Today we are having a dinner courtesy of Calagrana, delivered to our door. A speciality of the Venetian region, and specifically to Venice. Baccalà is salt cod. Reconstituted it is a speciality of many regions. This one, with potatoes, is yummy.

We opted out of the wine pairing on my personal sommeliers recommendation 🙂 The dinner was really good and I’m not a big fan of Baccalà.
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Phrase…”ora di cena. mangiamo” English…”time for dinner. Let’s eat”. Pronounced…ora dee chayna. Mahn-gee-ahm-oh.
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Stay safe…springtime is coming! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

We bought the Corriere della Sera and the Corriere del Umbria at the Tabac this week. I will tell you we buy the newspaper because we need the newspaper for other uses, after it’s been read. Like cleaning out the stufa, or under the cat dishes, or for making a fire…Luther reads it online anyway. And I sometimes read the Umbria version.

So this week there was a whole section on cooking. I love cooking as everyone knows and so I read it avidly…if slowly. I am actually at a B2 level of Cooking Italian. I can normally read recipes and articles about cooking very easily.

I had already thawed a package of coniglio for dinner. That’s rabbit for those who want to know. And there was a recipe for it in this newspaper. I read through the ingredients and saw I had them all. I decided to make it for dinner tonight. One of the ingredients was a cup of coffee… I was intrigued, what an interesting thing to have in the dish. But when I read through the recipe instructions there was no mention of the “cup of coffee” being added. I needed a second opinion. Luther read it through and between he and I we figured out the “cup of coffee” was a “measurement amount” of an ingredient, not an actual ingredient.

This is really quite normal. They don’t use cups and teaspoons and tablespoons here. Most things are by weight so you need a scale. In addition to weights you will see a bicchiere of such and such, or a glass of it. And a cucchiaio of oregano – a spoonful. But I had never seen 1 tazza da caffe aghi di rosmarino. I thought they were two different things…a tazza di caffe, and the fronds of rosemary. But I never thought it was a coffee cup size amount of fronds of rosemary. Now in retrospect it is a funny misinterpretation on my part! You live and learn.

Here is the dish. It said to serve it with risotto con pesto. So I did. But this in itself is a major error on my part. An intentional error as I knew risotto is ALWAYS served as a primi. And alone as it should be. It is NEVER a side. The coniglio is served as a secondi. Never, ever together on the plate. We Americans are used to the meat, the veg, and the starch on one plate. But not in Italy! I’m sure the writer meant them to be 2 different piatti. We enjoyed both courses on our one plate. [recipe here]

Italian phrase. “Domani e venerdì” English “Tomorrow is Friday” pronounced, doe-mah-nee A ven-er-DEE.
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Stay safe everyone. Andrà tutto bene 🌈

The days are a lot longer now. Our terrace gets no sun at all in the winter. But as the sun moves along the horizon suddenly the pantry window starts getting sun just before sunset. Today I noticed it’s shining halfway down that wall. It is my method to monitor the progress of the lengthening days and the approaching spring. 🍀 Grateful.
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Tonight for dinner we had Spaghetti Carbonara. The traditional Roman recipe. There was no record of this recipe before 1950. It was first mentioned after the end of WWII. The American GIs had eggs! And they had bacon! No one else did. They shared with the Italians who had little to eat. And they’d bring them to the restaurants and give them to the chefs to use to make some pasta for them. The chefs came up with Spaghetti Carbonara. Anyway, that’s the story! Such an easy dish. Only guanciale or pancetta, egg yolks, grated pecorino cheese, black pepper and spaghetti.

Sentence. “la primavera sta arrivando!” – “Spring is coming!” Pronounced…La preema-vara stah are-riv-ahndo.

Umbria vaccinated 1,331 eighty year olds yesterday. We have begun. Stay safe everyone., 🌈

Luther subscribes to Doctor Wine, an Italian wine and food site. Often I will find, in my inbox, a recipe he has forwarded that he has decided I should make. Every now and then I decide to make one and yesterday I did. This one was called Busiate al pesto di pistacchio e salmone affumicato or Pasta with pistachio pesto and smoked salmon.

Busiate is a fat long shaped pasta. It is made by wrapping maccheroni around a stem of a plant called Busa which grows in Sicily. This makes it a long twist of pasta. The pasta is a special shape from Trapani province on the west coast. It is traditionally served with a pesto made of almonds, pecorino cheese, garlic and olive oil.

I didn’t have Busiate so I used a fat spaghetti noodle. I have since found I can get the Busiate from Eataly. I will probably order some. Here’s the finished product. It was very tasty.

If anyone wants to try it the recipe is in the pull down menu [Recipes] at the top of the page. Also at the bottom of this page.
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Italian sentence for today. “Ho mangiato bene!” In English, “I have eaten well!”. Pronounced — oh man-gee-ah-toe ben-ay! You can say this after you’ve eaten in a restaurant and it will make them happy.🙂
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Stay safe all my friends! 🌈

Busiate con pesto di pistacchi e salmone affumicato
Serves 2
250 grams Busiate or fat spaghetti (about 8 ounces)
200 grams pistachios shelled and peeled (7 ounces)
50 grams olive oil (1/4 cup)
Salt
100 grams smoked salmon (3.5 ounces)
50 grams pistachios chopped (1.75 ounces)
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
Olive oil
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Blend the pistachios with extra virgin olive oil and a little tepid water to obtain a soft cream. Adjust the salt. (I used an immersion blender to make the pesto.) Set aside.

Chop the smoked salmon, leaving 2 whole slices aside for decoration. Set aside.

Cook pasta in abundant, well salted water. Cook until barely al dente. Save a cup of the pasta water and put the drained pasta in a big roomy pan. Add pesto and chopped salmon. Toss over heat, adding some pasta water (not too much at first) to make a nice sauce in which to finish cooking the pasta. Add more water as necessary. When the water is absorbed and the sauce looks creamy, serve with the decorative salmon strips, the chopped pistachios and the grated lemon peel on top. Garnish with good olive oil.