Archives for January 2013

Hazelnut Cocoa Tea Cookies

January 31, 2013 By dinnerinvenice 15 Comments

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Biscottini da Te’ al Cacao e Nocciole

Italy’s Langhe region, in the heart of Piedmont, produces some of the finest wines in the world. However, to many foodies, Langhe is first and foremost synonymous with nutty and chocolaty treats. The local hazelnut, “Tonda Gentile”, is in fact considered the highest-quality hazelnut in the world, and the jewel of the Italian production. Even the famous food writer David Lebovitz writes, “I do not like to speak in superlatives, so when I say that the hazelnuts from Piedmont are really the best I’ve ever tasted—believe it”.

The pure, fresh air of these vine-covered hillsides does seem to work some kind of magic on both the flavor and texture of the nut. And magic it could well be: the Langhe hills, topped by medieval churches and often wrapped in a mysterious fog, which fades the natural colors into soft purples and muted greens, inspired in the past many superstitions about witches’ gatherings! Of course, after the Piedmontese confectioners came up with Torrone (Italian honey nougat) and then with Gianduja (chocolate with hazelnut paste) , everybody figured out that those mysterious witches they feared must in fact be good fairies.

My personal Langhe fairy was my mother’s friend Matilde. Matilde, an elderly Piedmontese piano teacher with a formidable gift for baking, was solely responsible for turning my sugar-hating self (I did not eat dessert until age 10) into the cookie monster, and all with this easy recipe below.

Hazelnut Cocoa Tea Cookies

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

1 hour, 15 minutes

6-8 servings

Ingredients

1 and ¼ cups flour (plus more for dusting)
1 and ¼ cups powdered sugar
½ lb blanched (peeled) hazelnuts
1 cup (or 2 sticks) butter, cold and cut into cubes
4 yolks
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
salt

Directions

Grind the hazelnuts in your food processor with 2 or 3 tablespoons of the confectioner’s sugar (taken from the total. The sugar absorbs the nut oil so that you don’t end up with marzipan). Sift the flour with the cocoa, and combine it with the butter – either in a stand mixer or using ice-cold hands (keep a bowl of ice nearby).

Add the ground hazelnuts, the rest of the sugar (but reserve 2 tbsps for decorating), the yolks, and a large pinch of salt, and knead into a ball. Wrap in plastic and place into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes .

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Using a cold, flour-dusted rolling pin, roll the dough on a floured surface (even better: roll between two sheets of parchment or wax paper*). When it’s about 1/3” thick, cut it into discs using a cookie cutter. Arrange the cookies about 1” apart from one another on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.

And bake at 350 F for 15 minutes. Allow to cool and dust with the remaining confectioner’s sugar. Serve with a hot pot of black tea!

TIPS FOR ROLLING OUT A STICKY DOUGH:

• If the dough is very sticky, dust its surface with flour before placing it between the two sheets of parchment or wax paper.

• Lift the sheets out and put them back on several time, to prevent them from sticking to the dough and creating creases.

• Turn the dough over several times, so that it is rolled out evenly

https://dinnerinvenice.com/2013/01/31/hazelnut-cocoa-tea-cookies/

A FEW MORE IDEAS FOR COOKIES BY SOME OF MY FAVORITE BLOGGERS:
Brutti ma Buoni by AglioOlio&Peperoncino

Nutella Cookies by SundayAtTheGiacomettis

Amazing Sugar Cookies by CouldntBeParve

Margarita Cookies by SmittenKitchen

Filed Under: Comfort food, Dairy, Desserts Tagged With: chocolate, comfort food, cookies, gianduja, hazelnuts, Italian comfort food, Italian cookies, Langhe hazelnuts, nutella, Piedmont, tea

Frisinsal – Pharaoh’s Wheel

January 25, 2013 By dinnerinvenice 14 Comments

For this article and recipe in The Forward, click here

Filed Under: Appetizer, Comfort food, First course, Jewish Italian Cuisine, Non-Dairy, Pasta and Rice, Tu B'shvat Tagged With: baked pasta, fleishig, Frisinsal, Jewish Italian Cuisine1, noodle kugel, northern italy, regional, Shabbat Beshallach, Tu Bishvat, Venice

Potato Puree

January 18, 2013 By dinnerinvenice 13 Comments

The term “comfort food” originated in the US, and I’ve heard it used In Italy only recently, mostly by food-bloggers. That’s not to say that we didn’t have comfort food before, we just didn’t have a name for it. On top of that, our choices are often different. Where you go for hamburgers, we dig into spaghetti; when you take out the ice cream, we open the Nutella jar. There is one exception, a unifying, universal ingredient: mashed potatoes. In Northern Italy, when a mom wants to comfort her kids after a not-so-great grade at school, a broken heart, or simply a long week of rain, she will serve this crowd-pleaser as a side: Pure’ di patate (potato puree), a silky, creamy and scrumptuous blend of starchy potatoes, milk and butter.

While mashed potatoes can be dry, lumpy, hyper-garlicky, and even gloppy, puree is velvety smooth, and will win the pickiest palates over with its decadence. Not even your carb-phobic friends will be able to resist it.

* for a non-dairy version, replace the butter and milk with olive oil and vegetable broth.

* *if you are watching your weight, you could replace the whole milk with 1% and halve the butter; but do add some butter for flavor.

*** If you need to reheat it, you should add a little more hot milk or broth.

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds starchy potatoes (Yukon gold or russet, not too young)
1 stick butter
1 cup milk, or a little more
salt to taste
a pinch of nutmeg

Directions

Cook the potatoes with the peel (whole, if they are small-ish, or halved or quartered if they are very large) in a pot of salted boiling water (30-45 minutes). If you are in a rush, you can cook them much faster in a pressure cooker or even in the microwave (about 15 minutes). Test them with a fork to make sure they are soft, and drain, discarding the cooking water. Allow them to cool until they are still very warm but not too hot to handle, and peel them.

Put them through a ricer or potato masher, gathering them back into the pot. Place the top over low heat and add the butter, and then slowly the hot milk, stirring with a wooden spoon.

Keep stirring until the puree is soft, smooth and silky! Adjust the salt, add a pinch of nutmeg, and serve immediately.

Potato Puree

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

1 hour

6 servings

CALORIES AND FAT: ignorance is bliss!

Ingredients

2 pounds starchy potatoes (Yukon gold or russet, not too young)
1 stick butter
1 cup milk, or a little more
salt to taste
a pinch of nutmeg

Directions

Allow them to cool until they are still very warm but not too hot to handle; peel them, and put them through a ricer or potato masher, gathering them back into the pot.

Place the top over low heat and add the butter, and then slowly the hot milk, stirring with a wooden spoon. As you add milk, you can also switch to a whisk. Keep stirring until the puree is soft,

Smooth and silky! Adjust the salt, add a pinch of nutmeg, and serve immediately.

* for a non-dairy version, replace the butter and milk with olive oil and vegetable broth.

* if you are watching your weight, you could replace the whole milk with 1%, but do add some butter for flavor.

* If you need to reheat it, you should add a little more hot milk or broth.

https://dinnerinvenice.com/2013/01/18/potato-puree/

Filed Under: Comfort food, Gluten Free, Side Dish, Vegetarian Tagged With: autumn, comfort food, Italian recipe, mashed potatoes, Northern-italian, nutmeg, puree, side, sides, stews, winter

Venetian Jewish Fish Balls

January 14, 2013 By dinnerinvenice 15 Comments

In spite of the many tourist traps that give Venice, and many other popular destinations, a bad rep, if you have a chance to spend some quiet days there you will appreciate how the absence of cars has crystallized this city into a different dimension, with a magical sense of time. The pedestrian way of life is not something Venetians are forced to, rather they embrace it – after all, they have access to water buses – but they prefer to leave them to the hordes of tourists. Walking to and from work does not only provide us with a built-in form of daily exercise; it makes it very likely to bump into friends unexpectedly (only 60,000 people live in Venice), which usually results into a stop at one of the city’s bàcari (wine bars) to catch up over an ombra (a “shadow”, or a small glass) of wine or a Spriss cocktail, and cicheti, the signature snacks. Cicheti is a Venetian term used to describe a wide range of bite-size local treats, from deep-fried seafood and rice croquettes to grilled radicchio and baby artichokes from the nearby island of St. Erasmo; from boiled eggs served with anchovies, to meatballs, to the legendary bacala’ mantecato (stockfish mousse) and sarde in saor (fried sardines marinated in sweet-and-sour onions).

Among my favorite finger foods are these fish balls, which you can also keep cooking in a light tomato sauce after frying them, if you prefer to serve them as part of a meal, on top of polenta. Fish balls, like meat balls, are a staple of Jewish Italian sustainable cooking, and were traditionally made with leftover boiled or roasted fish. However, these are so good that when I don’t have any leftovers I cook some fish in order to make a batch.

Venetian Jewish Fish Balls

Ingredients

2 pounds leftover cooked fish (white)
2 medium/large eggs
about 4 slices white bread, crust removed
the fish cooking water (where the fish was cooked with celery, carrot, onion), or vegetable stock
1-2 tbsps freshly minced parsley
2 anchovies, salt-or oil-packed, drained and minced (optional)
a large pinch of nutmeg and one of cinnamon (optional; or thyme)
salt, pepper
flour to dredge
olive oil for frying

Directions

Soak the bread in the broth or fosh stock until soft. Drain and squeeze. Mash the fish with the bread, anchovies, season with salt and pepper, add the parsley and spices. Taste and adjust the salt if needed. Add the eggs, combine well and allow to rest in the fridge for a few minutes. If it’s still too soft you can add a tbsp of bread crumbs.

With wet hands, form little balls (about 1 to 1 /2” in diameter. Dredge them in flour and deep fry in olive oil, in a deep fryer or in a heavy pot with tall sides. To deep fry, heat at least 2" of the olive oil to frying temperature (you can test it by dropping a small piece of bread in the oil: if lots of little bubbles form around the bread, the temperature is right). Fry in small batches until golden all over, turning to cook evenly.

Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer onto a platter lined with several layers of paper towels.

Serve warm.

Serves 6

https://dinnerinvenice.com/2013/01/14/venetian-jewish-fish-balls/

Filed Under: Appetizer, Comfort food, Fish, Jewish Italian Cuisine, Non-Dairy, Sustainable Tagged With: appetizers, cicheti, finger foods, fish, Italian food, Jewish cooking, kosherconnection, kosherrecipes, meatballs, tapas, Venice

Archives for January 2013

Hazelnut Cocoa Tea Cookies

Frisinsal – Pharaoh’s Wheel

Potato Puree

Venetian Jewish Fish Balls

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Archives for January 2013

Hazelnut Cocoa Tea Cookies

Frisinsal – Pharaoh’s Wheel

Potato Puree

Venetian Jewish Fish Balls

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