Torrone (Sicilian Almond Nougat)

The coveted almond. Everywhere you turn today you hear how nutritious and healthy the almond is. If you're gluten free almond flour is the replacement for most of the recipes that use white flour.  

For the Sicilians, we already knew this information long ago. The island of Sicily is covered in almond, olive and lemon trees. Many of our recipes include one of these items. You ate what grew in your region and that's how the recipes developed.

For me the American born Sicilian my memories of visiting Sicily every summer with my parents included daily visits to my Zio's campagna ( my uncles country house).  At his campagna we picked the almond from the tree, cracked it open with a rock on the cement and ate those beautiful milky almonds right from the center....we ate until either we got tired of  cracking them open or until we were going to bust. You can never appreciate the beauty and the taste of that almond until you have had it in that raw state. (Below is a picturewhat the almond fruit looks like growing on the tree)

This is why many Sicilian dessert recipes whether it be cookies, candies or cakes are made with almonds.  In my childhood home the nut bowl (in their respective shells, with the nutcracker of course) always made an appearance at the end of the Sunday or holiday meal, right along side of the fruit.. 

Here I share the recipe for Torrone..a special occasion treat.. You'll need good strong biceps for stirring the last step of this dish!!

2 cups of unsalted roasted almonds

1 cup of white sugar

4 tbsp of water

2 tbsp of white vinegar

About 1 tbsp of orange or lemon zest

• Put all the ingredients together in a pot on the stove at medium flame
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• Use a wooden spoon and slowly mix all the ingredients 
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• Continue stirring the sugar will start to melt. Mix continuously.
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• The sugar will then crystallize again...  Continue to stir.  Do not stop stirring. This is where you need strong biceps.
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• I promise the sugar will melt again and once it is completely melted and the color is Amber remove the pot from the flame and pour the content on a sheet of aluminum foil. The entire cooking process is about 20 minutes.
  
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• With a spatula quickly flatten the hot almonds to form a sheet about 3/4" thick.
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• Let it cool for about 5 minutes and with a chefs knife cut the entire sheet in squares of about 2"  on each side.
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• Be careful to remove the aluminum foil from all the pieces and let them completely cool off.

Variation: you can use half honey, half sugar to make it a little more nutritious.

Enjoy

Buon Appetito!👌

Lucia

Meatballs (Polpetti)

Growing up we ate pasta with tomato sauce and in that tomato sauce it was standard to have meatballs and or some other kind of meat as well cooked in the sauce.  I usually woke up to the smell of the sauce cooking on Sunday mornings and my breakfast was to dip a hunk of bread into that pot of sauce and fish myself out a meatball.  Sunday was family meal day in my mother and fathers home, it wasn't unusual that there were ten to fifteen people around that table to feast on the Sunday dinner.  I hold that tradition today with my own family sometimes it's just the three of us!  Here's my recipe...

3lbs of  Ground Beef.....(1lb sirloin, 1lb ground round, 1lb chuck) on occasion I replace the sirloin with ground veal)
1 cup bread crumbs (seasoned is best) substitute Gluten Free
3 slices of any bread soaked in milk (and then squeezed dry) omit for gluten free
3 cloves of finely chopped FRESH garlic
3 eggs
1 cup of grated Romano cheese
3 Tbsp of finely chopped flat leaf parsley
1 Tbsp of Kosher or Sea Salt
Black pepper

In a bowl with the meat combine bread crumbs, bread, garlic, eggs, grated cheese, parsley, salt and pepper. Mix together with your hands making sure everything gets combined well. Now take a little bit of the mixture and cook it in the microwave so that you can taste it for seasonings.

Every good cook checks for taste!! At this point, if it needs more salt or pepper add it, otherwise you are ready to roll!!

I like my meatballs to be uniform in size so I use the old time ice cream scoop..you can use what ever you have or not use anything at all. I use a jelly roll baking pan to bake my meatballs, anything you can bake in or on will work fine.

Scoop them all and then roll.  I use a bowl of water to wet my hands as I roll, it makes for a smooth meatball. They should be tightly placed together on the baking sheet. Once they are ready for the oven I put a 1/4 of an inch of water in the bottom of the pan so the meatballs cook evenly and stay moist.  Cook for approximately 20-25 minutes or until they are golden brown in color.  Remove from the oven and place each meatball one by one in the pot of sauce.

Enjoy

Buon Appetito

Lucia

Antipasto Appetizer-Fun!

This is an appetizer I assembled for a party I went to over the holidays. It was fun and easy to assemble.  You can replace any items in place of what I used, creativity here is the key!! Below is a list of what I used and how I assembled it.



Fun antipasto appetizer
 

Package of appetizer size skewers

Grape tomatoes

Green Olives-pitted

Black Olives-pitted 

Fresh mozzarella bocconcini (small balls)

Genoa Salami (sandwich size,folded in half, then in half again)

Pepperoni (sandwich size, folded in half, then in half again)

Fresh Basil leaves

Ribollita

I love fall, it is my favorite time of year.  As the cool weather approaches I find myself spending more time than usual in the kitchen and I enjoy trying out and developing new recipes.   Soup is my favorite thing to eat. I am always making new soups, taking old recipes and improvising with new ingredients.  This soup is similiar to pasta e fagioli, but without the pasta and adding in some protein and is very quick and simple to assemble and prepare.

"RIBOLLITA" is a famous Tuscan soup a hearty potage made with bread and vegetables.  There are many variations but the main ingredients always include leftover bread, canellini beans and inexpensive vegetables. Its name literally means "reboiled". Like most Tuscan cuisine, the soup has peasant origins. It was originally made by reheating (ie. reboiling) the leftover minestrone or vegetable soup from the previous day.

3 garlic cloves, minced or leave whole

1 small onion, diced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 celery stalk diced
4-6 ozs. of chicken, turkey or italian pork sausage removed from casing and rolled into mini meatballs (size of a quarter)
½ cup olive oil
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 (15-ounce)cans cannellini or great northern beans, drained

2-3 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1 sprig fresh rosemary

1 bay leaf

Sea salt and crushed red pepper to taste

1 bunch of greens your choice of  (escarole, kale, spinach), washed and roughly chopped
½ loaf of Italian bread, cut into 1-inch squares and slightly toasted

 grated Pecorino Romano cheese (optional)

Directions:

•    Chop the celery, onion and carrot.

•    In a large pot, sauté the garlic, onion, celery, carrot and sausage in 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes.
•    Add the tomatoes with their juices, the beans, broth, rosemary, bay leaf and salt and pepper.
•    Simmer, covered, for one hour
•    Add the greens and cook for 10 more minutes.
•    Remove the bay leaf, stir in the bread and serve, drizzled with the remaining olive oil and sprinkled with Pecorino Romano cheese.