Latest news with #Parmigiano-Reggiano
Los Angeles Times
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Alba's Spaghetti al Limone
Print Recipe Print Recipe June 4, 2025 This spaghetti al limone is for lovers. Start the sauce by browning butter with crushed garlic — just until it smells like sweet hazelnuts — then add lots of lemon juice and zest and a showering of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Adam Leonti, the chef of Alba in Hollywood, calls this dish made for two 'date-night spaghetti.' Video: Watch Adam Leonti make his lemony spaghetti 1 Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. 2 In a large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat with the crushed garlic and gently brown the butter until it smells sweet like hazelnuts, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and moving quickly add the lemon juice, zest, parsley, black pepper and espelette to the butter. The lemon juice will stop the butter from continuing to brown. Set the pan aside. 3 Cook the spaghetti: Bring the pot back to full boil. Cook the pasta until al dente, approximately 9 minutes (read instructions on box for individual pasta makers' times). When the pasta has been cooked, remove from the water with tongs, reserving the cooking water, and place the spaghetti in the reserved limone-butter pan, with the addition of a 1/2 cup of pasta water. 4 Return the sauté pan with the sauce, pasta and addition of pasta water to medium heat. Reduce the sauce with the spaghetti in the pan. When the spaghetti and sauce begin to look thick and creamy, about 5 minutes, add the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Turn off the heat and season with salt to taste. Serve immediately.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
How County Cork in Ireland became a supreme food destination
Across County Cork's wide and quiet expanse of gently rolling hills and craggy coastline, a culinary renaissance is unfolding, led by dairy farmers, foragers, fish smokers, and chefs. Here, Ireland's soul and story are best understood on the plate. Long overlooked on Europe's gastronomic map, Ireland is emerging as a top culinary destination—nowhere more so than in this rugged southwestern corner. County Cork's unique microclimate and creative community has served as fertile ground for culinary invention; and the hills are green nearly all year and shores are laden with seaweed superfoods. You'll find Michelin-starred restaurants hiding in villages of just a few hundred people, farmers crafting new kinds of cheese, and wild foragers bringing the native plants of Ireland back to palates. More than just boiled potatoes, beef stew, and fish and chips, diners can find dishes like Rossmore oysters with strawberry vinegar granita; hawthorn shoot salad; cold-smoked, wild-caught salmon; and soda bread made with sea truffle (dillisk). In County Cork, from the east to the west, ancient Irish food traditions are converging with global influences, wild food, and practiced sustainability, and the story of contemporary Irish cuisine is alive and ongoing. To understand the culinary present in County Cork, you must first understand the scars of Ireland's past. 'A country's food history is intimately connected to its political history,' says Kate McCabe, co-founder and creative director of Bog & Thunder, a tour company that crafts bespoke trips throughout Ireland centered around meeting its artisans and producers. Ireland's food story is entangled in its colonial occupation. As Britain's first colony, Ireland's natural bounty, like butter, beef, and dairy, was exported to England, while the native Irish faced hunger and dispossession. Focused on subsistence farming and forced to use their best product to pay landlords. Despite having high-quality produce and dairy, it wasn't available to the Irish. Max Sussman, culinary director and co-founder of Bog & Thunder, estimates Ireland's culinary experimentation didn't start playing catch-up until the post-war period, continuing through modernization, independence, and European Union investment. This, combined with re-population—Ireland only reached pre-famine numbers in 2021—are contributing factors to a modern culinary scene that's still relatively young. 'We're at this incredible point in time,' says Suzanne Burns, leader of Kinsale Food Tours, where guests forage for seaweed and learn about Ireland's forgotten edibles—wild gorse, dandelion, hawthorn, and sea lettuce. Today, Burns says Ireland's food is a trifecta of 'really good traditional food that has embraced fusion food and wild food.' The terroir, soil, climate, and land play a part, but so too does the growing population, Burns says, 'and they can play.' Neighboring countries' food traditions often have rigid defining rules, like Italy's Parmigiano-Reggiano or France's baguette, for example. But Burns says, 'Here people are freestyling.' (A pub-lover's guide to Cork, from craft cocktails to fireside pints) That sense of play is at the heart of some of Cork's most renowned food products. Fingal Ferguson, a cheesemaker at West Cork's Gubbeen Cheese, describes the far side of the county, where his parents landed in the 1970s, as experimental and collaborative. 'It was this bunch of eccentric West Cork hippies,' says Ferguson, laughing. 'They were swapping rennet, helping each other make molds.' By the 1980s, Ferguson estimates that 80 percent of Ireland's artisan food producers were located in West Cork, specifically. Now, a generation later, those early experiments in making cheese have resulted in Gubbeen's quintessentially Irish semi-soft cheese served on cheese boards in top restaurants and sold at Cork's English Market. That success has allowed the farm and business to continue to play with their food, experimenting with Spanish-style curing and resulting in a line of chorizo, dry-cured bacon, salami, and hot-smoked meats. The county's bountiful natural resources provided ample ingredients to experiment with. Cork County is vast and wide—flatter in the east, ideal for crops; rolling grassy hills in the west, good for grazing livestock. The Atlantic wraps the peninsula in a mild oceanic climate all year. Rain is frequent and grass is luscious almost year-round, resulting in a long outdoor growing and grazing season. Favored by nature, the grass is rich in carotene, what leads to the shock of yellow characteristic of Irish butter and a flavor so recognizable chefs can identify its terroir by taste. Fern Allen, daughter of Ireland's celebrated culinary matriarch, Myrtle Allen, says the country house hotel and restaurant, Ballymaloe House, was the original farm-to-table before the phrase became a movement. When Myrtle Allen began cooking simple, seasonal meals in the 1960s with products from her own farm, writing a new menu each day, it was seen as amateurish. The word 'local' was an insult, inferior to ingredients from abroad, says Darina Allen, daughter-in-law to Myrtle and founder of Ballymaloe Cookery School. A woman running a restaurant out of her home was a radical act. Yet Myrtle Allen's boldness earned her top ratings in food guides, and she became the first female chef in Ireland to win a Michelin star. She went on to co-found the Euro-Toques European Chefs Association, an organization that amplifies the voices of small European producers and farmers who are prioritizing quality, taste, and European culinary heritage. Myrtle Allen put Irish produce and farmhouse meals on the global stage, and after came an ever-growing list of Irish culinary innovators. Bog & Thunder's McCabe says, 'Some of the most exciting food, I think, in Ireland right now is made by immigrant chefs.' In the West Cork village of Baltimore, Turkish-born chef Ahmet Dede has garnered two-Michelin stars for his restaurant, dede. In the small village of Ballydehob, population 200, chef Rob Krawczyk opened Restaurant Chestnut in 2017, and within five months had earned a Michelin star that's never left. His house charcuterie draws on his father's Polish meat-curing techniques, and his menu is crafted using ingredients within a 10-kilometer radius. It's what he observed growing up, watching his parents run a three-seat eatery from their home kitchen in Schull. 'Just because someone says it's local doesn't mean it's good,' he says of the overused word, but '[Irish product] was the best. It is the best.' (10 of the best restaurants in Ireland and Northern Ireland) Up a rocky, single-lane drive in southwest Cork stands an ocean-weathered wood studio not far from the Celtic sea. The two-room workshop, Woodcock Smokery, is where Sally Barnes smokes exclusively wild-caught fish using traditional, simple techniques. Beech wood, not oak. Salt. Time, and a close eye on the smolder. Here, she teaches her methods and the importance of working with wild-caught fish. All of the food artisans Ferguson grew up with, like Barnes, he says, 'none of them were doing this because of a business plan.' He said, 'they love the feedback of how it made people feel, and they felt connected to it.' Barnes echoes the sentiment of her food and skill sharing, 'It's encouraging a community and a place-based experience for people.' If County Cork's terroir is the secret ingredient, its people are the secret recipe. Ireland's history is still relatively close to the surface, when it was necessary to be entrepreneurially agile and rely on each other. In County Cork, that hardship alchemizes into innovation. 'There's a magic here,' says Burns, 'a deep connection to the land.' That ethos is what runs through the county's food scene: listen and let the land speak. Though you can find an Irish Pub in over 40 different countries, Ireland's contemporary cuisine is not an export—it's a lived experience unique to time, place, people, and climate. 'It's something that is in the process of being defined and it's emerging. Which isn't to say that it doesn't have an identity," says Sussman. 'It's just to say that it's exciting to go somewhere and feel that these things are happening as you're there, right?' (Take a peek at the revival of Northern Ireland's coastal cuisine) Goldie: A narrow Cork restaurant with a daily changing menu based on what's fresh from the harbor. Expect innovative takes on classics from chef Aishling Moore, like oysters on the half shell topped with strawberry vinegar granita and parsley Chesnut: Ballydehob's Michelin-starred restaurant by chef Rob Krawczyk, serving a notorious charcuterie and seasonal menu that is grown, reared, and gathered from West A two-Michelin-star Turkish restaurant in Baltimore from chef Ahmet Dede that celebrates the cuisine through the expression of Irish ingredients. Baba'de: New sister restaurant to Dede with a menu by chef Ahmet Seafood Restaurant: A 26-year-old restaurant that has been adapting its menu for what is fresh from the harbor since its English Market: One of the oldest covered markets in Europe, full of generations of family-run vendors. Find prepared foods, sandwiches, bakeries, and preserved foods as well as fresh produce, meats, and Cafe: This often-missed cafe is on the second floor of the English Market and sources from local gardeners, food artisans, and English Market Market: A lesser-known Cork food market in a converted warehouse on the river, full of food trucks, international cuisines, and local art. Kelsey Glennon is a travel writer and photographer specializing in covering art and artisans, farms and food, sustainable design, and active solo travel. She is a former professional dancer and is the voice behind the travel and style newsletter 'Not Optimized.'
Vancouver Sun
23-05-2025
- General
- Vancouver Sun
Recipe: Rich baked risotto offers plenty of cheesy goodness
Riso al Forno is a baked rice dish rich in tomato sauce and plenty of cheesy goodness, easy to prepare and a gluten-free alternative to pasta: 500 g (17.6 oz) Italian Carnaroli rice 1 x 28 oz (1 3/4 lb) whole Italian tomatoes 3 cups (750 mL) vegetable broth 1/2 onion 8 tbsp (120 mL) olive oil 2 tbsp (30 mL) butter Salt 1 lb (454 g) fresh mozzarella cheese 3/4 cup (180 mL) Parmigiano-Reggiano grated Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 12 fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup (125 mL) breadcrumbs Preheat oven 400 F. Heat a large saucepan to medium high heat with olive oil, add the onions and cook until translucent. Crush the whole Italian tomatoes in a blender, add to the saucepan, add salt and simmer on medium heat for 10 minutes. Add the rice to the simmering sauce, stir, continue to stir to avoid rice sticking, slowly add the broth as needed, continue to cook rice for 20 minutes stirring constantly. Turn off heat and mix in butter and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Brush your baking dish 9×12 inch with olive oil and coat with breadcrumbs. Layer half of the rice onto the baking dish gently pressing down, add fresh mozzarella pieces to the rice layer, and add fresh torn basil leaves. Add the remaining rice to create the top layer, gently pressing the rice, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes uncovered then broil for about 5 minutes to crisp the top. Serves 6-8. Maria Fazzari Larosa is a cookbook author of Maria's Italian Cucina from Burnaby who shares her recipe creations online @mariascucina on Instagram.
West Australian
03-05-2025
- General
- West Australian
The New York Times recipe: Chickpea stew with risoni (orzo) and mustard greens
Chickpeas are front and centre in this vegetable soup, which gets just a little chew from risoni. You don't have to use the mustard greens if you don't like them or can't find them. Just about any greens you have — spinach, rocket, kale — can take their place. 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, more for drizzling 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped 1 small fennel bulb or 2 celery stalks, chopped 1 medium onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced Pinch of chilli flakes 2 tsp minced fresh rosemary (optional) 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth (or water) 1 (420g) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained ¾ cup roughly chopped cherry or grape tomatoes ½ cup wholemeal or regular risoni About 150g loosely packed baby mustard greens or spinach Salt and black pepper Chopped spring onions, for garnish (optional) ¼ cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more as needed Step 1 In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high. Add the carrots, fennel or celery, and onion. Cook until tender, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic, chilli flakes and rosemary, if using, and cook for another 2 minutes. Pour in the broth, if using, or water, along with another 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Step 2 Once the mixture is boiling, add the chickpeas, tomatoes and risoni. Reduce to a simmer and cover with a lid. Simmer 10 minutes, or until the risoni is tender. Uncover and stir in the greens, letting them simmer until soft, about 2 minutes. Step 3 Add more water if you want the mixture to be more soup-like, and season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped spring onions (if desired), grated cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Serves 4-6 Total time: 25 minutes This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2023 The New York Times Company
Vancouver Sun
01-05-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
Restaurant review: For those who insist on great pasta check out Cantina di Luigi
Article content 'The menu is simple and to the point,' Yen says. 'There's no smoke and mirrors. Just really good food. Sometimes the best food is the simplest thing done right.' Exactly. It's for those who insist on great pasta. There are four pastas and a risotto on the menu, along with antipasti and small plates. Article content The pastas are made in-house and passed my test — I irresistibly finished the whole plate of carbs. Taglioni with shrimp, mussels, calamari, herbs, and lemon, anchovy, caper butter ($31) was oh-so-lightly kissed with sauce. The pasta had a slightly gnarly chew and the seafood did not hold back — there was lots of good quality mussels, squid, and prawns. The butter is house-made and cultured for a boost of acidity. Article content Veal, beef and pork rigatoni with a tomato sauce, fried rosemary and shaved pecorino ($32) gave and gave, flavour-wise. The meat was cooked stovetop for three hours until it couldn't hold it together, sighed and fell apart. Article content The pasta-making process is intuitive to the experienced. Sometimes it needs more semolina flour, sometimes more durum, depending on humidity and flour behaviour. A Yen trick is to include some of the pasta water to the sauce. Article content Article content As for starters, I loved the dish that keeps on giving, the 'ode' to Poirier, who first created it, says Yen. Cured anchovy, boiled egg with jammy yolk, bright salsa verde, salmon roe and chili aioli ($18) converge in a most delightful way. This dish was an apology. I'd ordered a radicchio, frisée, and pickled fennel salad with hazelnuts and gremolata ($15) and it was perfect except it was gritty, seemingly with sand. The server reported it, veteran manager Matthew Morgenstern tasted the greens, agreed, and had sent out this winning replacement. Article content Article content Fonduta, with 'nduja (a spicy, spreadable salami), butternut squash, and fontina cheese ($22), is a fondue-like dish, served with crostini for dipping. It's from Northern Italy, where a stick-to-your-ribs dish is just what winters need. Article content A couple of other dishes Yen 'absolutely loves' includes the beef cheek risotto with mushroom conserva and cipollini onions ($33). 'The luscious risotto, the slow-braised beef, the Venetian spices, and the brightness of onions — it's a lovely, lovely dish,' he says. Article content Article content The other is venison pappardelle ($32) with tomato and red wine sauce and Parmigiano-Reggiano. 'The leg is slow cooked and pulls apart,' he says. Article content Sadly, we were too full for dessert (tiramisu, torta Caprese, gelato, or a weekly cake) but they sent out a couple of cookies from the bakery, which we took home for a late-night snack. Article content On the drinks list, you'll find a number of classic Italian cocktails — negroni, aperol spritz, etc. — but it's the food-friendly wines that really stand out. They're all Italian and, for the most part, represent good value. Article content There's solid selection by the glass, starting at a very reasonable $7.50. Note, however, that the pours are 125 ml, just over four ounces, as opposed to the standard five ounces. Still, it's refreshing to see wine prices so approachable. Things get even more interesting by the bottle, where you can find reasonable markups on many of the wines. Aperitivos and digestives are worth a look too.
