Italian Food Recipes

Eggplants, tomato puree, mozzarella, basil, minced meat and Parmesan: these are the main Italian ingredients that I use to prepare this delicious Italian pasta-based first course. Its preparation is easy: first you should prepare the ingredients separately in this way, you should cut the mozzarella, cook the tomato puree with minced meat and basil, cook the pasta type penne and fry the eggplants then you should simply mix all the ingredients together. This Italian recipe seems to suggest another traditional Italian recipe typical of Sicily that is the famous “Pasta alla Norma” but these two recipes are different. In the next recipes I show you the typical preparation also of this.
INGREDIETNS (for 4 people):
350 g of Pasta type penne
800 ml of Tomato puree
2 Eggplants
Oil to fry the eggplants
50 g of Minced meat of veal
1 / 2 of Onion
4 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
3 – 4 leafs of basil
150 g of Mozzarella
Salt
Parmesan

PREPARATION TIME: 30 minutes

COOKING TIME: 1 hour

WINE: Sambuca di Sicilia bianco Doc (White Wine)

PREPARATION
Let the salted water boil for pasta. Preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a pan, cut the onion in slices add them to the oil and let it brown on a low flame in order to not burn them.

Then remove it, add the minced meat and let it brown,


add the tomato puree and the basil, mix all together and let it cook for about 30 minutes.


In the meantime prepare the eggplants, clean them, cut them as matches and fry them in a pan with hot oil.


When eggplants are cooked, place them over a sheet of kitchen paper in order to remove the oil in excess


and prepare the mozzarella cutting it in cubes.


When water boils, place in it the pasta and cook it for the time indicating on the packaging, then drain them. Re-place in the same pan a part of pasta, pour on it some sauce, a part of eggplant and a part of mozzarella, sprinkle with some Parmesan and mix all together;


continue in this way until pasta finish and at the end mix all together.
Serve hot. This is the result:

BUON APPETITO!

Asparagus are vegetable typical of the spring and summer period in particular from April to June, they are vegetables ideal for the preparation of any kind of Italian recipes. Typically they are used to prepare risotto but very good are also first courses with pasta like the Italian recipes presented below or also second courses and appetizers. Here I prepare a first course made with fresh orecchiette, that is a typical type of pasta from Puglia, seasoned with a sauce of asparagus, cream and walnuts. The preparation of this recipe is simple and fast because the asparagus are an Italian food that need a short time of cooking, indeed only 10 minutes are sufficient in order to make a puree of asparagus, then to obtain the delicious sauce of this recipe it’s sufficient to add some cream and walnuts and so the seasoning is ready. The presence of walnuts give to the sauce a crunch consistency that is well matches with the soft consistency of the puree of asparagus.


INGREDIENTS (for 4 people):
400 of Orecchiette
400 g of Asparagus
30 g of Walnuts crumbled
250 ml of Cream
1 Clove of garlic
Salt
Black Pepper
Marjoram
4 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

PREPARATION TIME: 20 minutes

COOKING TIME: 15 minutes

WINE: Friuli Annia Pinot bianco (White Wine)

PREPARATION
Let salted water boil for orecchiette. Wash the asparagus and remove the hardest and woody part of the asparagus’s stem. Now preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a pan with the clove of garlic and let it brown, in the meantime cut the stems of the asparagus in small discs maintaining the tender head entire

and add them to the pan, add 1 glass of water and let them cook for about 10 minutes.


When the asparagus are cooked, remove from them the best head, that you'll use for the decoration of the dish and place the others in a mixer in order to obtain a sort of puree of asparagus. Re-place the mousse of asparagus in the same pan, add the walnuts, the cream

and sprinkle with salt, black pepper and marjoram,

mix all together and the sauce is ready. When water boils add the orecchiette and cooked them for the time indicated on the packaging, when they are cooked, drain them and add them to the sauce, mix, garnish each dish with the the entire head of the asparagus and serve hot.
This is the result:

BUON APPETITO!

This is a simple and fast Italian first course to prepare: you should have in your fridge only some delicious Italian cheese and some milk. To make the cheese sauce you can use any kind of Italian cheese except mozzarella because it is a thready cheese and for this reason it is not ideal to make a sauce, in order to obtain the best result you should melt the pieces of the 4 cheeses that you have choose in some milk and simply sprinkle with some black pepper! The Italian cheeses that I choose for this recipe are: Gorgonzola, a typical Italian blue cheese from Piedmont and Lombardy, Toma, an Italian semi-hard cheese typical of Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta, Casera, a typical cheese of Valtellina and Parmesan.

INGREDIENTS (for 4 people):
320 g of Pasta type “Tortiglioni”
1 Glass of milk
30 g of Gorgonzola cut in pieces
30 g of Toma cut in pieces
30 g Casera cut in pieces
30 g of grated Parmesan
Black pepper
Salt

PREPARATION TIME: 15 minutes

COOKING TIME: 15 minutes

WINE: Dolcetto d'Ovada Doc (Red Wine)

PREPARATION
Let salted water boil for pasta. In the meantime prepare the sauce of cheese: place in a pan the milk and the cheeses, let them melt


and then sprinkle with some black pepper.


When the water boils add the pasta and let it cook as indicated on the packaging, then drain them and pour on it the cheeses sauce.


Serve hot and if you want sprinkled on some other Parmesan.
This is the result:

BUON APPETITO!