When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore….

An overused song, I know, but when you are walking through the streets of Rome and you hear an accordion playing the tune, it seems so apropos and so romantic..it just seems to go with the scenery…  and  for Valentine’s Day- an acceptable excuse to quote the song..The easiest main course to do for a Valentine’s Day dinner is Pizza. Amateur cooks and expert cooks alike can master a pizza. As my grandmother once told me when I asked her for her recipe “it’s just a little flour, some yeast and water”..she knew how to master the dough by the touch,the weight, the feel. But for those who are just learning, never fear,   and topping ideas are endless..choose whatever suits you..but for Valentine’s  Day you may want to avoid  garlic and onions.

Bake in a heart shaped pan. If you are using a silicone pan, cover the pan first with alluminum foil and oil that foil. Leave enough foil on the sides so that you can cover the pizza while baking. If you use regular pizza pan, you can eliminate the aluminum foil. This recipe can be considered more of a focaccia type pizza or in the US we call it a deep dish pizza. I have  included these interesting pastes, Amore Pastes, that are available in the US,  just as they are in Italy. If you have never cooked with tomato paste in a tube, try it ,it is so…. Italian!   And once you have used the tube, you won’t want to go back to the canned stuff.

Amore Pizza

Pizza Dough

from The Basic Art of Pizza: copyright 2011 art of living, PrimaMedia,Inc/Maria Liberati)

6 1/2 cups unbleached flour

1 cake of active yeast

2 1/4 cups tepid water

1 tsp sugar

For topping
1 tblsp olive oil

2 teaspoons of Amore Garlic Paste

1/3 tsp oregano

2 medium tomatoes

6 ozs. thinly sliced provolone cheese

Optional-3 ounces of cooked and drained Italian suasage crumbled or use a vegetarian substitute

5 tablespoons Amore Tomato Paste

2 teaspoons Amore Pesto Paste

12 ounces shredded mozzarella

Place yeast cube in tall glass, place in  1/2 cupwater and tsp sugar, stir.  Yeast mixture will become bubbly. In bowl place in flour and yeast mixture and blend by hand, as needed add in more water until dough is not sticky. Place flour on wooden board. Place dough here and continue mixing in until dough is soft yet not sticky, and a little  firm. Then cover and leave in warm place to rise.

When double in size, place into a pan and shape to fit. Oil your hands with olive oil, this will make it easier to lay the dough into pan shape. Press dough against sides and just over rim of pan,

Filet the tomatoes by cutting out the liquid part and slicing meat of tomatoes. In small bowl, add in tomato paste, garlic paste, oregano,olive oil. Place half the provolone on dough and spread tomato pase mixture on top. Layer sausage with provolone, dot wiht pesto paste. Place tomato slices on top and then top wiht mozzarella. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 35 monutes in a  preheasted oven at 425 degrees. Open foil to expose top of pizza and bake this way 5 more minutes or until top is golden brown. Wait 10 minutes before cutting.

Serve with a dry red wine.

For more pizza  recipes get your copy of The Basic Art of Pizza, also available as a downloadable ebook

For more great recipes get your copy of the Award Winning book The Basic Art of Italian Cooking: Holidays & Special Occasions-2nd edition

copyright 2010 art of living,PrimaMedia,Inc/Maria Liberati

My Memorial Day..’food and the city’ adventure will take me on a culinary road trip today to Lancaster, Pa and the surrounding area..as a foodie living in the city I am always looking for sources for fresh local produce..not sure what I will find today..but whatever is fresh and local should do..

Maybe I take my trying to make my ‘city feel a bit more country life’ to the extreme..but it’s difficult adapting to life in the city …A few hours isn’t that long to travel to bring freshness into my kitchen.

If you have some fresh basil in your kitchen or garden (local and fresh)..here’s an authentic recipe for making pesto. Pesto..( I love the bright green color it adds to any plate) can be used on many things. Okay..pesto does make a perfect match with pasta….but try it as a spread for a pannini (instead of mayonnaise).pizza topped with pesto and shaved parmigiana-reggiano cheese, potato salad with pesto as a dressing….you can re-invent so many dishes…

Pesto Genovese

*10 leaves of fresh  Basil

*3 cloves of garlic

*1/4 cup pinoli nuts

*1/4 cup grated Parmigiana- Reggiano (aged 24 months)

*1 tblsp of Pecorino cheese (aged 15 months)

*pinch of sea salt

*8 tblsps of extra Virgin Olive Oil

Separate the leaves of the basil from the stems. Wash the leaves, and dry gently with paper towels. Peel the garlic and place in a mortar and pestle and crush. Crush the pinoli nuts as well in mortar. Add in the basil and salt and continue to crush until blended. Add in cheese and continue to crush in the mortar. Add in olive oil a drizzle at a time, mixing before each addition of olive oil. If pesto is too dense, add in a drizzle of warm water or hot water used to cook the pasta (if serving with pasta).

Happy Memorial Day..wishing you a celebration that is fresh and filled with local flavors..wherever you are!

Maria

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Sept 9-12-Hudson Valley Wine Festival-appearances and on stage cooking demos..book signing.. Hope to see you there!! For more info on attending email:events@marialiberati.com  To join the list of sponsors of The Basic Art of Italian Cooking by Maria Liberati tm email: Info@marialiberati.com

copyright 2009, Maria Liberati

Plant and herb lovers will tell you that now is the perfect time to pick basil leaves. And chefs will tell you that they’re the ideal size to be chopped up and put into your favorite dishes. Famous Recipes is here to tell you the history of pesto, a delicious sauce where basil plays the most important role.

The term pesto comes from the verb meaning “to pound” or “to crush”. The earliest known recorded version of pesto comes from Roman poet Virgil’s (70 – 19 BCE) Bucoliche. Virgil writes of a similar Roman sauce called moretum. But the sauce alluded to in this epic is not quite the pesto we know today because it didn’t have the most essential ingredient: basil. Basil wasn’t officially added to the recipe until the mid 19^th Century after the plant had been introduced to Europe and found a perfect home in the Liguria region of Italy’s northwest.

After the basil was added, the recipe became extremely more complex. According to the Basil Park in Genova Pra (http://parco-basilico.provincia.genova.it/eng/Index_PBP.html), an Italian website devoted to making the most of Genoa’s most famous food, “For centuries basil was attributed magical virtues in addition to the properties that made it so valuable in the kitchen, so that it had to be gathered in accordance with sacred, codified rituals.” This is why many older recipes will call for hand mixing the leaves in special dishes. A more scientific assumption says that basil helps with ailments such as skin disease and intestinal trouble. But interestingly enough, basil plants can be affected by any number of factors including the time of day of harvest. Whether or not there is any truth behind the medicinal or magical properties of basil, however, is immaterial. A lover of fine Italian foods will tell you that its greatest quality is its taste. And pesto is a solid example of this.

Pesto

2 ½ Cups Basil

½ Cups Olive Oil

2 Tbsp Pine Nuts

2 Cloves Garlic, peeled and crushed

½ Cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

2 Tbsp Pecorino-Romano cheese

Bit of pepper

In a food processor, put olive oil, pepper, basil, nuts, and garlic. Process until just blended.

Put mixture in bowl and whisk in cheese.

For more great recipes and tips get your copy of the best selling book The Basic Art of Italian Cooking by Maria Liberati at http://www.marialiberati.com and got to http://www.marialiberati.com/blog2

Copyright, 2008, Maria Liberati

The Basic Art of Italian Cooking

http://www.marialiberati.com

http://www.marialiberati.com/blog2

Editor: Joseph McVeigh

Basil: a kingly herb?

Basil is a widely used herb in the Italian cuisine, a little bit like parsley: you can put it almost in every dish of pasta, risotto, sauces, pizza, decoration of cold dishes… Apart from that, it is also grown in pots and kept on window-sills throughout the summer as a remedy against mosquitoes. Its fragrance and perfume keep them away (this is a quality this herb shares with citronella, a tropical grass with lemon-scented leaves, which is cultivated in Italy, too. We’re becoming a tropical country, with the weather changing so much and growing hotter and hotter…)

Its name derives from the Latin word basilicum, coming in its turn from the Greek adjective βασιλικός, meaning kingly, as the dictionary says (M. Cortelazzo, P. Zolli, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, Zanichelli, Bologna 1979, s.v.). So, it has always been considered a very fine herb, suitable for kings and queens.

Basil is native of tropical Asia, probably India, where it is still considered a holy herb, and planted near temples. It was then spread into Europe and Italians, in the past, considered it a symbol of love. Women in search of fiancé used to put a basil pot on their window-sill to wait for true love.

It was very soon used in the kitchen: the Roman Apicio (25 BC- 37 AD ?), famous for his cooking ability, wrote in his De re coquinaria a recipe including basil to flavour peas.

References to basil can be found in poetry, prose and art from the Middle Ages to the present. In Italy, G. Boccaccio (1313-1375) wrote about basil: in his Decameron (4thy day, fifth novella), he told the sad story of two lovers, Lisabetta da Messina and Lorenzo. Her brothers, not approving of their affair, killed the young man. In a dream, Lisabetta saw where her lover had been buried, went there and with the help of a faithful servant cut the head from the body and, when at home, put it into a large pot and planted basil in it. Basil grew wonderfully as it was daily watered by Lisabetta’s tears.

The English romantic poets P. B. Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821) both wrote about basil in their poems. Shelley mentioned it in his To Emilia Viviani:

Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me
Sweet-basil and mignonette?
Embleming love and health, which never yet
In the same wreath might be.

and Keats retold the story by Boccaccio in his poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.

Let’s end with the recipe for the famous pesto alla genovese. What you need for 6 people is: abundant basil fresh leaves (about two handfuls), grated Parmesan cheese (3 tblsps), 1 clove (of garlic), a glass of extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt, pine nuts (1 tblsp). Chop garlic and basil very finely (add a little bit of salt, so that the leaves will keep their brilliant green), put them into the mortar and keep crushing adding oil, Parmesan, pine nuts little by little (the Italian name pesto comes from the verb pestare = to crush something in a mortar) until you get a creamy, green sauce; add some salt to taste. Being people living in the 21^st century and, as such, with no much time to spare, I suggest putting all the ingredients together in the mixer and mix until ready. If you want to make it lighter and more digestible, prepare it without garlic and pine nuts.

You can season pasta with it (remember to thin it with one/two tablespoons of the boiling water in which pasta is being cooked); if you use it for boiled meat or fish you should dilute it with a little bit of vinegar.

And, very quickly, to prepare a nice colourful dish: peel and cut four potatoes into small cubes, wash and cut 1 pound of green beans, put everything into a large pan, cover with water, and cook over medium heat until the vegetables are soft. Drain and season with your newly home-made pesto!

For more great recipes, get your copy of the best selling book The Basic Art of Italian Cooking by Maria Liberati at http://www.marialiberati.com and visit http://www.marialiberati.com/blog2