Category: Italian
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Orecchiette with sausage and broccoli
This is the recipe that upped my pasta game: cooking dry pasta in the sauce! Game changer. I’ve also got a bit of a thing for this funny shaped pasta that I can’t pronounce. It reminds me of little suction cups or little fairy-sized soup bowls that gather the sauce and dispense it in small…
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Buttermilk Rosewater Panna Cotta
I’ve been wanting to make milky-jello for a long time but just lacked the motivation. I was all excited to find that Samin Nosrat has a buttermilk panna cotta recipe in her book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I always have buttermilk in my fridge about to go off so I jumped at the opportunity to…
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Potato gnocchi in a Rosé sauce
To read Diana Henry speak about handling these little dumplings like you would flowers, it is a perfect analogy. They need a light touch and some delicate manipulation but they are a great way to use up leftover potatoes and are far superior to the chewy, hard little nuggets they call gnocchi at the grocery…
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Fried calamari
Don’t do what I did and buy the freshest calamari you can buy – going to the trouble of cleaning it, de-boning it and fretting over how thin to cut your tubes. Only to have your final product turn out rubbery. Don’t do that. Just go to the freezer section of your local grocery store…
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Arancini
Such a fun kid-friendly finger food – not to mention vegetarian – Arancini is a great addition to the repertoire. I have experimented with other recipes, but this is definitely my favourite and the most straight-forward. It requires making a good risotto, allowing it to cool slightly so it’s easier to work with, and then…
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Pork Loin braised in Milk
This is an excellent dish to keep in one’s repertoire, especially with many hungry mouths to feed. Pork is widely available and affordable, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I have often found pork dry. Well this recipe will change your opinion about pork’s juiciness. I admit that this recipe does not…
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Brodetto (Fish soup Italian style)
Between the endless rainfall yesterday and the exhaustion I was feeling, I decided on soup for dinner. And not just any soup, a soup to make the whole mess worth it. Also, I needed an excuse to visit my special fishmonger and wanted to see what special local catch was available. Lots of special things…
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Ricotta Gnocchi with Kale Pesto
This is definitely for the parmesan lovers out there. It is a flavour-packed punch for a cheese that is quite bland. I have been wanting to make my own homemade Ricotta for some time now, but that is for another day. This recipe uses your stock standard grocery store ricotta, adds some parmesan, flour and…
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Panzerotti (Fried Pizza)
OK, you really can’t get any better than this. Fried pizza dough stuffed with cheese, sauce and meat. My kids were in heaven when I served them this last night. A crispy fried dough, with warm gooey cheese inside. A real showstopper! I think my oil was slightly too hot so they cooked quite quickly,…
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Octopus salad with avocado and olives
I’ve been wanting to visit my local fishmonger, which just happens to be a a major seafood distributor and some of the freshest catch imaginable. Best of all it’s right around the corner from my house! When I read about how easy it was to cook octopus in an Italian cookbook I put two and…
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Braised beef anolini in brodo
After spending about 20 minutes leafing through this cookbook that I picked up from my local library, I was inspired by one of a dozen recipes and set my heart on a weekend project. However, I began to despair when I realised I must have gotten rid of my pasta machine in one of our…
Allspice & Olive 