The basics of the Italian Cuisine

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nicolettacooks

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🇮🇹cooking school La Cucina del Sole in Amsterdam. Teacher, food writer&photographer, voice-over, Tarotist. See also @houseoftarot @midorigreensalt 💚

nicolettacooks

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Sep 21

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🍌 Who loves banana bread? I do!
It’s the perfect recipe to use the very ripe bananas that cannot be eaten fresh anymore, something which I always seem to “produce” every time I buy bananas. ☹️

🍌 My cousin @_sissicomeno_ is visiting and she loves to bake, so I asked her to make her signature banana bread.
And what a good idea that was. 🙃

🍌 We decided to add no sugar (I find ripe bananas sweet enough) also because we sweetened it further with some chopped Turkish dry figs. You can of course add a dash of agave syrup or honey, if you prefer a sweeter taste.
This bread is also gluten free since the flours we used are g-f oats and almond, which makes it nice and moist. Should you prefer a fluffier bread, use less almond and more oats.

🍌 Save this recipe for when you have very ripe bananas and you want to make a nice, naturally sweet bread.

🍌 Ingredients and procedure are in the first comment.

#bananabread #savetherecipe #glutenfreebaking #glutenfree #sugarfreebaking #naturallysweet #noaddedsugar #sugarlessbaking #naturalfood #baking #bakinglove #easybaking #healthybaking #easyrecipes #foodphotography #foodphotographyandstyling ...

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nicolettacooks

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Sep 18

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Zuccotto is probably the first semifreddo ever recorded in the history of the Italian cuisine. Semifreddo literally means half-cold and is like a no-churn ice cream or a frozen French parfait.

Created at the court of Caterina de’ Medici in Florence by Bernardo Buontalenti during the Sixteenth century, it has turned into a classic Tuscan dessert.

It’s usually made with sponge cake soaked in liqueur and layers of a mixture of whipped cream and ricotta in two different versions, plain and cocoa flavoured, both enriched with pieces of chocolate and candied orange peel. My mum’s recipe also includes chopped hazelnuts, which I love to add.

This is a simplified version made in single-portion bowls. Simplified because I’ve used lady fingers instead of pan di Spagna (Italian sponge cake) and just whipped cream without ricotta, which makes its texture a lot airier and lighter.
You can of course make a big zuccotto like the original one and then cut it in slices, which is a lot more choreographic than these small versions. The mould has to be dome-shaped. I’ve used small ones in which I created just a base of cookies soaked in liqueur instead of covering the whole bowls with them.

Zuccotto is super easy to make and needs at least a couple of hours in the freezer, so make it in advance. It keeps really well for weeks in case you don’t eat it all, which I seriously doubt. 🙃
Dust with cocoa powder before serving.
RECIPE IN FIRST COMMENT. ⬇️

#zuccotto #italiandessert #dessert #dessertrecipe #dessertrecipes #toetje #toetjesrecept #recipe #recepten #dessertrecepten #foodphotography #foodphotographyandstyling #italianfoodbloggers #italiancooking #italianfood ...

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nicolettacooks

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Sep 11

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This is my newest pasta obsession: spaghettoni - thick spaghetti - with butter, anchovy, garlic, dill and chili peppers. It’s super simple and requires just a few ingredients, but the taste is incredible. I’ve already been eating it four times in little more than a week!

Use anchovies in olive oil and make sure they melt completely in the butter. Like this the pasta won’t taste fishy at all but will have a beautiful sapidity that only salty fish can give. The Vietnamese cuisine with its nuoc mam, the Thai one with nam pla and the Mediterranean cuisine with salted anchovies really have something in common, here, in spite of their huge differences.

A few tips: the pasta needs to be drained very al dente (meaning: still a bit hard) because it’ll cook further in the sauce, absorbing its flavours and releasing the starches that thicken it up just right to make it beautifully creamy.

I like my garlic and chili quite chunky but you can of course chop them really finely. Soften them up by letting them simmer with some pasta water.

If you don’t like dill you can use parsley or any other herb that goes well with fish.

The quantities are for 1 serving:
40 grams of butter
a dash of ev olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 chili pepper
90 grams of spaghettoni or other long pasta
a handful of dill
1 small lime

Hope you like this dish as much as I do. Buon appetito!

#italianrecipe #pastarecipe #pastasaus #pastalover #pastalove #pastareels #instagood #instafood #instapasta #pastarecept #recipereels #recipereel #instafoodie #foodstagram #foodreels #igersamsterdam #easyrecipes #easyrecipe #pastagram #italiancooking #nicolettatavella #lacucinadelsole #lacucinadelsoleamsterdam #nicolettacooks #foodphotography ...

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nicolettacooks

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Sep 10

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Yesterday it was World Crostata Day. If you don’t know what a crostata is, I can tell you it’s one of Italy’s oldest pies (the first recipe could already be found in a book form the 15th century) and one of the most popular ones. Every Italian loves a good crostata!

It’s the very first “cake” Italian children learn how to bake, perfect for breakfast or for a sweet merenda (the 4 o’ clock break), because it’s easy and fun to make. I remember baking my first - pretty horrendous, I admit - crostatas with my yellow electric “Dolce Forno” oven by Harbert, a perfectly functioning toy oven that worked with the immense (😂) power of a light bulb.💡

No wonder my sweet creations were often just half-raw. And the fact that I didn’t have the patience to wait and wanted to eat them as soon as possible might also have had something to do with the not so great results. 😉

These crostatas are the perfect way to use the ripest and juiciest Summer fruits, but can be made with any type of fruit or with just jam.

Want to learn how to bake crostata the real Italian way? Join me for my masterclass on Italian Pastries and Desserts on October 22. You can find the link here and in my bio. 🙂

https://www.cucinadelsole.nl/short-sweet-italian-sweets-and-desserts/

#crostataday #worldcrostataday #crostata #italiansweets #italiancookingclass #italiancookingclassamsterdam #thingstodoinamsterdam #schinkeldistrict #baking #bakingclass #bakingclassamsterdam #italianbaking #foodphotography #foodphotographyandstyling #foodphotooftheday ...