ricotta and apple spaghetti.

On the farm I stayed at in Italy, I worked everyday from 8 until 12, eating a simple breakfast of bread + jam + fruit + tea in the morning, and coming home to a filling spaghetti dish for lunch.

Maria made ricotta and apple spaghetti a couple of times, and I loved it. She used olive oil from the farm and a variety of spices that neither of us could translate. Giuseppe loved putting paprika on it (well, everything really...), so I thought that I would recreate the dish using paprika instead of throwing random spices in.

I chopped up some apple (gala, I believe) while the spaghetti water boiled. Threw in salt (the more the better!), the spaghetti, and when the noodles were almost al dente, I tossed in the apple bits to boil a little. Strained everything, mixed in some ricotta with the spaghetti/apple bits, drizzled some olive oil and sprinkled on some paprika.




I promptly brought this to the studio to eat during lunch. It was really good! I think that it would have tasted a little stronger if I had used really good olive oil (or perhaps a very very small amount of garlic? no, onions!). The ricotta made the spaghetti just rich enough to be very filling. I'll have to try to make it with my own ricotta, now that I know how to make it (wait until I put up photos from my 21st birthday weekend...)!

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olive oil bread.

Ariel and Hannah bake bread all the time. After baking so many batches of biscotti, I decided that it's about time to try bread. I've always wanted to try, but I guess I never really got around to it.

So I tackled olive oil bread. On the farm, Maria and I made fives loaves together, so I knew what the dough should look like...she bakes bread all the time, so she didn't need to use a recipe. Which is great for me, really.

Pictured here, is my attempt.




It was fairly good! I think another 10 minutes in the oven would've made it pretty delicious. Because of the olive oil, it's kind of thick, I think. It probably could've used more salt. More bread-related updates to come...I haven't had a loaf that's good enough to call it a completely success yet.

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dinner #1: salad and roasted potatoes.

The same night as the granola-making, I also made dinner for Ariel and I. I wanted to experiment with some of the things Maria used to make on the farm.

First up was the salad. I threw some leaves in a bowl, and chopped up some tomatoes and feta cheese. A handful of mellow-tasting edamame went really nicely with the sharp feta.


For the dressing, I made something Maria used to make for almost every salad. Instead of just pouring olive oil on top of the leaves, she would put some in a metal bowl, toss in some chopped garlic, and let that cook. She took it off the heat right before the garlic was going to brown. I did the same (with less tasty olive oil, unfortunately), and added a little bit of pepper. It really adds flavor to the olive oil, enough so that you don't need balsamic vinegar or whatever other dressing you would usually add with olive oil. Now that I think about it, I bet adding some red hot pepper flakes would've give it more of a kick. Hmm, maybe next time.


For the main dish, I made roasted rosemary potatoes! Maria made this a couple of times, and I know it's nothing exotic, but I really hadn't thought about making it before. I sliced the potatoes as thin as I could, and put them in a bowl. After adding some of that olive oil concoction I made earlier, I drizzled even more olive oil and freshly chopped rosemary. I spread all of that onto a pan, crushed some sea salt on it, and put it in the oven. After a bit, I flipped over the potatoes so that both sides of the potatoes had a relatively roasted skin on it.


SO. GOOD. Ariel said it was the best batch of roasted potatoes she's ever had (win!). None of the garlic/rosemary/salt/pepper flavors were too strong; I hate it when one taste overpowers the others, it's kind of distracting. I really liked that the thickness of the potato slices were varied, so that you got the mush bites and the crunch bites all on one plate. x

spring break food part 2: italy (pescosolido).

After Paris, I flew to Italy. I got in late to Pisa airport, so I took a bus to Firenze and stayed with my friend Tori. I left relatively early the next morning for Rome, so I didn't really spend too much time with her (we caught up at dinner when I went back, to be discussed in the upcoming post).

On the way to the train station the next morning, I stopped by my dear old Il Forno bakery and the Mercato Centrale (daily fresh food market) to grab some breakfast. I ate my two bite-sized pastries, one sfoglie (my absolute favorite, although I like them without chocolate), and giant apple on the train. When I tasted the olive oil in the two little guys, I definitely felt some gastronomical nostalgia (why does that sound like a disease?).




So once I got to Rome, I took the metro to Anagnina and then hopped on a bus that took me to Sora (2 hours). Why? Well, I decided that since I was way too lazy to plan 3 weeks of spring break travels in Europe (woah, spoiled much? geez), I'd camp out in one place for a while. I perused www.workaway.info (kind of like wwoofing) and found an agriturismo in Pescosolido (total countryside, next to the Abruzzi National Park) that was willing to take me for 10 nights. In return for room and board, I'd have to work for 4.5 hours each day. Most of the work I did was farm-related (feeding, digging, planting, gathering), but there was also plenty of cleaning and dish washing to be done. Washing dishes after a meal for 18 is surprisingly not that terrible.

Maria did all the cooking. Her food was simple but very delicious and filling! I definitely took mental notes on everything I ate, and since then have tried my own variations. I didn't take too many photos, but here are some of my favorite things:

For breakfast, the volunteers got bread (that Maria baked) and jam/marmalade/jelly. Sometimes Maria made her own, and this one was legitimately the best jam of my life. I asked her what was in it, and she said pumpkin and sugar. That's it.


Here's the bread that Maria makes. I helped her make it once; I think we made 5 loaves. Here's a pitcher of the wine that Guiseppe (Maria's husband, 65, only speaks Italian...I mostly worked with him doing farm things) makes every year. It kind of tasted like a more fruity cider (as in, the alcoholic kind).



He also makes olive oil, from the olives in the groves. It had a VERY strong olive oil taste and was already slightly salty. It complimented the ricotta cheese that Maria would always make from the goats milk that I would bring in every morning from the barn (sounds romantic, doesn't it?).



Here's Giuseppe's olive oil with sprigs of Sicilian basil. I swear, I'm doing this at home. Next to it is a jar of peperoncino aka hot pepper, a favorite of Giuseppe's. He always stressed that everything he made was biologico and had no chemicals.



Aaaand the final photo? The baby goat (yes, from the farm) that the family ate for Easter, next to the fire it was roasted on.




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