While the Academia Barilla website is now completed, as well as all the new website features we invite you to explore, we are now working on the restyle/redesign of the Academia Barilla online store, that will be released in its new version soon.

We love our blog and we couldn’t stay away from it, so here we are again, back to blogging.

Since you can now discover gourmet recipes from the Italian regional gastronomic tradition at the new Academia Barilla website, we asked Barilla Executive Chef Lorenzo Boni to provide us with a recipe from our beloved region, Emilia-Romagna, and he provided us with a recipe for a classic dish: Veal Cotoletta alla Bolognese, that Chef Boni pairs with a side of Asparagus Tips and Cherry Tomatoes sautéed in Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Ready? Let’s go to the kitchen!

VEAL COTOLETTA ALLA BOLOGNESE
A recipe by Chef Lorenzo Boni
(serves 4)

INGREDIENTS

- 4 Veal chops, 12 oz each
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 eggs
- 3 cups, freshly grated bread crumbs
- 4 slices, Academia Barilla Prosciutto di Parma
- 1 very thin cup, Academia Barilla Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved
- 1/2 cup, Veal demi-glace or concentrated stock
- 1 cup cream
- fresh white Truffles, to taste (jarred white truffles optional)
- few drops truffle oil, optional
- 1 bunch asparagus
- 2 tablespoon Academia Barilla Unfiltered extra virvin olive oil
- Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla Natural Sea Salt with Lemon Zest, to taste
- Academia Barilla Cherry Tomatoes, to taste
- black pepper, to taste

PREPARATION

Pound the meat so that it is 1/3 inch in thickness, season with sea salt and pepper and dust with flour.

Dip each slice in beaten eggs and then cover in bread crumbs. Fry both sides of the chop in butter, discarding the excess.

Cover each chop with truffles, a slice of Academia Barilla Prosciutto di Parma, and Academia Barilla Parmigiano Reggiano.

Deglaze with a little cream and veal jus and place it in the oven to melt for a few minutes.

CHEF TIPS

Serve with vegetables on the side, we suggest asparagus tips and cherry tomatoes sautéed in Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Sauté the asparagus and cherry tomatoes in the Unfiltered Extra Virgin Olive Oil over medium heat. Season with the Lemon Sea Salt and black pepper to taste.

Thank you Lorenzo for sharing your first recipe and chef tips of the year with us!

We will be back to blogging properly soon - in the meanwhile, we invite you to explore our new website and to keep an eye (or a click) on the soon-to-be-relaunched Academia Barilla online store!

Yesterday we introduced a new entry for our Guest Chef Series, Chef John Franchetti, and today he is ready to share with us his first recipe: The Christmas Pizza!

This is a pretty simple recipe that everybody at your Christmas table will love. Chef Franchetti definitely loves pizza - look how happy he looks in the picture below, while he’s eating a pizza in the street of Naples on a Vespa! Forget gourmet! Just keep it simple, like today’s recipe!

Ready? Let’s go to the kitchen!

CHRISTMAS PIZZA
A recipe by Chef John Franchetti
(serves 4)

INGREDIENTS

- 5oz pizza dough
- Academia Barilla Monti Iblei extra virgin olive oil
- 8 pc. shaved garlic
- 1 sprig chopped oregano
- 1/2 oz lardo
- 1/4 Amagaki Persimmons
- 1 sprinkle grated Academia Barilla Pecorino cheese
- a few drops of Academia Barilla Balsamic Vinegar of Modena aged 3-years

PREPARATION

Pin out the pizza dough to 14 inches in diameter and drizzle on the olive oil.

Sprinkle the garlic, oregano persimmons, lardo, and the pecorino cheese.

Bake in wood fired pizza oven for 1 and 1/2 minutes, spinning the pizza 3 times.

Remove from oven and cut in 6 pieces, drizzle with balsamic, serve hot and Buon Natale!

Buon Natale (Merry Christmas) to you too, Chef Franchetti - and Merry Christmas to all our readers!

The Italian Food Lovers Chef Network keeps growing, and today we are proud to introduce a new Guest Chef: Chef John Franchetti from Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar in Santa Rosa, California.

We had an email chat with John in California and learned a few things about hisChef experience and insight, that started in 1981, when John met the American celebrity Chef, restaurateur, television personality and cookbook author Chef Emeril Lagasse, really liked what he was doing, and decided he was going to follow the same path into a gourmet Chef career.

As he wrote about his Chef experience in an email:

My experience started with Commanders Palace, and Emerils in NOLA, from there I worked doing catering in Rhode Island.

Then I moved to Alaska where I hooked up with my bride to be and I got involved in her restaurant and became a perfect match for us.

Years later we moved back to my home town and started the process of finding a another person that has the same vision that we have to begin the restaurant building together. We found Kevin Cronin who we felt has the same ideals and passion that we do and he was too looking, from that Rosso Pizzeria was born.

For Chef Franchetti, recipient of the Anchorage Alaska Best Chef and Best Restaurant, Santa Rosa Best New Restaurant and San Francisco top 100 Restaurants awards, his secret ingredient in being a top Chef is “doing what you want or believe in with the food, not tring to be something or someone else“.

Chef Franchetti’s favorite food is seafood, his favorite cookbook is The Meat cookbook, by Bruce Ideal, and his favorite cooking style is, according to his own definition, regional cooking with Italian influence.

About Italian cuisine Chef Franchetti says “I believe that Italian cooking is regional and traditional with a whole lot of opinions about its true origin, but with a strong focus on seasonality“. We also like his definition of Italian gourmet: “crafted and harvested regional items and products“, pretty much like the Academia Barilla gourmet food products, which Chef Franchetti uses every day at Rosso Pizzeria.

His experience with Academia Barilla products from a Chef standpoint is, as he told us:

I currently use pecorino cheese, balsamics, and salamis. These gourmet products create a uniqueness to what we are doing here at Rosso Pizzeria. The flavor profile on all products are balanced to go on their own or combined with other products, which is what we keeping doing at Rosso Pizzeria.

The address to Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar is Creekside Center, 53 Montgomery Drive, Santa Rosa, California 95404.

You can reach John and the Rosso Pizzeria crew also through the restaurant website Rossopizzeria.com or calling Rosso Pizzeria’s +1 707 544 3221 phone contact for info and reservations.

View a larger map on Google Maps

Thank you to John for joining our Italian Food Lovers Chef Network. We will publish Chef Franchetti’s first Chef Network gourmet recipe tomorrow, keep following our blog!

Ready? Let’s go to the kitchen!

FARFALLE PASTA WITH DUCK CONFIT, CRIMINI MUSHROOMS, ASPARAGUS AND PARMIGANO REGGIANO
A recipe by Chef Doug D’Avico
(serves 4-6)

INGRDIENTS

- 1 pound Barilla Pasta (we use the Farfalle shape, but any will do)
- 1 pound Home made or store bought Duck Confit
- 8 ounces of Crimini mushrooms, washed and sliced
- 1/2 bunch asparagus, cut in 1” pieces, discarding tough ends
- 1 bag of pearl onions (around 4 ounces), skins removed
- 2 1/2 cups fresh chicken stock or a good quality store bought
- 1 cup homemade Demi Glace or a store bought Glace di Veau
- 1 clove of garlic, chopped
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter
- 4 oz Academia Barilla Parmigiano Reggiano, grated
- 1 oz Toasted Pine Nuts
- Academia Barilla 100% Italian extra virgin olive oil
- Academia Barilla Natural Sea Salt with Orange Zest
- fresh ground black pepper, to tast

PREPARATION

Fill a large pan with water, large enough to cook the pasta in, bring to a boil and season to taste with salt.

Remove the bones and skin from the duck, break it up into nice size pieces as it will shred when warmed. Set aside.

In a large pan (6 to 8 qt pan) warm over med –high heat, when pan is warm add the pearl onions and 1 tablespoon olive oil and sauté to brown the out side of the onions, about 4 minutes, if the heat gets to hot turn down the heat as to not burn the pan. Remove the onions and in the same pan sauté the mushrooms with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and the chopped garlic sauté for another 3-4 minutes.

Return the onions to the pan and add the chicken stock and Demi Glace. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a medium and reduce the liquid by half. While this is going on cook your pasta as per the directions on the box.

When the pasta is almost done, you are going to throw you asparagus pieces in the water with the pasta (do not over cook the pasta al dente is best) and cook for 45 seconds. Drain thoroughly and add the pasta and asparagus to the sauce reduction.

Add the duck to the pan and cook till the sauce is to the consistency that you like. One step you can take before starting all the cooking is to put the duck bones and scraps into a sauce pan with the chicken stock and Demi Glace and reduce by half ahead of time. You want the sauce to be able to coat the pasta and not be too soupy. The time it takes on the reduction depends on the chicken stock.

When the sauce is done finished remove from heat and add the butter and half the Parmigiano. Toss and season to taste with salt and fresh ground pepper. Pour into serving bowl and garnish with the toasted pine nuts.

Serve the extra Parmigiano Cheese on the side to your guests.

Thank you Chef D’Avico for sharing this Christmas recipe and the Chef tips. Merry Christmas to you from both the Italian Food Lovers readership and blogging team!

As you have noticed, this week we celebrated Turkey Day proposing a lot of gourmet recipes from our Italian Food Lovers Chef Network, but none of them with turkey! Well, we published a recipe for the tratitional Thanksgiving roasted turkey, but we left our guest Chef free to propose alternative, innovative Thanksgiving recipes.

Today we have with us Chef Doug D’Avico of Trattoria n. 10 in Chicago with a new Thanksgiving gourmet creation: Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Cinnamon and Orange Zest. Ready? let’s go to the kitchen!

SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI WITH CINNAMON AND ORANGE ZEST
A recipe by Chef Doug D’Avico
(serves 4-6)

INGREDIENTS

- 3 lbs light fleshed Sweet Potatoes
- 1/8 cup good quality ricotta, drained
- 1/8 cup Academia Barilla Pecorino Gran Cru, grated
- 1 ea large egg
- 1/2 tablespoon Academia Barilla Sicilian Sea Salt with Orange Zest
- 1/4 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon nutmeg
- 3-4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
- 1 orange
- 1 medium size leek, white part only
- 2 tablespoon cinnamon-sugar mixture
- 3 tablespoon european style butter
- 2-3 tablespoon Academia Barilla Riviera Ligure Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- some fresh herbs for plate garnishing

PREPARATION

Take the 3 sweet potato, wash the outside well and bake in a 375 degree F oven till soft to the touch, remove from the oven and let cool. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle remove the skins and put the flesh though a potato ricer to break up any large clumps and place into a large enough bowl to mix all the ingredients in.

Mix all the ingredients, except for the flour, into the sweet potato and combine well with your hand.
Take 2 cups of the flour and fold into the sweet potato mix half a cup at a time, making sure the flour is thoroughly incorporated before adding the next 1/2 cup. Check the dough it should be a little sticky, if it is too wet add a 1/4 cup more flour and mix. Wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

After resting take the remaining flour and use some to dust the work surface. Take the dough out of the bowl and place on the floured surface, sprinkle a little more flour over top and knead a few times so you can handle the dough.

Flatten the dough out to about 3/4 of an inch and cut strips every 3/4 of an inch and then roll each strip a little bit to round out the corners, set a side and finish the rest of the dough. Use a little more flour if the dough starts to stick to the table. Use a damp towel to cover the dough strips while you work.

Have a corn meal coated tray ready to store the gnocchi’s on after they are cut. Using a small knife cut the strips into 3/4 inch pieces and you can use either the back of a fork or a gnocchi board to roll the gnocchi off of or just take your finger and poke a little indentation into each one and then place on the corn meal coated tray.

Finish the batch and then freeze the gnocchi or cook and serve.

To serve bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. In the mean time while you are waiting for the water to boil, remove the root end of the leek and cut the leek on a bias about 1/4 of an inch thick until you get to the green part, discard or use for homemade stock. Separate the layers of the leek and wash under cold water to remove any sand set aside.

Using a zester, zest 1 orange and set a side. Preheat a 12 inch sauté pan and warm over medium heat, when hot add 1/2 the butter and add the washed leeks to the melted butter, do not let the butter burn, and cook for about 3-5 minutes or until the leeks are tender season with a little salt and pepper and remove from the pan set aside. Remove the pan from the heat.

Check the seasoning in the pot of boiling water and adjust with the salt to taste. When the water is at a rolling boil add the gnocchi and stir well so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. They will take about 5-8 minutes and are usually done about 30 seconds after they start floating. Just before they are done put the large sauté and back on the fire over medium high heat.

Drain the gnocchi and add to the sauté pan with the remaining butter. The pan should be nice and hot as you will want to add a little bit of color to the gnocchi. Cook for about 3 minutes then add the cooked leeks and cook for 2-4 more minutes and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar and add the orange zest and mix well, pour into a serving bowl and garnish the plate with fresh herbs, just before serving drizzle the Academia Barilla olive oil over the whole dish. Serve immediately. You can serve some extra Academia Barilla Pecorino Gran Cru on the side.

Thank you Chef D’Avico for this yummy Thanksgiving recipe. Thanks again also to Chef Tony Mantuano and Chef Mark Grimes for the gourmet recipe shared with us this week. Thank you also to our friends at BIGAB, the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library, for providing us with the traditional Thanksgiving roasted turkey recipe!

And again, Happy Thanksgiving to all Italian food lovers from Academia Barilla and our Italian Food Lovers blog team!