This was the dish I cooked for our last lunch before I departed for Melbourne, Australia around three weeks ago, and this was the dish we ate yesterday for our first dinner here at home. I cooked a big batch of ragù before I left and stored it in the freezer, so yesterday when we didn’t really have anything to eat, we boiled some fusili and tossed it with this.



I really want to share my experience in Australia but I am still tired and jet-lagged from the trip, so instead of the travel photos I want to share this with you. In Italy almost everybody has their own version of ragù. This is my version: simple one. It takes a long time to cook it so I always prefer to cook it in big batch and freeze it. This is enough for three or four meals for two people, feel free to halve or double the recipe.



Conchiglie al Ragù

1 kg minced meat (you can use beef or mix 50% of beef and 50% of pork)
1 onion, finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
1 celery stalk, finely diced
2 cans of 400g whole tomatoes (I use cirio brand)
250g dried conchiglie pasta
Extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and pepper

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan, in a low heat and add the finely diced onion, carrot and celery. Cook over low heat for around 30 minutes until soft but not brown (sofritto), turn up the heat and add the minced meat, cook until the meat change colour, add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes then reduce the heat and let simmer for 1 1/2 hour - 2 hours until the sauce is thickened. Adjust the seasoning and turn off the heat.

Boil 2,5 liters of water, add some sea salt and cook the pasta according to the package instruction. When the pasta is cooked, reserve 1 cup of the cooking water before draining the pasta. Drain the pasta and toss with 1/4 of the sauce. If it is too thick, add some reserved water to thin it.

Transfer to serving plates, drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil and freshly grated parmigiano reggiano.

Divide the remaining ragu to containers, let cool completely and store in the fridge/freezer.

Buon apetito!

It has been ages! I know…what kept me from posting: we had to move house. Remember I told you about my leaking roof? Last time, it rained so bad and it rained outside-IN! The roof could not be fixed, because it was an antique joglo and to fix it would require a biiiiiig effort and of course living in tropical country with a badly leaking roof is not an option. So we moved. Still an antique joglo, but with a strong strong roof and an extra room for guests. The house is still bare, and we are still waiting for the kitchen tables and we have a new family member: Charlie.

Lots of stories, but right now I really just want to share this recipe with you, this was light but satisfying (don’t see my portion, I mostly eat like a bird… :) I did not have pine nuts here, and kind of difficult and expensive to buy in Indonesia, macadamia is more available and accessible as we are quite near to Australia. I think basil tastes different in here and in Italy, but it still tasted great!

Tagliatelle with Macadamia and Basil Pesto, Baby Green Beans and Kabocha

Serves 2/3

250g dried tagliatelle

1/6 medium kabocha, peel, throw away the seeds and very thinly sliced

1 small potato, peel and very thinly sliced

A handful of baby green beans, washed

Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling

Freshly grated parmesan, sea salt and pepper

Pesto:

5 stalks of fresh basil, leaves picked, washed and roughly chopped

10 macadamia, lightly toasted, and roughly chopped

1/2 clove of garlic

a handful of freshly grated parmesan

Extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt

Bring to boil water (and a tablespoon of salt) in a pot big enough for the pasta and the vegetables

In the meantime, put all the ingredients of pesto in the food processor (just put a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a bit of salt in the beginning, you can adjust this later) and blitz until smooth, remove and season to taste with sea salt. If you feel the pesto is too thick, add some more extra virgin olive oil.

When the water boils, add the potato, kabocha and green beans, when it comes to boil again, add the pasta and cook until the pasta is al dente. Reserve some of the cooking water and drain the pasta. Throw the pasta back to the pot, add the pesto and stir well, if it is too thick, add some of the reserved cooking water to thin it.

Divide to plates, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan and ground black pepper. Serve with fresh bread and big big smile.

Buon apetito! xx

A rather long title for this simple dish :), but really, those vegetable were the last last veggies I had in my fridge. I have been too busy with projects that I have not gone grocery shopping either going to the market. In fact, I will go directly after writing this post (the project finished yesterday!) You might find the ingredients a bit odd in amount, feel free to add more veggies as you like, but I found this composition quite perfect :) (more…)

Today is one beautiful Sunday, everything is so peaceful, sunny and a bit of soft wind. I have one pumpkin sitting in my kitchen, one I wanted to turn to some halloween food but I was too busy I did not have time. And today when Marco turned up in the kitchen all so hungry, this was the first thing came to my mind, a good excuse too to use that last batch of ricotta I made that needed to be finished :) (more…)

When hearing the name of this recipe: spaghetti ai cucuzzi e ricotta, I think you would not guess that I made it with one very-much-under-estimated vegetable called blonceng :) It is considered such an uninteresting vegetable that people here never really consider that it would pair nicely with pasta, nor that it has another ‘cooler’ Italian name: cucuzzi :) But for me I found it delicious and has a soft and abit sweet taste, I first experiment with cucuzzi (sicilian gourd) when I was in Italy, introduced by Pipo, my Sicilian vegetable seller at my usual tuesday farmer market, making soup and also use the leaves (called tenerumi) to make pasta.

Blonceng is so ridiculously cheap in Indonesia, we usually got one for 3000 rupiah, around 20 euro cents :) plus it is rather big that I could use it to make four times meals for four people. Imagine that! I made gratin two days ago with blonceng and mom was amazed to see this vegetable transformed into something looked…tres chic! :)

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The good thing about food in Italy is that every region really has their own specialty and character. Like now when I am just about bored with classic pasta-tomato sauce combination, the lunch today simply blew my mind. Marco’s brother who has just returned from attending wedding in Sardinia, gave us a bag of beautiful fresh Gnocchetti sardi, also called Ciciones, they are cute small Sardinian gnocchi that is made of semolina instead of potato in normal gnocchi. As the base ingredient is semolina flour, they are actually closer to pasta than gnocchi, but I don’t know why they are called gnocchi, next time I go to Sardinia, I will need to ask around about this :)

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Tenerumi is not my new friend, she is a new vegetable I discovered at the market this week, I think she has cute name :) It is basically the leaves of Cucuzzi, the Sicilian groud, I made a soup with it weeks ago. Finally today, I could make lunch with ease. It has been a hectic period for me, with projects pouring on me and travelling too. I was so tired, I did not even want to bring my camera with me. And if you notice, my photographs are a little different, I am using another lens now, bigger, heavier and I am still not used to it.

Back to Tenerumi, this is a typical dish from Sicily, that Pipo taught me (he and his family come from Sicily). Very simpe dish and if you don’t add the cheese in the end, it is a vegan dish. It is very simple but full of flavour (Tenerumi is very flavourful vegetable)

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It is around one o’clock in the morning and I am writing this post with a dim light, relaxing mood and listening to the cinematic orchestra’s latest album. I have been busy (new design project) and around (milan-florence-rome). During the travel, I ate good food in good places, but I missed home food, as always. I made this few weeks ago, before things started to get too busy and it was just so comforting. I will make this again tomorrow, and now I will just share it with you :)

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