To say that I cook with what I find at home when I’m at Pellegrino’s is…. Make fun of yourself.
In this house there are three chest freezers full to the brim with game (all: wild boar, hare, roe deer, pheasants, wood pigeons …), and with chickens, ducks, mallards, geese, the gossip-girls guinea fowl, reared in the house hen ( huge, equipped with plants for shade in the summer, opening onto a shed for sleeping and laying eggs, with two fruit trees all to themselves, a small pond which is the headquarters of the ducks). And then vegetables from the garden, legumes and organic flours with wheat germ.
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And then at home there is a cellar, with wines made by Pellegrino and his friends, that keep good company with cold cuts and hanging hams (also home-made). Sometimes there are also cheeses. In the garage doors there are all kinds of pickles (obviously with home-grown vegetables and oil), herbs hanging out to dry, cherry tomatoes hanging from the ceiling, tomato purée. Yet we too face the fateful question
- What are we eating today? –
We are sometimes confused.
Pellegrino also likes to go to the market and supermarket and buy what is not produced at home, which is also enriched by the gifts of friends like him: pigeons, rabbits, watermelons … … In addition to coffee, chocolate, salt, sometimes sugar for make jams (at home we use real honey, fennel flowers, sulfur flowers, honeydew, chestnut honey, all made by friends or friends of friends), sometimes it also happens to buy things that we absolutely need. Whims, whims, and also, to say it to Tuscany, troiai (junk foods). Sometimes it happens to fall into the trap of eye-catching packaging.
Well, let’s go back to the origin of the speech.
You will understand that in a house like this you just need a bit of imagination because the raw material is all there. But every time I try to use those leftovers that are sadly in the fridge and that would go in the bucket for the chickens if they are not consumed soon.
So I created this recipe: there was a late radicchio from the Veneto countryside in the fridge: a friend sends it to us every year. There was a little butt of venison salami, some ricotta from Mameli (the trusted shepherd). The basket of walnuts is full and you know, after Christmas they don’t go there anymore, even if you have broken your back to collect at the back of the field.
It’s Sunday, I decide to have the party meal. Flour and eggs on the pastry board and I make the dough. While it rests, I chop a piece of onion, thinly slice the radicchio. I sauté the onion for a minute in a tablespoon of good oil, add the radicchio, a pinch of salt, put the lid on, stew.
Meanwhile, I put the salami butt in the blender and put it in the bowl with the ricotta, add a small egg, a tablespoon of grated cheese. I wait until the radicchio has cooled a little and mix it with the mixture. Stuffing done
I’m going to compose the ravioli: I roll out the dough, cut it into large discs with a glass, put a teaspoon of mixture in the middle and close it in half moon.
For the walnuts I sit down: I have to crush them one by one and free them from the woody sheet that separates the segments of the kernel. Then I put them in the mixer. I put this walnut flour in a large skillet with a small piece of butter, a pinch of salt about a glass of milk, a few leaves of fresh marjoram that is in the vase on the terrace. I cook a few minutes until you get a cream.
Meanwhile, the water to cook the ravioli is almost at the boiling point and Pellegrino comes up with a bunch of fragrant rocket. He rinse it, dry it. I throw the ravioli into the water, gently push them under with a skimmer.
I chop the rocket, grate the parmesan.
Here are the ravioli that rise. I put them in the pan with the walnut cream still a little watery. I “jump” them. I toss them shorthly, put on plates and serve with a sprinkling of parmesan and a sprinkling of chopped rocket.
I know, this post from UOZINMAIFRIG has an elaborate recipe. But what can you do … I live like this. As I always say, I am a lucky girl.
Marcella Ansaldo