Skill Building

To choose this recipe I didn’t have to look further into its ingredients. I didn’t even need to see a picture. It was love at first sight. When I first saw the name, I immediately liked it. With such a sweet name (torta tenerina ~ tender cake), it had to be good. And indeed it was! Among all the recipes, this was my favorite name 😊.

Before choosing a vegan version on YouTube I checked many recipes, including those which were not vegan. This looked like a super chocolaty cake. All the recipes asked for a lot of chocolate. Some had very little flour. The one I chose was made with rice flour (for extra tenderness!)

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 10) Torta tenerina

I got to know about ragù just last year, in 2020. One of my favorite sources to learn Italian, were the comedy videos I found on YouTube (for example, Casa Surace). And that’s exactly where I started hearing time and time again about this traditional Italian recipe. In the beginning, I thought it was something like the Argentinian estofado and that it always had to have some type of meat on it. Later on, I would learn that there were multiple types of ragù. Even vegetarian or vegan ones! 😊

When I picked this recipe I was aware that this is something you usually add to other dishes. So, in a sense, it’s not a dish in itself. But, as it looked like such an important part of the Italian culture, I wanted to have it on my list 😄. The one I prepared is based on soy. So far I tried it with pasta, as a sauce. It could also make a great lasagne filling. A good alternative to the lentil lasagna I did in Week 7!).

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 9) Ragù di Soia

How did I pick the recipes for this project? First I searched online for the most popular (or representative?) Italian dishes. I started from there. One other thing was my personal preference. I wanted to try preparing many of these recipes for a long time (such as the “pizza napoletana”, the “tiramisu” or the “lasagna”). But in a couple of cases, I just went with a dish just because I liked the name. I liked how it sounded. The “sbrisolona” is one of these 😊.

For some weird reason, I thought that if I had the “sfogliatelle”, I should also do the “sbrisolona”. They kind of sound similar, right? Or, at least, they start with an “s” and a consonant. I like words like that in Italian. Always! But… if I only had known that for this recipe I would have to use cornmeal, maybe I would have chosen another one 😄. Cornmeal is one of those few ingredients that I don’t like that much. Especially on sweet recipes! But I tried to do the best anyway.

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 8) Sbrisolona

One thing I wasn’t sure about before preparing this recipe was the pasta part. Would I have to make the lasagna sheets myself? Or would it be “okay” to buy the dry ones at a store? After watching a couple of YouTube videos the question answered itself: I would do it with the dry ones! If the Italian YouTubers were using it, with wouldn’t I as well? 😊

The second decision was on the filling. In the beginning, I considered buying some kind of vegan grounded beef (apparently, there’s one brand that makes a good alternative). The second option was using soy crumbles. And the third one, lentils or some other thing. I chose the latter because I wanted to try something different. I never use lentils as a meat substitute (usually I do soy crumbles), so I wanted to see -and taste!- how it was like.

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 7) Lasagne

Did you know that you don’t need to put eggs in your gnocchi? It turns out that gnocchi is one of the easiest recipes to veganize. You just ditch the egg, and there you have it: vegan gnocchi! I have eaten them many, many times. They are just like the non-vegan ones. Most people cannot tell the difference: with or without eggs are pretty much the same.

For the Gnocchi alla Sorrentina I would also need mozzarella and grated cheese. Lately, Argentina has started to produce really good mozzarella cheese. My favorite brand so far is “Felices las Vacas“. They not only have mozzarella, but also cream cheese (“queso cremoso”, also known as “queso mantecoso”). The grated cheese is easy enough to make it at home: you just blend cashew nuts, nutritional yeast (ideally, cheese-flavored), salt, and some garlic powder.

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 6) Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

Have I already mention how much I like pastry and bakery? I love that stuff! Last year I tried doing my first cinnamon rolls at home. I tried the regular (vegan) version with white flour, and also whole wheat flour recipes. All of them are great 😊. While doing the sfogliatelle, I had a dejavù: I thought I was making rolls. I guess it’s just because in both recipes there’s some sort of rolling involved. Also, there’s butter/oil spread over the dough.

Every time I try a new recipe I look forward to learning something new. But, at the same time, I keep an eye on opportunities to reutilize something I learned in the past. I think this is key in cooking (and in life!). Trying to remember what worked well in the past, how can we use something that served us in the past. In this recipe, I did just that when I replaced the margarine with coconut oil, a healthier and tastier alternative. That’s how I did it with the cinnamon rolls (coconut oil instead of vegan butter 😋). If you’re doing baking vegan, make sure to always have coconut oil nearby!

[Read more…] about Cooking in Italian (Week 5) Sfogliatelle