Cooking Class | PlanningaTour.com

Tuscany – A typical dessert: “chiacchiere” with lemon mousse

Lemon mousse:
. 3 eggs
. the juice of 3 lemons plus grated rind of one
. 100 mg sugar
. 6 gm gelatine
. 350 gm whipping cream

Separate the eggs and put the yolks and the whites into different mixing bowls. Put the whipping crea minto a third mixing bowl. Add the sugar to the egg yolks and mix well. Put the lemon juice and the gelatine in a small saucepan and leave for 5 minutes before heating gently to dissolve the gelatine.
be careful not to let the lemon jiuce boil.
Take the saucepan of the heat and leave to cool a little before adding it and the lemon rind to the egg yolk mixture. Mix well.
Now whisk the egg whites and the cream until they are both firm.
Mix them both into the egg yolk mixture by very gently moving the mixture from top to bottom with a wooden spoon or spatula. The slower and more gently you do this the lighter the mousse will be.
Put the mousse in the mixing bowl into the fridge for at least 2 hours to set.

Chiacchiere:
. 400 g plain flour
. 25 g icing sugar
. 50 g butter
. 2 eggs
. a glasso f marsala
. a pinch of salt

Sieve the flour into a bowl and add all the other ingriedentes. Mix well to form a smooth dough. Leave to rest for 10 minutes.
Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until it is just a couple of milimetres thick and then cut into strips using a zig-zag edged patry cutter. Fry in hot oil for a few minutes until browned and leave to drain on some kitchen paper.

Serving suggestion

Using two dessertspoons, form querelle with the mousse by taking a spoonful of the mixture from the bowl with one spoon and then carefully passing the mixture between the spoons until a neat form is obtained. Gently slide the quenelle off the spoon into a dessert plate.
Dust the chiacchiere with a little extraa icing sugar and place them on the plate next to the querelle of lemon mousse.
Finally decorate the mousse with a few fine strips of lemon rind.

Tuscan Recipes, Chick Pea Veloutè with Vegetable Tartare and Basil Oil

For the chick pea soup
350 gm chick peas
1 stick celery, roughly chopped
4 shallots ,thinly sliced
1 carrot, roughly chopped
4 dessertspoons olive oil
A sprig of fresh thyme
A sprig of fresh rosemary
3 fresh sage leaves
2 litres water
salt

For the vegetable tartare
1/2 sick celery
1/2 courgette
1/2 carrot
2 shallots
1/2 red pepper
15 fresh leaves basil
50 ml olive oil
salt and pepper

For decoration
4 basil leaves fried in the little olive oil

Soak the stick chick peas for 12 hours or overnight, rinse and put them in the saucepan with 2 liters of water .

Add the carrot and the celery and pinch of salt and simmer for 1 and half hours. While the chick peas are cooking, gently fry the shallot in the little olive oil with the thyme leaves, rosemary needles and sage leaves.

Drain the cooked chick peas over a bowl keeping the cooking water for later. Add the chick peas to the shallot and herbs, add 3 or 4 ladles of cooking water and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Blend into a smooth cream or “veloute” using a hand-held blender, adding a little more cooking water if necessary.

To make the vegetable tartare,wash and trim all the vegetables, then cut them into small, similar sized cubes. Place the remaining ingredients- the fresh basil leaves, olive oil and salt and pepper-in a tall jug and blend using a hand-held blender.
Dress the vegetable with the basil oil.

Put a small amount of the vegetable tartare in the middle of each of your serving bowls. Its best to use a small metal ring to help keep the vegetables together and create a neater shape. Pour the chick pea veloute around the vegetable tartare, decorate with the fried basil leaves and serve.

Tuscan Recipes, Tagliatelle with courgettes and tiger prawns.

250 gm tagliatelle, 300 gm of peeled tiger prawns, 3 courgettes cut into small pieces, 100 ml cream, fresh flat leaf parseley, chopped, a squashed garlic clove in camicia – this means that the garlic clove hasn’t been peeled and still has its shirt on!
Olive oil, freshly ground salt and pepper, freshcourgette flowers for decoration.

Start bt heating a large saucepan of salted water for the tagliatelle. In the meantime, gently fry the garlic in a little olive oil ( keeping the skin on reduces the strength of the garlic ). Remove the garlic and discard it. Using the same pan and oil gently fry the courgettes for about 5 minutes then add the prawns and continue cooking.
When the prawns are cooked add the cream and simmer gently for a few minutes to reduce the amount of liquid and form a creamy sauce.
Add the chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook the tagliatelle. This usually takes between 2 and 4 minutes but check the cooking instructions on the packet and taste from time to time to see if it’s ready.
While the pasta is cooking cut the courgette flowers into strips lengthways and fry in a little hot oil.
Drain the pasta and toss in the sauce.
Serve and decorate with the fried courgette flowers.

Buon Appetito!

Tuscany, The year of the Olive

Olives, those beautiful silvery trees, have today become a visual metaphor for Italy.
Nevertheless, seldom does anyone come to Italy solely for the purpose of growing olives and making olive oil. Most foreign-born cultivators naively back into it somehow. Olives usually enter their lives on a ” bit of land ” just beyond the garden of their dream home, whether it be a humble farmhouse or a full-blown villa.
Those gnarled trunks look so expressively romantic.
The delicate leaves gently sea basking in the Mediterranean sun. The terraced groves are so suggestive of a living link across time to departed generations. Yes… but, wander into any local bar and take a look around at the old tuskers playing cards or arguing over this year’s olive crop and you’ll notice they’ve grown as gnarled as their trees.
Olive farming is indeed lovely work with long hours spent in solitary meditation, but it is also year-round hard work.
The year starts in Februarywith the cutting down of the undergrowth in the olive grove and fertilizing each tree. March and April are pruning time and burning of the cuttings. In May the trees go into bloom, dropping their tiny white flowers on the ground like a summer snow. June the undergrowth is cut again to prevent fire in the olive grove.
July and August is quit time while the olives are left to grow in the hot, dry summer. In late September, some additional light pruning and cutting undergorwth is again on the agenda.
October brings the laying of the nets. November, December and beyond is harvest time and taking the olives to the frantoio to make olive oil and January is clean up time – taking up and putting away the nets and equipment and, of course, enjoying the fruit of our labor!

Wine Trails of Tuscany

The “Wine Trails of Tuscany” run through magnificent wine-growing areas which, apart from the obvious vineyards and wineries, offer an integrated tourist package of cultural, historical and natural attractions.

These trails are also a means of fostering rural development and of promoting so-called “Enotourism”, that is, setting wine production in a cultural, environmental, historical and social context.