The vibrant street life of Paris is magical. The only way to really experience the city is to walk and view the impressive architecture, art and monuments. Stroll through the gardens, visit the museums and walk along the Seine. Feel the magic atmosphere where cafe life is the center of social life. Romance is what Paris is all about in every aspect of life and known as “The City of Love”. Everywhere you look Paris awakens every emotion!
Come with me on short walk and visit one of my favorite cities in the world, Paris.
Paris Postcards
In France and many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern markets that I have visited, the selection of spices always draws me to photograph the alluring colors and take in the wonderful aromas. I buy small packets, take them home, and enjoy trying them in meals that I prepare. They even encourage me to experiment with new exotic recipes. The best part is that it brings me back to the places I visited for the evening.
During WWII while my father was fighting in Europe, my mother supported us by working at the Table Talk Pies Inc. Located in Worcester, Massachusetts and established in 1924. Like many other business of that time, they started as a very small neighborhood business and sold their pies in horse drawn carriages around town. Table Talk still exists today with distribution and production all around the country.
My mother perfected her pie baking and was the expert among our family and friends. She sold her pies in our family business “Turo’s Market” on Shrewsbury Street, Worcester MA. (no longer exists). We moved to the country in a house my parents built in the middle of an apple orchard. Every Sunday she would baked all sorts of pies of the season and family and friends filled our house for coffee and pie. When the fruit was first in season she would make us all our own pie and set it down in front of us for one big start of the season pie feast. She made a large assortment of pies but two were always the most popular and that was blueberry and apple pies (apples picked in our backyard).
To this day everyone in our family remembers these Sunday afternoons with such fond memories. Besides always having a huge crowd around our house on the weekends, the sent of fresh baked pies in her country kitchen still lingers with me today. Everyone in our family tries to create the very same flavor that she perfected. Somehow we never are able to recreate the same taste, but that is probably because we just can’t duplicate those wonderful times that went with friends, coffee and a piece of pie with ice cream. Pies are still a large part of our family get-togethers and she still fills our discussions as we compete for the title of best family pie baker.
Fruit pies are very simple and only require the minimum amount of ingredients. Sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest, butter, a little flour or cornstarch and that is it. If you try to complicate it, you will affect the fresh flavors of the fruit. Fresh fruit pies are not about being creative, but about the clean flavors and the juices of ripe fruit -and there is the key, ripe fruit.
Make sure when you are buying blueberries that they are firm, plump, fragrant, and dark blue. Remove stems and any berries that are green or not ripe. Most of us today use cultivated berries and they can also be bought frozen. We always went blueberry picking at farms and collected large quantities that we froze and had blueberry pies all winter. They freeze beautifully and are great just to pop a few in your mouth as a snack frozen. You can put them into your pie frozen and you wouldn’t know that they had been picked months before.
Blueberries are also well known for their health benefits. Enjoy my Moms recipe!
Blueberry Pie
Basic Pie Crust
Dry Ingredients
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup cold solid vegetable shortening (one cup of shortening if you eliminate the butter)
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter (the butter makes the crust flaky)
2/3 cup ice-cold water (as needed)
Pinch salt
Other Items needed
Mixer or rolling pin
Parchment paper
9” pie plate
DOUGH USING A MIXER OR PROCESSOR
Mix the flour, shortening, and salt until it looks like a crumb mixture. Add the butter to the crumb mixture. The mixer or processor does a good job of crumbing the mixture. The butter should only be pulsated a few times to assure it isn’t over processed. The original recipe calls for a total of 1 cup of shortening; you can use a mixture of butter and shortening. Remove it from the mixer or processor and mix 2/3 cup of ice-cold water a little at a time until the dough forms. You may not need the entire amount of water. DO NOT OVER PROCESS OR KNEAD THE DOUGH. Once you have brought all the ingredients together, cut it in half and form a disk shape by patting it with your hands and put it in plastic storage bags. Refrigerate them for at least 1/2 hour.
BY HAND
If you are mixing the dough by hand, place the flour in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Cut the shortening into small pieces and crumble it either with you hands or with a fork. Cut in the butter, in larger chunks. Add the ice-cold water and bring it together into a ball, the same as the directions above.
NOTE: You can add a little cinnamon, lemon zest or sugar if you like into the flour mixture.
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 52 minutes, 12 minutes at 420º F, 40 minutes @ 350ºF
Yield: 8 servings
FILLING
6 cups fresh blueberries, enough to fill a 9” pie plate
3/ 4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 lemon (zest only)
1/8 pound butter, cut into cubes
Other Things Needed
3 ziti pasta
ASSEMBLY
Roll out one half of the dough and place it into a 9” pie plate. Refrigerate the other half for the top.
FILLING
Put the blueberries into a bowl and add the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and zest and toss the berries until they are completely covered with the ingredients. Pour them into the uncooked piecrust and dot the top with butter. Roll out the second piece of dough and cover the top of the pie. Even out the dough around the rim and crimp the edges. With a knife, puncture at 3 holes and stick in a piece of ziti pasta in each hole. The ziti will act as little chimneys and let out the steam.
BAKE
Bake in the middle of the oven at 420º F for 12 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350º F and cook for another 40 minutes. Remove the pie when it is brown on the top and put it on a rack to cool. Once at room temperature, put it in the refrigerator.
SERVE
Serve cold with vanilla ice cream.
NOTE: You can brush the top of the piecrust with an egg wash or cream to give it a more golden color or sprinkle a little sugar on the top.
La Chitarra (pronounced key-tahr-rah) is a pasta maker believed to have been invented in Chieti, Abruzzi Italy around the 1800’s. No one seems to know who invented it and until recently pasta made with the chitarra was mainly found in the Apulia and Abruzzi regions.
Since I’ve never been able to find a story behind this unique simple pasta maker, I made up one.
A long time ago, a young boy by the name of Michele, watched his mother making pasta every day, toiling over kneading the dough, rolling out it out into huge thin sheets and cutting it with a knife into thin stands. This is how Michele’s mother earned a living. Michele loved music and often sat on the steps of his simple stone home located along a narrow street of the village playing his beloved chitarra. He played for his mother while she worked – it seemed to make her life a little easier. As he was playing, he had an inspiration that the musical strings of his instrument would be perfect for cutting the dough. He removed the strings and placed them over a simple oblong box – he was going to miss his chitarra. He brought it to his mother and together they cut the pasta on his invention. To their amazement, as they rolled the dough over the musical strings, the pasta fell below the box in perfectly cut strands. The musical strings not only worked perfectly for cutting the pasta, but the beautiful sounds of the chitarra filled the small kitchen as they ran their fingers across the strings. From this point on they called her pasta “pasta chitarra”. Well of course this is my story, but every time I use my chitarra, I think of Michele and his mother.
There are two sides of the chitarra; one side cuts thin strands the size of spaghetti and the other Taglatelle and Fettuccini. The dough should be rolled out a little thicker to make troccoli, which is famous in Apulia. There are screws at one end, which are tightened to make them taut when rolling the spaghetti and loosened when it is not being used. Roll the dough the width and length of the chitarra and place the dough on the strings. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough over the strings. Run you fingers along the metal strings to loosen the cut strands and the cut pasta will fall into the box below.
During a trip to Vieste, Foggia, I visited a little restaurant in the old village called “Enotecca di Vieste”. Here I met the owner who brought me into the kitchen to show me how to make her mothers recipe for troccoli with chickpeas, eggplants and zucchini. After we enjoyed this hearty pasta dish with these lovely people, she handed me a bag filled with all the ingredients to make the dish at home myself. In Vieste restaurants have large balls of dough on a table covered with a kitchen towel. When you order troccoli, they cut off a piece of the pasta dough and roll it over the chitarra. You can’t get pasta any fresher then this.
La Chitarra is possible to find in some specialty kitchen supply stores.
Pasta Dough
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 4 servings as a main course, 8 as accompaniment
4 cups all purpose flour
2 pinches salt
4 medium eggs
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Tepid water (if necessary)
DOUGH
Place the flour mixture on a pastry board and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs, olive oil, salt and a small amount of water (you can always add more water if the dough is too dry). Begin to stir the flour from the outside part of the well into the wet ingredients. Continue this process until the dough holds together in a ball. The dough should seem as if it is too dry, but once it is rolled out in a pasta machine it will hold together. If the dough is too wet, rub a little flour on it, as it will be difficult to handle and too sticky to roll through the pasta machine.
Knead the dough for at least 10-15 minutes, and allow it to stand covered with a clean kitchen towel at room temperature for at least 15 minutes.
ROLLING THE PASTA DOUGH
Start with a wider slot when rolling it out on your pasta machine. Roll it out a few times on each level until you have reached the second thinnest level. You will have to develop a feel of the thickness of the dough.
Once the dough is rolled out, cut it the length and with of the Chitarra. The dough should be a little thicker then if you were cutting it for fettuccini or spaghetti.
Pressing down with a rolling pin, roll the pin over dough. Run you fingers across the exposed strings at the end of the Chitarra and the pasta will fall to the bottom of the box.
Recipe Summary
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
INGREDIENTS
10 sprigs fresh basil
3 ripe large tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
1/2 cup dry chick peas (soaked overnight)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cube beef bouillon, dissolved in water (1 cup per cube)
1 small eggplant, cut into 1” chunks
1 small zucchini, cut into 1” chunks
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
10 sprigs Italian parsley, chopped
1 pepperoncino, soaked in olive oil
1 green pepper, chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
If you are using dried beans, place 1/2 cup beans in water overnight, they will double in size. Put them into the sauce for the last 15 minutes of cooking. If you are using canned beans, add them at the end only for a few minutes.
Place the olive oil in a pan and sauté the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent. Add the chopped pepper, zucchini, pepperoncino and eggplant and continue to cook for 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes, basil, and bouillon in the pan and cook for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked. You can add a little wine, more bullion or a little pasta water if required. In separate pan cook the troccoli in salted water for 3 to 5 minutes until al dente.
Mix the sauce with the troccoli and sprinkle parsley over the top of the pasta before serving. Put a nice piece of Parmesan cheese on the table for people to grate over the dish.
Rome has seen less of an economic effect from tourism then other cities in Europe. The drop in tourism has only been 5%. Tourists still flock to this city of so many wonders even in difficult times. If you are looking for a way to visit Rome but need to cut back on some expenses don’t cut back on seeing the sites, but maybe try some of the less expensive but great meals offered in Rome. Pizza is as famous as Rome itself. Some recommendations of great pizzas around Rome -most offer many other dishes at good prices are listed in the article attached. It is fast if you are on the run to get as many sites in as possible, and yet you can experience the flavors of Italy. Some have pizza with wild mushrooms, or asparagus, maybe one with pesto or eggplant. They are a whole meal and a great alternative to some of the more touristy restaurants found around Rome. Many Pizzerias offer other meals like risotto balls, fried mozzarella, fried baccala (salted cod). The ultimate fast food!
Pizza to go Slice and easy
By Alessandro Mirra march 2009
“One of the best things that Rome has to offer visitors in search of a quick and satisfying snack is takeaway pizza or pizza al taglio. You just go in and choose the amount of pizza you want by weight or by price. There are an almost infinite variety of toppings to suit all tastes and most places will offer a wide range of other hot foodstuffs such as suppli (balls of risotto with tomato sauce bound together by eggs around a piece of mozzarella, the whole surrounded by breadcrumbs and then fried) filletti di baccalà (salt cod in batter) or potato crocchette.
The city is packed with takeaway pizza stores that provide office workers, students and tourists a cheap, quick alternative to traditional restaurants or imported fast food outlets. One of the most famous is Lo Zozzone, tucked away down the Via del Teatro Pace behind piazza Navona. Zozzone’s pizza is so go good you can often find members of the Senate from the nearby Palazzo Madama who have deserted the luxury parliamentary restaurants for a quick and tasty snack. Another popular place among pizza afficionados is Pizzarium in Via della Meloria (Metro Cipro). This gourmet takeaway outlet not far from the Vatican Museums is run by celebrated pizza chef Gabriele Bonci, who combines slow-rise dough made from special flours with fresh, seasonal toppings like wild asparagus, or pesto and aubergine. You’ll also find super suppli and a wide range of imported beers to wash down your lunch. Antico Forno Roscioli in Via dei Chiavari 34 (Campo dei Fiori) is one of the oldest pizza bakeries in Rome. The choice of toppings is perhaps not as vast as in other places but the quality of the ingredients is unparalleled and the pizza itself is second to none. Near Piazza San Silvestro is Pecora Pazza (Via della Mercede 18). Despite fierce competition from the mass-market “Spizzico” pizza joint in Via del Corso, this place is always packed.
To finish on a sweet note, Laboratorio Pasticceria Lambiase, better-known as “Il Sorchettaro”, is a superb bakery store at Via Cernaia 49/a (not far from Porta Pia) famous for its deadly luscious pastries. Pride of place goes to the Sorchetta doppio schizo a freshly-baked croissant covered with whipped cream and melted chocolate. But they also sell a vast array of pizza fresh from the oven. Open until late, it’s the perfect spot for a tasty treat after a night on the town.”
Source: http://romepost.it