Eggplant Parmigiana

The Eggplant Parmigiana is a most famous southern italian dish, and we're sure that once you've tried it, it'll become a classic in your kitchen too!

Many are the places that claims to have created this simple yet delicious dish, as always happens with the great things, everyone's interested in demonstrating his "paternity" to it. The Eggplant Parmigiana is typical in many Italian regional cuisines, and even if many thinks that this kid was born in the Campania region, the only region that actually obtained an official title to demonstrate it is Sicily.

Two are the main ingredients of the Parmigiana (no, neither of the two is the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, curiously). We're talking of the Tomato and the Eggplant or Aubergine if you're London-based. These two ingredients are just marvellous together, they are a match made in food heaven, they always seems to have been around together since forever. Today, they are two of the most representative ingredients of the Mediterranean cuisine, but they're really not mediterranean at all. Shocked? Keep reading!


Mr. Tomato and miss Aubergine agreed to have a blind date that they decided to occur in Sicily, somewhat halfway between America (Tomato) and Asia (Eggplant-aubergine).
The first one to reach the meeting point was miss Aubergine, around year 827, brought there by the hands of the Moors. The poor pretty lady had to wait a long long time for her pretender, but miss Aubergine in Sicily found a second house, and she even called her friends to reach her in that beautiful island. In a little while, Sicily was filled, packed of miss Aubergines, all of these waiting for the "Caravan of love" to come from America with many, many Mr. Tomatoes.

miss Aubergine went to Sicily for tourism but decided to remain there.

They say that in that year Cristopher Columbus discovered America, but we all know that it was just an excuse: come on, let's be realistic, Columbus went there just to pick up the Tomato that were horribly late for their blind date! (knowing Mr. Tomato pretty well, we dare to say that he was too much nervous because he wanted to give an excellent first impression). What would it be of Italian gastronomy without the tomato!? It would be really unthinkable! The variety of dishes made with tomatoes is just countless: pasta, salads, meals, pizza...and a million of other dishes useless without that gorgeous fruit dressed up like it was a veggie. One may be allowed to think that if it were not for the discover of the tomato, many dishes wouldn't even exist nowadays! But shush! Let's not say this aloud, we don't want the tomato to talk big.


Finally, it was Hernan Cortes who brought tomatoes to Europe, around year 1500 (men seems to be never in a hurry!). Before reaching Sicily, actually, they call at Madrid, Spain (if we close our eyes we can imagine the tomatoes running from a Terminal to another in Madrid's labyrintic Barajas Intercontinental Airport!). Mr. Tomato, just arrived in the Old World, was considered to be just a non edible ornamental plant: we guess that he spent way too much time getting himself all dolled up! Shall we agree that this is one of the World's first examples of Metrosexuality in the history of mankind, shall we?

The meeting of Mr. Tomato and miss Aubergine

When he finally managed to reach Sicily and he met miss Aubergine, it was more than just love at first sight: it was a premeditated love, a love written in the skies by destiny. A love that is very strong still today, if we judge by the number of dishes where they appears to be gloriously married together. It's like an artistic duo: when they appears together, magical things happens! We had to wait many centuries to see them shining together, but they definitely worth all the time spent! To be completely sincere with you, there are also other dishes that came before the Parmigiana and had miss Aubergine as a starring actress: we're talking about the Sicilian "Caponata", but don't worry, we'll talk about it in another occasion!


We can find the Eggplant Parmigiana (Parmigiana di Melanzane in Italian) recipe for the first time in a cookbook published in Naples in year 1778, titled "Il cuoco elegante" (the elegant cook) and written by Vincenzo Corrado. In the 1839 book "Cucina teorico-pratica" ("practical-theoretical cuisine") by Ippolito Cavalcanti (from Naples too) we can read the Parmigiana recipe almost as we know it today.

Parmigiana di Melanzane, or in english Eggplant Parmigiana

Pretty as much as it happens with its birth, even the origin of the name of the Parmigiana is surrounded by many hypotesis and uncertainities. We can think the Parmigiana to be somewhat linked with the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, or in the beautiful city of Parma, in north of Italy. Actually, in Parma, a very high end gastronomical city, there was a tradition in cutting veggies into slices and presenting them cooked one above the other, just like Parmigiana. We tend not to agree much with this option, since there are no immediate links between Parma and Sicily at the time of the supposed birth of the Parmigiana, even if many excellent food historians and food scholars like Luciano Pignataro do support this hypotesis and think that the Eggplant Parmigiana means "eggplant cooked as they do in Parma".


The other hypotesis comes straight from the Sicily itself, where the vernacular word "parmiciana" means louver, therefore indicating a structure composed of different slats one above the other, just like what happens with the Parmigiana. We are more convinced by this option, since we know that the Moors had windows similar to our jealousie windows and they brought them wherever they went, as it happened with the eggplant. It mustn't surprise then that there might have been a Moorish dish with sliced fried eggplants in the Arab Sicily that was the grandma of our Parmigiana recipe.

What it seems to be sure is that the Parmigiana less or nothing have to share with the "King of Cheeses", the unique and only Parmigiano Reggiano, even if in modern-days Parmigiana that marvellous northern Italian cheese is used gratinated above the dish. On the other hand, what dish does not enjoy some gratinated Parmigiano? In different regional version of this recipe we can see that are used Pecorino or Caciocavallo cheeses.

But now it's time to put something under our teeth! Let's go with the very simple and delicious recipe!

Recipe:

Ingredients: (As always, the quantities written above are just an indication: with three middle sized eggplant you can obtain four portions of Parmigiana, and according to this ratio, modify the quantity of eggplant needed)

- 3 middle sized eggplant
- 500 - 800 g aprox. of tomato sauce (preferably home made)
- Breadcrumbs
- Flour
- 2 or 3 eggs
- 100 g. of authentic Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (only the original!)
- Olive oil
- Basil
- 2 fresh Mozzarella (better if it's "fior di latte")

Preparation:

1- We start peeling our eggplants (the skin of the eggplant may result bitter in our palates), we wash them into slices somewhat less than half an inch wides, we put them in a colander and the sprinkle some salt above them. We let the eggplants to "sweat" to let them lose their water, for about an hour. After this, we wash the slices, we dry them and we bread them.

2- To bread our eggplants, we'll pass the slices through flour, then through beaten egg and last through breadcrumbs. We'll fry them in boiling oil until they become golden brown in both sides and we dry them using a kitchen paper to get rid of the excess of oil.

Flour, eggs and breadcrumbs

3- In a platter fit for the oven, we put the eggplant slices in the bottom of the dish, then we cover it with tomato sauce (ours is made with pepper and garlic), then add sliced or little pieces of mozzarella fresh cheese to taste, basil leaves and then we add another layer of eggplants, following the order, just like you would do cooking a lasagna.

  4- The last layer will end with tomato sauce, mozzarella and gratinated Parmigiano Reggiano. We'll pop it into the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes at 180ºC. They say that the Parmigiana is to be left into the oven "finchè si asciuga", that in italian means  "until the sauce gets dry" and we can appreciate a golden brown crust above it.

It is a delicious dish that you can enjoy both warm or cold.


Last but not least, you can cook a light version of the Parmigiana using grilled eggplant instead of fried ones. You can also fry them only passing them through the beaten eggs or breading them only with flour and not with breadcrumbs...you choose how! Just try it, you'll fall in love with it in a matter of seconds!

Buon Appetito!

From the Caprese salad to Futurismo

Even if the calendar tells us that the Fall is just around the corner, no one can keep us from lengthen the summer in our kitchens, and for this reason we bring you an all time italian classic summer recipe: the caprese salad!

The Caprese salad is a fresh dish that's filled with mediterranean taste and light, a simple and genial recipe that's based upon a column of italian gastronomy: a dish is a good dish when you can't add or quit a single ingredient without altering the global aequilibrium. Said in another word: elegance, pure elegance. Few ingredients, but perfectly balances and choosen. It is said that nothing is more complex to obtain than simplicity, and it's really true. Simplest things may result obvious to us, because they've been created to stay with us forever with no stress at all. Simplest things are simply impossible to improve.

The history of the Insalata Caprese is not well known, but what's sure is that it appears for the first time in a 1920 menù at the Capri island's "Quisisana hotel".
It may be interesting to notice that the caprese in that occasion was a part of a so called "futurista dinner", that is a dinner based upon the principia of the artistical movement of the Futurismo. Beside painting, sculptures, etc.*, the Futurismo and its leading poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, wanted a radical reform of the traditional cuisine. Marinetti established the rules of the game in his "Manifesto della cucina futurista".

View from Monte Solaro at Capri 

In his manifesto, Marinetti called for a complete erase of the pasta from the traditional cuisine, and its substitution with modern, aerodynamical, fluid and concentrated dishes. "simultaneous and shimmering bites", as Marinetti said: in the Twenties, the Futuristi already saw the molecular cuisine and Ferran Adrià's "El Bulli". The Futuristi loved the fresh and light colours, that they thought to be perfect for the modern way of life. And the very italian colours of the Caprese dish were very interesting for the nationalist european society of the Twenties.

There are other version of the birth of the caprese salad, of course. For instance, it is said that after the World War II, a mason that worked in the charming Napolitan island loved to bring the "tricolore", or the Italian flag, at work in the panini sandwich he used to eat. His creation had such a success that was imitated by the restaurants of the island, and from there the international jet set started to know the caprese salad. For instance, it is said that in the Fifties, the King Farouk loved a panini sandwich filled with mozzarella, tomato and basil.

But let's talk about the recipe of the Caprese salad! Can't be any easier!

Ingredients:

- Tomato
- Fresh mozzarella
- Basil

We love our Caprese with the mozzarella di Bufala, but many sources says that the original version of the salad should be done with a fresh cow mozzarella. The original recipe should be done without adding olive on it, but we can't help but pouring a drizzle of olive oil on our Caprese! You can give your own touch to your salad adding black greek olives, different kinds of tomatoes and so on. You can use also the Modena balsamic vinegar to dress it (but be careful to choose the original one!).

Preparation:

For the classic version of this salad, you should cut the tomatoes and the fresh mozzarella in slicesand put them in a dish, a slice of tomato and a slice of mozzarella and so on, and add basil to taste.

You can have your own Caprese in a thousand of different version! Use your own imagination! Here we bring you some ideas, like for instance a Caprese sandwich, Caprese skewer, Caprese hasselback, Caprese panini and so on!

Buon appetito!

_____________________________________________________________

Note:

For those interested in the artistical movement called Futurismo, keep reading! (We know that this is a cuisine blog, but you know...we can't help but talking about art! We're totally artoholic!) 

* We wanted to share with you some notion about the Futurismo, a most important artistical avant garde of the early XX century. Infact, it was one of the first anti-traditional artistical movements in the Old Continent. They literally
started a frontal assault against tradition.

Giacomo Balla, "La costellazione del Genio", 1918,
Museo del 900, Milan

The Futurismo created a large number of artistical masterpieces by artists like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni. The last one was the creator of the Futurismo's most iconic work, represented today in the 20 eurocent coins. If you've been to Europe, you've had an artistical masterpiece in your pocket and you didn't know! The Futurismo was literally determinant in the aesthetics and in the pop culture of the XX century. We can see a lot of work of the Futurismo at the Milan's Museo del Novecento or at New York's Moma or 
- what else?- at the Met!

Umberto Boccioni, "Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio", 1913, Museo del 900, Milán

Greetings and have a great start of Fall! 

Cheese filled garlic dough ball recipe

Italians and Garlic, an history of love and...hate! This might be curious to hear to a northern american, but it is true. The garlic, an ingredient incredibly ancient and super healthy, is almost as loved in some region as it is hated in many others. Generally speaking, but with huge exceptions like Piedmont and Tuscany, in the central and overall in northern Italy is not so used. In Lombardy we have a paradoxical situation where is almost...well...how can I express it...is tolerated, let's say it in this way. In the southern Italy is incredibly loved and used in excellent recipes both for its flavour and its healthy properties. This is for sure an iconic indicator of how variegated Italy is in terms of both culture and traditions: what is beloved somewhere is not so well received in another. We can say that literally many Italies exists, unified in its charming and deeply humanistic culture. This will result self-evident to everyone who actually throughout the italian geography from north to south, and this is undoubtly one of the most charming feature of the Boot.

As for the use of the garlic and many other things, southern Italy may be considered more similar to Spain than to northern Italy. The emigration from the southern Italy to north America exported the culture of the garlic, and this is the reason that generated the equation: "italian cuisine equals garlic", generalizing a regional product as if it was used by the whole country with the same love.

Garlic cloves

But how was created garlic bread? It is considered to be an "americanized" version of an ancient "poor" traditional dish, the bruschetta, now a Tuscan typical antipasto. The bruschetta was consumed already in the roman era, and was made with old bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with strong olive oil. Even if now the bruschetta is a gourmet antipasto to be eaten with the best italian extra vergin olive oil, originally it was rubbed with garlic and covered with strong oil in order to let the bread last longer in the poor cuisine of the ancient times.
European restaurants take the garlic bread back from the italo-american cuisine, and today it may be find in lots of Italian-inspired restaurants almost everywhere...north of the Alps. The main difference between the italo-american garlic bread and the bruschetta it's what is considered to be the main ingredient in terms of flavour: in garlic bread is the garlic and in the bruschetta is the olive oil, making it essential to be made with a very good olive oil. We have documents of menus in US with garlic bread in it as old as the second half of the Forties.

Recipe:

We wanted to give our own touch to the garlic bread, taking a little bit here and a little bit there, using instead of the usual bread the pizza dough and using a different sauce, inspired in the huge variety of canarian sauces known as "mojo", that will be sometime soon the topic of our post.

For this recipe you can use the typical pizza dough you usually use, the one you prefer best, every kind of pizza dough works for what we suggest you here. We usually use a very thin kind of pizza dough that we've mentioned in a previous post (if you want to read it, click here), because it's easy and quick to prepare.

It is the perfect recipe for a starter or an antipasto, it's better to eat it still warm, but cold are super tasty as well ;).
We can prepare the pizza dough and the garlic dough balls many days before our guests come to our house, since the rest of the preparation is pretty simple. Success is granted!

Ingredients:

• 1 pizza dough (recipe here)
• 3 garlic cloves (to taste)
• 30 g. of parsley
• 80 -100 ml of olive oil (better if it's extra virgin)
• Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (Always the original! To taste, but not less than 25-30 grams)
• Mozzarella filante cheese or any melting stringy cheese
• salt and black pepper to taste

Preparation:

1- With the pizza dough we make some little balls, trying to make them kinda uniform, we will fill them with the kind of cheese we've chosen. We put them in an oven tray separated each one from anothen, since they'll grow a little bit. We bake them in a preheated oven at 180º C for some 15 minutes or until we see them becoming golden brown.

Garlic dough balls ready for the oven!

2- While we're baking our garlic dough balls, we prepare our sauce (or "quasi mojo" he he!), very fast and easy to do. We can use a food processor, a mixer, a Thermomix...whatever you want, and here resides maybe the biggest difference between the mojo canario and this sauce, since the first one is traditionally made by hand and clearly has not cheese in it. Add all the ingredients of the sauce (garlic, parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese) and process them together until you obtain a nice sauce.

...and garlic dough balls ready to be eaten in 3, 2, 1...

3- When our garlic dough balls are ready, we take them off of the oven and (when they're still hot) we immediately put them in a bowl together with the sauce. We stir them all together well in order to let all of the dough balls to wet well into the sauce and get all of the flavour. We can put a little bit more of grated cheese above the dough balls and...eat them as quick as you can, they literally will disappear in a matter of seconds!

The interior of our garlic dough ball...nom nom!

Buon appetito!

AnGie

Welcome summer! Tiramisù popsicle recipe

To celebrate the coming of summer, we'll bring you a popsicle based on a very classical italian sweet: the World renown Tiramisù.

The Tiramisù is a very simple sweet dish, but it's not a classic in the sense of "old", it's a rather "new classic", since it was invented in...1962! I mean, come on! That's the day before yesterday! ;) How could people live without this marvel?

The original recipe was an idea of Mrs. Alba Campeol, in the beautiful city of Treviso, very near to Venice. She affirms that the idea came out after giving birth to her first son, when her mother and her mother-in-law used to bring her coffee and ladyfingers and tell her: "eat them all, that'll be good for you!". In Italian we say "tirare su" (rise up, come on!) when someone needs to get better, and starting with this idea, she decided together with the cook of the restaurant they owned to add some nourishing eggs with sugar and the mascarpone cheese.

Even though many (or everybody) thinks that Tiramisù has some liquor in it, it actually hasn't. Or shouldn't have, according Mrs. Campeol's original recipe, since it was precisely designed to be fit for everyone, from the childhood to the oldest one, and specially for those who needed to "tirarsi su", to recover themselves, making the liquor unfit for the recipe. The many tourist that visited the enchanting city of Treviso (we would advice you to do so!) were blown away from the simple and genial recipe, making it Worldwide famous, and this lead to the many versions of this sweet that we have nowadays.

Here you are an interview to Mrs. Campeol (in Italian) where she tells us the history and she also regrets not having patented her recipe in the Sixties! We're thankful and grateful anyway, Mrs. Campeol!

 
Ingredients:

• 4 egg yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 100 g. of sugar
• 400 g. of mascarpone cheese
• 3 or 4 Savoiardi biscuits or ladyfingers
• cocoa powder
• a cup of coffee
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

1- Beat the egg yolks until they get foamy with an electric blender. You're looking for a pale white colour.

2- Add to the previous mix the mascarpone cheese and mix it togheter.
 
3- Beat the eggs white until they become foamy and we add this to the previous mix with round movements, from bottom to top in order to let the foam stand up straight.

4- We dip the Savoiardi or the ladyfingers in the coffee (it can be decaffeinated, instant coffee or espresso, you choose).

5- We put our mix in our popsicle or ice cream moulds, alternating with coffee-wet ladyfingers and cocoa powder and our mix again, as many times as we want, until the mould is filled and we end with some cocoa powder, then we put our wooden stick. We can also decide to put the ladyfingers at the center of the mould and the mix around them. This time I decided to do it with some little pieces of ladyfingers, that's a matter of tastes!

6- Put it into the freezer, if it's possible from a day to another, since it's a very creamy mix and it needs a lot of cold.

This time I've made it as a popsicle, but you can do it in a plum cake mould too.
Before pouring the mix, I cover the bottom with a plastic wrap, in order to avoid that our Tiramisù does not sticks to the bottom and can be removed easily. This version is to be made just like the popsicles, but with some more savoiardi biscuits and forming and alternate structure, just like the traditional Tiramisù: biscuits, mascarpone mix, cocoa powder and others biscuits, in that orden. This is what is called a "semifreddo", a sweet between a gelato and a traditional cake.

Happy start of Summer to everyone! Enjoy this ice creamy version of the Tiramisù!

Greetings,

AnGie

Pesto alla Trapanese sauce recipe

Italian pesto is perhaps one of the most well known italian sauces. I bet that when you hear someone talking about pesto, you'd think about the green (or genoese) pesto, based upon basil and pine nuts, but today we'll bring you a different version of this most stasty sauce, we'll talk about "pesto alla trapanese", originated from the city of Trapani, west Sicily.

It is thought that this version of pesto was invented when the genoeses ships docked at Trapani when returning back from the East. In that way the idea of the pesto alla genovese started to break the new ground in Sicily, and there the local population decided to use the local excellences, like the great tomatoes and the almonds.


Traditionally, the pesto sauces has to be done with the mortar, and it's because of that way of making it that the pesto gets its name: from the italian word "pestare", that is "to mash". Generally speaking, every kind of pesto sauce has at least an ingredient in common, the basil! During the antiquity, they used spices to dress the food, the eastern spices that came from Venice through Constantinople, the so-called "Doors of the East". That spices were available at an high price, and so only the riches could afford them. That made the local poor population to start using the local ingredients they had in their lands, and it turbed out that it wasn't that bad too! With the medicinal or aromatic herbs they started to create the basic sauces we all know nowadays that dress our dishes. It is also said that the millenial recipe of the pesto was also one of the first sauces made with olive oil.


The recipe may vary according to your guests' preferences, of course, now it's just the right time to start try it to decide how we like it best!

Today I'll show you a version made with dried tomatoes, very tasty and easy!


Ingredients:

• 80 g. of almonds
• 130 g. of dried tomatoes
• 100 g. of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (only the original, no "parmesan" allowed!)
• 10 or 15 basil leaves
• 1/2 spoonful of sea salt (to taste)
• 2 garlic fingers
• olive oil (to taste)

Preparation:

1- We put the dried tomatoes some 10 minutes in warm water, so to hydrate them a little bit.

2- Toss all the ingredients in a mixer, add some olive oil, more than a drizzle, and mix it all together. The quantity of olive oil it depends on the level of consistency we want to obtain, so we'll keep on mixing and drizzling olive oil little by little...and...there you are! Ready!

We can conserve it into the fridge for many days, and it may last even longer if we cover it with olive oil! Another idea to conserve it is to freeze it and to keep it at our disposal when we need it. I use to freeze it into ice cubes moulds, I put the pesto sauce into the mould and when I need it for my pasta dishes, there I have it! I've got actually ice cubes of all the colours heheh...I could tell you that time when someone when try to refresh his drink with an ice cube has had his drink with...a strange taste hehehe! But that's another history! ;)

 









 

The pesto alla trapanese is a very versatile sauce, you can use it in a coutless amout of dishes, or prepare it with different textures, as shown in the previous images. You can let it somewhat "drier", for instance to use it on a cruchy traditional bruschetta bread, you can use it as a filler, for fishes, meats, etc...etc...of course, do not forget to eat it with pasta! With pasta like orecchiette, spaghetti al nero di seppia or pasta con le sarde to me it becomes divine!

                           

 

This kind of pesto is usually made with fresh tomato, that makes it different in texture, and needs less olive oil too, and it's pretty good too! Then we have the pesto alla siciliana, made with the yummy ricotta cheese (nomnom!), and many more other sauces that we'll discover in another occasion.



Come on, let's try all the variations! As my father used to say..."there is a place, somewhere in the World, where a room is filled with different sauces, one for each day of the year"...we should listen him!

Greetings and...put some sauce in your life! ;)

 AnGie