Italia

Today we cooked food from Italy. It was, needless to say, absolutely fantastic.

We started our day by going to Cossetta's, an Italian pizzeria and market in St. Paul. Now, for those of you who don't know, Cossetta's has the most delicious pizza ever. Seriously. We had lunch there (guess what we got!) and bought our pasta, pancetta and Pecorino cheese before heading back to our lovely kitchen to start cooking.

p

The first dish we made was Simple Stuffed Bell Peppers (Peperoni ripieni semplice) from Mediterranean Cooking by Reader's Digest. This is the cookbook that we got our recipe for gazpacho on Monday, so far, every recipe that we've tried out of it (we made two other recipes from it yesterday) has been fabulous. The bell peppers were beautiful, easy to eat and really easy to make. They would be a perfect appetizer for a dinner party. They were also quite delicious with a very nice, strong flavor.

The next thing that we made was Bucatini with Pancetta, Cheese and Parsley (Bucatini all'amatriciana bianca) also out of Mediterranean Cooking. We substituted bucatini with percatelli, a very similar pasta. Both are thicker than linguini or spaghetti. This pasta was absolutely one of the most delicious things that I've ever eaten. Pancetta is similar to bacon (you can substitute bacon for pancetta if necessary) and comes from the belly of a pig. The recipe also calls for extra-virgin olive oil, a chile pepper, white onion, parsley and Pecorino cheese. Pecorino is similar to Parmesan but with an even stronger flavor. Overall, the result was wonderful both to eat and to look at. Like the bell peppers, it has nice flavors and lovely colors. I liked it best cold, though it is also quite tasty when it is still hot.

We also made flatbread (Piadina). This was really fun to make. It has a very plain flavor as it made of just flour, baking soda, salt, lard and water. As a fun experiment, we also added dried rosemary to half of the dough which was much better than the plain because it gave it some flavor. We cooked the flatbread on a griddle at 450 degrees Fahrenheit though the recipe itself just calls for "very hot." It definitely needs to be eaten with something else, but is otherwise very good.
For dessert we made an Almond Torte from Piedmont (Torta Alpina Piemontese) from Betty Crocker's Italian Cooking. It was really tasty but very filling. The torte is dense and has plenty of almond flavor without being too overpowering, and should be served with whipped cream and strawberries. This is another really easy but delicious recipe. The dough is rolled into little balls which are then squished together in a round pan. The result is pretty addicting, so be careful if you make it!

All in all, the Italian food was amazing. Not surprisingly, we all ate way too much yesterday. All of the recipes were easy (with the exception of the flatbread) and delectable. I would highly recommend every recipe that we made today and would suggest purchasing Mediterranean Cooking by Reader's Digest, so far we have not been disappointed.

Ciao!