing to a piece of paper. She put some free meat into our bag and wrote her phone number for us, while also insisting -- we think -- that we give her our phone number. We did but left wondering if we just exchanged for free meat.

Warsaw Chocolate

A few drops of rain were our excuse to duck into E. Wedel, Warsaw's marvelous chocolaterie. For 12 zlotys each, we ordered the classic chocolate drink that they've been serving for over 150 years. It was the best chocolate I've ever had: thick, rich, creamy and devilishly chocolatey without being overly sweet. AT was right about the Poles and their love for chocolate. The charming place was packed and we seemed to be the only tourists.