Ginger Beer

 

This is a fresh and spicy drink which is not a proper beer, but it’s very similar.
Make this recipe is very easy and it will be ready in only three days, and it will contain a little bit of alcohol as well. They say 0.4%, but in mu book there are some more degrees.

Ingredients:
130 gr fresh and peeles ginger
140 gr sugar
1 l water
8 gr fresh yeast
1 biologic lemon

Directions:
Put water on heat and boil it, in the meanwhile peel the ginger, slice and chop it.
Peel the lemon zest using a knife or a grater and squeeze it.
Now put all the recipe ingredient in a bowl except the yeast, and pour that bowl with boiling water.
Once the water will be cooled add the yeast. It is importanto to not put yeast when the water is too hot because that can kill yeast.
Cover the bowl with a clean towel and waith 24 hours.
Now sift it and let the sediment there, then pour it in a bottle using a funnel.
Close the bottle and let it ferment for 48 hours. Make sure you won’t use a glass water because it will probably broken by the very high pressure
Once fermented pay attention when you open it because pressure will soth the top bottle on your ceiling, so stay away with your face!
So now you can store it in the fridge and drink it before 6 days.

Chocolate tart with caramel

That’s the Ernst Knam recipe called “Giulio pie”, slightly modified by me.

This pie’s taste is very captivating, sensual and it’s really soft, so you’ll be very satisfied by that tart!

Ingredients:

Tart:
200 gr flour
125 gr butter
125 gr sugar
40 gr sugar free cocoa powder
1 egg
5 gr baking powder
2 gr salt
1/2 vanilla bean

Mou:
125 gr zucchero
125 gr whole cream
100 gr butter
2 gr salt

Ganache:
200 gr 70% dark chocolate
200 gr cream

Directions:

Tart:
Mix together butter, sugar, egg, salt and vanilla.
I suggest you to melt salt into egg before mixing, because unmelted salt isn’t too good tasting in a pie.
Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder and add them in the dough.
When you have mixed the dough flatten it and store into the fridge for half an hour, if you don’t flatten it will need more than three hours to refrigerate.
Once finished refrigerator storing, mix a little bit more fore make it a bit tender, then lie down with the rolling pin and set on the baking pan.
Puncture it with a fork or a knife, cover it with a weight which can be coins, beans, gravel. I prefere Coins becouse they conduct heat very well.
So bake it for 15 minute with weight and 5 minute more without weight for dry it.

Caramel:
Put the sugar in a large pot and turn on the high heat for caramelize it until it will be browned as desired, dont mix it but just move the pot as showed in the video.
Warm the cream, pour it into the caramel and be careful with hot steam. Turn the heat on minimum and stir for five minutes.
Now turn off the heat and then add the butter, mix it until melted.

Chocolate ganache:
That’s the most easy thing to do, just warm cream into a casserole and melt chocolate in it.

Before pouring ganache store the pie for 8 hours in the freezer for solidify the caramel.

Super fast and tasty Limoncello – Ready in two hours

 

Before starting I’d like to tnaks Dario Bressanini for this special recipe.

How much infusion time do we need for a perfect Limoncello? Some one talks about one week, some other says two weeks, one month or two month.

In reality University of Napoli researchers discovered that one day is enough for main tastes, and three day are needed for secondary tastes.

But I will tell you the fastest way to do it: only two hours infusion time!
How can we do that? That’s simple, we will put lemon zest in alcohol ad store it in a casserole with some water at 50°, so in this way warming will speed up infusion time.

Ingredient:
30 gr lemon zest (about three bio lemon)
100 gr alcohol 95%
120 gr water
100 gr sugar

Directions:

Make limoncello it’s quity simple, but a kitchen thermometer is necessary.

Rinse lemons and cut the lemon zest, but pay attention because we don’t need white part because it’s very bitter.

Put lemon zests in a little jam jar and fill it with the alcohol. Now close and put it into a dark place, because light could kill some good essences.

Prepare sugar syrup warming it with the water on your stove until sugar will be melted. You don’t need to boil it.

Now pour some water into a casserole, warm it until reaches 50°, put in it the jar and cover with a lid. Now wait two hours.

After two hours separate zests and alcohol (I used a sieve), add the sugar syrup (cooled), and pour Limoncello into a glass bottle, I suggest you to store it into the freezer, it won’t freeze but just chilled!

 

 

Rye bread flour with raisin and hazelnuts

This is a Jeffrey Hamelman recipe, with some changes I made.

The first modifing is about raisin and hazelnuts weight, then I replaced walnuts with hazelnuts because I prefere them. The last modifing is about baking time and temperature, but you probably already know, every single oven has its way to cook, so set your time baking suitable for your oven power!

This recipe is composed of two different dough: we’ll call the first pre-dough and the second will be the main dough.

We’ll make the pre-dough and let it raise for 14 -16 hours and this is to allow dough to develop very good smell and flavour, after this long and slow raising we’ll mix it with main dough.

I prefer a long and slow rising because that will let the dough to develop very good flavour and smell, that’s impossible with too much yeast, because in a 3 hours rising the dough will be less good and harder to digest.

Pre-dough ingredients:
180 gr rye flour
140 gr water
1 gr fresh yeast
1 tablespoon honey

Main-dough ingredients:
360 gr bread flour (we call it manitoba)
16 gr rye flour
200 gr water
10 gr salt
8 gr fresh yeast
70 gr raisin
70 gr hazelnuts

Pre-dough directions:

Mix toghether rye flour, water, honey and yeast. Honey will make a more intense crust and golden surface!

Mixing this kind of flour is a bit difficoult because it’s very sticky, but after that cover the bowl with kitchen wrap and let it raise for 14 or 16 hours at least.

Main-dough directions:

Put in the mixer all ingredients, even pre-dough exepct salt, raisin and hazelnut. Then mix them for 5 minutes before add salt. Don’t put yeast and salt in the same time, because salt could kill the yeast. Also salt is not good for gluten development, then add it in the mixer after a few minutes. 

Add raisin and hazelnut, but I suggest you to mix the in the dough by hand mixing.

After dough mixing divide it in two parts and let it raise for one hour covered with a clean cloth.

Before bake it, throw a bit of water on your oven floor for make some steam, because steam enhance bread raising, if you don’t put water the crust will be hard after a few minutes and could worsen rising. Steam make bread surface more tender during the baking and it will give a very good rising.

Now bake these loaf at 220° and after for ten minutes turn the heat on 200° and cook it for 15 minutes, so 25 minutes totally.

Ginger beer recipe

Hi tehre! Today I’m gonna get you a beer recipe, but that’s not a proper beer, it’s similar. By the way, if you’re Anglophone you already know ginger beer, which isn’t really knowed here in Italy.

Verty freh, tasty and a bit spicy…so delicius!

Ingredients:
100 gr fresh peeled ginger
140 gr sugar
1 l water
8 gr fresh yeast
1 biologic lemon

You can also make this recipe adding some chilly, vanilla, nutmeg, anise, liquorice, cloves, cardamom, fennel or juniper.

Directions:
Peel the ginger and then weigh it, whean you get 100 gr ginger chop it.

Grate lemon zest (I use a knife), but be carefull to not grate white side because it’s very bitter. Once grating squeeze that lemon.

Now put chopped ginger, lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar in a large bowl and filled with boiled water. Let it cool.

Once the water temperature is on 25 celsius degrees, put fresh yeast on it. It is important to not put yeast in hot water, because that could kill yeast, and it won’t work.
Now cover the bowl with a clean cloth, and let it infusioning for 24 hours.

After 24h sift water and let yeast sediment on the bowl, put it in a plastic bottle. Pay attention and don’t use a glass bottle, beacause pressure created by fermentation could broke it! Now let fermenting it for 48 hours.

Now you beer is already done! Pay attention when you’ll open the bottle because there will be a very high pressure and the cap will be shooted, so be careful.

Chocolate and orange muffins

This is a Luca Montersino recipe which I made a little modification because he use candied orange, but i don’t really want to use it because fresh orange zest is much easier to find, so just I used it!

By the way it’s a really easy and qick recipe, so let’s see how to do that!

Ingredients:
225 gr pastry flour
36 gr cocoa (bitter)
90 gr brown sugar
100 gr chocolate drops
75 gr eggs
285 gr whole milk
70 gr melted butter
15 gr baking powder
1/2 orange zest

Directions:
Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa toghether and add them in a bowl with brown sugar.

Take a knife and scratch half orange zest and put it into the bowl.

Now add milk, melted butter, eggs, chocolate drops and mix the batter.

Now put the batter into fluted papaer case and bake them at 180° for 20 minutes.

Salted peanuts Cantucci

First of all I want to expalin I made some changes because, in my book, Luca Montersino original recipe need them.

I used 80 gr of peanuts instead of 120 gr, then changed cooking temperature and timing.

Well let’s start showing how to do cantucci:

Ingredients:
105 gr butter
50 gr sugar
45 gr Parmigiano Reggiano (I used Grana Padano)
15 gr powdered milk
120 gr whole eggs
3 gr baking powder
300 gr flour
80 gr salted peanuts
2 gr nutmeg
3 gr salt

Directions:
Put butter, sugar, nutmeg, Grana Padano, powdered milk, salt and start to mix them.

Now pour eggs slowly.

Sieve flour and baking powder together and put them into the blender. Now it’s peanuts turn.

Once mixed all ingredients grab the dough and make long shape as showed in the video and cook it for 30 minutes at 160°.

After that let it cool and then cut it into diagonal slices for gain cantucci shape, it is important to cool it well because of avoid too much crumbs.

For the last step bake slices at 160° for 10 – 15 minutes.

Grissini Lingue di Suocera – Mother-in-law tongue breadsticks.

These breadsticks are very characteristics because they are passed through pasta roller and when cooked they will be really crunchy and tasty.

I don’t use too much yeast, just two grams, because I prefer a long and slow rising to at least 18 hours. That will let the dough to develop very good flavour and smell, that’s impossible if you use too much yeast, because in a fast rising (three hours) the dough will be less good and using a slow rising (18 hours) let us to have a easier to digest breadsticks.

Let’s talk about flur.
We need a medium gluten flour, that means 240 w. W is the gluten measure, but if you don’t know the gluten percentual, you can mix 350 gr of manitoba (bread flour) and 150 gr of pastry flour.

Ingredients:
500 gr medium gluten flour (350 bread flour and 150 pastry flour)
230 – 250 gr water
2 gr fesh yeast
12 gr salt
50 gr lard
olive oil

Directions:
Put the salt into a bit of recipe water for melt it, then add flour, yeast and water into the blender and mix them together.

Don’t put yeast and salt in the same time, because salt could kill the yeast. Also salt and lard are not good for gluten development, then put them in the mixer after two or three minutes.

Put the dugh into a large bowl, cover it with the film and make some little punctures with a toothpick for let air come in. Let it raise it for 18 hours.

The day after we are ready to make breadsticks, so put a bit of flour on your worksurface and start pass through the doug in the pasta roller until the desired thickness which could be fine as you can see in the video. Don’t bend it again for not loose lot of flavour we gained by long rising.

So now we can cut it into sligtly irrgular breadsticks shape with a pizza cutter, sprinkle some oil on the baking tray, lay them on it and oil the breadsticks with a brush.
If you oil the baking tray you don’t have to flip the breadsticks everytime, because in this way you can oil both surface. 

Cook them at 240° for 4 or 5 minutes, and put the baking tray between the top and the middle, but that’s aproximative, because my oven it’s not the same as your, so pay attention and make the best for your Mother-in-law tongue breadsticks or Lingue di Suocera!

Once you have cooked them, put breadsticks on a grill for don’t make moisture, and then store them in plastic closed bag. You don’t have to refrigerate these breadsticks. Enjoy them! 😉

Credists to: Luca Montersino.

 

Meringhetta cake.

Meringhetta is composed of three sponge cake layer, slightly soaket with some maraschino liqueur, filled with whipped vanilla cream, custard and French meringue on side.

If you want sponge cake recipe click here and if you want custard recipe click here.

Directions:

Cut sponge cake in three pieces and surface brown layer and start composition.

Put the first sponge cake piece on a plate and soak slightly with maraschino using a food brush.

With sac a poche put a whipped cream lay, put the second sponge cake piece, soak slightly with maraschino, cover it with custard, put the third layer and cover it and sides with a bit of cream (covering side will help us for place meringue).

Now get ready for more exciting part!

Cover the cake top using cream an custard both making stripes, set merningue on side and make some spumiglie decorations between mernigue and top stripes using cream.

Iginio Massari recipe.

 

How to make tomato sauce very fast. Ten minutes!

For this recipe we just need a microwave, a blender and some ingredients.
Microwave cooking allow us to gain right cook in only ten minutes, after that we will only blend it.

Ingredients:
650 gr tomatoes
10 gr onions
5 gr garlic
80 gr tomato paste
150 gr water
extra virgin olive oil

Directions:
Chop tomatoes, onion and garlic coarsely.
Put them in to a large bowl with salt, tomato paste, oil and water.
Cover the bowl using suitable for microwave food wrap and cook for 10 minutes at max power (my microwave max power is 850w).
During cooking wrap will blow up, so make sue it won’t touch oven ceiling. Prevent it lifting up a bit of wrapping, but watch out because hot steam could hurts your fingers!
After cooking wait a little while beacuse it’s too hot, then get rid off wrapping and blend it very well adding water and extra virgin olive oil.