Blue cheese, bacon and peach salad.

This is just a salad, not even a recipe you can say.

It's true but try this mix and you'll make it over and over again!

Peaches with smoked bacon and blue cheese are a perfect match you'll fall in love with it!

Yuo can use lettuce or baby spinach (the youngest and more tender leaves), I prefer spinach.

For each serve:

a bunch of lettuce or baby spinach

2 tbs diced roasted smoked bacon

1/2 peach (nectarine if possible) sliced in thin slices

1/4 cup diced blue cheese (gorgonzola if possible)

extra-virgin olive oil

salt & pepper

1 tbs balsamic vinegar if you like

1 tbs roasted pine nuts if you like

Wash and dry salad, put it in a bowl and season it wih oil then add all the ingredients, mix and taste: then add salt and pepper if needed.

Creamy onions bucatini.

This recipe is easy, tasty and suitable for vegetarians or vegans (just avoid bacon, use extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter).
It's also really quick and you can prepare the sauce while the water is boiling and bucatini cook.
For 6 serves:

21 oz. bucatini

3 big blonde/ white onions

1/2 cup butter or extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 cups (more or less) water

a small pinch of baking soda

2 cups grated Parmesan (or Pecorino cheese if you prefer)

1 cup diced bacon if you like

Put the water pot on fire, meanwhile slice onions very thin, put them in a pan with the grease of your choice on low fire.
Add the pinch of baking soda, stir well and add water enough to let the onions simmer.
Keep the fire low, onions must melt, not get brown.
You must end up with a sort of onion cream.
In another skillet you can crisp bacon cubes then you can add them to onions and mix: taste and if necessary add salt (and pepper if you like).
Drain your bucatini, save half a cup of cooking water, add it to onions after you poured in bucatini.
Add grated Parmesan and mix well and quickly on fire for a couple of minutes.
Serve this dish hot.
Have a nice meal!! :)

Bacon candies (Caramelle al bacon).

I'm back for a while with a giant belly and a nice recipe I still didn't share with you.

It's an appetizer or an idea for a party, they're easy to prepare and really loved by children.

You need very simple ingredients and alluminium foil:

for about 20 candies you need:

a pack of sandwich bread (the white one, rectangular shaped)

bacon or italian pancetta

white creamy cheese like philadelphia

Spread cheese on the first bread slice, top it with another slice and spread cheese again, do the same untill last slice.

Now chop the bread tower with a long knife and make squares, mouth-sized.

Roll on each square a slice of bacon then close it into an alluminium foil giving the shape of a candy.

Do the same with all the squares then put in oven for about 15 min. at medium heat.

Serve hot or warm, they're fantastic!

Thanksgivings' little roasts (Arrostini del Ringraziamento).

As I told to a blog reader in a comment in Italy Thanksgiving is not a holiday: we just celebrate Christmas.

This doesn't mean we don't know about this very important U.S.A. holiday and today on tv I saw a Thanksgivings' recipe really easy and fast that could be loved abroad.

Turkey is surely the main dish served during this day, turkeys are really big and I heard U.S. ovens are so big just to cook things like turkeys.

Is it true? :D

Our standard ovens are probably too little to cook a whole turkey, so this is my version of a classic recipe!

You need:

turkey's thin slices, 2 per person

some bacon in a single slice, how much depends on how many you are

1-2 red onions peeled and sliced

half a spoon of sweetcorn per person

a little dried prune without kernel per person

extra-virgin olive oil

salt

rosemary

white dry wine

all pourpose flour

string to tie meat on

Chop bacon in tiny pieces, put them in a pan with onions and stirfry for a while, then add sweetcorn and prunes and cook untill tastes are well amalgamated: this is the roasts' filling.

Spread a turkey slice and put a spoon of filling in it, close the slice with string, do it with every slice.

Pass the little roasts into the flour, then in the same pan where you stirfried the filling, add extra-virgin olive oil, heat it and put roasts in.

Let it cook with a glass of white dry wine and rosemary, add salt if needed.

Cook softly for about 25 minutes, then serve with mashed or creamed potadoes.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!

Treviso's radicchio lasagna (Lasagne al radicchio di Treviso)

Of course abroad the most famous kind of lasagna is made with white sauce and meat sauce but it's not the only kind of lasagna you can make.

You can serve vegetarian lasagna made with white sauce and vegetable ragu' just for istance; today I'll give you an idea for a very refined dinner or lunch, a kind of lasagna that you maybe can't find usually in Italian restaurant worldwide (or maybe yes, I don't know, but making it at home is better ;) ).

For 4 serves you need:

1 lb. treviso radicchio (or a red radicchio-chichory)

10 oz. fresh pasta for lasagna

3 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 oz. butter

1 oz. bacon

1 small white onion

2 garlic cloves

salt and pepper

freshly grated Parmesan

For the white sauce:

1/2 cup whole milk

5 tablespoon butter

2 1/2 oz. flour

salt

nutmeg

Take the radicchio and cut it in thin stripes, then wash and dry it well.

In a big pan heat oil and butter with onion and garlic cloves, add bacon in stripes and let it fry for few minutes then add radicchio, salt and pepper, cover and let it cook untill it's stewed.

To make white sauce melt in a pan the butter, add flour little by little, mixing: when you have a sort of thick cream add milk, salt and nutmeg, cook on low heat for 3 minutes after it comes to boiling point.

Boil pasta sheets in hot salty water, spread some butter in a oven-proof dish then pour white sauce, stewed radicchio, pasta and grated Parmesan in layers, finish with a generous spread of radicchio, Parmesan and white sauce: put in the oven for 40 minutes, if it becomes too brown cover with a sheet of alluminium.

You can prepare it a day in advance then put in the oven just in time for the guests arrival or even prepare it then freeze: it last for 2 month.

It's a great thing to avoid the pressure of cooking everything last minute!

Pasta with arugula and bacon (Pasta alla rucola e pancetta)

Today it's time for a quick firts course, perfect for mid-week meals.

You can substitute bacon with ham or sausage if you prefer or even anchovies if you like them!

For 4 persons you need:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup diced bacon

1 large clove of garlic, coarsely minced

salt and pepper

juice from 1 lemon

1 bunch fresh arugula well washed and chopped

1 pound spaghetti (or rigatoni as seen in the photo!)

freshly grate Parmesan

In a saucepan, heat the oil, and add the diced pancetta.

Cook until it is brown and starting to crisp.

Remove from the heat and add the garlic.

Season with salt and pepper (as often saind I don't love pepper very much so I avoid it).
Cook the pasta until it is "al dente".

Drain pasta and return it to the pot.

In the pasta pot, combine the hot pasta, the bacon and garlic, the lemon juice, and the chopped arugula.

Cook briefly over medium heat until it is well mixed, and the arugula has wilted.

Serve hot, topped with shaved parmesan cheese.

Yummy!

Carbonara spaghetti (Spaghetti alla carbonara)

Today I have time enough to post the second recipe.
It's another celebrity of Italian kitchen: the Carbonara.
It's quite simple to prepare, just remember that spaghetti is the only right pasta format to serve with and try not to evercook them ;)
Carbonara is a very antique dish, tipycal of Rome zone.
There are many stories about how it was invented, the most interesting sees Carbonara as a result of the fantasy of Roman cooks at the end of the Second World War, when Americans comes to Italy with many food stocks as bacon and lyophilisate eggs but probably in those years Carbonara was old yet^^.
To reach the real Italian taste you should use GUANCIALE (pig cheek very similar to bacon) but I suppose it's not easy to find everywhere so bacon is ok anyway:)
Here is the preparation:
Count about 100 gr of spaghetti/person (it's quite a big plate, if you're not a great eater use less pasta)
1 egg/person
20 gr. bacon cubes/person
10 gr. grated pecorino cheese/person
black pepper as you want

While the pasta is cooking put the bacon cubes in a pan and fry them (with a little oil if you want, of course witout is lighter) until the grease is trasparent and the meat a little crunchy then mix in a bowl eggs with pecorino and pepper (you can add a sprinkle of salt but ingredients shouldn't need it).
when spaghetti are ready put the bacon in the bowl with eggs then pasta, mix quickly and serve immediatly (Carbonara is great but if you wait just a couple of minutes it becames a sort of glue:P).
You can add pecorino and or pepper if you like.
Enjoy your dish!!