Hello everyone! First of all, thank you for your patience. I know we missed a couple of cook alongs, but we’re back for good! Thank you also for your enthusiasm and support, I adore the time we spend together cooking.
Today’s newsletter is sweet and short, as I have already planned for tomorrow a long one with plenty of tips on what to stock in your pantry if you want to build a Tuscan/Italian repertoire. You’re going to love it.
So, without further ado, here’s what we cooked on Sunday:
Artichoke, fennel and celery salad with bottarga
Making this salad and calling it yours, you will learn how to compose a dish where every ingredient earns its place. Here, fennel, celery and artichoke each bring a different kind of crunch and a subtly different bitterness, the parsley lifts everything with a flash of green freshness, the citronette ties it all together with the lightest of touches, and the bottarga does the work of salt and umami in a single shaving.
You will also notice how fennel behaves in two completely different ways depending on how you treat it: raw, as here, it is crisp and assertive, with that distinctive aniseed edge. Cooked low and slow, as in the soup, it turns sweet, yielding and almost unrecognisable. Same ingredient, two different personalities. Knowing this opens up a whole new way of thinking about the vegetables you already have in your kitchen.
Vellutata di finocchio e aneto. Fennel and dill soup
Today’s recipe is a soup, but in Italian we wouldn’t call it simply zuppa, as that would suggest a thicker, chunkier preparation, which should also include bread — a staple in our Tuscan cuisine to make soups more filling and nutritious. It isn’t a minestra either, as that calls for a cereal of sorts, such as pasta, rice, barley or farro. The closest term to describe today’s soup is vellutata, as in the French velouté: a soup made with a small number of ingredients, puréed into a thin, creamy, velvety consistency. It often includes potatoes or cream to add richness and round it out, but I relied on chicken stock and leeks instead. Have you ever noticed how leeks, when coddled on slow heat, turn into a creamy, buttery base for soups?
An Italian cooking masterclass
Here you can find the updated list of all the past cook-alongs—a special bonus for all paid subscribers—, so if you’d like to explore some of the earlier sessions, you can add even more delicious recipes to your Italian cooking repertoire.
Appetizers
Fresh pasta and first courses
Pici pasta + aglione tomato sauce (eggless fresh pasta from Tuscany + punchy vegan tomato sauce)
How to make tortelli, two ways: spinach and ricotta + potatoes
Potato gnocchi + sugo finto (vegan tomato sauce with plenty of vegetables and aromatics)
