Crispy& Crunchy Chicken

Although it contains parmesan cheese,  it  might seem like a Cajum dish.

Ingredients: A whole chicken but deprived of the chest (that you will cook later for another dinner ), 60g of breadcrumbs, 40g of grated cheese (Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano), little olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Here I added quantities, but I just did by eye.

Preheat oven to 150°C (short less if the oven is vented).
Mix breadcrumbs with grated cheese and pepper.

Preheat oven to 150°C (short less if the oven is vented).
Mix breadcrumbs with grated cheese and pepper.

Cut chicken into small pieces.
Broke wings into 2 pieces each as well as the above-thighs, but let whole thighs. If you have time and it is possible, remove skin.
Then, with hands or a brush, grease with olive oil every chicken piece. Bread them in the breadcrumbs mixture.

Everything is ready, it's grape-harvest time!

We are just in grape harvest time, a period that, this year, will be long if the weather holds.

In fact this year in Tuscany  Sangiovese grapes are not yet  arrived all at full maturity.

Not so for the Chianti Vepri.
So they will probably harvest by the end of this week: everything is ready.

Last Saturday I was right there with my sister,  to visit Siro Cicogni, owner of the Vepri Vineyards.

Mint Schnapps.

If you have a lot of mint in your garden or on your balcony, this is a recipe that I recommend.
Besides to be drank pure, this liquor should give a refined flavor to ice cream, in particular to chocolate ice cream and also to other delicious desserts.

You should use a mix of different mint. The choice is yours.

Ingredients: about 100 beautiful fresh mint leaves, 1 lemon, 1 liter of alcohol from liquor at 95 °, 1 liter of water, 800g of sugar.

Tarragon Chicken scallops

Chicken and turkey breast, can be cooked in many different ways.
If we are careful and skilled in cutting, we can make from a single chicken breast cutlets lot more slices than we might believe at first glance, as  tells us also Pellegrino Artusi:
"[..] a capon breast may be sufficient for four or five people. Slice breasts into thin slices almost like paper, give them the best shape that you can [..] he says in the recipe" Chicken Breasts to sauté "

Ingredients for 4 people: 2 chicken breasts or a similar amount of turkey breast, butter and a little olive oil, ½ cup of dry white wine, a sprig of fresh tarragon, 2 tablespoons of fresh cream (optional), Flour, Salt and pepper. 

Automn Quiche

Ingredients for 4 people: 1/2 medium sized onion, 300g Chards (only the white part of the stalk), 2 medium Carrots, 80g Bacon, 2 slices Emmenthal or Fontina cheese, 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk or cream, pastry crust Brisée (made from 250g of flour, 100g of butter and 1 egg), a little parsley, salt and pepper

A good Chianti!

Chianti Vepri

Siro e Clio Cicogni

The winery is located at Ambra, in the Chianti area of Valdichiana.
Its name come from the quaint village of Vepri that borders one side of the property. This country has ancient pre-Roman roots and a special vocation for wine.
C conducted by Clio Cicogni who in 2010 bought an old vineyard of 15 hectares, abandoned from several years and immediately decided its conversion to organic farming.
The family Cicogni has a tradition in the field of milling wheat for bread (5 generations). Since 1976 developed the sector of cereals and in the past 14 years begun the production of organic feeds, and more recently converted the mill to exclusive organic production. (see website).

Clafoutis

The Clafoutis is a typical dessert of the Limousin, a region of south-central France whose territory is situated around the Massif Central and that includes 3 departments: Corrèze, Creuse and Haute-Vienne

 The original Clafoutis is only made with cherries, although today quite often the same name is used also for other desserts which in fact should be called Flaugnarde and that are prepared with the same method but  with different fruits such as apricots or plums, apples, pears, blackberries, peaches, plums, etc..

The term Clafoutis derives from the occitan dialect verb claufir, that means to fill and come from Latin clavum ficere = to fill of points similar to nails ( that are in this case the sweet cherries).

image from Wikipedia

The Clafoutis or Clafouti is a cake made with cherries and pancakes batter.
It is a very popular dessert in France but it's not rare to find others similar to it, as the cake called millard in Auvergne.

Tuscan Panzanella

Tuscan Panzanella is a salad made with stale unsalted bread from Tuscany, onion and tomatoes.
Its name could be a familiar short of the word panzana, a term used to indicate the usual meal: a way to say pap.

image from www.theblackfig.com

Further south in Italy, in Cilento, this salad of dried bread and vegetables is usually called Caponata or Caponatina and as bread are used the Friselle, those slices of toasted bread well known and available all over the eastern Mediterranean.

This type of preparation is now popular in most of the italian peninsula and, they told me also in the Sicilian province of Enna: each place has got time to create some local legend about its source.

In Lebanon and Palestine is very much liked a veggie salad, the Fatousha, made with Arab or pita bread, dried and broken.

Hasselback Potatoes

In Sweden these potatoes are called Hasselbackspotatis, name derived from the restaurant where they were created and served first in 1940: the 3 centuries old Hasselbacken Restaurant in Stockholm.

The recipe is simple.
Its gorgeous taste depends from the special way potatoes are cut, a shape that requires some care.
So prepared, potatoes become crispy outside and very soft inside.

Ingredients for 6 persons: 12 medium potatoes, 40g of melted butter, 2 tablespoons of olive oil,salt and bread crumbs.

Gazpacho Andaluz

Isabel Gonzales in his book Round ricos de Comida, Comida pobre writes:  

Sòlo decis que hay tantos gazpachos como pueblos incluso come familia, pues cada una le da su toque, su punto especial, quie es, desde luego, el mejor. Los gaszpachos veraniegos, ya sean majados o no, pues tutavia hay quien sigue majando y no por ello ha de ser octogenario, se hacen, cuando menos, a base de tomate, pimiento, pan, ajo, sal aceite y vinagre. Segùn los casos, les pueden anadir otros ingredientes. 
(There are many gazpacho many villages or families, everyone gives his special touch, which of course is the best. Gaszpachos the summer, which may or may not be purées without necessarily intended to be an octogenarian, prepare at least with tomato, pepper, bread, garlic, salt, oil and vinegar.Depending on the circumstances, you can add other ingredients.)

This is the queen of cold soups, a salvation for appetite in hot summer days

Ingredients: 1kg of Ripe red tomatoes, 2 green peppers, a cucumber average, a clove of garlic (optional), Mollica Bread or Crackers Corn, Olive oil, a tablespoon of vinegar, 3/4 of a liter of water and salt.

Lebanese Rice with Apricot Compote

I combined the recipe for Lebanese Rice&Milk  with an easy apricot compote to get a fresh and delicious dessert that fits well in the heat of these days

Ingredients for 6 servings: about 125g of small grain rice or basmati rice, the same volume of water, 1 liter of milk, 150g  sugar (preferably raw and cane sugar), 2 tablespoons scented water (orange blossom or thousand flowers), 1 kg of apricots cleaned and without stones, juice of 1 lemon, 300g of water.

Lebanese Rice&Milk

Ingredients: 3.5 ìl. of milk, 200g rice, 50g of orange flower water, 20g of cold water, 500g of sugar

Heat milk in a saucepan and add the rice when boiling.
Let boil gently for about 50 minutes.
So turn up heat and stir constantly until it becomes thick and dense.

Finally add orange scent water and sugar and let it boil longer.
Pour into a bowl or on a large individual dish and let it cool.
Serve garnished with a fruit compote.

Benefits of the sun

Nature Santé Innovation, a site to which contribute doctors and researchers, sends to readers a very interesting newsletter with contents often overlooked or little known that may be beneficial to our well-being .
From one of these letters I have drawn the following.

What we often forget about sun 

A hat, sunglasses, long sleeves, total sunscreen, stay in the shade and also in house from noon to 4pm. These prescriptions we believe are usefull to protect ourself from skin cancer. But this is not just a way to ruin our vacation and our fun in the summer, it is also bad for health.
The sun indeed has many beneficial effects often not known by all.

Sauce of Mushrooms

Ingredients: 50g Mushroom , approximately 30 grams of any kind of mixed mushrooms (optional), 1 Shallot , a small piece of Butter, ½ glass of Port, 1 cup of beef broth concentrate, little Parsley, Salt and Pepper.

Finely chop the shallots.
Clean  mushrooms and cut them into slices.
If you have them available, cut in pieces also the other mushrooms (Pleurotus and even frozen mushrooms).

Pot-Roasted Duck

Ingredients: 1 Duck, Goose grease, Olive oil, 2 cloves of Garlic, 2 Shallots, a spring of Sage, 1 wineglassfull of Red Wine, Salt and Pepper.

Clean and flame the duck and cut it in small pieces.
Arrange them into a baking pan with the goose fat, garlic cloves and thyme.
Season with a little olive oil and sprinkle with coarsely chopped shallots.
If you do not have goose fat, replace it with a few bits of bacon and increase the amount of good olive oil.

Cover and place in preheated oven at 180°C.
After about 20 minutes, add the glass of red wine, turning the duck pieces over so that they all brown evenly.
Add salt and pepper.
Cook for at least 1 hour.

The goose fat is a noble fat, delicate and fragrant. It gives a delicious taste to foods.

Patatoes "à l'échirlète"

Ingredients: 3/4 ]b. (about 16) 1 1/2 inch new potatoes, 1 cup water or chicken or beef stock, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons goose fat, salt. 

Wash patatoes.
If you do not have the new one, you can choose yellow potatoes and cut them into small pieces  giving them a rounded shape typical of this recipe. Put them in a saucepan just covered with water or stock, with garlic cloves and salt.
Cover and cook 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. If all liquid is not absorbed, take patatoes out of the saucepan and let them to dry on a dish.
Take a large skillet, add goose fat and when it will be warm add patatoes.
Cook slowly until they are lightly browned.
Serve with roast of pork, beef, veal or lamb.

Sauce Hollandaise

This is one of my favorite sauces.
Although many claim that it is hard to do because it can easily "go crazy", this never happened to me, since the first time I have cooked it.
It is only a question of patience proceeding carefully and without haste.
The best method of cooking in a bain-marie, but you can also cook directly over a vry low flame using an heat spreader.

Ingredients for 6: 1cl of Water, 125 gr of Butter, the juice of 1 Lemon, 2 Egg yolks, Salt and White pepper.

Broccoli with raisins and pine nuts

This to me is a recipe from memory. It remembers me a gentle woman who worked for my family as cook: a dalicate and tiny woman and very kind as well and also a very good cook.
She was Friulian but cause she had worked in many in many cities in Italy, from North to South, and brought in her kitchen the memory of the places where she lived and worked.

Ingredients: broccoli tops, a clove of garlic, pine nuts, dried raisins, olive oil, salt.

Hauner Winery - Malvasia delle Lipari

La Malvasia delle Lipari ed altri vini dell'Azienda Hauner

Carlo Hauner Junior

The Hauner farm located on the island of Salina, in the Aeolian Islands was founded in the '70s by Carlo Hauner senior, who moved there and bought a land size of 20 hectares. After cleaning and having restored the ancient terraces, he made this land a vineyard Malvasia, grape already cultivated by local farmers on the island. The wine Hauner is today well known in the most prestigious restaurants worldwide

The farm now is led by Carlo Hauner Junior, son of the founder. It produces two types of Malvasia (natural and raisins), one white wine and two red wines and a unique Grappa di Malvasia delle Lipari. The production is made from the grapes from the vineyards, in the district of Lingua in Salina, and from grapes of other small local winemakers

Carlo Hauner, from Brescia but with Bohemian origin was the creator of the farm that bears his name. He arrived for the first time in the Aeolian islands in 1963 as a tourist. As a young man he was a painter and not yet twenty years old, he exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia. In the years of maturity he gained significant international success as a designer. His passion for winemaking can be seen as the ultimate challenge of an intense life full of interests... So begins the page on the website that tells the story of the Hauner winery.

Crépes with Agretti

What are Agretti? They look like grass, and are a succulent plant that grows in Italian bog land.

Agretti are a tasty vegetable that grows in Italy and in France.
They can be eaten raw but they are better blanched in salted water or steamed and tossed with olive oil and lemon.
They look like grass thin as spaghetti and this could suggest recipes more imaginative and creative. As nutritional value and taste are similar to spinach, but they have a much more delicate flavor .

The cleaning needs attention: snap off the red roots, and rinse the dirt off of them.