r/ItalianFood

Absolutely nil points for looks, but thankfully many points for flavour:
Last night I finished work at around midnight but was granted today off in lieu so I stayed up a little later to cook a more involved pasta dish than I might usually do.
It was inspired by a raft of pasta dishes I had in Sicily rather than being one set recipe.

Started with a shallot and garlic clove, and two anchovies.
Sweat those down before adding some tinned sardines and golden raisins and cooking on low whilst the pasta cooked.

Added capers, parsley and pinenuts at the end.

Finished with more parsley, some lemon zest and breadcrumbs.

This was super savoury and filling despite the pasta portion itself being smaller than I’d usually have.

Finished off a bottle of light red as didn’t want to open anything specific.

I made Rigatoni Al Pomodoro with Rigatoni, Extra Virgin Olive Oil,San Marzano Tomatoes, Garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Suggestions welcome :)

Grazie Millie🇮🇹

I'm a home cook, and I had a growing pile of recipe links scattered across bookmarks, screenshots, and YouTube tabs. It was super unorganized, and I got kinda fed up.

So I made yourrecipevault.com (https://yourrecipevault.com/). You paste a link from a blog post or YouTube video, and it pulls out a clean recipe with ingredients and step-by-step instructions, saved to your vault. There's also a grocery list feature where you select the recipes you want to cook, and it generates a combined shopping list you can copy and paste.

I just published it, so I'd love to know what works, what's broken, and what's missing.

Hi everybody! From time to time, I cook Carbonara, Amatriciana, etc at home, so I couldn’t resist trying pasta alla vodka.

Even though it’s considered an Italian-American dish, Wikipedia still says it originally came from Rome and became popular in the US later. So I’d be really glad to hear any criticism or comments here.

Personally, I don’t really see why it couldn’t be considered Italian: it’s basically a slightly modified tomato sauce, using vodka instead of wine for deglazing, changing the taste of the fat/oil used. Any comments are very welcome!

I saw different variations online: some use olive oil, some don’t. But I really love the taste of guanciale, so I couldn’t help adding it.

Here’s what I did for 2 portions:

1. I seared 80 g guanciale until the fat rendered out and a crust formed on all sides. I usually cut it into small ~1 cm strips so that the pieces stay tender inside, which makes them especially enjoyable to chew. Once it was ready, I removed the guanciale from the pan.
2. I added crushed black pepper directly to the rendered fat to increase the aroma.
3. I added 50 g onion to the fat and fried it for about 4 minutes.
4. I added 1 garlic clove (~4g) and ~1 g crushed chilli flakes (~half a teaspoon), and fried them for about 30 seconds.
5. I added 20 g tomato paste and fried it for about 30 seconds.
6. I added 60 ml vodka and let it evaporate for about 1 minute.
7. At that point, I started boiling the pasta in salted water. This time I used fusilli, but penne, rigatoni, and even spaghetti work as well. I had only fusilli at home, but because of their shape, the sauce sticks to them perfectly.
8. I added 200 ml passata and let the sauce simmer while the pasta was boiling. I added a little more vodka at this stage to increase the aroma/taste of alcohol. Yes, it’s definitely a matter of taste, but I like to keep a bit of that note; otherwise, it almost completely disappears after adding the cream. You can skip this extra vodka if you want to.
9. I added 5 g sugar. If you use fresh tomatoes or a sour passata, I’d strongly recommend it, otherwise, you can skip it.
10. About 1 minute before the pasta was ready, I lowered the heat under the sauce and added 80 g of 30% cream. I think 20% cream would also work, but you need to warm it gently and probably remove the pan from the heat to avoid curdling while mixing everything together. I heated it for about 1 minute on 3/9.
11. I added the pasta to the sauce, then added about 100 ml pasta water to emulsify and thicken the sauce.
12. I added 40 g Pecorino Romano. I think Parmigiano Reggiano would also work well, but I liked Pecorino here. Moreover, it’s saltier, so it helps avoid adding extra salt. If you decide to skip the cheese completely, I’d recommend tasting the sauce and adding salt if necessary.
13. After serving, I added the guanciale back on top. Some people (who use them in this dish) add it directly to the sauce, but I don’t like that, because I love it crispy. Otherwise, it might become soggy like you boiled it. If you want, you can add 50% to the sauce and save 50% for topping, for aesthetics.

I’d be really glad to hear any comments or recommendations on how I could improve the recipe or to know how you would cook it!

Ciao Friends,

For the past couple of weeks, I was inspired by watching authentic Neapolitan pizza making @ home using a standard Electric Oven, and I was truly inspired to take an attempt after watching this genius and very awesome person, Vito Lacopelli.

My pizza-making attempt is from TOP to BOTTOM.

I started with the Direct Dough method & eventually switched to Poolish, which allowed good fermentation of the dough to start showing the puffing of Cornichone.

Vito gives really good tips on how to bake the pizza in a home electric oven that can reach MAX temp of 550F. Without his tip, I wouldn't have gotten leopard spots and ideal charring of cornichone.

Reference:

• End-to-end Dough to Baking @ Home
• Home Elec. Oven, Parbaking Method

I'm not yet there in making perfect Neapolitan-ish pizza, but I feel encouraged with my progress. I'm happy to receive feedback on how to make even better puffy, crunchy, crusty pizza.

Thank you for taking the time to read my POST.

Have a good week and summer!

Ciao 👋 🍕 😋 ❤️

The recipe I made:

560g flour

460g water

15g fresh yeast

10g salt

5g olive oil

Tonight I made a take on Ragu inspired by a dish seen on Jim’s Table, an Instagram account.
We have lots of wild garlic butter in the freezer and the recipe called for finishing the sauce with wild garlic, and I dobbed some on top too. Jim’s recipe called for broad beans which would have been so much better than this, but it a bit early in the season so I used some Edamame from the freezer. The soy didn’t really add much except some texture and colour, but didn’t detract either.

All in all, a pretty delicious take on a familiar concept.

Served with a fruity Barbera from Northern Italy.

Wholemeal Italian pasta:

Ingredients:

Garofalo Pappardelle - Organic Whole Wheat Pasta

Rincón de la Subbética premium olive oil

Good quality canned tuna fillets in brine

Full punnet of garlic

Fresh finely chopped chillies

Diced small red onion

Capers

Sweetcorn

Salt & pepper

Simple and quick to make... Absolutely delicious