My Journey

The final list of all the regions I covered over the past 16 weeks are as follows:

• Sicily
• Sardinia
• Liguria
• Trentino Alto-Adige
• Valle d'Aosta
• Mozzarella Cheese & Ricotta Cheese
• Lombardy
• Emilia-Romagna
• Piemonte
• Campania
• Tuscany
• Basilicata
• Molise

I still have one more final meal to cook and serve at my presentation, but I will be taking recipes from all different regions.  The knowledge I have gained not only about cooking, but about traditions and culture around food in Italy is huge.  This project has made me grow so much and I am grateful for every minute of it.

Thank you all for following my journey!

My Last Meal!!! (Molise)

One of the recipes that kept coming up while researching and looking in my cookbooks for Molise was capanata. Instead of using one of the many recipes I found for it, I asked my grandma to teach me her recipe (which was all just in her head), because she makes the best capanata in the world.

We started by cutting the eggplants into little cubes and frying them in oil. I learned that you need to continuously stir them, or they will burn.

Once the eggplant was done we set it aside and cooked the celery with tomato sauce and garlic. We turned the heat down and let it simmer for about ten minutes, so that the celery was still a little crunchy.

We mixed some sugar with white wine vinegar (my grandma would have preferred red wine vinegar but it was the only kind we didn't have) and put it in the microwave for about 10 seconds, just so that the sugar dissolved. We added this to the pan, along with the eggplant, capers and pine nuts.

The next step of the meal was to make the pasta. I was very excited to make this pasta because I found special "pasta flour" at Wegmans that is a mixture of durum wheat and semolina.

To form the cavatelli, which is a typical pasta of Molise, I rolled out ropes about the same diameter as a pencil. I then cut the ropes into cylinders that were a little less than an inch long.

I then placed my fingers on the cylinders and pulled the dough towards myself to make it curl up. This was the most challenging pasta shape I have made so far, which is funny because the book says it is simple and even children can make it. Luckily it isn't crucial for it to be perfect like with the tortellini. The dough was also very sticky, so I had to repeatedly flour my hands and the work surface throughout.

To make the bread crumbs I grated day old bread and toasted it with oil and garlic in a pan.

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I then boiled the pasta and cauliflower together, added the pasta a little later so they were done at the same time.

I put everything in a bowl with some chopped almonds and parsley, and it was delicious!

I had hoped to make some sort of desert from Molise, but every desert recipe involved baking and it was 90 degrees outside, and about 85 degrees in my kitchen the day I cooked from Molise so I decided not to.

Basilicata and Cooking with Grandma

The first step to this meal was shelling the fava beans. It took a really long time, but it was actually kind of relaxing and enjoyable.

Once they were all shelled I had to blanch them until they turned bright green, which they never really did so it was difficult to tell when they were done. As soon as I took them out of the boiling water I dumped them into an ice bath to stop the cooking and make the skins easier to peel off.

The water I blanched them in turned this bright red color, which I thought was really interesting because no part of a fava bean is red.  

Once they were blanched I had to peel the inner skin off of them. At this point my grandma came in to help me and shared a story about the favas. She said that her uncles and dad used to soak fresh favas in salt brine and then snack on them while drinking beer, snacking on the excess favas with me reminded her of this.

Before cooking the artichokes I soaked them in lemon water for about half an hour. I then cooked them with onion in a large pan for almost an hour.

Last time I boiled potatoes I took them out way before they were done, so this time I had grandma help me. As she was slicing them I set a big piece of cheese on the cutting board next to her and she broke off a chunk and said "you should never put Parmigiano in front of an Italian grandmother."

When the artichokes were almost completely cooked I added the favas and potatoes and let them all cook together until the potatoes were a little bit crispy. Meanwhile I started the sauce for the pasta. I simmered oil, salt, sliced garlic, and parsley together, and added a little water from the pasta pot.

I had mixed the halved cherry tomatoes with olive oil, bread crumbs and salt before baking them, and this picture doesn't do these tomatoes justice. When I took them out of the oven they were extremely bright and shiny, and they looked almost like jewels.

I added the tomatoes and some shredded basil to the pasta, and on every ones plate we added a little ricotta. This was one of the best pasta dishes I have made so far, I only wish I had used homemade pasta.

Basilicata Menu

This week I am using Lidia Cooks From The Heart of Italy. The menu for Basilicata is as follows:

1. Pasta con Pomodori al Forno (Pasta with Baked Cherry Tomatoes)
2. Ciaudedda (Artichokes, Fresh Favas, and Potatoes)
3. Torte alla Prugne (Torta with Prunes)

Tuscany With My Sister

Instead of making the menu that I found in Cooking With Italian Grandmothers, my sister Sarah (who spent time in Tuscany 2 years ago) and I made a meal together that she planned out. We made stuffed artichokes, polenta with rosemary and bay leaves, and a simple salad.  Instead of baking the artichokes after stuffing them, we steamed them in a big pot. It was a very long process but they tasted delicious! Sarah has always been much better at cooking than me and I call her all the time for advice, but I actually got to help her out thanks to this project. She didn't know how to make polenta, and I learned how while making my meal from Valle d'Aosta, so for the first time ever I got to teach my sister something about cooking!

Tuscany Menu

For my Tuscan meal I am going to use my Cooking with Italian Grandmothers cookbook. There are two grandmothers from Tuscany featured in this book. Mary has a variety of recipes, while Bruna has three recipes for cooking rabbit. From Mary's recipes I chose the following:

1. Pappa al Pomodoro (Tomato-Bread Soup)
2. Patate Arrosti con Rosmarino (Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary and Olive Oil)
3. Carciofi (Baby Artichokes with Garlic, Herbs, and Wine)

Cooking with Grandma

Last night I got the chance to cook dinner with my grandma.  We made chicken cacciatore, which I didn't eat any of, but it was still a lot of fun to cook with her.