Italian Food Lovers

Are you still undecided on the best gourmet menu for your Valentine’s dinner?You should try more aphrodisiac recipes from the Academia Barilla Gastronomy Library - I have some more ideas for you today.

I picked up Georgio Leonardi’s “La Cuisine des Amoureux” a French cookbook from the ’60s dedicated to the Lovers’s Cuisine. Leonardi puts together great love-empowering recipes from all over the world, and dedicates an entire chapter to aphrodisiac recipes from Italy. Ready?

PRUNES AU JAMBON
(Prunes au Jambon - Plums with Prosciutto)
A recipe by Georgio Leonardi

INGREDIENTS

- 300 grams (10 ounces approx) plums
- 100 grams (3.5 ounces approx) prosciutto
- extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 liter (16 ounces approx) donkey’s milk (!)
- 50 grams (1.8 ounces approx) pine nuts

PREPARATION:

Wash and dry the plums, and eliminate their seeds, then leave the plums to infuse for an entire night in a bowl with the donkey’s milk and the pine nuts.

Dry the plums again after they’ve had their time in the donkey milk marinade, and wrap each plum in finely cut slices of prosciutto.

Sautee for a minute, and immediately serve the prunes au jambon warm, with wooden skewers.

—

Thank you to Georgio Leonardi and the Gastronomic Library at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center in Parma, Italy.

Wow, that sure is a delicious and easy-to-prepare gourmet and aphrodisiac dish but, where do I get the milk from donkeys? Well, if you live close to a farming area you can be so lucky to taste such a delight. Otherwise just forget about it - maybe it will happen to you next time you’ll be traveling across Greece, or the Pyrenees…

OK, that was a vintage recipe. Sure you don’t need to dry the plums yourself, either - you can buy dry plums at your closest farmer market or even supermarket.

Maybe you can opt out of the donkey’s milk too, and try a more available full milk from cows. And, if you want to get the finest Italian prosciutto, we will of course suggest you to choose prosciutto di parma that you can find at your closest gourmet deli or food store, or better yet, get online at the Academia Barilla online store.

Enjoy your Valentine week and share with your special one your gourmet love!

Have you tried Isabel Allende’s recipe we published last weekend? Let us know how it went - in the kitchen, of course, we don’t want to know the rest… It could be interesting for me to know, from a strictly professional standpoint, if the mousse was truly aphrodisiac as described by Isabel Allende. So let us know if it worked or not - just shoot us a comment below.Alright, so, some more Valentine’s Day aphrodisiac recipes today from the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library!

After starting our aphrodisiac explorations in Chile with Isabel Allende (well, for many years the Chilean-born writer was a San Francisco bay resident), we move across the Andes to land in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The book I have found for you today in the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library is La Cocina Afrodisiaca, by Gerard De Villiers, who introduces the Argentinian-Catalan Chef Maurice Szigeti. The edition I found is from 1995, published by the Argentinian Ministry of Culture, of course in Spanish.

Gerard De Villiers is a French spy-story writer who got famous since the 70’s also because he was always showing up in theatres of operations during terrorist attacks, and then for writing best-seller thrillers rich of real-life details. It’s interesting to note how De Villiers also ventured with Argentinian Chef Szigeti into a cooking theatre of operations to write this cookbook, unique in his long list of spy-thriller publications.

I chose a classic aphrodisiac today from De Villiers’ book, seafood. I selected this part of the book also because I got inspired (and found immediate connection) from the introduction to the Seafood chapter (Pescados, crustaceos y mariscos) published by De Villiers - I translate it here below, trying to keep the same poetic approach, for as much as possible…

Fish, crustaceans and seafood
An introduction from Gerard De Villiers

All food from the sea
are aphrodisiacs by excellence.
The same word should remind us this.

It is not by chance if Aphrodite,
born from Neptune, God of waters and foams of all seas,
is the Goddess of love and beauty.

In your seaside holidays never hesitate
in replace meat with fish,
you’ll feel its beneficial effects up to the middle of the next winter.

CEVICHE (Peruvian Sushi)
A recipe by Maurice Szigeti

INGREDIENTS (serves 2)

- 1 very fresh Tilapia or Kingcroaker fish (Besugo, Corvina)
- 2 or 3 lemons
- garlic and salt to taste
- thyme
- 2 bell peppers

PREPARATION

Ask your local fish store to cut for you fillets out of a very fresh Tilapia. Cut the fillets in thin slices.

Put the fish slices in a tray with 2 colorful bell peppers chopped to tiny pieces, a finely chopped piece of garlic, a pinch of salt and another of thyme.

Add the juice from the lemons, stir well and leave in the refrigerator to marinate for 12 hours, stirring again every now and then to make sure that each piece of fish gets soaked in the marinating sauce.

If the Tilapia fish bears eggs, throw them in the ceviche, too. Fish and seafood’s aphrodisiac properties are valid also for fish roe. When raw, their aphrodisiac effect multiplies.

Only one imperative: only use very fresh fish and seafood for your raw ceviches.

—

Good one, easy and surely hot, De Villiers! Thanks to Chef Maurice Szigeti, too.

Today there are hundred different versions of ceviche, from those with shrimp and calamari to those with scallops, tuna fish, salmon and all fresh delights from the sea. Variations in this classic recipe include adding chopped onions, chives, capers, ginger, soy sauce, fruits, or even also balsamic vinegar!

I’m a fan of both raw food and seafood and I love any version of sushi, from Japan to Peru to Italy - have you ever heard of Italian Sushi (also called Italian Susci)? We’ll touch base on that soon here on Italian Food Lovers.

My personal serving suggestion for the recipe above, and in general for all seafood cocktails/salads: use a cocktail glass to serve it for maximum gourmet presentation results. Present the glass with the ceviche on a serving dish that you can use for adding more creative presentation decorations. Buon appetito!

In the meanwhile, have a great Valentine’s week with your gourmet special person and the culinary tips from Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library. And if you want to surprise your gourmet lover with a great Valentine’s gift, don’t forget that you can find great gourmet gift ideas at the Academia Barilla online shop.

I will be back soon with more aphrodisiac recipes tomorrow!

Happy Gourmet Valentine’s Day to all Italian Food Lovers!

Academia Barilla loves food and, to celebrate Valentine’s Day, we have decided to browse our Gastronomic Library for some of the most intriguing (or most curious) aphrodisiac recipes.

Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library is part of the Academia Barilla Culinary Center in Parma, Italy, and it’s a real paradise for food lovers, historian and researchers.

With more than 15,000 books from all over the world, including handwritten books dating back to the 16th century, historic menus and other gourmet gastronomy resources, the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library is a unique biblioteque in the world, the perfect place where to spend days browsing and reading, if you are into food.

Let’s start this series of Valentine’s posts with an easy and surely sexy recipe: Crab and Avocado Mousse.

The recipe is taken from one of my favorite books, Aphrodite - A Memoir of the Senses, by Isabel Allende - the perfect read for food lovers, perfectly balanced in a literary place between a narrated aphrodisiac cookbook and Allende’s literary narrative style.

I have both an Italian and a Spanish version of Allende’s book, so I will have to translate the recipes directly into English for this blog - I hope I won’t butcher brilliant Allende’s writing style too much.

I love this book - let’s now go to the kitchen!!!

CRAB AND AVOCADO MOUSSE
An aphrodisiac gourmet recipe by Isabel Allende

Intro by Isabel Allende:

Almost all mousses are based upon the same basic recipe, with the main ingredient being the one who provides the particular flavor to each mousse - in this case crab and avocado.

Mousses are discreet foreplays to both menus and love. This two-color recipes, light in consistency and nice to see when served, can be prepared in advance, with the further advantage of letting you receive your guest lover without the risk of a last-minute culinary anxiety.

INGREDIENTS

- 1 cup bechamel cream (besciamella)
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1 cup cooked and minced crab meat
- 1 ripe avocado, medium size
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 3 teaspoons food jelly
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3 spoons of water
- 3 spoons of Jerez (Spanish Cherry Liquor, also Brandy works fine)
- few drops hot chili sauce, to taste
- a pinch of salt and pepper

PREPARATION

Mix the cold bechamel cream with the mayonnaise, while melting in a different bowl the food jelly into boiling water, adding the Jerez liquor (or brandy). Pour the hot jelly/jerez into the bechamel/mayonnaise bowl and mix it all together, stirring well.

Split the resulting mousse in two parts - add to one of the halves the crab meat, after seasoning it with salt, pepper, lemon juice and the chili sauce; prepare the other half with the avocado, previously mixed with the heavy cream, salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Use some olive oil to wet the inner walls of a tall tray, and pour the crab mousse in, leveling its surface with the back of a spoon. Create a second layer carefully pouring in the avocado mousse. Make sure to distribute the avocado mousse evenly, make sure not to leave empty spots and not to mix the two creams/mousses.

Personal note: you can also use shaped food containers for better presentation results. Since it’s a Valentine’s dish, you can’t go wrong with an heart-shaped mousse but, if you want to be more creative, try to use other shapes: I would shape it into a star, just to leverage its romantic reminiscences - or would opt for a more classic and always contemporary oval shape. The final creative decision is up to you and your creativity.

Refrigerate for at least two hours or until the mousse will be solid. Rotate the tray onto a serving dish to serve, using a leaf of lettuce and some slices of lemon to decorate.

–

Thank you Isabel Allende!

Stay tuned with Italian Food Lovers in the next few days: we’ll offer you a full week of aphrodisiac recipes from the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library, so you will have plenty of gourmet choices for your Valentine’s week!