ITALIAN FOODIES

The weather has changed with a vengeance, not that we had much of a summer but the last couple of weeks have been glorious, it’s so hard to go back to this again. If you live in Ireland chances are you will be indoors for the next week so it’s a perfect opportunity to make this pasta as you need to let these tomatoes roast slowly for a couple of hours. When I go shopping I always buy loads of tomatoes and normally make a roast tomato soup or just a simple tomato sauce. I was flicking through one of my pasta books and spotted this recipe which is perfect to use up tomatoes or to produce a really impressive dish when you have very little in the fridge.  

what you need:

 - 500g cherry or plum tomatoes - as usual I used tomatoes from SQ

 - 2 garlic cloves finely chopped

 - chilli flakes

- dried oregano

 - olive oil

 - balsamic vinegar

 - pappardelle or fettuccine

 - parmesan cheese

 - salt and black pepper

what to do:

 - pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees.

 - cut your tomatoes in half and place them cut side up in a oven tray.

 - sprinkle them with your oregano, chilli, garlic, salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar.

 - roast in the oven until soft and wilted for about an hour and a half.

 - bring a pot of water to the boil, add salt and your pasta and cook until al dente.

 - Drain when cooked, put back in the pot and add some olive oil and mix in some parmesan.

 - serve with your roasted tomatoes on top.

I really enjoyed this pasta and it was a lovely change from my regular tomato sauce, I had some tomatoes left over so I used them in a sandwich the next day with some grilled chicken and brie which was “YUM”.

buon appetito!!

Some of you may be wondering how does this one have time to start another blog while running a business, a house and looking after a child, it’s called FOOTBALL/RUGBY/RYDER CUP. I’ve mentioned before that we have the Italian channels so if we are not watching the Champions League, Internationals, Premiership, UEFA Cup we are watching the Italian version on RAI so rather than sit upstairs watching T.V on my own even though we paid a fortune for the Sky multi-room so that I could do just that but in order to save our relationship I sit on the couch with my laptop on my lap eating a loop de loop as we speak;) I basically don’t watch much T.V.

One thing I have got hooked on though is The Family on Channel 4 on Weds nights, it’s like being a fly on the wall of a normal family living their everyday life and I’m hooked. They are filmed for 100 days and nights, how anybody can do this I don’t know but it’s riveting stuff, I recommend you watch it.. It’s amazing how a normal average family can be so interesting to watch, I think it’s the fact that we can all relate to them, it could be us on the T.V and I think we all love to see how other people live, my favourite is the father, he reminds me of my dad trying to handle 5 women, tough job!! This is why blogging has become so popular I suppose as we all love to get an insight into other people’s lives, well I do anyway, maybe I’m just too nosy;)

Back to the recipe, Jim Flavin my local butcher kindly gave me 2 lovely big juicy T-bones yesterday as a little thank you for mentioning him in my Limerick Leader interview last week so I decided to make this potato bake to accompany it from Ursula Ferrigno’s book “easy italian” which I highly reccomend, it has some really great simple recipes in it. I got my copy in TX Maxx for €6 so if you see it there, buy it!

what you need for 6 - I halved the recipe for the 2 of us.

 - 1 kg of old potatoes such as Maris Piper, King Edward or Pentland Crown. Do not use Kerr Pinks as they will not cook through, believe me, we had a raw potato bake after cooking it for 80 mins:(

 - 25g unsalted butter

 - 125g prosciutto slices

 - 450ml milk

 - 250ml cream

 - 225g parmesan cheese

 - freshly grated nutmeg to taste

 - sea salt and black pepper

what to do:

 - pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees

 - peel the potatoes and slice them really thinly.

 - grease a shallow baking dish with butter.

 - lay the potato slices in the dish overlapping them slightly. Lay the prosciutto slices on top.

 - in a bowl mix together the milk, cream and half the Parmesan cheese and season with nutmeg and salt and pepper.

 - pour the mixture over the potatoes, sprinkle with Parmesan and dot with butter. Repeat and do the same for the second layer.

 - bake in the oven until the potatoes are tender(I wish) for about 45 mins

It was such a shame that the potatoes were raw as it had a lovely cheesy, creamy flavour and would have been delicious if cooked through, I made it today and then re-heated it tonight. It was really fast to make and I will definitely make it again with a different potato, there was a lovely aroma in the house too while it was cooking, it would be great to impress guests when they arrive if having a dinner party:).

buon appetito!!

 

I’ve been thinking about starting a ”mummy” blog for a while and finally bit the bullet and did it. I don’t know how it will go as it is very different to a food blog but I’ll give it a try anyway. It’s basically going to focus on my experience of being a “mama”, all the trials and tribulations and everything I’ve learnt along the way. I talk a lot about the princess on this blog but am always aware that this is a food blog and a lot of you come here for the recipes and not to listen to me banging on about my everyday life so now I will do it over there. I’ve put a new poll over to the right (because I don’t know how to put it here, aghhhhh) to find out if you have any interest in reading it, please let me know:) You can check it out here

ciao
xxx

While we were in Atina this summer there were a couple of festivals on so that meant lots of “street food”. I loved this little stall selling bruschetta and lamb outside the local butcher.

ciao:)

my pasta press, now show me yours!!

I’ve gone a bit soup mad the last 2 weeks, I made 3 new soups and loved them all. First up was this roast pepper soup followed by a spinach and chickpea soup and finished off with a roast aubergine soup tonight. I picked up some sweet peppers in Dunnes and Superquinn not knowing what I was going to do with them so I just threw them into the oven with some basil, red onion and garlic and hey presto!!!

what you need for 2 people:

 - pepper chopped into large chunks - I used 3 large sweet red peppers from SQ and a 4 pack of small sweet peppers from Dunnes.

 - 250g cherry or plum tomatoes cut in half.

 - 2 garlic cloves peeled

 - 1/2 red onion chopped into large chunks

 - basil

 - 500ml chicken or veg stock. I use Kallo stock cubes(gasp)

 - sea salt and black pepper

 - olive oil

what to do:

 - heat your oven to 180 degrees

 - put all our veg into an oven tray, season and pour in some olive oil and cook for about 30-45 mins. Don’t add the basil until 5 mins towards the end.

 - add your stock, season and blend using a hand blender.

 - serve with some parmesan cheese and grilled ciabatta.

I gave it to the princess with some soup pasta and she declared it to “be nice and like it mammy” which is a first:) She is so anti veg at the moment, it’s not funny!! It amazes me how much she loves junk when she  never even got a piece of chocolate until 14 months but would now happily live on ”ips”(chips), ”bottons”, “ice-ceam” and “inup”(7up). Grandparents have a lot to answer for these days me thinks!!!!! When we were younger we were lucky to get a packet of eclairs or a dairymilk between 4 of us once a month but the other day when she went to the shop she came back with a bag of buttons and a bag of jelly tots, she’s not even 2 yet!! I couldn’t even eat 2 bags of sweets, needless to say I took one bag and a tantrum ensued but it’s gotta be done. In the meantime I will keep making soups and hiding veg and fruit to make sure she eats ok when she’s not with the GP’S!!!

buon appetito
 

more tomatoes:

courgettes and their flowers

peaches:

ligurian basil, the best there is:

strawberries:

ciao
xx

When we arrived in Genova this summer we hired a car to drive to Deva as it is only about 45 mins from the airport, Bru’s cousin normally picks us up but he was working so we decided it was as easy to drive ourselves. We barely fitted into the car with all the luggage we had, our scales didn’t work properly so between me, Bru and Alessia we had a total weight of 78kg plus the MIL, I know, an absolutely ridiculous amount for 2 weeks and we flew Ryanair to London and then onto Genova the next day, having a father that works in the airport comes in handy sometimes;)

Anyway, we took the motorway to Deva and went to the wrong pay station at the toll, we took the Telepass instead of the cash. Now, I should point out at this stage that I did offer to sit in the passenger seat as I’m fairly good at directions etc but no I was put in the back because of my lack of Italian and the “MIL” took pride of place in the front with Bru, me bitter - NEVER!. So between the 2 of them they managed to go to the wrong toll, we didn’t know what to do as we didn’t have the telepass and Italians don’t do sitting in their cars waiting for the stupid tourists in front to figure out what they’re doing so there was a lot of horn blowing and a very panicked “MIL” in the front. I sat very quietly and smugly in the back with a kind of told you so attitude, yes I know very childish but I wanted to sit in the front, “nobody puts baby in a corner”:) .

In the end the MIL had to jump out and press the help button and they reluctantly let us through the barrier, now being Irish we just assumed everything would be fine and we would just pay at the exit and didn’t bother listening to the MIL that we had to go back and get a ticket. She rang her brother and it transpired of course(this woman is always right goddammit) we should have went back for the ticket and we wouldn’t be able to get off the motorway at Deva so we had to take a detour to another town and collect a ticket, a €50 fine and a right telling off from a very grumpy Italian. I don’t know which was worse  - the fine or listening to the MIL for the rest of the journey;)

What has all this got to do with Portofino I hear you ask? The only place to pay the fine was Rapallo so we decided to make a day of it and visit Portofino as we have never been before and it’s not that far from Rapallo. It ended up that we didn’t have to pay the fine after all that as the guy at the “fine office” was really nice and couldn’t believe the other guy had given us the fine etc etc so it was all a big load of nonsense really but really the moral of the story is ALWAYS let me sit in the front

The drive to Portofino was beautiful, I loved Santa Margarita and hope to go there for a few days next year. Portofino itself was so quaint and picturesque, we had lunch of linguine with clams in a small little restaurant on the main street and went for a gelato and a “passegiata” down by the port afterwards celebrity spotting but saw nobody we knew:(

There were lots of fabulous boats coming in to deck, a bit of a crowd gathered for this one as there was a rumour that it was some big Italian footballer, we all waited for about 2o mins while they disembarked and then some random guy came out, everybody sighed and went on their merry way.

ciao
xxx