Fresh Blueberries and Ice Cream

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Just before I left Toronto, I prepared my dad’s favorite: fresh blueberries and ice cream. Take advantage of the fresh fruits that are now in season – blueberries (go for local).

I love ice cream and fresh berries…..any excuse for ice cream. I added a little fresh mint from the garden and some lemon rind to garnish. Simple and delicious!

Happy Father’s Day!

maria!

Quick and Delicious Solution to Last Minute Christmas/Holiday Gifts

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Buon Natale,

Stuck on last minute “Buon Natale” gifts? Make a batch of my amaretti cookies as gifts when you are visiting friends and family during the holidays. They are perfect with coffee, tea, sweet liqueurs, or your favorite gelati.

You can package a dozen with a decorative tea towel or cellophane.

My recipe yields 3 dozen.

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

3 cups almonds, plus an additional 36

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoons almond extract

2 cups of confectioner’s sugar spread on 12 inches of wax paper (for rolling)

Vegetable spray for the baking sheet (though Mom sprinkles the baking sheet with flour)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Using a food processor on pulse, chop the 3 cups of almonds until they are finely ground.

Beat the eggs, sugar, and almond extract. Add the ground nuts and gently fold them together until you have a moist mixture that you can form into balls.

Lightly grease three baking sheets. Using a teaspoon (or your hand), scoop up the batter, form balls, and roll them in the confectioner’s sugar. Place them at least an inch apart on the greased baking sheet. Prior to baking, press one almond into each ball.

Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the cookies are golden in color and firm to the touch.

Let them cool before removing them from the pan.

The 7-Egg Sponge Cake

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For those of us who grew up with recipes that do not exist, here’s one recipe that made me question the egg count.

To clarify, I’m not prejudice about the odd egg count, but I swear that this cake started with twelve eggs.

But I got a little suspicious. Could this have once been an eight-egg sponge cake, and then one egg fell or was miscounted? Or perhaps it was originally a six-egg sponge cake, and one egg was left over and then added for good luck? Understanding the ideology of the misfit school of no recipes would lead one to believe that a broken telephone or a misinterpretation was the real reason behind the seven-egg sponge cake.

At any rate, the cake was fantastic!

 

The “Cup”

Congratulations to me! My first blog ……..

I’m going to share with you some experiences I had in the kitchen as I am preparing to publish my first cookbook “Breaking Bread in L’Aquila” pub date: April/2010. I am not a trained chef but learned first hand from the best – my grandmother, mother and my aunts. I’m first generation Italian (Calabrese) and got great “authentic tips” by watching them in action “no measuring cups or recipes!”

I also cook intuitively, by way of feel, mood, cravings and what’s in the pantry or refrigerator. Unfortunately, desserts are another story. Desserts are much more precise and accurate. Not to mention that for me, I work on one dessert recipe at a time instead of multi tasking on a few recipes (making pasta, sauce, salad all at once) – sound familiar?

To give you an example, I made amaretti biscotti over the weekend. My mother makes the best amaretti but do you think there’s an accurate measurement? Getting the recipe from my mother is like listening to a George Carlin monologue on “stuff.” In my monologue, it’s about “the cup.”

“Ma, what “cup” measurement are you referring to when I am measuring the flour”?

Her reply; “scoop the cup” (the blue mug) and make sure it’s really full on top, like a dome”. I understood as I tried to visualize ……When I measured with the “cup” description, I then put the flour in a bowl, and then took my measuring cup to measure – it would then yield to approximately 1 ½ cups. Before I can start baking, I spent about an hour writing down the recipe and re-measuring as the measuring “audit cop,” I then made the amaretti.

Can you relate?

Anyway, I think they came out fantastic, what do you think?

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