This recipe was inspired by Maria Luisa Scolastra from Villa Roncalli (her book at page 358). My experience with recipes from Villa Roncalli; they don't work, also this one did not produce a sauce with the quantities indicated.
But it is a memorable dish.
Simple, but luxury. Fried eggs with truffles. Umbria is truffles area, the black truffle. It is sold as the whole mushroom, shredded or in different preparations. For this recipe, grated whole truffle is the best, but if in the fridge is only "carpaccio di tartuffo" or "Tartufella", just go for it.
well, not real olive leaves. This is a pasta in form of olive leaves and green from mixing some veggies in by the producer.
Umbria is famous for sausages. Not every village, every butcher has its own recipe. They are all too salty having been salt in old days the essential ingredient for preservation. I am still waiting for an innovative sausage :-).
It is winter and it is cold. Time for "Ribollita". This is a soup from beans and black cabbage, which can be recooked for several days and it gets always better. But attention, it must be brought first to a perfect consistency. And here everything can go wrong.
I always buy rice and grains like farro. But I seldom use them. My main carb has become bread, despite of liking pasta a lot. I never had a passion for "risotto", only some Basmati preparations are for my taste.
Now I was looking for weeks to my jars with whole grain rice and and organic "farro" (Spelt says Google Translator)
It is winter, time of "Zucche" (pumkin) and "cavolo nero" (black cabbage). This menu features a soup made of pumpkin and carots, scrambled egg with truffle cream and pan fried black cabbage.
the pumpkin is much softer than the carot, that left nice pices of carots in the soup after homogenizing the veggies. The soup was made slightly spicy with Hainan hot pepper sauce.
I did not cook this. It was a memorable lunch in Wuhan. Crabs, slightly spicy with cucumbers and spring onions. Accompanied by a specific vegetable that you can get only in Hubei province and only in winter. Instead of French Fries, deep fried Lotus roots, not healthier, but tastier :-)
I am not giving up! I try to produce pasta at home with high quality flours, fresh eggs and delicious fillings.
This time it worked out. The pasta was 60% De Cecco hard wheat semola and 50% Janas Senatore Capelli. The dough was perfect.
Ricotta is a specific soft and fresh cheese that can be obtained from milk of cows, sheeps and goats (and buffaloes!). I prefer goat or sheep ricotta because of their aromatic taste.
This dish I made from pasta I prepared myself. In the pasta dough was a generous amount of truffle paste. More about hand made pasta in other posts, it is normally simply not worthwhile the effort.
I am living near Bolsena lake an ancient crater, ones filled with Lava, now with water. And in this water, there are many tasty fish
The most appreciated of this is the Coregone also callled "lavarello". It originates from the North of Europe, but it feels perfectly fine in the Lake Bolsena's relatively cold water.
Yesterday I came about the excellent piece from Maria Cross regarding the bullshit which is told about raw food (https://medium.com/@mariacross/raw-versus-cooked-which-diet-is-the-most-nutritious-5e7da97b78f4). I had to do with raw food fanatics in my life.