Lamb and artichokes fricassea

Lamb and artichokes fricassea

Well, a fricassea, oh my, what the hell it is? Actually it’s something very simple and very traditional in the Mediterranean cuisine: you can find in Italy, Greece and even France.

8 artichokes
Juice 1 lemon
700 g lamb leg, cut in chunks
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion
1 tablespoon flour
Freshly ground pepper
Chopped fresh parsley
Chopped fresh dill
2 eggs

Clean the artichokes: remove all the hard leaves and the stalks. Cut them in two, remove the beard inside and cut every half in two and put them in water with the juice of half the lemon.
Chop the onion.
Heat the oil in a dutch oven. Add the onion, let it color, add the lamb, sprinkle with the flour and add enough water to cover the meat.
Stir, bring to boil, add salt and pepper, the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Add the chopped herbs and artichokes too.
Lower the heat, cover, and let it cook for 45-50 minutes.
Beat the eggs with the remaining lemon juice.
Let the lamb and artichokes cool a little.
Take 3 tablespoons of the cooking juices and add it to the beaten eggs. Beat and add to the pan, reheating slightly and briefly, keeping mixing.

Serve immediately.

Lamb and artichokes fricassea

Saffron

Zafferano

There is saffron and saffron.

Saffron from Africa, saffron from Asia, saffron from North America, saffron from Italy and Spain, and then there is a minor, tiny cultivation of saffron in Aveyron, France, chez my in laws!

The picture above is the 2008 harvest from my in laws field: 2-3 grames of one of the world most expensive spice.

Few grames spreading an heavenly parfum all around the spice drawer. Few grams to be carefully used :)

Next, what i did with them :)

Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Bread

I recently had the fortune to put my hands on a 22 years old pasta madre, levain, sourdough (kind courtesy of Semerssuaq*).
I was always afraid of sourdough: I mean, it’s alive! What if it dies? What if I kill it???
Well, apparently it’s not so simple to kill it! If you take good weekly care of it, well, it will survive, kicking lively in your fridge!
And the bread, oh the bread: unbelievable!

200 g of sourdough
500 g of strong flour
1 teaspoon of salt
300 ml of water

Mix the sourdough with the water.
Add flour and salt, and knead for 20-30 minutes (better with a stan mixer: you’ll need only 10 minutes).
Let it rise in a big glass bowl, covered with film, for at least 3 hours.
pre-heat the oven at 200° C.
Cover a baking tin with baking paper and lay the dough, making a rounded ball, no kneading. Cover it with the bowl and let it rise for at least 30 minutes, better 1 hour.

Cook for 30-40 minutes, until knocking on the bottom it sounds hollow.

Let it cool completely before slicing it.

Ask the cook!

Piment d'Espelette

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Your fridge is dead empty and you have to create a dinner for 6?

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Fill in this form and I’ll answer all your culinary questions!

DISCLAIMER I’m very sorry, but due to the little ammount of time I have to update my blog, I don’t translate in Italian (or other languanges) any of the content published and I don’t write recipes upon request… Don’t hate me please: I still love you very much! ;)

If you crave for recipes in Italian, why don’t you visit my Italian Food Blog, Mele al forno?

Menu for Hope

As last year, and the three years before that, Pim is organized the biggest found rasing of the food blogosphere: Menu for Hope!

Last year we raised more then 100.000 $ for the World Food Program, and this year we would love to raise even more!!!

I decided to put together an Italian & French hamper for this year (code EU16, sent to Europe only), made of:

- homemade dates chutney

- homemade cantuccini (hard cookies, filled with almond and pinenuts)

- Italian traditional torrone

- Marmellata di mandarino tardivo, from Sicily

- Rilettes d’oie façon Landaise (goose paté)

- Terrines de Faisan aux Noisettes (pheasant paté)

- Paté de Campagne, pur porc (porc paté)

- Terrine de Canard aux Cèpes (duck paté with porcini mushrooms)

- 3 spread: Crevettes au Calvados (Calvados shrimp), Thon a l’olive noir (black olive tuna) and Huîtres et Wakamé (oysters and wakame)

And if you are interested, with my Italian blog and altogether with my friend Sara, the host for Europe, we are offering something too:

Milan Walking Tour with Breakfast, Open-air Market, Food Lovers’ Highlights and Aperitivo for 2 people: start your walking tour with a classic Italian breakfast, stroll through an open-air fruit and vegetable market and then head to the historic center of Milan for a traditional Italian aperitivo with a few food lovers’ highlights on the way. Duration: 4-5 hours. Saturday only, or Sunday w/o markets.

Code: EU14

All you have to do is to follow this simple donation Instructions:
1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at http://chezpim.com
2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope5 and make a donation.
3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code.
For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win.  Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Donate! Donate! Donate!!!

Sablée Breton

Sablé Breton de Pierre Hermé

My dear friend Sara organized a wonderful cookies swap to celebrate Christmas!
She invited over some other girls, Italians, Americans, a French girl and we swapped all different kind of cookies.

I brought 3 different kind of cookies: simple Italian cookies in the shape of hearts, cranberries rockies and this sablée Breton.
Sablée Breton are basically made of butter, flour and sugar. But the butter is a special kind of butter: demi-sel, that means salted butter.
Bretagne is very famous for its salted butter, and for its sablée too.
the recipe I used is by the best, the unique, the one and only patissier in the entire world: Pierre Hermé!

For 30 4×4 centimeter square sablée Breton

133 g demi-sel butter, room temperature
60 g sugar
50 g butter, room temperature
1 g fleur de sel (or crashed Maldon salt)
7 g hard boiled egg yolk, room temperature
167 g flour
34 g potato starch

In a mixer bowl, with a paddle attachment, make a paste with demi-sel butter and sugar.
Add the rest of the ingredients in the order stated above and form a smooth bowl.
Let it rest for at least 1 hour in the fridge.

In the mean while, preheat the oven at 170° C.
Lay out the dough, 5 millimeters thin.
Bake for 15 minutes, then cut out 4×4 centimeters squares and bake again for 5 minutes, until golden.

To give a bit of color I added some pistachio nuts before the second bake.

Let them cool completely before serving.

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