Thanks to both for the explanation. That makes sense since the cook in the novel makes crumbles from it and then adds it into some food.
Even with Google I still am not sure what vini d’autore are. Maybe a brand from the Lazio (a region)? One Italian trader translates it as “Author Wines” which seems nonsense to me.
Peter, this brand came new also to me, 'nuff said.
(for contextualising: my neighborhood bar [1] is also the best wine shop (enoteca) in the entire Portici-Ercolano aerea)
[1] note carefully that in Italy “bar” means “cafe” in UK/US, albeit indeed sells also shots, but their staple IS the coffee
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Cause I am making it right now:
You need:
And a pan.
Cut the onions and the garlic and soften them up in the pan with oil and herbs. Add the tomato(es/ can) until it reduces a bit. Crack the egg(s). Wait until the white is cooked.
Serve with fresh bread, rice, couscous, …
ENJOY!
It’s been a while… Anyway new recipe drooop for this summer!
Will feed: some hungry bellies. How many? Enough (she shruged)
You need:
And a bowl and a knife.
Prepare some couscous according to the package. (if you use grits/polenta, try to make it as thick as possible)
Cut your vegetables in bite-sized chunks and add to bowl.
Chop the herbs and add to bowl. (I mash them in a pile and use the scissors to cut it 
- if you have a food processor, that’s even easier)
Add some olive oil.
Add some lemon juice.
Add some ras-el-hanout (to your spice tolerance).
Mix.
When the couscous is cooled, add to the bowl.
Taste and adjust.
Rest in the fridge.
Best served about 15/30min after making it.
Raisins are a nice addition. I’m eating mine with also some Halloumi.
(My bowl is waiting for me in the fridge )
I bought some Saffron when I was in Spain and it was so good making just plain rice with it.
I used an instapot, and I’d use about 100 mg of saffron threads. I took half and ground them up (should have used mortar and pestle but I didn’t have it, so I just used a plastic spoon to crunch them in a ceramic bowl). Then I poured some hot water in the bowl and tossed in the other 50 mg of saffron threads whole.
While that was steeping, I cut up an onion and sauteed it in the instapot with some olive oil. I rinsed some rice and once the onions were browning, I threw in the rice to sautee it for a second. Then I poured the saffron water into a measuring cup (it’s very oily) and added more water to make up the amount I needed for the rice (rinsing the bowl every now and then). I then added salt and used the rice cooker setting on the instapot.
It’s a simple recipe, just saffron and onion, but it’s so good. at first I was putting egg or tuna on it (seafood with saffron rice is one version of paella), but the rice was so good I just ate it on its own a couple of times.
OK, I have gotten my key lime pie to a place I really like, and as promised in the “one good thing” thread, I’ll share. It’s a baked pie, so no worries about eating raw eggs. And it’s less sweet than most recipes, which use a lot of sweetened condensed milk. Whipped egg whites replace the milk admirably. The texture is less custardy and more fluffy than a traditional pie, but it’s tart and smooth and delightful.
Regular limes will not do for this recipe. You need key limes, and if you can’t find them, a 50/50 mix of regular limes and lemons is an OK (although not great) substitute.
Crust:
Ingredients
8-10 sheets of graham crackers, blended fine.
1/2 cup- 1 cup crushed pecans. Do not overprocess these; you want them to be nutty bits, not powder.
1/2 cup brown or light brown sugar
pinch of coarse sea salt
8-10 tbsp unsalted butter.
Mix the dry ingredients together well, then add the melted butter in and mix until the mixture is all damp with butter. Press it into a pie pan (a large, deep one-- if you have small shallow pie pans, you might be able to make 2 from this recipe) and use a spoon or a glass to smoosh it into the corners and up the sides. It will shrink down the sides when you bake it, so make sure it’s thick at the top edges of the pan. Bake the crust at 350 for 8-10 minutes, then cool it in the fridge.
Filling:
Ingredients
A lot of key limes. We buy them in little bags and 2 bags is the right amount.
6 Eggs
1 or 2 14 oz cans sweetened condensed milk depending on how sweet you want your pie
1.) Zest key limes to get 1 TBSP fine zest. Do this first-- it’s impossible to zest limes that have already been juiced.
2.) Juice limes-- you need 1 cup juice.
3.) Separate eggs. Beat the yolks until pale and frothy, 2-3 minutes.
4.) Add condensed milk to the yolks. I like to use one and a half cans and Tom puts the leftover in his coffee. But if you like your pie very tart, you can use one can (probably you should reduce the egg yolks to 4 in this case). Beat for a minute, then add zest and juice and beat again.
5.) Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Be careful-- if you overbeat them they’ll get curdy. If you used one can of milk, add one can’s worth of beaten whites to the filling and gently fold it in. If you used a can and a half of milk, add a half a can’s worth of beaten whites and gently fold it in. Gently folding with a rubber spatula is imperative here. Do not mix them in. Fold super gently until it’s all integrated. You’ll have leftover egg whites.
6.) Pour into cooled pie crust and bake for 20 minutes or so at 350. You want the center of the pie to be set, so depending on your oven it might take a little longer.
7.) Chill for a few hours and eat.
Yessss! Gonna try to make this next week, while the weather still calls for sweet and fresh treats
OK, @Pebblerubble asked for a Misir Wot recipe, so here’s mine. Misir Wot (or Wat, although all the local places here spell it Wot) is a spicy Ethiopian red lentil dish that is one of my favorite comfort foods.
MW should be eaten with injera, which is an Ethiopian crepe-like flatbread with a very sour, funky taste from the grain it’s made of (teff) and a spongy texture. I’ve never made my own injera-- I just buy it from a local restaurant. It’s fantastic.
You need:
red lentils
onion
garlic
chicken or vegetable broth
tomatoes
tomato paste
and berbere. You can make your own from an online recipe, or buy it at a fancy grocery story in the spice aisle, or wheedle some from a local restaurant if you’re a good customer.
and a fat. Traditional MW uses niter kibbeh, which is a spiced clarified butter which is delicious but so, so bad for you and hard to find, although you can find a recipe and make it. Because I have a rule that I only use butter in baking cakes, I use olive oil instead, which is why my MW is not as rich as what you’d get in a restaurant.
As to amounts: go with what feels right. We like our MW very oniony and very garlicky, and we make huge pots of it. You may like it thicker or in a thinner sauce, or you may find the berbere too spicy and use less than we do. So this is a recipe you should make according to your own tastes.
Directions:
Boil your lentils until they’re just a little firm.
Chop your onion(s) finely and slowly cook them in your niter kibbeh or your olive oil until they’re caramelized.
Chop your garlic (we use A LOT) finely and cook it with more fat. Add in tomato paste, some chopped fresh tomatoes (again, amounts of this depend on how many cups of lentils you’re cooking, but it should be pretty tomato-y), and the berbere. A good rule of thumb is about 1Tbsp of berbere per cup of lentils. Cook it until it looks and tastes good (although it should taste STRONG here before you thin it), then thin it with your broth until it’s the consistency you like.
Mix the lentils, onions, and tomato-garlic mixture together in your pot or pan and cook until it’s the consistency you like, adding more fat or broth as needed.
Eat!
**Note: This freezes really well, so we make giant pots of it and freeze it and eat it for weeks. I have also been heretical enough to occasionally make it with ground turkey, which would surely horrify an Ethiopian chef, but if you want something meatier, it’s really good.
Thank you very much! It is by far not complicated (which I feared). Except if I make the Berbere spice mix and/or the spiced clear butter myself. But I’ll probably buy that from an Afro shop or use olive oil like you. Btw Indians have a clear butter, too. They call it Ghee (but it is un-spiced afaik.)
I’m pretty sure I will cook this recipe soon 
Edit: I will probably try Turkish flat bread as a supplement.
Bumping this thread, because I am having Ratatouille Toasty with Swiss Cheese slices and I am in heaven!
That sounds not so tasty, because how does the vegetable taste together with the cheese toast?
It really taste heavenly, I can assure you.
The crunch from the toasted bread is music to my ears, sending goosebumps all over my skin. The slight burnt taste of the unfortunate crumbs pressed too long against the oiled pan teasing your tongue for the wonders of what’s between the yeasty slices.
Pulling the bite, you get the milky and soft Swiss cheese stringing, breaking only by the extended stretch. There is a needed timing with it: break it too late and it will have cooled a but too much, too early and it may burn your lips. The choice of cheese is essential: a cheese with too strong taste will overpower the sweet juiciness of the stew. That’s why Swiss slices (or Emmental shredded, both together is best). It’s there to give the texture and slightly bitterness, but not too much that it takes over the dish.
Chunks of vegetables, the leftover from the original stew, will escape its sandwich prison, melting softly on your tongue, each vegetable with its own unique flavour, playing against the other, dancing with each other until they are gone, swallowed. If you did not cook the bell pepper fully (I sometimes don’t because I’m lazy), maybe you’ll get some extra snaps from biting into one. And I can’t forget the tomato sauce, which cooked all the vegetables and seasoned to perfection (with feelings).
Each part is great on its own, but the sum makes for a transcending experience.
If you don’t like Ratatouille or Toasties that are not just bread and cheese, you won’t like this
That sounds much more delicious than the taste in my mind after reading about the meal. Btw I like Ratatoullie and also cheese including Emmentaler and Swiss.
A Ragù alla Bolognese can be made quickly (which still is a fine dish!) or slowly. That’s two totally different things; the quick one relies on the right spices while the slow one uses few but good ingredients and takes a few hours to cook the taste out of them. For the quick one you can’t tell the difference between “real” and vegan minced meat while for the slow one you’ll need “real” meat, the better the better.
The recipe for the slow version that I use is in German: Ragù alla Bolognese. The recipe is at the very bottom, it’s very compact and completely relies on its ingredients. If you want to try it and struggle with the automatic translation, make noise. The recipe says “two hours”, I make that three at least to get the desired result - maybe I should use better meat and/or a better pot.
if you can’t find an recipe for ragù in English, at least try to use proper language (that is, in Italian…) recipes…
BTW, tortellini al ragù IS the staple of the feast of the leftist parties in Italy… (look up “festa de L’ Unità”, not only on the 'pedia)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Lol it’s been a while…
And I will definitely piss a ton of people with it but…
It’s delicious!
(as introduced to the Goncharov Girlies and now haunts everyone)
The Canon wants that this pizza was part of the Pizzeria Shoot-out scene in the Goncharov (1973) “movie”.
You’ll need:
Build in the order listed. Put into oven following the dough’s instructions.
Bonus point if you: Order a margarita pizza, whip out the cans at the table and add them in front of the horrified faces of the staff.
Jocking aside, it does taste quite nice. Salty from the tuna, sweet with the tomato, tangy from… well, the tangerine…
From Naples ('nuff said) I’m mildly perplexed about this recipe… and from the picture, looks more like a “trancio” than a pizza.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
I, unfortunately, can’t make the thin crusted dough…
Come on, in water? On a pizza?
well as in, not the can where the tuna is in oil
