finale

 coffee, foodie stuff, gap year, Italy, us  No Responses »
Sep 042015
 
last supper

last supper

so our week in piemonte has come to an end, we had a last supper with thomas and his family, it was a tribute to the italian cuisine and started with zuccini flowers deepfried in a light batter and topped with an anchovie. we followed this with the classic pasta con vongale and then a risotto con tre formaggi. ida and thomas made classic lemon tart with a soft meringue topping.

now its back to zürich in the car and then an overnight with christian and claudia before flying to amsterdam and catching the train to apeldoorn to spend some time with michiel, boki and dali.

finally some random leftover images!

 

 

Ndundari con salsa di pomodoro e basilico

 foodie stuff, us  No Responses »
Mar 092013
 

inspired by the wonderful chefs in the cooking show of the season, “Two Greedy Italians”, i decided to cook their ‘Ndundari con salsa di pomodoro e basilico’ which translates as ricotta dumplings with a tomato and basil sauce.

Ndundari

it is a truly simple recipe with a minimum of ingredients in the best tradition of italian cuisine, it takes about 10 minutes to make and is quite similar to gnocchi.

if you get a chance to watch these two marvellous old men revisiting the country of their birth and revelling in the fresh food and the history of food, family and friends while all the time carrying on like a couple of 5 year old playmates then do yourself a favour and sit down on the couch with a nice glass of red and soak it all up!

Ndundari (2)

you can see the similarity to gnocchi at this stage of preparation, for the full recipe follow this link, Recipe

with a glass of rough bordeaux and a sprinkle of parmesan the meal was cast, the chilli in the simple tomato and basil sauce gave the dish an extra dimension, it would be a terrific sauce with any pasta. the only missing element was some nice crusty ciabatta to scrape up the leftover sauce with!

Ndundari (1)

 

 Posted by at 7:58 pm  Tagged with:



Crabs

 foodie stuff, us  No Responses »
Jul 202012
 

the season for mud crabs is here and we have been getting some crackers, although these ones were not the result of a few hours slogging thru the mangroves fighting off crocs, mozzies and sandflies – we actually bought a box of crabs from a local professional as VJ wanted to cook some to take to relatives.

I have been tempting him for some time with stories of my chilli mud crabs and he had cast doubt on my ability to prepare a  suitably impressive version of the classic dish – challenge ON!

i think i can safely say “achievement unlocked” on that score!

i had only cooked the claws in the chilli sauce so today I boiled up all the bodies and picked out all the meat, i decided to make a mudcrab and prawn ravioli, so i mixed up the crab, prawns, dill, parsley and sheeps cheese with an egg and then filled ravioli with the mix and cooked them.

as a sauce i just did a simple wine reduction with a few fresh herbs & shallots and then made it up with cream. crab ravioli a la ricky

there is just no bad way to have mud crab in my opinion, its hard to beat when its freshly caught and poked in the coals of the fire at the beach, it gets that lovely smokey flavour through it and seems the sweeter for being so fresh.

but there is nothing wrong with it boiled and slapped on hot white bread rolls with lashings of lime and chilli mayo – and not forgetting chilli mud crab, one of the all time classics and the specialty of ‘rick’s bar & grill’ – eggs arnhem land. (muffin, poached egg, mudcrab meat and hollandaise sauce.)

anyway, here are all the images from the two meals in a slideshow,