potatoes

Preparing vegetarian balls needs time. During my cooking classes I hear many people who declare that they do not have time to stay in the kitchen; but I am sure, they could find it 😉 The real problem is that we give priority to other activities that are often not so important for our lives. If we really feel that cooking something, for us or our family, with high quality food is a good habit, we can create moments to do it. For these long preparations, you can, for example, organize cooking evenings with some friends, sharing the shopping, and making a lots of tasty balls for everyone. It can be a way to spend pleasant hours together and do something useful: you can then freeze your balls and create a good food supply. Here is the recipe for potato and spinach vegetarian balls … I hope you enjoy it 😉

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Welcome spring! How wonderful is the first blooming trees with the awakening nature; how exciting is find the first vegetables of the new season at the market. Let’s start, for example, to celebrate the arrival of asparagus: they have excellent purifying properties and a high content of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium. In addition they are simple and quick to cook and they can be prepared in different ways: in a risotto, on a quiche, for a cream or omelettes …. Today a quick recipe for an asparagus cream with lemon and mint flavor. Enjoy your meal 😉

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Here we are in the middle of autumn. The street’s markets are covered of new colors….Now we are reached from the green of broccoli, chards, spinaches, chicory…then from the white of cauliflowers, fennels, leeks….from the purple of some cabbages and then from the orange of pumpkins. Today a simply colored recipe wich can warm in an autumn day: pasta with pumpkin, potates and leek, seasoned with sage, thymes and pistachio nuts. Enjoy it 😉

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In Italy hot summer is at the end and when the sun go down I start to feel the desire to have a nice and soft scarf to put on shoulders….Also in the kitchen, in this period of the year, I use to cook vegetable soups or pureed soups, like this one I’m sharing today. This recipe is also enriched with toasted bread cubes, sheep ricotta and chieves. Enjoy 🙂

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When I was a little girl I used to help my grandmother Vittoria with my mother and my aunts. We staied all together around the kitchen’s table to prepare every kind of delicacy for the family sunday lunch. It was a very special moment.

I have all these wonderful memories in my mind and I think that exactly in those moments my passion for cooking was born.

I was very attached to my grandmother. And I’m very happy to do today what she did her many years ago.

She was a cook: she warked in my grandfather’s restaurant. He inherited it from my great grandfather….it was Arturo’s restaurant. My great grandfather started with street food and then he bought this place to set up a really restaurant and bar.

The recipe that remind me more my grandmother is the “potato gnocchi”.

She used to prepare the flour on the table and add in the centre the smashed potatoes. Then she started to mix by hand until she had nice pliable ball of dough; after that she took the dough, a piece at time, and roll it out gently with her hands until create rolls of about 3 inches. Then she cut the tubes of dough into pieces and me and my aunt used to press each pieces against tines of a floured fork, with our thumbs to roll them end of tines and give the particular form.

I don’t remember how many times I’ve eaten them raw….

When my grandmother made gnocchi, it was always a happy day for me, because the love that put her into cooking was unique, and all the recipes she desiced to do where full of that love….a very expecially ingredients!

I’ve decided to prepare this vegan version, served with a delicious carrot and saffron cream…

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Every time I cook mushrooms I think about my mother. She used to cook them, when I was a little girl, with the garlic and the parsley … they smelled so good to me.

Now I use them for many preparations: risotto, veg balls, delicious vegetarian lasagna. I like so much mushroom’s cream that have a pleasant texture and an elegant look. I’ve decided to give you here this version enriched with a pinch of chopped parsley and toasted hazelnuts.

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