BARS – PERUGINA – www.nataliziocafe.com

I don’t know why I’ve decided to finally advertise this brand of chocolate bar. (Careful because some of them are just really for baking. I believe you can eat this one.) Anyway, Perugina is the Italian National Brand of Chocolate Bar, like Hershey’s or Nestle’s (used to be or still is, I’m not entirely sure); and though European companies compete throughout the world as if they were all from one country, it seems that, Italian confectionary goods never get picked up by anyone except ourselves. I think Perugina is a terrific brand of cholate bars and I am always hoping that they become popular in America. But, sadly, they never do.

If they had a US commercial, I would imagine that the golden winged horse/lion that was my friend growing up for a while, flies across a pastel and gold-laced sky, into a big vat of chocolate and comes out again disappeared as a big chocolate kiss, which is the other famous product, a Baci (pronounced bah-chee) chocolate, which means a chocolate kiss, like Hershey’s does: except we have our own. Although I know Hershey’s chocolate kisses are pretty important in Italy as well.

So much for peddling candy chocolate.

I wrote a book about growing up around the memory of candy bars, called The Candy Bar and I published it a few years ago and haven’t looked at it since then and for the life of me, I cannot remember if I remembered to put together a chapter about Perugina Bars. As I recall for myself and I don’t ever feel much like looking up my manuscript pdf because I have to many gripes about forgetting things to enter into the book over several years done and finished, I did not say enough or possibly even anything about Perugina except for the chocolate kisses part and that I had always been sorry that, they were not popular throughout the world. Then I went on to talk about the disappointments about Italian commerce. So I guess I did recall some topic but not well enough to the moment of regrets, to say that, when international competition just counts you out for some reason, it’s like having never been in a running race at all and having to stay at home eating your own homemade chocolate. I wish I had said that that way. But that was the point. (The book is available on Amazon by searching my name and the title, The Candy Bar. I’m Patricia Spencer. I don’t know if I ever say that on this blog. Maybe I should. My facebook page now says Patricia Morgan-Jones. So sorry about that. But that’s all true now.)

BARS – PERUGINA – www.nataliziocafe.com

Tiramisu Cake

maroscooking's avatarMaroscooking

Many people are familiar with the delicious Italian dessert Tiramisu.  This recipe from blogger Sabine’s blog Also All the Crumbs Please transforms the classic dessert into a decadent cake.  The recipe calls for a lot of mascarpone cream, over 2 lbs, but it is well worth it!  I love this food blog because it is very detailed and technical in its directions which is so important when you are baking.  She also has beautiful photographs and video which are exceptionally helpful, along with notes and details about her recipe.  I shared this dessert for a dinner party.  I made the cakes the day before and frosted the cake the day of my dinner party.  To flavor my mascarpone frosting, I used 2 tablespoons of espresso powder rather than brewed coffee.  I dissolved in in the cream before adding it to the whipped mascarpone as I wanted to ensure my frosting…

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ORGANIC CHICKEN TENDERS WRAPPED IN CRISPY PANKO CRUMBS SEASONED WITH BASIL AND TOPPED WITH BABY BELLA MUSHROOMS & GREEN ONIONS IN A SAUCE OF MARSALA WINE – BASIL PESTO – GOLDEN RAISINS

Celia Hales's avatarTHE MEDITERRANEAN MICROWAVE

For 4:

–6 organic chicken tenderloins

–panko crumbs (crispy, plain, packaged, one-third cup)

–basil (dried, 1 teaspoon, bottled)

–baby bella mushrooms (chopped, fresh, 3 or 4)

–green onions (3 stalks, chopped, fresh)

–marsala wine (cooking wine, one-quarter cup)

–basil pesto (bottled, 2 tablespoons)

–golden raisins (one-quarter cup, packaged)

–salt and pepper

–olive oil

1 – Place the basil pesto in a small mixing bowl.  Add marsala wine slowly, stirring constantly.  Then pour sauce into a covered baking dish.  Add raisins.  Stir.  Microwave on high for 3 minutes.

2 – Place the chicken in a plastic bag.  Season with salt, pepper, and basil.  Add olive oil to coat.  Pour in panko breadcrumbs.  Shake well.  Then place chicken in the sauce.  Top with mushrooms and green onions.  Finish with a few drops of olive oil.

3 – Microwave on high for 7 and one-half minutes.  When finished, test a center piece for…

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A Non-Recipe Recipe with Ricotta

Wow, you could spend all day planning an appetizers tray alongside of this!

My Home Food, That's Amore's avatarFrascati Cooking...... That's Amore

Some recipes don’t call for much work.  This is one of them.

Avail yourselves of the best quality ricotta you can find – preferably ewe’s milk ricotta as opposed to cow’s  milk – and press it firmly into a baking dish.

Bake in a hot oven (200 degrees Celsius, shall we say?) until it ‘sets’, until it forms a golden crust.  This can take anything between 20 and 40 minutes depending on the amount of ricotta and the temperamental variations of any home oven.

Once it is out of the oven, drizzle some olive oil all over the surface and add generous amounts of black pepper.

Serve.

Next time you are asked to contribute something for a potluck dinner, send grateful thoughts my way as other guests dig into this ricotta and utter exclamations of pleasure.  Ah the delights of simplicity !

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Ramadan Iftar Recipes | Step by Step | Recipe52.com

And so, again from before, which is below this post: Iftar is the evening meal during ramadan, every evening made and served after the last evening prayers; and a few definition of terms that are archaic to English usage.

aloo = potatoes; tikka = meat cutlet; paratha = unleavened bread fried on a griddle; chapli = minced meat + spices; seekh = same as chapli but shaped in cylinders; shami = minced meat with ground chickpeas; keema = ground meat, stewed or curry fried with peas or potatoes

 

Ramadan Iftar Recipes | Step by Step | Recipe52.com

Ramadan Iftar Salad Recipes | Recipe52.com

Ramadan began May 5th and ends June 4th this year. Since the food for this holiday is always interesting and international, I thought I would re-publish what I have found in my email, this being interesting to me.

But I did a little research for the foreign terms in a couple of recipes, particularly the Dahi Phulki Salad. Just for general information, since, I didn’t know: phulki is also known as besan, which is also known as gram flour, which turns out to be chickpea flour. And papri, is sometimes spelled papdi and is a flour biscuit, usually referring to a thin crisp wheat biscuit, but it could also be a thin crisp white flour & oil biscuit. I couldn’t find more on it.

Finally, Iftar is the evening meal which breaks the daily Ramadan fast after the evening prayer. Muslims follow a lunar calendar for part of their religious devotion and in the month of Ramadan which changes annually in a counter-calendar rotation (as for instance, next year it will begin in April and last year it began in June and so on); I believe this might even date back to the Egyptian pagan custom of sun and moon worship, so it is an unbroken cultural as well as a religious tradition, in which, the prayers are no longer to pagan gods, but remain in respect of the ancient calendar traditions and customs. It is a religious fast month; the outside world tends not to know a great deal about the actual practice of the holiday, so I also will not pretend to know about it too well.

 

Ramadan Iftar Salad Recipes | Recipe52.com