This is the kind of authentic Italian recipes I love: few good quality ingredients and simplicity 🙂

It’s a typical recipe of Lucania, an area mostly part of Basilicata region, and the fact I managed to find also the Pecorino of Moliterno made it really authentic 🙂

But the main ingredient is the peperone crusco, a very particular ingredient: it’s a type of sweet pepper typical of that area, which is dried, and to make it crunchy (“crusco“) you have to fry it for very few seconds (5-10 seconds, no more, otherwise it burns and gets bitter) in oil. But in this case I found some sold already “cruschi”.

It can be eaten as a snack, or it can enrich a lot of recipes, simply crumbled or you can make a powder from it.

Then the pasta: usually homemade pasta is used, especially cavatelli or strascinati…

What a great way to use up leftover Rice and leftover Chicken! Add your favorite salsa and cheese and you have a meal. I had bought a rotisserie chicken and saved one of the breasts. I save 1 cup of the Cilantro Lime Rice from yesterdays post. This is ready in no time and should make three delicious Burritos. This recipe is compliments from my husband.

Ingredients

Place the cooked and diced chicken

into a small frying pan.

Add the taco seasoning to the chicken.

Toss the chicken and seasoning together.

Add the water and cook over medium

heat just until the cooked chicken is hot.

While the chicken heats up, place

the rice in the microwave until hot.

Lay a large tortilla flat.

Place 1/3rd of the hot chicken on

the bottom third of the tortilla.

Place 1/3rd of the hot rice

on top of the chicken.

Quickly add…

Pork is something that I have started eating a lot more, ever since I moved to the US for my higher studies. It can be prepared in many ways like barbecue, slow cooking, pan frying and baking. Over the last few years, I have learnt how to cook pork chops, carnitas, pork butt (shoulder), ribs and the pork loin. In the US, especially in Texas, pork is a widely used and popular protein. In this recipe I have used the whole pork loin and coupled it with a beetroot and cream cheese sauce. Recently, I have grown a fondness for Beetroot. As a kid, I wasn’t a big fan of this root vegetable but because of it’s health benefits and that ‘everything on your plate must be eaten’ teaching I grew up with, I had to eat it. The pork loin (boneless) is rubbed with salt, pepper, sumac, minced garlic…

Another dish that can be eaten warm or cold, is Indonesian shredded spicy chicken. Every weekend I try to make big quantity dishes so that I can have them for a few days, especially now that I don’t have much time to cook during the day. I paired this dish with my Tempe Orek (Indonesian crisp sweet&sour Tempe), and it felt just like home. Because I made it in such a big quantity, feel free to adjust according to your servings. Hope you like this recipe and happy cooking!Total time: 1-1.5 hour

Serving: 4-8

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INGREDIENTS

1.6 kg              chicken breast (about 8 chicken breasts)

To fry and blend

6                      big chilies

3                      small chilies

4                      shallot

3      …