Italian Fruit Tarts

Preparation time: 40 minutes. Serves 10 people.

Is there anything better than a delicious, crispy, crunchy Fruit Tart to start a weekend!? Fruit tarts with Crema Pasticcera and seasonal fruit are the perfect treat for your weekend and are perfect for any occasion: breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea, chemical hunger at night. 

1. Sweet Shortcrust Pastry (Pasta Frolla) 

• 275 gr. of plain (all-purpose) flour 
• 100 gr. sugar 100 gr. unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes 
• 1 egg yolk 
• 1 whole egg 
• lemon zest (half lemon)

Mix the flour and the sugar together, make a volcano as shown in the picture and add 1 egg, 1 egg yolk, butter and the lemon zest.

Mix all together with cold hands - remember to keep them cold!! At the beginning the dough will look like crumbles - don't worry, that's normal! Process until dough comes together. Test by squeezing a small amount of dough together with your fingers. If dough is crumbly, keep mixing with your hands until dough is smooth and compact.

Make a ball and flatten it into a disc and wrap in a transparent film.  Transfer it to the refrigerator and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out pastry on a lightly floured work surface to 3-mm thickness. Cut pastry and fit it into the tart tins (previously buttered and floured); trim off excess pastry with a sharp paring knife. Prick base of pastry shells with a fork. 

Preheat oven to 200° C.

Line each pastry shell with non-stick baking paper and fill with ceramic pie weights, dried beans or rice.  Bake pastry shells until edges are just beginning to turn golden, about 15 minutes.

Transfer baking sheet to wire rack.  Remove non-stick baking paper and pie weights.  Let cool for 1 minute. Remove pastry shells from tins and return to wire rack to cool completely.

2. Pastry Cream (Crema Pasticcera)

• 3 cups of whole milk
• few drops of vanilla (or vanilla seeds)
• 3 tablespoons of sugar
• 3 large egg yolks, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons of flour
• half lemon peel

In small saucepan bring milk and vanilla just to the boil over medium heat. Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl whisk together egg yolks sugar until pale. Using a fine mesh sieve, sift flour into egg mixture; whisk until smooth.

Remove vanilla bean from milk mixture.  Gradually pour 1/3 hot milk mixture into egg mixture, whisking constantly until well combined.

Pour mixture back into saucepan.  Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, over low heat. Continue to boil, whisking constantly, over medium heat until thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer mixture to small bowl.  Place a piece of plastic wrap directly onto surface of pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming as it cools.

3. Assembling Fruit Tarts

Mixed berries and season fruits: raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, but also bananas, kiwi and peaches.

To prepare glaze, in small saucepan heat jelly over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until jelly is melted, set aside to cool slightly.Divide pastry cream evenly between pastry shells. 

Arrange berries on top; using a small pastry brush thinly coat berries with glaze.

If not serving tarts immediately refrigerate to chill.  Bring to room temperature before serving. 

Having fruit tarts after dinner?! Enjoy them with your homemade Limoncello - Recipe here!

Italian Chicken Cacciatore with Sage and Prosciutto

Preparation time: 40 minutes. Serves 4 people (depending on the size of the chicken)

This is a yummy, typically-Italian variation of the famous Pollo alla Cacciatora recipe. The recipe is also extremely easy and fast to prepare - you will only need few minutes and then let it cook for 30 minutes!

Ingredients:

- 1 free-range Chicken or chopped free-range chicken pieces

- 100 gr Parma ham

- half glass red wine

- sage, rosemary, E-V olive oil, onion

Take a saucepan, add 7 tbsp E-V olive oil and 2 garlic cloves with their skin and put it over medium-low heat. Add the chicken pieces and continue cooking, stirring them about so as to brown all sides (5 minutes per side).

Once the ten minutes is up stir the wine into the pot and cook over a brisk flame until the wine evaporates. Dust with freshly ground pepper and salt on each side of the meat. 

 

When the wine has evaporated (i.e. when you don't smell alcohol in the air anymore), add the chopped herbs (8 leaves of sage and some rosemary) and the chopped ham (see pictures).

 

Mix well, cover, reduce the flame to a low simmer, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring, over a low flame until the meat is fork tender; should things look like they're beginning to stick down, add a little water. 

The dish is ready. This is what I call a mouth-watering recipe: the fat of the chicken melts with the fried and crunchy Parma ham making the perfect sauce... yes, yes, yes!

Try it now!

Mascarpone Amaretti Cups

Preparation time: 20 minutes. Serves 6 people (depending on the size of the cups)

It's time for a nice yummy dessert - easy to make, absolutely delicious to taste! I would recommend to prepare it for an after lunch or dinner.

You will only need:

- 150 gr Mascarpone cheese

- 100 gr Icing Sugar

- 3 eggs

- Shaved dark chocolate

- Some brandy

- Amaretti biscuits

Mix the egg yolks with the icing sugar (ops, sorry for the wrong sugar in the picture!) until you obtain a creamy light mixture. Add the Mascarpone and mix a bit more.

In another bowl, mix the egg whites until they reach a somewhat firm peak. When your egg whites get fluffy...STOP! If you overbeat them, they will liquify again. Then Shave the dark chocolate as shown below.

Add the whipped whites and the shaved dark chocolate to the creamy mixture previously prepared. Gently stir with a spatula from the bottom to the top of the bowl, so that the whipped whites don't liquify.

Your cream is ready!

Add the cookies to a medium bowl and stir in the brandy or any other dessert liquor (just until moistened, you don't want them soggy). It's time to get a cup or a glass. Divide the Amaretti into the bottom of 6 glasses (4-5 Amaretti per glass). Add the cream and top with a roughly shaved dark chocolate. Believe me, this is as good as a well-prepared Tiramisu'!

Can it get better than this?

Unexpected Bruschettas

Preparation time: between 5mins and 1h30. Serves 8 people

Tired of the usual tomato&basil bruschettas? Try out this recipe and you will delight your guest with a simple but sophisticated starter!


We present you two different kind of bruschettas, which can accompany both a rich or light dinner/lunch: 

Cherry "Confit" Tomatoes&Burrata

Here you are what you need:

• Bread, sliced
• Cherry tomatoes
• Burrata (a typical kind of mozzarella from Puglia, south Italy), if you can't find it, you can use Buffalo Mozzarella
• Oil
• Salt&pepper
• Sugar

First of all, cherry tomatoes need to be prepared: the only thing you need is time. Cut the tomatoes in halves and dispose them over a oven tray, upon a piece of baking paper. Sprinkle some sugar, oil, salt and pepper over them (sugar and salt in the same quantities).

Leave them cooking in a pre-heated oven at 170° for 1h40mins, at a medium height.

Once tomatoes are ready, put them over a slice of bread, with some Burrata or Mozzarella cut into small pieces.

Put again in the oven (max temperature) for 5 minutes, until the Burrata is melted down.

Serve immediately.

Lardo di Colonnata&Anchovies

For this recipe, the ingredients are a little bit more difficult to find, but once you find them the recipe only take 10 minutes:

- Bread, sliced

- Lardo di colonnata

- Rosemary

- Anchovies

We found the real Lardo di Colonnata in the refrigerated section at Best Of Italy, Ranelagh.

Cut the Lardo in very thin slices, and put it over the slices of bread. Add few rosemary leaves upon it and one anchovy on each slide of bread.

Put in a pre-heated oven at 200° for 5 minutes, or until lardo melts and anchovies become a little bit crunchy.

Simply delicious!

Limoncello!

For 3 LT of Limoncello: Preparation time: 30 mins, Sitting time: 15 days

No idea for Christmas presents? Try out this simple recipe and you will astonish your friends with a homemade, typical Italian liquor which will help them digest Christmas meals!
The only thing you need are:

• 1 LT Pure Alcohol (95% min)
• 8/9 untreated lemons
• 1 aTnd ¼ L of water
• 1 kg of sugar
• ...time: lemon peels have to sit for 15 days minimum, before completing the preparation process.

Day 1:
Pour the bottle of Alcohol and the bottle into a gallon jar.
Try to use organic lemons or make sure that lemons are cleaned to remove all pesticides, dirt, and fertilizer chemicals. Dry the lemons. Use a potato peeler to peel just the yellow part of the skin off the lemons. Make sure you have NO white pith on the back of the peels, because this causes bitterness in the finished liqueur. Try to make the peel pieces as large as possible, because this will make the straining process easier.

Put the lemon peels in the gallon jar and stir gently.

Cover tightly and put away in a cool (not cold) dark place for alcohol to extract oils from peels, creating an infusion. Let it sit for 15 days. Every two days gently stir lemon peels to refresh exposure to alcohol.

Day 15:

Put the water and the sugar together over the heat and let the sugar dissolve into the water. Do not let it boil, otherwise the water will evaporate.

Once the sugar is melted, set syrup aside to cool. It must be room temp before adding to infusion.

Use a slotted spoon to gently scoop lemon peels from the jar and discard. To avoid creating small pieces that will make straining more difficult, try not to break peels as you remove them.

Add the liquor to the syrup and mix gently. Use a strainer to pour the liquor into bottles and return to cool dark place to storage.

Now Limoncello is ready to use: label it and provide yourself with fancy Limoncello small glasses, as showed in the pictures.

Limoncello is best when served directly from the freezer. Enjoy!

Pasta alla Amatriciana

Preparation time: 20 minutes.

Details: approx. €10 to serve 4 people.

Many of you might remember that we have already talked about the real ancestor of this pasta recipe: the famous and delightful Pasta Alla Gricia. This two pasta recipes share their history together as both of them were meant to sustain shepherds in the Lazio region during transhumance days (i.e. the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures).

It's not surprising then that Pasta all'Amatriciana is just Pasta alla Gricia with the addition of....tomato sauce! Many people say that this pasta is the definite completion of Pasta alla Gricia, that reaches its perfection when it becomes "all'Amatriciana". I love both recipes, and strongly think that both of them have the dignity to be thought as "distinct recipes".

Pasta all'Amatriciana takes its name from the city where it's from: Amatrice. Here (and in Rome's deli shops) you can find the n.1 ingredient for this recipe: guanciale di Amatrice. Guanciale is cured pork jowl, and has a unique, mild, intensely piggy flavor. Obviously you don't need Amatrice's guanciale necessarily (at least if you live abroad), and you can use any other Guanciale available at the shop (it must be rigorously Italian, of course). Please never prepare an Amatriciana with Pancetta or Irish Bacon. Seriuosly, Don't do it!

  

The preparation is really easy, and once again:

NO GARLIC!

NO ONION!

NO PARMESAN!

NO PARSLEY!

This is all you need:

• 1 tbsp E-V olive oil
• 150 gr. Guanciale (you can find it at Best of Italy or Fallon&Byrne in Dublin, or buy it online!)
• 120 gr. Pecorino cheese  (easily found at Superquinn, Fresh, Best of Italy, Fallon&Byrne)
• 400 gr. Pomodori Pelati (pelati/chopped tomatoes)
• 500 gr. Spaghetti or Bucatini or Rigatoni 
• 1 chili pepper
• half glass white wine
• salt, pepper

Bring your well-salted pasta water to a boil. While the water is heating, slice the guanciale thinly into narrow strips and grate the Pecorino. Place the guanciale in a cold pan with a tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil and place over medium heat; the olive oil helps to render the fat evenly and acts as a conduit, transferring the flavor from the pan to the pasta.

When the guanciale strips are starting to get translucent, add less than half glass of white wine. Leave the guanciale on the fire for 1 minute max, waiting for the wine to evaporate and add the Pelati tomatoes. Mix all together and season with salt, pepper and a 1 chili pepper. Continue to cook the sauce for 10 minutes, tossing the mix from time to time. 

As soon as you add the tomatoes and the sauce starts to take shape, put the pasta in the boiling water and drain it when it reaches its "al dente" texture. We used rigatoni for this recipe...I love how they mix and dance with the sauce! Quickly add the drained pasta to the pan and turn on the heat. Toss the pasta vigorously coating with the sauce made of guanciale and tomatoes, grinding some black pepper on it. After about 1-2 minutes, remove the pan from the heat and add the previously grated Pecorino (it should not melt on the pasta, so remove the pan from the heat before this step!).

We could say that this recipe is simple, authentic, historical, delicious, etc. I'd say it's Orgasmic. I just can't find other proper words to define it.

Frittata di scammaro: Eggless Omelet

Preparation time: 40 minutes in total.

Details: approx. €15 to serve 4-5 people.

This is a typical recipe from Naples, a city famous for pizza, passion, chaos, traffic, sunshine and crime! This lively southern port city is a real paradox: you can find incredible venues and historical places mingled with urban decay. Modern skyscrapers and dilapidated houses. Super clean areas and extremely dirty ones. 
Naples also hosts the world famous Christmas cribs market: thousands of tourist gather here each here to buy nativity sets, sheep, miniature foods, miniature market stalls and crib figures. I mean any kind of crib figure: ever thought about adding Steve Jobs among the mainstream, standard shepherds?!

Let's go back to our recipe: this is called a frittata but it is not made with eggs or meat. It is a cake of fried spaghetti seasoned with the usual and much-beloved Neapolitan condiments of garlic, olives, anchovies, capers, sultanas and pine nuts. It merely resembles a frittata. 

Scammaro refers to days of fasting, and this is one of the so-called lean dishes that you can have before Easter on fasting days. While it contains no meat or dairy, it does have a significant olive oil content (so, for real fasting, I would not suggest this recipe!). It takes time to accomplish, too — 40 minutes of nearly constant attention. But it's worth it. Oh yes, it is.

This recipe fully respects the neapolitan most hortodox tradition and is inspired to the YouTube recipe by Marinella Penta De Peppo. Mrs Penta De Peppo is Naples at its best: culture, love for tradition and arts, beauty and elegance. She is also a great YouTuber and I strongly recommend Italian speakers to watch this video and visit her channel!

Marinella, we love you!

As she teachs us, there is a legend behind this recipe according to which Frittata di Scammaro was a creation of Cico the Wizard (Mago Cico) who managed to create an omelet without eggs (well...the story is far more complex, of course). 

Legends apart, let's now focus on the recipe itself, here's what you need:

• 280 grams spaghetti
• 100 grams fresh black olives
• 50 grams salted capers
• 75 grams pine nuts
• 75 grams sultanas
• 4 anchovies fillets
• Extra-virgin olive oil and 2 garlic cloves

Take a saucepan, add 7 tbsp E-V olive oil and 2 garlic cloves and put it over medium-low heat. When the garlic starts to get yellowish, add the roughly chopped olives, the capers, the sultanas and pine nuts and mix well. Don't add the anchovies at this stage. Increase the heat very slightly and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. When the sauce is ready, add the anchovies and mix well (in this way they will not melt with the heat). 



Cook the spaghetti until al dente in plenty of salted, boiling water. Drain well. When ready, transfer the previously prepared sauce to a large bowl. Add the spaghetti and toss well to distribute the sauce throughout.

Take a skillet and add half glass E-V olive oil. Place over high heat for 1 minute, distributing the spaghetti evenly and pressing it down a little. Then lower the heat to start cooking the omelet and start heating each "pole" of the skillet for 3-4 minutes. Let's imagine the skillet has 4 poles: north, south, west and east. Rotate the skillet over the low fire and heat each pole for 3-4 minutes. Cook one side of the omelet for 15 minutes in total. Then slide it onto a large dinner plate or platter, then flip it back into the pan with the uncooked side down and repeat the cooking process for other 15 minutes (3-4 mins per pole).

Total cooking time will then be 30 minutes! 

This recipe is simply amazing: it embodies history, tradition and is characterized by a well balanced mix of mediterranean flavours.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature, cut into wedges (scissors work best), as an antipasto, first course, or second course.

Yes, this is such a great example of simple cooking and great, authentic flavor! Cico the wizard was a great magician..