Fusilli estivi con pesto

This is a sort of take-off on caprese - the classic Italian salad of mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. Here the basil comes in the form of pesto, which is very useful if you have too much basil to make a normal caprese!


Though I had my own basil plant last summer, this summer I've been moving around/on vacation too much to deal with having plants, so I've just been buying basil at the farmer's markets each week. The only problem with this is that you can't buy basil in quantities smaller than a gigantic bunch, and of course basil only lasts for a few days, so you have to eat it quick!

Since I really can't eat that much basil on my own, I've just been using as much as I need and then turning the rest into pesto. This has led to a bevy of interesting pesto creations for dinner, and so far, this pasta is my favorite.

Ingredients:
75 g. fusilli per person
A handful of cherry tomatoes
Ciliegini di mozzarella (the little cherry tomato-sized balls of mozzarella)
Kalamata olives (I added them to jazz things up, but if you want to keep it simple, they can easily be omitted)
Pesto
A few basil leaves for garnish

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, and add the fusilli. Wash the basil, cherry tomatoes, and olives, and chop the cherry tomatoes into halves. Pit the olives, and chop them into halves.

When the pasta is done cooking, drain it, and run cold water over it to cool it. Drain again, and combine with the pesto, mixing well. Add the cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, and olives, and mix again.

Serve, adding the basil leaves on top.

Panzanella (Tuscan bread salad)

Panzanella is a classic Tuscan summertime dish. Simple to make, it requires no cooking and is best if made at least an hour before serving, so it's a great dish to bring to potlucks and parties.


The version I made is the most basic one, but it's easy to make your own variations by adding whatever ingredients you want. Some common additions include hard-boiled egg, anchovies, capers, or lettuce.

Ingredients (for a large salad):
1/2 loaf of high-quality, somewhat stale bread (though the typical bread would be Tuscan bread, which is made without salt and in my opinion is a complete waste of flour, I used some older sourdough walnut bread I had, and it was delicious. The walnuts were a great addition to the salad as was the extra flavor of the sourdough)
1 cucumber
5 medium-sized salad tomatoes
1 red onion (the fresh kind if possible)
A handful of basil leaves
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Cut the bread into thick slices and place the slices in a large bowl of cold water to soften up. Depending on how stale your bread is, this could take from about 5-15 minutes. The bread should be soft but not disintegrating.


When the bread is softened, remove it from the water and squeeze out any excess water from the bread. Taking a bit at a time, crumble the bread into smallish bits (not as small as real crumbs), and place the crumbled bread in your salad bowl.

Slice the onion into half-rings. Wash and peel the cucumber (if it's the kind that needs to be peeled) and slice it fairly thin. Wash the tomatoes and dice them. Wash the basil leaves and tear them up by hand.

Add the onion, tomatoes, cucumber, and basil to the bread. Add in several spoonfuls of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir everything up, cover, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Just before serving, add in a spoonful or two of balsamic vinegar, and extra olive oil, salt, or pepper, if necessary.

Pizza Tonno e Cipolla

Pizza tonno e cipolla, that is, pizza with tuna and onions, is one of my all-time favorite pizzas.


Unfortunately, it's a pizza that isn't too popular here in the U.S. Even though we're willing to put just about anything on our pizzas, some of them quite horrendous, tuna does not seem to be a topping people think of when writing their pizza menus.

So, of course, I decided to satisfy my cravings by making my own! I had also just bought a baking stone, and this seemed like a good opportunity to try it out. Well, it seems I needed a bit of practice with this new stone. Even though I had successfully made pizzas on my parents' baking stone, this time it took me not one, not even two, but three tries before I could declare myself successful in my pizza-making endeavor. The first time I tried, it was actually more an ingredient issue as I didn't realize my flour was not high-gluten; the pizza came out OK, but it was a bit more work and one side got a bit smushed when entering the oven.

The second time was, at least presentation-wise, a disaster. The pizza dough stuck horrendously to the peel, so much so that even with the help of a spatula I couldn't get it onto the stone. Eventually I had to transfer the gooey mess that had once been a lovely-looking pizza onto a baking sheet and bake it that way. The good news was it still tasted fantastic, but unfortunately not very photo-worthy.

Well, this time, I learned from my previous mistakes and now, an older and wiser pizzaiola, I present you with my method for making a pizza tonno e cipolla.

I used a slightly different dough recipe this time, partly due to necessity (i.e. lack of ingredients) and partly just to experiment. It came out just as good as my previous doughs, so I think either one is fine. I also added cherry tomatoes because that was the way my favorite lunch pizzeria in Milan did it, and I loved it.

For the dough:
150 g bread flour
50 g whole wheat flour (this is how I compensated for the fact that none of the grocery stores I visited had whole wheat bread flour. It's not nearly as hearty as using all whole wheat flour, but it's enough to add some oomph to the dough!)
About half a glass of water
Half a package of yeast
A small spoonful of sea salt
A small spoonful of sugar
A larger spoonful of olive oil

For the toppings:
A small cupful of tomato sauce (I just use canned tomatoes for pizzas)
About 100 g pizza mozzarella
1 small-to-medium yellow onion
About 100 g tuna
A handful of cherry tomatoes
Another spoonful of olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano

A note about the tuna - using higher quality tuna really makes a difference here. I still remember the pizza tonno e cipolla I had at a pizzeria in the Navigli section of Milano where I'm sure they used fresh tuna because the taste was just amazing. Of course, it will still taste good with standard canned tuna, but I think it's worth it to try to get the best kind available. One brand I like is Ortiz, which comes preserved in brine in a glass bottle.

A couple of hours before you want to eat your pizza, prepare the dough. If you're using active dry yeast, activate it by adding it to a small cup of warm water, along with the sugar. Sift together the two flours and then add the sea salt. Form the flour into a sort of fountain, high on the sides and low in the middle. Pour the yeast mixture into the center and gradually blend in the flour from the sides, adding more flour from farther out as you go. Add in the oil and then the water, a bit at a time, blending until you get a smooth, slightly sticky dough.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead for several minutes until the dough becomes resistant, bouncing back when you press it down.

Form the dough into a ball, coat it lightly with oil and place in a large bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a cloth or some such thing and leave it in a warm, non-drafty place. Do not put it in your oven, as this is the point where you should start preheating. Remember, to make a good pizza you want your oven to be hot hot hot!

If you own a baking stone, make sure the stone is in the oven before you start preheating. If you plan to bake your pizza on a baking sheet, do not put the sheet in the oven. In either case, heat the oven to about as hot as it will go, usually 500ºF or 250º C.

After about 45 minutes, start preparing your toppings. One of the reasons I think my second pizza stuck so much was that I took too long to put the toppings on. The quicker you are in topping your pizza, the less chance there is that it will stick to the peel, so make sure everything you need is perfectly ready before you roll out the dough.

Begin by peeling the onion and chopping it into half-rings. The first time I made this, a big question I had was whether the onions should be raw or pre-cooked before going onto the pizza. My internet research proved unhelpful as there seemed to be several people who swore by putting them on raw and several others who insisted they should be cooked. One person even described an elaborate method that involved marinating the onion in wine for a full day beforehand!

While I was not about to try the marinating method, I did decide to do an experiment in which I covered one half of the pizza with raw onions and one half with pre-sautéed onions. In my opinion, the sautéed onions tasted much better, so that is the recipe I'm giving here.

Onion Experiment

After you've chopped the onion, heat some olive oil in a pan. When the oil is hot, add the onion and let cook a few minutes until tender. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, stir a bit, and then remove the pan from heat to let the onion cool.

Chop up the mozzarella and tuna, and wash the cherry tomatoes and slice them into halves. Be sure to have your tomato sauce, oregano, and a spoonful of olive oil ready.

When the dough has doubled in size (after about an hour or an hour and a half), take it out and roll it out onto a well-floured surface. For those of you using baking stones, another trick you can use to keep the dough from sticking to the pizza peel is to start by rolling it out onto a different floured surface and then transfer it to the peel before you add toppings. I also sprinkled some semolina onto the peel, but I decided I didn't like the taste when the pizza was done, so I don't think I'll be doing that again soon.

When rolling out the pizza, it's good to keep it in the air a fair amount, tossing it gently and then spinning it a bit so it stretches evenly. When you get it pretty well tossed, you can also go around stretching out the edges to make it bigger and thinner. Remember that a true pizza should have a very thin crust!!

When the pizza is ready, test to make sure it's not sticking to the peel by lightly bouncing the peel up and down a few times and seeing if the pizza moves. If not, unstick it now before you add all the ingredients, after which it will become impossible. It's also important not to weight the pizza down with too many ingredients, though these ones are so good that it's hard for me to stick to that rule!!


Spoon on the tomato sauce, spreading it evenly across all but the very outer edge. Sprinkle the mozzarella over it, then the onions, tuna, and finally the cherry tomatoes. Try to place the cherry tomatoes facing up so that the skin doesn't burn.

Drizzle everything with olive oil and then sprinkle oregano over the top. Place the pizza into the oven, keeping the peel level and just bumping it slightly to get the pizza onto the stone (of course, if you're using a baking sheet you don't have to worry about any of this).

Let the pizza bake for about 8-10 minutes, remove from the oven, let cool just a bit and eat up!

Pizza Napoletana

This pizza falls under the category of pizza rossa which literally means "red pizza" in Italian and refers to pizzas that use tomato sauce, but no cheese (there is also pizza bianca - white pizza - which has cheese but no tomatoes). Though I have seen some recipes online that call for mozzarella, the type I usually saw on pizzeria menus in Italy did not have any cheese, so I stuck with that version.


Though Naples is most famous for being the birthplace of the classic Pizza Margherita and to a lesser extent the Pizza Marinara, I think this particular pizza, whose origins are not as clear, gets to be called 'Neapolitan' because its ingredients are very typical of Southern Italian cuisine.

Many non-Italians do not realize just how regionally diverse Italy is, but the fact is that up until its unification in 1861, there wasn't really an 'Italy'. There were city-states like Florence and Venice, kingdoms like the kingdom of Naples, and all sorts of other territories and republics, but there was no Italy, either politically, culturally, or even conceptually.

The gaping differences between regions, and particularly between the North and the South are still largely apparent to anyone who spends even a few days in the country. Ask any Milanese person about the South and they'll immediately go into a long tirade about how nothing ever works there, how nobody seems to care about things like rules and laws, and how everyone is consistently late for everything. Similarly, ask a Neapolitan about the North and you'll get an earful of how cold the Northerners are, how they just can't sit back and enjoy life and how they are always worrying and rushing off to do silly things like work.

The differences extend beyond cultural attitudes into almost every aspect of life. For example, while Italian is the official language of the country, almost every region has its own dialect (sometimes several), and these dialects differ from each other far more than say, a Scottish accent does from a Brooklyn one. A large number of these dialects are actually incomprehensible to Italians who did not grow up speaking or hearing them. When I saw the movie Gomorra, which was about the Neapolitan mafia and was almost entirely in Napolitano, the Neapolitan dialect, it had Italian subtitles from start to finish, and it's a good thing too because without them I would have been completely lost!

The diversity and richness of local traditions in Italy is also apparent, and very important, in its cuisine. Every region and often every city or town has its own proud menu of traditional dishes - the Ligurian trofie al pesto, ossobuco and risotto alla Milanese in Milan, bucatini all'amatriciana in Rome, bistecca alla Fiorentina in Florence, burrata and orecchiette in Puglia, and spaghetti al bolognese from Bologna (unsurprisingly) are only a few of the thousands and thousands of regionally celebrated dishes.

The pizza napoletana presented here may not actually be from Naples, but its ingredients are certainly more typical of Southern Italian cuisine. When I think of the food of Southern Italy, I mainly think of three things: tomatoes, seafood, and spiciness. In contrast, Northern Italian food often tends to be richer and creamier, using butter where Southern dishes use olive oil, or risotto where Southerners use pasta, and certainly using a lot less peperoncino!

This particular pizza, while it does not require the use of peperoncino (though you can add it if you so desire), is very very salty. Make sure that when you sit down to eat it, you have handy a large glass of water, or better yet, wine!

To make it, you will need:
About 150 g flour (I used whole wheat as always)
Yeast
Water
A pinch of salt
About 100 g of San Marzano tomatoes, peeled and crushed to just pulp (I actually just use canned tomatoes for pizzas, since my unstrained tomato sauces tend to come out fairly juicy and would probably get the dough sopping wet)
A handful of black olives, with the pits removed
A smaller handful of capers
5-6 anchovies
A few leaves of basil
Oregano
A spoonful of olive oil

First of all, you need to make the dough. If you are using active dry yeast as opposed to instant yeast, activate it by putting it in a small bowl with some tepid water. Sift the flour into a large bowl, add in the yeast first, then the salt and the water, a bit at a time, and stir until everything is well combined, and you have a moist but not overly gooey ball of dough.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes or until it is springy and resistant. When the dough gets to this point, place it in a floured bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a cloth and leave in a warm, non-drafty place for an hour to an hour and a half.


At least 45 minutes before you plan to bake the pizza, preheat your oven to 500º F / 260º C. If you are lucky enough to have a pizza stone, put it in the oven before you start to preheat it.

If you are making your own tomato sauce, peel the tomatoes and strain them to get nice solid pulp. Otherwise, just open the can (but if you go with canned tomatoes you should still buy canned San Marzano tomatoes because they are the best).

Prepare the toppings by washing the olives and capers and tearing the basil into little bits. When you have all your toppings ready and after the dough has doubled in size, take the dough out of the bowl and gently shape it into a flat circle, making it as thin as you can. If you haven't yet mastered the art of spinning pizza dough into the air and elegantly catching it on your fists, just try bouncing it back and forth from fist to fist (no nails!) and then stretching it out further on a flat surface, pinching the ends a bit.

Transfer the pizza to an oiled baking sheet (if you're not using a baking stone) or a pizza peel (if you are using a baking stone).

Spoon the tomato sauce in an even, not-too-thick layer over all the pizza except the outermost rim. Distribute the olives and capers evenly over the pizza, and then place the anchovies on in strips radiating out from the center. Sprinkle everything with the basil and oregano and add just a drizzling of olive oil.

Put the pizza into the oven as quickly and as carefully as you can. Let bake for 7-8 minutes, remove, and serve piping hot!

Cherry Tomato, Ricotta, and Caramelized Leek Tart

I still had some pastry left over from my last tart-making endeavor, and I'd been aching to try to make my own ricotta for awhile, and so I thought, what better way to take care of both of those issues than by making a lovely ricotta-filled tart?


I always have lots of cherry tomatoes and I loved the mental image of little cherry tomato halves sitting pleasantly atop my tart, so there was ingredient number two. As for the leeks, I had picked up a couple at the farmer's market this weekend on a complete whim, with no thought about what I would actually use them for. The sweetness of caramelized leeks seemed like it would complement the tartness of the cherry tomatoes nicely and thus, a tart was born!

And it was certainly delicious - the leeks went perfectly with the cherry tomatoes, and the homemade ricotta was so fresh... the only problem was I didn't make nearly enough of it! Who knew that milk was made up of so much whey and so few curds?

In any case, the recipe for one ricotta, cherry tomato, and caramelized leek tart:

You will need:
Pastry dough - I strongly recommend making your own, but store-bought will also do. I make my own as in the tart recipe here
One quart/liter whole milk, the fresher the better
Small amount of cream if desired (I didn't use any this time)
A few spoonfuls of lemon juice
1 egg
About 10 cherry tomatoes
2 medium-sized leeks
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

To make the ricotta, first set up a large bowl with a colander/strainer over it and place some folded-over cheesecloth on top of the strainer. If you don't happen to have any cheesecloth on hand, other types of cloth will do. People seem to especially recommend butter muslin, but I think any clean sort of cloth should work just fine.

Heat the milk and cream together with a little salt. Once the milk/cream mixture has reached a boil, immediately turn the heat down to low, stir a bit, and add the lemon juice. Stir some more, and when the curds (the solidish white things) start to separate from the whey (the cloudyish liquid part), pour the whole mixture into the cheesecloth and let it strain for as long as it takes. Mine was done pretty quickly, so I just wrapped the ends of the cheesecloth over the ricotta and let it sit until it was time to put it in the tart, but if you're not going to use it immediately, transfer it to the fridge when the whey has all strained out.

Homemade Ricotta
You can either keep the whey or throw it out. I felt bad about throwing it all out, so I put it in an old yogurt container and moved it to the fridge. Tomorrow I will probably be making whey bread in an attempt to use it up...

Going back to the tart-making, the next step is to caramelize the leeks. Tear off the very outer leaves, rinse, chop off the top part (with all the dark green leaves) and then slice cleanly lengthwise down the middle. The leaves will open out prettily, allowing you to rinse them out individually which is important, because leeks have a tendency to collect dirt inside.

Once your leeks are well-rinsed, chop them up into little rondelles, and heat some olive oil in a sauté pan (you can also substitute butter here, or a mixture of butter and olive oil). When the olive oil is hot, add the leeks, sprinkle some salt over everything, and turn the heat down to very low. Cover the pan and let sit for a good 30-40 minutes, stirring every so often. When the leeks are a nice brown caramelized color, they will be done and ready for the tart.

Caramelized Leeks
Preheat your oven to about 180ºC / 355º F. While it is heating, roll out the pastry dough and lay it into a buttered tart pan. Poke holes into the bottom and sides with a fork and then, when the oven has heated up, place the crust into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While the crust is heating, lightly beat one egg and add your ricotta to the egg. Add salt and pepper, and stir well. Chop the cherry tomatoes into halves and set aside.

After the 10 minutes are up, take the partially-baked crust from the oven and fill it first with the caramelized leeks, then with the ricotta-egg mixture, and finally place the cherry tomato halves on top in a geometric pattern of your choosing.

Return the tart to the oven and let bake another 15 minutes or so, then let cool, and eat up!

Penne "alla Greca"

This is a wonderful pasta dish to make in the summer because it involves very little actual heating. Besides that, it's super-simple and soooooo good! Though the classic tomato sauce with vegetables will always be my favorite pasta dish, this one is definitely in the running for second place.



For one person, you will need:
75 g of penne or other short pasta
25-50 g of feta
10-12 cherry tomatoes
Half a medium-sized red bell pepper
One small red onion
A handful of kalamata olives
Olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Salt & pepper
Dill (fresh is better, but dried is easier to find and it works just fine)
Mint (same as for the dill)

In the version pictured here, I didn't have any dill or mint on hand (this is from when I was Italy and dill is almost impossible to find there), so I used some fresh parsley which also worked nicely

Set some water to boil in a large pot. While you're waiting for the water to boil, chop the cherry tomatoes into halves or quarters if they're very large, and dice the pepper and the onion. Combine the cherry tomatoes with the pepper and onion in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Add the lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill, and mint, stir everything up, and then let sit.

Once the water has come to a boil, salt it, and add the penne. Then, pit the olives by crushing them under the flat side of a knife and chop them in half.

You should let the penne cook just until they are al dente, i.e., 'to the tooth', i.e., cooked through but still chewy and somewhat resistant to your teeth when you bite into them. Though with enough experience cooking various types of pasta, you can usually make a pretty good guess as to when the pasta has cooked just the right amount, the most foolproof way to get good al dente pasta is simply to test every so often by fishing one out and munching on it!

Once the penne are done, drain them, and then mix them into the pepper-onion-cherry tomato mix*. Add the olives, crumble the feta over everything and enjoy!

*If it's a really hot day, this pasta also works wonderfully well served cold - just run some cold water over the penne immediately after you drain them. I usually don't do this, but that's because I love the way the feta just melts in your mouth after it's come into contact with the warm pasta...