fruit and sesame smoothie

With the summer and good weather, surely many of you will try to refresh yourself by drinking sparkling or sugary drinks, but you will surely be aware that beside of those drinks there is a delicious and fruity alternative: we're talking about smoothies. This drink is nowadays very popular in America and Europe because it is considered to be an healthier version of the famous milkshakes. A smoothie is fresh fruit mixed with soya (or regular) milk or yogurt and ice. Occasionally it may also contains peanut butter or even chocolate. The final result is similar to a fruity granita or an italian ice, but more creamy, and that's why it's called "smoothie". It may have a milkshake-like texture, but it differentiates from it because smoothies have no ice cream in their recipe making it lightier. We published also other recipe about healthy and fresh drinks, like our carrot and lemon juice here.

Smoothies are often confused also with frappè, that is a Greek drink very popular in the Mediterranean and easter European area. Frappes are made with coffee espresso, and it is characterized by its foamy consistence, similar the one of a cappuccino.

In the lasts years, with the increasing of the interest in healthy food, smoothies have become more and more healthy, containing super light ingredients. They've become an authentic icon of healthy food lovers. We can find the word "smothee" for the first time in a 1940 advertising for a food mixer. The modern concept of smoothies has been developed in the health addicts world of 1960s California, and from then on it has been a symbol of an healthy and tasty drink without added sugar. It is now much loved by the ones who criticises the omnipresence in America of the commercial sparkling drinks containing lots of sugar.

Today we'll bring you our own version of a classical New York-style smoothie that you can change the fruit we've used according your tastes, and of course you can decide to use peanut butter. We decided to to a different and lightier version, using the tahin sauce instead of the peanut butter. The tahin sauce is made with toasted sesame, and it's very frequently used in the eastern mediterranean cultures, as it's essential to prepare the famous hummus. We decided to change the cow milk with rice milk, which makes it perfect for those with a lactose intolerance, for the vegans and so on!

C'mon, try this recipe, not only because they're so popular right now, but also because they're so healthy, simple and easy to do, and they're perfect for any time of the year too! These drinks will make your sons enjoy all the taste of the fruit and their so important vitamins. This recipe will take no longer than 5 minutes of your time, you'll see! ;)

Ingredients: 

• 1 frozen banana (better if it's a platano de Canarias)
• 250 mixed berries
• 2 spoonful of tahin
• 150 rice milk

Preparation:

Mix in a food processer all the ingredients until you obtain a mix that it's at the same time thick and soft. We suggest you to peel the banana or the platano de Canarias before you freeze it, and to wash the mixed berries or the strawberry before you freeze them.

You can use directly fresh fruit, without freezing it, but in this case you can change the half of the milk with icecubes, to keep the texture and the freshness we're looking for. If you prefer you can add also add some honey, even if the fruit it's pretty sweet anyway. It's also perfect with a couple of dates, too!

Greetings,

AnGie

La ricetta degli Onion Rings per il 4 Luglio!

Per festeggiare il 4 luglio, vi portiamo una ricetta gustosissima e parecchio americana: gli anelli di cipolla, o onion ring. E' una ricetta facilissima, veloce e rapida da fare, e sarà molto apprezzata dai vostri ospiti. Per fare questa ricetta ci siamo inspirati nel magazine di Jamie Oliver, finalmente uscito anche in edizione italiana. Ci è piaciuto molto come hanno cambiato la ricetta originale, e allora abbiamo deciso di cambiarla ulteriormente. In questa ricetta gli anelli di cipolla vi verranno più croccanti e saporiti del solito. La prima volta che questa ricetta fu menzionata fu in un numero del 1910 del Daily Times, un giornale locale pubblicato a Middletown, NY. Anche la catena di ristoranti Pig Stand afferma di avere inventato la ricetta degli anelli di cipolla, anche se negli anni Venti. Non sappiamo quale delle due versioni sia l'autentica, quello che è sicuro è che è una ricetta americana fino al midollo. La seguente ricetta è perfetta per 5 o 6 persone, pertanto adeguate le quantità secondo il numero di ospiti e...il loro appetito!

Ingredienti:

- 3 cipolle bianche o dorate

- 100 g di farina comune

- 300 ml di latticello

- 300 g di farina di mais

- 1 cucchiaino di pimenton (un prodotto spagnolo, potrete sostituirla con la paprika)

- olio d'oliva o di girasole

- sale e pepe al gusto

Preparazione:

1) Tagliate le cipolle in anelli di circa 3 o 4 millimetri di spessore, fate questo la notte prima e lasciateli in frigor di cucinarli, per lasciarli seccare per bene.

2) Preparate tre ciotole, nella prima mettete la farina, nella seconda metterete il buttermilk o latticello*, e nella terza metterete farina di mais assieme a sale e pepe e anche un po' di pimenton, o paprika se non trovate questa delizia spagnola. Nel frattempo, mettete un po' di olio in una padella e riscaldatela per bene.

3) Ora passate gli anelli di cipolla nella prima ciotola con la farina, poi per quella che contiene il latticello ed infine in quella che ha la farina di mais. Ora friggete glionion ring nella padella per circa un minuto, o finchè non saranno perfettamente dorati. Ricordatevi di rigirare gli anelli di cipolla per friggerli in maniera omogenea. Toglieteli poi dalla padella ed infine lasciateli asciugare un po' su dei tovaglioli e...mangiateli con la salsa che preferite!

Buon finesettimana e felice 4 luglio a tutti i nostri amici italoamericani!

Saluti,

Angie 

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* Puoi trovare il buttermilk nei grandi centri commerciali, ma puoi comunque fartelo a casa in un attimo: spremi un limone in un po' di latte e lascialo riposare per circa 10 minutu. Fatto! In questo modo avrai il tuo latticello in un attimo!

Dark and white chocolate cashew nuts cookies

Today we bring you a sweet recipe from America. We all know the traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe, and there are just too many versions of it, but that's just my take on it, with white and dark chocolate chips and chopped cashew nuts that helps to reach a balance in the flavour.

American Cookies comes from Massachusetts, and they were created in year 1939 by Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn. According to the myth, Mrs. Wakefield was baking regular chocolate cookies, but, as she ran off cocoa powder, decided to use chocolate chunks, believing that the chocolate would eventually melts in the dough in order to substitute the cocoa powder. Big was her surprire when she saw that the chocolate chunks were still there, well evidents all around the cookies, giving an aesthetical touch on them and contrastating the flavour of the dough. The cookies fastly obtained success and Mrs. Wakefield decided to publish a recipe book, including her famous sweet treats. In that way, American chocolate chip cookies became famous not only in Massachusetts, but also in the rest of America...and in the whole World too! It is said that Massachusetts' Senator John Fitzgeral Kennedy was a big fan of Mrs. Wakefield cookies back then!

 A young president Kennedy eating cookies

Our bran new KitchenAid

Today we decided to do something very american because of our new kid: the KitchenAid stand mixer! Oh how we love it! We just stoop out the kitchen to write this article, we can't help but keep staring it! But hey, here's our recipe!


Ingredients:

• 225 grams of butter (room temperature)
• 225 grams of brown sugar
• 200 grams of white sugar
• 480 grams of all purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 spoon of vanilla extact (in my case, Madagascar vanilla jelly)
• 1 spoon of baking powder ( 1 tsp or 5 grams)
• 1 pinch of salt
• 100 grams of dark chocolate chips
• 100 grams of white chocolate chips
• 80 grams of cashew nuts

Ingredients

Instructions:

-Fist of all, we mix the butter in a bowl together with the two types of sugar, until they are fully incorporated.
-Second step: we add the eggs, one at time, waiting to add the following egg until the previous is completely incorporated. Together with the eggs, we will add also the Vainilla extract, that can be liquid, paste or jelly vanilla extract
-In another bowl, we sift together the flour, the baking powder and the salt. Once mixed this dry ingredients, we add them to our wet ingredients we previously made.
- Mix all together and add chocolate chips and the chopped cashew nuts, we stir together this ingredients until they are well incorporated and we let the dough in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 170º Celsius or 325º Farenheit.
- Prepare a couple of baking tray with baking sheets and we are ready to make little balls using our dough. You can use the ice cream scoop to create your own dough balls. Feel free to choose the size you prefer, but please put the dough balls separate one from each other, or they will bunch up and we would finally obtain a single, cathedral-size giant cookie. We can delicately flatter the balls with the fingers of with the rear of a spoon if you want, but don't worry, with the heat the dough will lower.

cookies just before entering the oven

- Bake the dough for about 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

cookies inside of the oven, halfway through the baking. Can you see how they get bigger?

-Remove the cookies from the oven and let them in the tray for about five minutes without touching them, otherwise they would break since the cookies are still too weak.

-Let them cool completely in a rack. This step is really crucial in order to have crispy cookies and not fluffy ones.

cooling the cookies

- After that...just bite them! (if you haven't already!) you've waited for it for soo long at this point!

Cookie interior...yummy!

- You can store your cookies in a tin container with a baking sheeton the bottom of it, or in an airtight container.

I hope you'll like them as we did!

Saludos!

Angie

P.s.: I found the Madagascar Vanilla jelly in the World Artisan Fair of Milan, which takes place every year in December.I always used vanilla paste, liquid vanilla, vanilla sugar or even Vanillina, but I loved this little jar of "gelee de vanille", or Vanilla Jelly, since I tasted it, I would take a spoon and eat it directly from the jar!