Torta Caprese (Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake)

The "Torta Caprese," is a flourless chocolate almond (or walnut) cake name from isle of Capri.  According to legend, it came about when a baker forgot to add flour to their almond cake recipe.  As a result, it has been called, "uno dei pasticci più fortunati della storia" (one of the most fortunate mistakes/pies in history).  What I find so interesting about that little quote is that "pasticci" means both "pies" and "mess / to make a mess of".  Well, if it was in fact created by accident, it is definitely what Bob Ross would call "a happy little mistake" because this is a delicious cake.  Made of only a few ingredients and topped with only powdered sugar, it is quite a simple recipe which I think is what gives it most of its appeal.  Buon Appetito!


Torta Caprese, adapted from epicurious
Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 sticks (7/8 cup) unsalted butter
• 6 ounces almonds (I used slivered because it is what I had on hand)
• 1 ounce walnuts
• 6 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened) 
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar

• powdered sugar for garnish
• 
  

Preheat oven to 350° F. 

Lightly butter a 10-inch springform pan and line the bottom with a The Smart Baker pre-cut 10" parchment paper round. 

Melt butter and cool. In a food processor finely grind together almonds, walnuts and chocolate. Separate eggs.

In a bowl with an electric mixer beat yolks with granulated sugar until very thick and pale.  Beat in nut/chocolate mixture and butter.

In another bowl with cleaned beaters beat whites with a pinch salt until they just hold stiff peaks and whisk one fourth into almond mixture. Fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly and spread batter evenly in pan.

Bake torte in middle of oven 40 - 50 minutes, or until it begins to pull away from side of pan and a tester comes out with moist crumbs adhering. Cool cake in the springform pan for 5 minutes, then, run a knife around the edge of the cake and open the springform.  Move to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

Dust torte with powdered sugar when cake comes to room temperature. 

Canning: Homemade Tomato Sauce

One of the first things I asked my grandmother for when I moved into our house was her tomato sauce recipe.  Grammy's tomato sauce was pretty famous (well, at least it was within our family) and she always had a ton of it on hand for any dish that required it.  As soon as I got that recipe from her, I began making my own sauce every couple of months and storing it in pre-portioned vacuum sealed bags in the freezer.  It is kind of a long process to make Grammy's sauce - It has a few different stages and each stage requires some bubble and simmer time, so it is not something you can just whip up whenever you want.  But it is definitely worth all the time stirring and watching.  

Now that I'm about to embark on full time Student Teaching, I knew I wouldn't have time to make Grammy's sauce for a while.  But pouring the sauce into the freezer bags, using the vacuum sealer without getting sauce everywhere, and storing not quite flat bags in the freezer was getting old.  When I got this month's issue of Food Network Magazine, I saw they had a section dedicated to preserving jam.  I thought, well if you could do it with jam, you could probably do it with tomato sauce too, right?  After some web browsing, I found out that it IS possible, you just have to be careful with your recipe to prevent poisoning your family :)  Which means no meat, no fats, and limited low-acid ingredients in the recipe.  If you google it, you'll find a ton of different recipes suitable for canning.  This site was particularly helpful, as was the article in Food Network magazine which has pictures of every step.  Most importantly, be diligent with the sanitizing!  Here was our process:

You'll need:

--A big big pot - big enough to fit the jars, a small rack for the jars to stand on, and enough room on top of the jars so that they can be covered by boiling water

--Canning jars with new lids and bands

--A canning rack or a small wire rack that fits inside your big pot.  If you don't have one or can't find one (like me), you can use silverware.  Criss cross some silverware at the bottom of your pot so that you can place the jars on top of them.  You just need some space between the bottom of the jars and the bottom of the pot.

--Tongs

--A funnel

--A ladle

--Clean kitchen towels

1. Pre-clean the jars, lids and bands with hot, soapy water.  

2. Sterilize the jars: Place the jars on top of you rack or silverware.  Fill the pot with water and boil for at least 10 minutes to sanitize.  Keep them in the simmering water until you are ready to fill them.  Put the lids and bands in a smaller saucepan of simmering (NOT boiling) water until ready to use.  

3. Using the tongs, remove a jar from the boiling water.  Pour out the water and place the sanitized jar on one of the clean kitchen towels.  Using a clean funnel, fill the jar with sauce leaving about 1/4 inch at the top.  Repeat this step with the other jars to use up all of the sauce.

4. Using tongs, remove lids from the simmering water and place on top of the jars.  Remove the bands from the water and hand-tighten (do not over-tighten) the band.  

5. Processing: Put the filled jars back on top of the rack in the pot of water.  Cover with at least 2 inches of water and cover.  Bring to a boil and let boil for 35 minutes.  

6. After the processing time, remove the jars from the water with the tongs and place on a clean kitchen towel in an area where they will not be disturbed for 24 hours.  A vacuum seal will form (you might even hear a POP of the lid getting sealed on!)

7. After 24 hours, use your finger to lightly press in the center of the lid - it should not pop at all.  Vacuum sealed jars can be stored at room temperature until ready to use.

It wasn't so bad, it was just a little bit time consuming.  The process is pretty much the same for preserving other things like jams and jellies (processing times will probably differ according to the recipe) so once you learn how to do it you can preserve anything.  Best of all, only the lids are not reusable.  Your jars can be used over and over again.  

Homemade White Whole Wheat Pasta

This coming Monday, I make the transition from years and years of being a student to now being in the teacher position.  I'm in my last semester of my graduate degree.  Come December I'll have a masters degree in Art Education and I'll be fully certified to teach Art in Florida.  Since it is my last semester, that means full time student teaching/interning - I'll be spending 7 weeks in a High School Art classroom and 7 weeks in an Elementary school classroom.  I'm very excited, anxious, eager, nervous, and a whole lot of other adjectives.  I know I'm going to learn SO much about how to teach and I'm really looking forward to this experience!

That being said, the weeks leading up to internship have been filled with lots of things I know I won't have the time to do during the school year.  I've been doing lots of wedding things (Just 57 days until the Big Day!), like putting together favors, finalizing details, dress fittings, hair trial runs, and more.  I've also been spending a LOT of time in the kitchen cooking and baking because I know sadly I won't have as much time to do those things as I do now.  

I know I don't talk about Cooking very often on this blog, but I do actually like to cook very much.  Maybe that's because dinner doesn't stick around long enough to get photographed (it usually get devoured as soon as it is done).  Or maybe it's because chicken parmigiana just doesn't look as cute in pictures as a stack of brownies does.  But my-really OUR because the wonderful fiance helped tremendously with this one-latest cooking escapade definitely warrants a blog post.  

For my bridal shower, I got a Pasta Excellence Set for the KitchenAid mixer along with a "Greatest-Ever Pasta Cookbook"!  I was SO excited to get this - it comes with a pasta roller, a spaghetti cutter, a thick noodle cutter, an angel hair cutter, a fettucini cutter, and a ravioli maker.  The cookbook I got along with it is perfect for beginners - it explains every step of the pasta-making process in detail and shows pictures at each stage.  Very helpful when you're attempting this task for the first time!  We made the book's Basic Egg Pasta Dough (with some slight alterations which I'll include below) for our first Pasta-Making Session.

Basic White Whole Wheat Egg Pasta adapted from the Greatest-Ever Pasta Cookbook

4 Cups White Whole Wheat flour

1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour (both flours together should weigh 600 grams)

6 eggs, room temperature

2 tsp sea salt

1/4 Cup water, for use as needed

1. Sift the flours together and make into a mound on a clean work surface.  Use your fingers to make a deep well with high sides in the center of the mound.  

2. Crack the eggs into the well and add the salt.  With a fork, mix the wet ingredients together and slowly start incorporating flour from the sides of the mound into the wet ingredients.  Be careful to not break the sides of the well or spill the wet ingredients over the sides of the mound or you'll have a big mess.  Be patient, this is going to take a while.

3. When enough flour is mixed in that the mixture in the center is no longer liquid, use your hands to work the ingredients together into a sticky dough.  Get all of the sticky mixture off of the work surface and work into the dough ball.  If the dough seems too dry, start adding water by the Teaspoonful into the dough.  If it is too moist (a problem which I didn't have), add some flour.  

4. Form a rough ball and knead it.  Take the heel of your hand, and push the dough away from you.  Fold it back on itself and repeat.  Be sure to turn the dough and continue kneading every few minutes.  After several minutes of kneading like this, you could throw it in your KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook attachment and knead it for a few minutes to help form the dough.  You will likely still need to knead it by hand a bit after this, but it helps speed up the process.  Thorough kneading is very important!  Your dough isn't kneaded thoroughly unless it is very smooth and has some elasticity.  This is the hardest step!

5. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and allow to rest for 15-20 minutes at room temperature.  It will be ready to roll after this waiting period. *If you plan on making ravioli, now would be a good time to prepare your filling!

Now, break out the Pasta Roller!

Use it on the thickest setting at first (#1).  Break off a chunk of dough slightly larger than a golf ball.  Use your fingers to press it down into a rough sheet.  Put it through the pasta roller on the widest setting a few times.  Next, take it to the next setting on the pasta roller - a little bit thinner (#2).  Run it through this next setting a few times.  Then, fold the dough in half and insert the folded end into the roller.  Run it through a few times like this before moving it up to the next setting (#3) and repeat all the way until the dough is rolled out at the #4 setting.  If the dough is forced to go through the roller on too-thin of a setting when it isn't ready, it will break apart and will likely get too dry to be able to be used at all (we learned this the hard way).  As you make pasta sheets, lay them out on your clean work surface and cover with plastic wrap as you make the rest of your sheets.

When the dough is at the thickness of the #4 setting, it is ready to be made into pasta.  We made it into a variety of pastas - 

Some spaghetti:

As you cut the spaghetti, put on a lined cookie sheet and toss with flour to prevent the dough sticking together.  

Roughly form little "nests" with the spaghetti.  

Now you can do one of three things:

1. Allow the pasta to dry for one hour and then throw it in boiling water for around 4 minutes and eat it!

2. Allow it to dry for a couple of hours until it feels a little bit stiff but not as stiff as boxed pasta.  Then, plastic wrap or zippy bag the nests and freeze until ready to use.  You can put the home-made frozen pasta into boiling water for about 4 - 5 minutes and it'll be ready to eat.  Consume within 3 months.

3. Let the nests dry for 24 hours until it feels stiff like boxed pasta.  It can be stored in airtight storage containers in the pantry.  Consume within 3 months.  

Voila! Home-made pasta ready for whenever you want it!

We made lots of ravioli, too:

To make the ravioli is surprisingly easy!  Take a long sheet of pasta dough, fold it in half and insert the folded end into the ravioli attachment.  Using the hand crank, turn the knob one quarter turn to feed the pasta sheet. Take the filling scoop and insert 1 - 2 scoops of the filling of your choice (2 ideas below!).  As you turn the hand crank, the filling automatically fills in the little pockets of the ravioli and seals the edges.  A little filling goes a long way, so don't put too much in.  If you get to the end of the dough and there is filling left, it might get a little messy.  :)

Once the sheet is completely through the ravioli maker, tear the sheets of ravioli apart at the perforations.  Lay the ravioli out on a cookie sheet lined with a clean dish towel.  Allow to dry for one hour before cooking.  The raviolis will only take about 4 - 5 minutes in boiling water to be done and ready to eat!  (Or you can freeze the little raviolis after their initial drying period and boil them up whenever you want them).  

With ravioli fillings, you can get pretty creative.  Just one thing to keep in mind is that fresh ravioli only need to boil for 4 - 5 minutes, so anything you put in should be fully cooked.  In our first ravioli making sessions, we made two fillings:

Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Ravioli Filling:

3 Tblspn unsalted butter

6 oz fresh spinach, washed and shredded

1 Cup ricotta cheese

1/3 Cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

a pinch of nutmeg

1 egg, room temp

sea salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.  Add the spinach, salt and pepper and cook for 6 - 8 minutes on medium heat.  Stir frequently until the spinach is wilted.  Increase the heat to high and stir for a few minutes to dry out the spinach a little bit.  Transfer to a mixing bowl and allow to cool.

When cool, add ricotta, grated cheese, and nutmeg.  Mix well, taste for seasoning.  Then when you're happy with the seasonings, add the egg and mix well.  It is ready to be put into ravioli!

Spicy Sausage and Spinach Ravioli Filling:

1 Tblspn olive oil

2 spicy italian sausage with the casings removed

1 Cup ricotta cheese

3 oz fresh spinach, washed and shredded

1 egg, room temp

Grated cheese, salt, and pepper to taste

Over medium heat, cook the sausage in a small pan until meat is browned and cooked thoroughly, and a lot of the liquid has cooked away.  Remove to a mixing bowl and allow to cool.

Add the olive oil and spinach to the still hot pan and cook, covered, until wilted.  When it has wilted, gently squeeze some of the liquid out of the spinach and discard the liquid.  

Mix the sausage, spinach together with the ricotta, grated cheese.  Add grated cheese, sea salt and pepper and taste for seasoning.  If you're happy with the seasoning, add the egg and mix well.  It's ready to be put into your raviolis!

So that I could get a feel for the taste of the ravioli, I didn't want to cover it in a red sauce.  Instead, I made a simple Browned Butter and Sage sauce.  It is so simple I hesitate to even call it a sauce, but it is soo good.  Browned butter is nice and nutty and has much more depth as a result of browning.  When you add sage and sea salt... you'll just have to try it to understand.

Browned Butter and Sage sauce

3 Tblspn butter

8 - 12 leaves of Fresh Sage, washed and dried

Sea Salt for serving

Grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese for serving

Melt the butter on medium heat and add the sage leaves.  Cook it over medium heat until it browns.  Here is a little tutorial on how to brown butter if you're not familiar. 

When cooking your pasta, save a little bit of the pasta water when straining.  Add the browned butter and sage to the pasta water and pour over your pasta.  Sprinkle sea salt on top of your pasta, add some grated cheese and enjoy!  (Adding sea salt brings out the flavor of the browned butter as well as the sage.  Without it, it'll just taste like.. butter.  So skipping the sea salt is NOT ok!!  You'll be missing out!).  

Here is only our spread of the pasta we made that night:

WHEW, that was a long post.  I suppose it makes sense because the pasta-making was a long process.  But it was a lot of fun.  Actually since then, we've actually made MORE pasta.  I can't wait to play around and make all kinds of different flavors or pasta dough.  I'd definitely recommend this recipe for the ravioli dough as it was nice and simple and really let the flavor of the filling shine through.  However next time I'd probably make something a little more flavorful for the spaghetti and non-stuffed pastas.  But don't get me wrong, it was still delicious. :)

Next post up before Student Teaching starts?  Canning home-made Tomato Sauce!  You'd never guess me and the fiance are in our mid twenties, you'd think we were little old Italian women.  At least we eat well!

Cannoli Ice Cream

The ice cream maker came back out last night. This time it produced a decadent, rich, creamy Cannoli ice cream. You heard me right. This is not to be taken lightly. Quite a leap from the refreshingly light and fruity Key Lime Sorbet. More than one scoop of this pastry-inspired bad boy, and you're in for it. Not for the faint of heart. But it's ohhh so good.



Cannoli Ice Cream makes about 1 quart
Ingredients:
1 3/4 C ricotta cheese (not skim)
2/3 C sugar
1/2 heaping tsp vanilla extract
2/3 C heavy cream
1/2 tsp grand marnier
citrus zest (I used grapefruit because it is what I had, but you could use lemon or orange...I used about the zest of half a large grapefruit)
smidgen of fine sea salt

In a food processor, combine the ricotta, zest, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. With cover on and blade spinning, slowly pour in the heavy cream. Then add the grand marnier. Place the mixture in a medium bowl, and place the medium bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice water. Set in the frig until thoroughly chilled. (I find the ice bath makes it chill faster).

Churn in your ice cream machine according to your machine's directions. Place in a freezer container in the freezer until firm.

Rainbow Cookies

These favorites were made back on Christmas Eve/Christmas. I've made them consistently for Christmas a few years running now. They are all over the place in New York Italian bakeries, but here in Florida, they're rather scarce. Even when you do find them here, they're just not the same. When done right, they are moist, almondy, dense, and super, super delicious. Even those who don't like almond, chocolate, or jelly in their desserts love these cookies. The reason I don't make them more often is that they are a heckkk of a lot of work. This year though, with my new food processor, and my new set of 3 rectangular 9x13 cake pans with square corners, they were a leeeettle bit easier... though they still took hours and hours over the course of 2 days. The end result, though, is always worth it.

Rainbow Cookies
Ingredients:
8 ounces almond paste*
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white granulated sugar
4 eggs separated
2 cups all purpose flour
red, green, and yellow food coloring
1/2 C seedless strawberry jelly**
1 C semisweet chocolate chips
Chocolate sprinkles

*Almond paste is common ingredient in Italian desserts, but if you are unlucky like me and your area either doesn't carry it at all, or only carries 7 ounce tubes, rather than waste another whole container just to get that one extra ounce...this can substitute for that missing ounce: slightly less than 3 tablespoons (a little less than a quarter cup) of blanched slivered almonds ground to a paste with 2 teaspoons sugar.

**Not the traditional flavor, but it’s what I like to use...also usually the kind I have on hand is of the chunky variety so I just run it through the food processor first.

Directions:
Grease (3) 9x13x2 pans (preferably not the glass kind, like pyrex, that are rounded at the corners. Square cornered pans are better.) then line with pans with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper.

In a large bowl, break up the almond paste with a fork. (WHEW, I have learned from experience that this is ARDUOUS and takes a LONG time. Now, I put the grater blade into my food processor and break it up real quick.) In an electric mixer, cream together the almond paste, the butter, sugar, and egg yolks. When fluffy and smooth, stir in the flour.

In a small bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form and then fold them in to the dough.

Divide the dough into 3 equal parts. Tint each a different color: red, green and yellow. Spread into the prepared pans so that it evenly coats the entire pan (this takes a while).



Bake 10 – 12 minutes until lightly browned around the edges. Remove paper with cookies from pan and allow to cool.



Place green layer on a big sheet of plastic wrap large enough to cover all the layers when they are stacked. Fit it into a 9 x 13 cookie sheet. Spread jelly to taste – you do not want too much, or your layers will slide apart from each other. Generally, 1/2 c should be enough for the entire recipe. Top jelly coated green layer with the yellow layer. Spread jelly.





Top with red layer.


See all the layers so nicely stacked?


Cover all the layers with the oversized piece of plastic wrap and seal around the edges.


Put a cutting board, or a baking sheet on top of it with some weights on top to flatten it down over night in the frig. (I just put whatever happens to be in my frig at the moment on top of the cookie sheet or cake pan that I put on top of my cookies... water bottles, a half gallon of milk, a jar of pickles, anything. Spread the weight out so it is distributed evenly.)

Remove sheet from frig and remove plastic. Top a double boiler with the chocolate chips. When completely smooth, spread on to the top of the red layer, spreading all the way to the edges.


Before it sets, generously cover with chocolate sprinkles and lightly press down with your fingers through plastic wrap.


Refrigerate until chocolate it firm and then cut. ENJOY!!

Italia (Part Tre), and Mini Tarts

And now, for the conclusion to the Tour d'Italia: Edizione Gastronomia.

During our stay in Italy, we also made a day trip to the beautiful town of Siena. We got to climb the tower to get the most impressive view of the countryside you can imagine, visit the spectacular Civic Museum with some amazing Simone Martini paintings that was spectacular to see in real life, and we even got to see St. Catherine's head. Yes, St. Catherine's head. It is encased and displayed as a holy relic in the basilica of San Domenico, and we got to see it. After we had worked our appetites up thusly (sarcasm, I hope you caught that), we went to Nannini's.


I googled it, and its on all the lists of "Things to do when visiting Siena". It was great. The interior was so beautiful and classy in that old-timey way, and their famous Ricciarelli cookies (below) were no less beautiful and classy.

In fact, they were outrageous. The cocoa ones were not as good as the straight up, traditional, white almondy ones. They look hard, but inside that powdered sugary coating was a soft, flaky buttery inside that was absolutely to do for. I need to get my hands on a good recipe for these [(if anyone has one, I'd love it! :)]
Our day in Siena was wonderful, and was followed by a lunch at a vineyard called San Donato. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, but if you happen to be around the Siena area and you are looking for a tasty, tasty easy to drink white wine, stop by and pick up a bottle. It is one of the very few wines in the world that I would buy for myself (we are not big wine drinkers... or anything drinkers for that matter). Their Vernaccia was delicious enough for me to buy a bottle, and add its fragile self to my already too heavy suitcase.

Back in Florence, there is one place we went for a quick snack quite often. If I had to sum up Florence in one bite, I'd do it here. Of course, there are a gajillion places in Florence called "Forno," it basically just meant bakery or bread shop. But there is ONE forno that is above all the rest. Its located right outside of the San Lorenzo Central Market. I know there are many different ways to get in and out of the San Lorenzo market, but one of these entrances leads to the block this Forno is on. Actually, its located right by Mario's restaurant that I talked about in the first post. So, if you're in Florence (which I hope you are), and you are on line waiting for a table at Mario's but you are too hungry to wait, leave someone on line waiting for your table and take the few short steps to this Forno:

If you see that sign, take a step in. If you then see a picture of Brad Pitt hanging by the doorway that leads to the back, you'll know you're in the right forno (the owner, one of the Innocenti, has an adorable crush on him). If you find yourself in the right forno, order a piece of Schiacciata:

That little piece of bread might not look that exciting, but I implore you, take a bite before you judge it by its humble appearance. Here, they charge you by weight. The small piece I usually got for breakfast was about this size, and ran 70 euro cents, and it is more than enough to hold you over. And no, it is not just a piece of bread. Its about an inch thick, with a crunchy crust exterior and a doughy beautiful fragrant soft interior. It is drizzled with their high quality tasty olive oil, and thats it, these simple flavors alone make it the best tasting piece of bread in Florence. I suppose it has something to do with the ingredients they have over there that we just don't have here (eggs that aren't from chicken-fed chicken so that have a gorgeous deep almost orangey color, the authentic olive oil, the un-over-processed and bleached flour, etc), but I know for sure that if I had 5 minutes to give someone a taste of Florence, I'd take them to Forno...not Vivoli for gelato, not Mario's for lunch, but here for a 3 inch by 4 inch piece of bread. Oh, how I miss it.

Finally, our stay in Florence was over. On Sunday morning, we packed up all our belongings and jumped on a bus to Roma, where we stayed for 8 days. After the approximately 3 hour bus ride there, we wheeled all of our luggaged down the cobble stone, pedestrian only street only mere minutes from the Vatican to our apartment on Borgo Pio. We helped each other lug our bags (newly heavy with italian leather pocketbooks, red wines and jewelry) up the stairs, dumped the stuff on our beds, and we were out the door. The weather was the best we could possibly hope for: warm, sunny, clear... the perfect atmosphere for a walking tour introduction to the city of Rome. We walked all over: past the Vatican, to the Piazza Navona where Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers is, past the pantheon and its busy piazza, through several other piazzas with more buildings I had been studying and oggling through textbooks for years. It was like a dream, honestly...too much to take in, in a good way. Finally, all 16 of us were hungry, and our knowledgeable professor and guide knew exactly where to take us:

where else, but Giolitti. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep, its been too long.


It was another old-timey, classy, beautiful establishment with a variety of pastries, granitas, coffee and espresso, and... wait for it wait for it... Gelato. And I mean that with a capital G. After my 26 days in Italy, I can say with a certain assuredness that Giolitti offers Italy's best Gelato. The last three days of our trip, me and two other girls vowed to come here for Gelato twice a day to get our fill before we left. Well, we fulfilled that promise to ourselves (in fact, they got both gelato and granita each time).

Some other offerings from Giolitti.
From my variety of flavor combinations, I found two to be the winners:

Cioccolato (chocolate), Mandorla (almond) and Nocciola (hazelnut) con panna. And:

Biscotti (Yes. Circle bites of crunchy chocolate biscotti mixed in), Nocciolato (chocolate hazelnut) and Cannolo Siciliano (cannoli) con panna, of course.

Ahhh, delicious. Our next exciting culinary adventure was when a few of us took a trip to the Jewish Ghetto for the signature fried artichokes. The restaurant we chose was one my professor recommended:

Da Giggetto.
And the famous artichoke?:

This is actually half an artichoke, but you can get the picture. It was delicious: crispy at the ends of the leaves and a bit of a soft center where the actual meat of the artichoke was. Very good. Different, but good.
For my meal, I had my first experience with Spaghetti alla Carbonara:

I had no idea what I was in for. For some reason, I thought that carbonara involved a red tomato based sauce, but boy was I wrong. It was the heaviest thing ever: combine creamy, thick, cheese, pasta, eggs, and pancetta... well, I couldn't even finish half of the thing, it was a monster. It was absolutely delicious, but fatal. I was happy, though, to have my first carbonara in the city that invented it.

Our nearly month long stay in Italy was nearly over. For our finale meal, we went to

Hostaria Costanza. Its located in what remains of the theatre of Pompey, and legend has it, this is where Julius Caesar was assassinated. We had a nice big table that sat all 16 of us students, my professor, and our tour guide from Florence. I took tons of pictures, partially because I was a little sad that it was all over, the whole trip was coming to an end. And also because the food was that good, and really pretty.
For the first course, I had this ridiculous dish:

I had never heard of it: Scarpelle. Its like a big manicotti, except made of crepe not pasta which is filled with ricotta and spinach and covered with some sort of tasty orangish/redish sauce. I can't even express how good this was.
Next up, secondo piatto:

Veal Saltimbocca. I normally don't eat veal for moral reasons that have been instilled in me since I was young, but the other options for second choice were not very appealing. Though morally unsound, this dish was quite the palette pleaser.
And for dessert (before walking to our final giolitti gelato of course):

Tiramisu, yeah, be jealous.

The final culinary thing I'd like to show you from Italy is terrific. I know a really witty caption would be perfect here, but... I'm at a loss.
These...

...are lollipopes.

Finally, the end of my culinary coverage of my Italian voyage is here. Its a bit sad. I had an amazing time, but I suppose I'm glad to be back in the states. Hopefully, I'll find myself back in Italy someday so I can enjoy everything all over again.

Mini Tarts

Back in America, I've been doing a little bit of baking. I've decided I'm going to make small batches of things for the most part from now on. I always scale recipes down, but I think perhaps I'll do it even more so. First, there are only two of us here. If I bake less, we can try little samples of things to see if we even like them before I commit to a whole 9X9 of it. Then, if there is less quantity, less will be wasted if its a total disaster. And if its good, it'll go semi quickly and I can bake something else. :)

The first thing I baked in this small quantity was inspired by something I saw on FoodGawker, the new site that has come to fill the whole left by Tastespotting. I loved the way these shortbread tartlets looked over on Velvet Lava Cafe's blog. They were so cute, and I have loved the recipes of Ina Garten's that I have tried so far that I was dying to try something like this out.

The urge to make something in this vein was advanced even further by a problem I have. Yes, I have a confession, I have a certain problem in the kitchen. You see, I'm really not a fan of throwing food away. If I have a half eaten container of ricotta in the frig that is about to go bad, I will go out of my way to find a recipe that calls for just that. If I have a little bit of heavy cream left that is approaching its expiration date, I will bake something that requires it so that I don't have to throw it away. Its not the worst problem in the world, I know, but since Dan had purchased and used half of a container of pre-made frosting while I was away, I felt compelled to use it in something so it would not go to waste. Since pre-made frosting would never find a home on my homemade cupcakes in a million years (sorry, I'm a baking elitist) I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to use it up. But first, the crust. I halved Ina's recipe that was listed on Velvet's blog as such:

5 Tblspn butter
1/5 Tblspn sugar
1/2 of 1 egg
1/8 Tsp vanilla
.5 C + 1 Tblspn flour
1/16 tsp baking powder
Sprinkle of salt

Preheat to 350.
In one bowl, whisk flour, baking powder and salt together, and set aside.
In a different bowl, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix dry mix into the wet mix, and stir until just combined.
Take small spoonfuls of the sticky, sticky dough and place it into the wells in an ungreased non-stick mini-cupcake tin. With floured fingers, pretty down the center as best you can. With a spoon, spread the dough to go up the sides and try to create the best crust-shape you can, with a depression in the center. Mine were very thin on the sides and done very sloppily, and still came out of the tin ok. My half batch made 11.
Bake for ~14 minutes until they start to get golden-brown. Place tin on rack, and take a knife to see if the tarts are loose from the edges of the wells (mine were just fine, surprisingly!). Let cool.

I got a little ambitious and wanted to make a surprise filling in between the shortbread tart and the frosting. For 4 of them, I spread a thin layer of peanut butter. In 3 of them, I spread some strawberry jam that I had melted down.



Some filling poking out!

In the last four of them... well... I got very ambitious.
I wanted to do a twix-ish thing, with the tart as my nougat, the frosting as my chocolate, and this dulce de leche as my caramel.
Well, this was a pain in the butt. Some of the pain may be due to the super super small batch I made. I scaled it down so much that the original recipe went from 4 cups milk to only 1/4 C. It came together way quicker than the recipe said, probably owing some to the reduced quantity. But it was still a pain. It tasted OK, but nothing special. After taken off the heat, it got hard and unworkable real fast. And I didn't have a thick enough layer on the tarts to really taste significantly against the overwhelming chocolate frosting flavor.

Oh well! This particular recipe for dulce de leche is not something I'd try again.

For the frosting, I blobbed some of that pre-made stuff, added a teaspoon of espresso powder, and broke out the handheld electric mixer to make it a little softer, lighter and fluffier.



These were not spectacular. The shortbread crusts were quite good and crumbly, I'd try this again in another application. Thats all for now in this longest blog post ever!