PASTA ALLE VONGOLE

I know, I know. Vongole should go with spaghetti. But what about “celentani” for a change?? Celentani is a type of Italian pasta that looks like a macaroni formed in a helical tube shape. This was my favorite pasta variety when I was a kid 😋 My nonna used to make celentani with fresh, homemade ragù sauce: I loved it so much for lunch after school!
Well, now that I don’t eat meat anymore, a pescatarian version with vongole is perfect too 🐚

InstaRecipe (for 2 people)

You need:
160 gr Celentani or spaghetti
200 gr vongole (clams)
1 garlic glove
olive oil
salt & parsley to taste

Procedure

In a big pot, heat the water for the pasta. Cook the celentani or spaghetti as per package instructions.
In the meantime, in a pan roast the chopped garlic glove with some olive oil. Then, add the clams and cook for about 10 minutes. When ready, pour the pasta in the pan with the clams, add some fresh parsley and some olive oil if needed. Stir well for a couple of minutes.

Buon appetito!

RISOTTO WITH ORANGE BELL PEPPERS

Up for some risotto for #dinner? This colorful RISOTTO WITH ORANGE BELL PEPPERS gives me some spring vibes 🌼 ‘cos I don’t how’s the situation where you guys live, but over here spring doesn’t seem on its way yet 🌧🌨🇳🇱

InstaRecipe (for 2 people)

In a pan, add 4 tbs of olive oil, 1 chopped onion and cook until golden colored. Then, add 1 chopped (orange) paprika and roast it for a couple of minutes. Next, add 150gr rice for risotto (I used the Vialone Nano type) and toast it for a few minutes.
Now, it’s time to cook the risotto with the vegetable stock (made of 1 L water + 1 cube of vegetable bouillon). Add 1 cup of stock at time and stir gently while the risotto absorbs the stock. Keep adding the vegetable stock and stiring, while cooking the risotto (about 15-20 minutes). When ready, add parsley to taste.

Pronto!

CALAMARI IN UMIDO

It’s FISH-FRIDAY 🐟 What about an Italian classic seafood dish? Check this easy recipe of CALAMARI IN UMIDO (calamari stew with tomato sauce) 🦑🍅 and give yourself a nice and healthy treat for dinner ✨

InstaRecipe

Ingredients (for 2 people)

450 gr calamari tubes
1 garlic glove
2 tbsp olive oil
250 gr tomato sauce
Fresh parsley
Salt & pepper to taste

Procedure

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet with the finely diced garlic and cook for 3/4 minutes. In the meantime, chop the calamari tubes in 0,5 cm rings and then add them to the skillet and cook over medium heat for a few minutes. Last, add the tomato sauce, salt, pepper and parsley, stir well and cook for about 10 minutes (watch out to not over-cook the calamari otherwise they turn gummy).
Serve warm with some bread and a nice glass of Italian white wine 😉

Zesde Verjaardag in nederland: YOU TURN 30 IN LOCKDOWN again

I’ve decided about this already some months ago. Until I wont’t be able to properly celebrate this big milestone bday in a proper way, I won’t turn older.

Today, we are more or less in the same situation of one year ago. It feels like one year has passed but we are not moving forward much. That’s a strange feeling. Yet, in spite of the limited things we are allow to do, I can call myself lucky to be surrounded by wonderful people who make days like these so special.

After months, I dressed up, put some nice makeup on and it felt good. Even just to talk to my Italian family and my friends over Facetime, and have a nice dinner with my Dutch extended family at home.
Of course, as tradition calls, I spent quite some time in the kitchen bakign my bday cake. As this is the Easter weekend, I opted for a themed-cake and prepared the Italian typical Colomba with a bit more sophisticated twist: the dough with a crunchy note of pistachios, a filling of lemon pastry cream, and a nice top of pistachio glaze. Love this one.

COLOMBA AL PISTACCHIO E LIMONE

Italian traditional Easter Colomba cake with pistachios and lemon

Ingredients

For the cake (dove-shape 750 gr or baking tin 20cm diameter)

300 gr flour “00” type
3 eggs
90 gr sunflower oil
170 gr almond milk (or regular milk)
150 gr browns sugar
1 lemon zest
1 orange zest
15 gr baking powder
20 gr finely chopped pistachos

For the lemon pastry cream

2 egg yolks
40 gr corn starch
60 gr sugar
5 gr vanilla sugar
250 ml almond milk (or regular milk)
1 lemon

For the pistachios glaze

200 – 300 white chocolate
80 – 70 ml fresh liquid (to whip) cream for cakes
80 gr pistachios paste (crema al pistacchio) – if you live abroad, you most likely will find it in specialized stores (for the Dutchies, you can find it at Dille & Kamille)
20 gr finely chopped pistachios

Prepare the cake

For this cake, you’ll do all steps using an electric mixer.
Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks.
Whisk the yolk with the sugar, the lemon zest and orange zest. Then, add the oil, milk, flour and baking powder, while keep whisking.
Whisk the egg whites until spongy and then incorporate them in the batter using a spatula. Add the pistachios finely chopped.
Spread the batter on a 750 gr dove-shape cake tin or 20cm regular baking pan (remember to spray with non-stick cooking product and cover the bottom with greaseproof paper).
Cook in preheated oven 180°C for 40 minutes and you might need to cover the cake with aluminum foil after 10 minutes as the top the cake tend to brown very soon. Check with a wooden stick – if it comes out of the cake clean, it’s ready. Let it cool down completely.

Prepare the lemon pastry cream and fill the cake.

Preparing the cream like I did here. When the cream is cold, get the cake and make some holes on the top of it using the bottom of a wooden spoon. Remove the extra dough and fill the holes with the cream using a sac-à-poche.

Prepare the pistachios glaze and decorate the cake

Melt the white chocolate in a pan or at bain–marie. Then, low the heat and add the liquid cream for cakes and the pistachio paste. Stir with energy for a couple of minutes, then pour the glaze in a bowl and stir until all ingredients are well combined, and the glaze is smooth. This will also help with cooling down the glaze a bit. Don’t wait too much otherwise it will start to thicken as it gets colder.
Pour the glaze on the top of the cake and decorate with the finely chopped pistachios.

LINGUINE AI FRUTTI DI MARE

My non-Italian friends often question the fact that I am Italian because I rarely eat pasta. I prefer eating more various food tbh and, if I want to cook high quantities of carbs, I do prefer cheating with risotto. Yet, sometimes a nice “piatto di pasta”, like these delicious Linguine ai Frutti di Mare (linguine with seafood), is what everyone needs. Me included.

InstaRecipe

Ingredients (for 2 people)

160 gr linguine
200 gr frutti di mare (mixed-seafood)
1 garlic glove
100 gr cocktail tomatoes
olive oil
salt & parsley to taste

Procedure

In a big pot, heat the water for the linguine (and please, add the salt only after the water starts boiling🙏😉). Cook the linguine for about 10/11 minutes (or as long as indicated in the package).
In the meantime, in a pan roast the chopped garlic glove with some olive oil, while paying attention to not burn the garlic. Then, add the seafood and cook for about 10 minutes. Next, add the chopped cocktail tomatoes and cook until they release a bit of their juice and turn soft.
When ready, put the linguine in the pan with the seafood, add some fresh parsley and some olive oil if needed. Stir well for a couple of minutes. Serve these delicious linguine ai frutti di mare.

Buon appetito!

Mimosa MUFFINS and 7th blog-anniversary

Some people say it’s wool, others it’s copper. Well, yesterday was the 7th anniversary of Aroma Di Cannella. Wow, I am getting old.

Over the years I have always tried to make a little celebration around this day by either baking or cooking something special to share with the readers. It’s funny because every year it’s sort of a double celebration. On one hand, there is the actual ‘birthday’ on March 7th, which is the date of the first blogpost published back in 2014. On the other hand, Fat Tuesday is the more symbolic or iconic ‘birthday’ as my first post was about what I baked on Fat Tuesday of that year, which happened a couple of days earlier than March 7th. The two dates (birthday and Fat Tuesday) rarely coincide as the same day because, as you probably know, Fat Tuesday changes every year according to the Catholic calendar.
Anyway, for some reasons, I tend to remember Fat Tuesday more than March 7th. In fact, over the years, it often turned out that I completely forgot about the real anniversary. The last time when I did remember about it was back in 2018, when I was living in LA during my #PhDlife. After that, I did forget for two years in a row. What can I say? 2019 and 2020 were very hectic around this time of the year. Apparently, the beginning of March has been a moment of big happenings.

Well, this year, for once, nothing big has happened. It’s been quite a few quiet days. Not that we can do much in these days, anyway. So, this time I did remember March 7th. Hence, yesterday I thought about a nice recipe to celebrate that could also fit well with today as the International Women’s Day.

I have to say, I’ve never celebrated much this occurrence. Yet, in Italy we have this tradition since the mid-40s to give women Mimosa flowers as a symbol of women’s contribution to society and a sign of respect and support. When I lived at my parents’, my dad used to give us (my mum, sis and I) Mimosas every year, until he decided to directly plant a tree in our garden.

Mimosa Tree in my family’s home garden (photo taken by mydad this morning).

Next to Mimosa flowers, Italians – obviously – also celebrate with typical food delicacies. All Mimosa-themed, of course. Among all, the Mimosa cake is one of the most common ways to revisit the flower into a (sponge) cake. The trick is baking some extra cake, turn it into crumbles and place them on the top of the cake so it looks like a yellow Mimosa flower.

As it was a few days that I really wanted to bake some lemon muffins, I thought: what a better way to turn them into lemon Mimosa muffins?

MIMOSA MUFFINS

Ingredients (for 12 muffins)

For the muffins

250 gr baking flour
30 gr almond flour
15 gr baking powder
2 egg
100 gr brown sugar
8 gr vanilla sugar (or 1 tbsp vanilla extract)
90 ml sunflower oil
1 lemon juice
100 gr almond milk

For the lemon cream (you might have a little extra left)

2 egg yolks
40 gr corn starch
60 gr sugar
5 gr vanilla sugar
220 ml almond milk
1 lemon zest

Prepare the lemon cream

Start with preparing the lemon cream like I did here. Once ready, pour the cream in a bowl and cover immediately with transparent film. Store in the fridge to cool down until it’s time for assembling the muffins.

Prepare the muffins

Prepare and bake the lemon muffins like I did here without adding the poppy seeds. Let them cool down completely.

Assembling the muffins

Cut the top of the muffins with a knife. Using a teaspoon, make a hole in the muffin by removing the dough so to make space for the cream (you might need to do the same also in the tops). Save all the muffin crumbles in a bowl and store aside. Pour 1 tsp of cream in each muffin and cover with the tops. Spread a thin layer of cream on the tops and sprinkle some of the crumble leftovers over the tops so that they stick on them.

Enjoy!

Enjoy these delicious and delicate-taste muffins with a nice cup of tea or coffee. Store them in the fridge for a couple of days if you don’t finish them all in one day…