We are cooking our way through Europe right here at home in Hawaii. Our second stop was to Italy. We spent a few days there and made some great dishes. The one thing about this stop is that it wasn't very different from my every day cooking since I cook Italian food a lot, its kid friendly and always good.
Our first meal was grilled sausage and peppers.
We also made a chicken grilled under a brick
We made some fresh ricotta. I used a new recipe from Lynn Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Tables. It was much easier from my previous recipe. It was so easy in fact I was able to tweet it in 140. I made a simple pasta of extra virgin olive oil, ricotta, beautiful tomatoes, garlic and basil.
With the left over ricotta I also made Ricotta Gnudi - a gnocchi made out of ricotta or a naked ravioli. This was a big hit!
Here is the ricotta recipe from Splendid Table by Lynn Rossetto Kasper. I highly recommend this book for recipes and history of Italian cuisine.
makes 1 pound
2 1/2 quarts whole milk
1/4 cup, less 1 tablespoon heavy cream
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
Stir together ingredients except salt in non reactive pot. set pan over medium low heat cut for 40 minutes or until milk reaches 170F.
Keep heat medium low. Stir just a few times. When reaches 170F bring temp to medium and bring up to 205 or 208F Turn of heat and let sit for 10 minutes. Drain in a colander with double layers of cheese cloth. Refrigerate.
