My Italian Cuisine

Preparing fresh egg pasta at home is much easier than you think. It can be done in half hour time without machines or any other tool. This is way my grandmother used to do it every Sunday in Italy at the family farm, few simple ingredients: fresh eggs, flour, water and salt; few simple steps: mix the ingredients and make the dough, shape the "sfoglia" with a rolling pin, shape your favourite pasta: spaghetti, tagliatelle, lasagne etc... A simple recipe made with few quality ingredients... what makes a good fresh egg pasta? 1. The flour: in order to get a good fresh pasta the quality of your flour mix is crucial. If you want to get a good texture you need to mix semolina (Farina rimacinata di grano duro) and AP flour, both organic when possible; the % may change depending on the kind of pasta you want to produce.  For tagliatelle, spaghetti or lasagna you can mix 50% of AP flour and 50% of Semolina. The semolina will give consinstance to the dough and your pasta wi...

- First of all, what is this bubbling blob? ... "Sourdough starter is a stable symbiotic culture of wild yeasts and bacteria. The yeasts break down starches into sugars, which the bacteria eat. The bacteria, on the other hand, create an acidic environment that kills off competitors to the yeasts. The yeasts were almost certainly already living on the grains when they were out in the field. As for the bacteria, that’s a trickier question, but the consensus seems to be that they come from us – studies have failed to isolate Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis anywhere except in long-lived sourdough starters and on human teeth. The individual mix of yeasts and bacteria varies from starter to starter, and region to region. It’s part of their charm; every starter is unique, and produces bread that tastes somewhat different from those produced with other starters" Sourdough starters work more slowly than commercial yeasts, which are much more concentrated. A sourdou...

S ponge cake serves as the basis for many types of layered cake and  desserts. In Italy is mainly used for birthday cakes, Mimosa cake, pastry and many others desserts. NB: This is just one of the many existing methods to make a sponge cake. Serves 10-12 ingredients:   8 eggs, separated to whites and yolks 250g sugar   250g flour   1 tsp vanilla extract A little butter and flour for the cake pan 10-15gr baking powder for sponge cakes (optional)  Instructions: - Preheat your oven to 180°C, 350°F. - Place the egg yolks into the mixer and mix them on a high speed until creamy. After a minute, add about 2 tbsp of sugar. Continue to mix for a few minutes more until the mixture becomes thicker.  Add the vanilla extract. Keep mixing until the mixture double the size. Now turn off the machine and transfer the egg yolks to a separate bowl. - Whip the egg whites. Place the whites into the clean mixer bowl....

This is a recipie for a very tasteful chicken broth. The spices give to this broth a special taste, really appriciated during winter. I use it for soups and many preparations, I usually make it in big quantity and freeze it, to use it when i need. This  broth should be cooked not less than two hours, more you cook it, richer it gets. It is really better if you get organic chicken and veggies for this praparation. Organic chickens are in general much more tasteful and healthy as well as organic veggies. Well... home made broth is very easy to make and much better than any bouillon cube or canned broth you can find in shops, so why don't you try it and let me know how it worked out? Makes about 3 liter of broth Ingredients: 500gr Chicken (better if organic) cut in pieces 1 Medium onion 1 Carrot 1 Medium tomato 1 Rib of celery 1 Medium potato 1 Bay leaf 6 black peppercorns 4 Cloves 1 Star Anice (optional) 2 Garlic cloves (optional) 1 Tbs unrifined grey sea salt 4 ...

"Pasta Frolla" ( Short crust pastry) is one of the basics dougs in the Italian (and international) pastry making. It can be used in many different ways and filled with a wide range of ingredients, to make tarts, cookies etc..... Here I propose a quick and easy pasta frolla for traditional Italian pastry, it's suitable for almost everything, but -  if you want it more crispy, for cookies for example, you can add more sugar, quantity of sugar should by the way never exeed the quantity of butter, - if want a easy-to-cut soft pastry, for fruits tarts for example, you should use more butter. I usually mix the dough with a food processor, all in once, also here there are different options : - mix the sugar and butter first then add the flour, ths method is good for cookies, the dough may change shape during the cooking. - mix butter and flour first. the result is more "sablé" good for crumbles. If you don't have a food processor mix the ingredients in...

 The content and pictures of this post are copyright registered & protected ©myitaliancuisine There are many ways to prepare a pastry cream, specially the amount of eggs yolks can change depending on the use. I have seen a chef making pastry cream with 35 egg yoks per 1 liter of milk! This is the basic "bakery" way to prepare pastry cream for multiple use: cakes, fruit tarts or other pastries like croissants or cream brioches or to prepare the Italian Chantilly Cream (pastry cream + sweet wipped cream, which is not to be confused with the French Chantilly Cream which is a simple wipped sweet heavy cream). This recipe is very easy and almost impossible to fail if you follow the 3 steps exactly as described here below: Step 1 : prepare the boiling milk You need: 750gr milk 250gr heavy cream (35 to 40 % fat) Mix the Milk and heavy cream in a pot. Bring to a boil. Step 2 : Prepare the flour/sugar/milk/eggs  mix You need: 200gr sugar 100gr AP fl...