by G. R. Gemin
Amatriciana is a great pasta dish if you like bacon. You’ll need to slice up about three rashers of bacon, or use Pancetta, which is little cubes of bacon in a sachet that you can get in most supermarkets. Follow the instructions for the basic tomato sauce above (you could even include the peas), but fry the bacon or Pancetta with the onion and garlic at the beginning. You also need to add some chilli, dried or fresh, depending how hot you want it – I usually add half a teaspoon of dried chilli powder. (Be careful you don’t accidently rub some chilli in your eyes after you’ve touched it as it stings!)
Pasta Bolognese uses minced beef. Fry half an onion and garlic with about 500g of minced beef. Fry it for about ten minutes, until the beef is browned, and then follow the instructions for the basic sauce above, but this sauce needs longer cooking time – about 35 to 40 minutes.
SWEET PIZZA RECIPE
The Italians don’t really make sweet pizza. It exists, but it’s an adaptation of normal pizza. You can find recipes online, but I think, in general, they are far too sweet. So here’s a simple recipe for sweet pizza with sliced apples and bananas.
INGREDIENTS
250g of plain flour
Salt
Caster sugar
Olive oil
Baking powder
Milk
2 apples
1 ripe banana
METHOD
Before you start to make the pizza, heat the oven to 200°C or Gas mark 6.
For the pizza base, seive 250g of plain flour into a large bowl, then add a teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Mix these together.
Make a hole in the middle of the mixture and put in 3 tablespoons of oil. Mix it with your hands until it becomes like breadcrumbs. Then, little by little, add 4 tablespoons of milk and about a quarter of a mug of water, mixing them in as you go, to make a dough. It should become soft and not too sticky. Be careful – it can get messy.
Drizzle one tablespoon of olive oil onto a square oven tray, or pizza tray, and sprinkle with a little flour – this prevents the pizza base sticking to the tray. Roll the dough as thin as possible (about three or four millimetres unless you prefer a thicker base) and lay it on the oven tray. You may have to stretch it gently with your fingers to cover the area. It can be made into a circle or a square.
Peel and core the 2 apples, and slice them finely. Peel the ripe banana and slice it finely too. Leaving a 1½ centimetre border around the edge of the dough, arrange the sliced apples and banana in a single layer so that it looks like a pizza. Brush the border with a little milk and sprinkle the pizza with 3 tablespoons of sugar, or drizzle over a little honey. You can also sprinkle it with desiccated coconut or cinnamon. Finally, brush it with olive oil.
Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes – it doesn’t take long. Cut it into triangular slices and eat it hot or cold. You can also invent your own toppings … sliced pear, or grapes, or strawberries, or you could add ground almonds. I’m sure you could come up with some nice ideas.
There are lots and lots of great recipes to try online – the BBC Food website (www.bbc.co.uk/food) is very good and has lots of recipes from many different cultures.
Best wishes, or, as Joe would say, Tanti auguri!
Giancarlo
COPYRIGHT
For Mamma, Barbara and Isabelle
For all the lovely food
First published in the UK in 2016 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street
London, SE1 1QR, UK
This ebook edition first published 2016
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text © G.R. Gemin, 2016
Cover illustration and typography © Tom Clohosy Cole, 2016
The right of Giancarlo Gemin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978 0 85763 630 0
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