Pan di pizza Carasau

INFORMATIONS
* 2 people
* 540 calories per serving
* Difficulty easy
* Ready in 45 minutes
* Can be prepared in advance
* You can eat out

INGREDIENTS
* 2 sheets of bread Carasau
* 1 yellow pepper
* 1 red onion
* 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* Salt
* 8 basil leaves, plus some for garnish
* 200 ml vegetable broth
* 2 tablespoons tomato paste
* 200 g tomatoes type Pachino
* 8 black olives
* 2 cloves fresh garlic
* 2 anchovy fillets
* 150 g mozzarella cheese
* Oregano
* Pepper

PREPARATION
Break into 4 slices of bread and reassemble them into a large round plate overlapping slightly.
Wash the peppers, cut, remove stem, seeds, and cut the white parts lists a couple of inches wide, from which derive the square pieces.
Peel the onion, slice rather thick and cut each slice into 4 pieces to get the square.
Put in a frying peppers, onions and half oil.
Skip the vegetables over a high flame for a few minutes, then lower the heat, add a pinch of salt, basil leaves washed well, a ladle of broth, cover and cook for 10 minutes over medium heat, stirring quite often with a wooden spoon.
When cooked, uncover, raise the heat and cook several minutes until the peppers are not well toasted. Add the tomato puree, mix well and put out the fire.
Wash the tomatoes, cut in half and put them in a large mixing bowl along with olives, pitted and chopped, garlic cloves peeled and halved, drained anchovy fillets, chopped and damp, the mozzarella.
Drizzle with remaining oil, a pinch of salt and a handful of oregano.
Stir, then add peppers and onions.
Arrange the salad on bread Carasau season with a drizzle of raw oil, a generous grinding of pepper, garnish with basil leaves and serve.

Vegetarian option
It ‘simply omit the anchovies.

This article courtesy of “Lo Spicchio d’aglio” .

Italian Pasta Salad Secrets

Summer is the best season for Pasta Salad: with the right mix you can cook a balanced meal that has everything you like: pasta, vegetabables, cheese, ham and so on! But in order to achieve a good Pasta Salad you have to follow some rules and procedures. Let’s see how can you make an awesome pasta salad!

Choose the right kind of Pasta

It may sound obvious but if you are starting up your cooking career you should not underestimate this first step! There are many kinds of pasta (refer to this wikipedia page for a complete reference)
but in order to attain good results, you should stick do shaped pasta or kinds of pasta that can be “singled out“, for example avoid spaghetti and the like.
Why? Because we want to avoid stickyness which would cause lumps of pasta. Some of the best kind of pasta to start with are:

Cooking the pasta salad

BE warned: you need at least 4 hours using this method.

Some final words about the ingredients

You could experiment a lot, but you could obtains good results with mozzarella cheese, fresh vegetables and sliced ham. Some leaves of basil with tomatoes will give you a really fresh taste.

Most importantly, you need an high quality kind of pasta in order to get an awesome italian pasta salad: visit cybercucina if you wanna buy some excellent kind of pasta!

Have a nice meal!

original text and image courtesy of: www.lospicchiodaglio.it

The history of pizza

The pizza has origin in the past; some historians that this food was originated during the etruscan civilization, with shapes and ingredients extremely different from today. The pizza was born as a simple food for poor people which needed basic components: flour, oil, salt and yeast.

The true pizza was born around 1600: there was an impending need to improve the taste and palability of the bread; In the beginning it was simple dough bread cooked in ovens with the addition of garlic, lard and salt. There was also a “deluxe” version with cheese and basil.

Pizza Margherita

 

 

In 1889 there was an important innovation: the introduction of mozzarella cheese over the pizza. A Pizzamaker in Napoli called “Raffaele Esposito” and his wife prepared the pizza with the mozzarella cheese in order to please the Queen of Italy, Margherita, Wife of Umberto I.

The Queen was intrigued by this so called “pizza” that was probably referred by some writer or artist. But she could not go to a restaurant outside the court, so the restaurant was brought to her.

The winning pizza mixed tomato, cheese and basil, which was equally good tasting and matched perfectly the colors of the italian flag.

Margherita, the most famous pizza

This is how the “margherita” become the most famous pizza in italy and in the rest of the world, even though it was already known inside the most popular suburbs of napoli. But, hey, the wife of a monarch can’t be wrong, can she?

As of today most hard-core fanatics of pizza in Napoli recognize only two kinds of pizza: “margherita” and “napoletana” which is essentially made with tomato and anchovies (but no cheese).

By the way, i’m on vacation till the 2nd of January, so i wish you all a nice 2009!