IMPERIA or: let's do homemade pasta. With the Power of Lord.

Wannabe pasta-maker? IMPERIA: this is the magic word.
Imperia is a beautiful stainless steel machine look-alike the one produced in the thirties here in Italy. Yes, they make it to date, and sell it with an identical packaging. Just below the Imperia box:

Now they sell also a motorized version, but, bedda matri, don't buy this american rubbish. I know that in your daydream you can make pasta pushing on a remote control from the sofa, with a 2 litre cola in a hand and soaking a tortilla in chili sauce with the other hand. Sure, you have just the big toe to push the remote control, izz enough. Make an effort, there's an extraordinary motive power in your arms and it's free! Use it.

My grandmother Matilda called it "The power of the Lord". Ok, when she turn off the light she tell me "let's use the light of the Lord". Fortunately the Lord did not claimed for bill payment, until now.

But stop with thick talk, we have to make homemade pasta with Imperia.

You need:

- Durum wheat. Pastry flour will give you a pasta good to use as glue, a good work for your dentist. Manitoba is good, but durum wheat is better.
- water
- Imperia
- the power of your arm, or, if you are that kind of people, the Power of Lord. Bedda matri. May be if you are that kind of people, you will feel to owe somebody to Him. You could offer Him a dish of pasta, why not? My grandmother Matilda... ok, I will tell you nex time.

You have to make a hard dough, mixing water and wheat. Add water enough to do a ball good for the IMPERIA steel rolls. Pass the dough throug the rolls many times, until comes out from the machine a smooth and thick sheet.

In the picture above I make a dough with water and cuttlefish ink, good for seafood pasta.
With Imperia you can do tagliatelle with the sheet:


And now the hard point for you americans glue-eaters: to guess the right cooking point.
Boil a lot of water. Add salt. And add pasta. The pasta will sink.
When it comes up, it's good, OK? When floats, you have to keep it out of boiling water, immediatly!! OK?

Just now! FLOATING PASTA!! GO and drain it, NOW! GODDAMN, why you are reading this stupid post? GOOO!!!

Enjoy!

Grandma's Matilda potato rissoles given at death's door

Bedda matri, it's a lot of time that I don't give to you Americans a good recipe to solace your sad palates.

This blog have had an astonishing outcome, millions of people beg me for another recipe: «please, please! Give us something to cook this Sunday, we are bored with Thanksgiving turkey! Please enlighten us!»
We Sicilians are very generous people. So, let's get the Sicilian-English dictionary and - herd, get your cookware: I'm going to lay down the Recipe.

There was a specific circumstance for my grandma to prepare the potato rissoles. It were when my father beat me. My grandma Matilda always prevented my dad from beating me. She hid me under her skirts and said him "Si t'arrìsichi a tuccari u picciriddu t'ammazzu! Comu ti resi a vita accussì ta lievu!", that in good english sounds: "If you try to beat him I'll kill you, I gave you life and I'll take away!".
Often it turned out my grandma beating my dad with a broom.
Later, my Grandma did the potato rissoles to solace me.

And now, I will say you how she did the best potato rissoles in the world, as she peach me when she had an operation to her knee and she think to be at death's door.

So, that's the recipe of :

Grandma Matilda's potato rissoles given at death's door


Ingredients for two.
For two. A Sicilian never cook for two persons. The minimum is at least five. But you Americans are all singles, you don't marry and hire out children. So you probably will cook this rissoles to make a splash with your girlfriend. Anyway.

You need:
- 1 Kg of potatoes
- parsley
- 2 eggs
- a dish full of grated parmigiano
- 4 cloves of garlic
- black pepper
- a little scrape of nutmeg
- a spoon of durum wheat
- grated stale bread

Boil the potatoes, let them cool in fresh water, mush up and mix with eggs, minced parsley and garlic, parmigiano, ground pepper, scrape of nutmeg. Now, little by little add the grated bread, until you can make a ball with the dough. Make a flat oval rissole, cover with the durum wheat and deep fry in olive or peanut oil.

To be eaten at burn temperature.

It's quite simple, doesn't it? No, it's difficoult, you presumptuous person! You have to find out the perfect equilibrium between hard and mushy. This is the secret that my grandma matilda peach me at the death's door. Two days after the operation she was still alive and she asked me to compleatly forget the secret. So, still now, when I want a perfect potato rissole, I ask to my grandma.

Lomb scaccias (or calzones or pie), or: as I feed my wife when she's watching tv novelas

Bedda matri, I didn't know that you Americans cooked our national Sicilian "scacce" (ska-tchee) or impanate of calzones or pie, as you call them. It's and excellent idea, I'll cook it when my wife's watching her tv novelas and doesn't turn away her eys from tv neither during commercials, cause she is afraid to miss the beginning when commercial is over.
So, you surely will appreciate my scaccia country Easter version, as my grand mother Matilda used to cook it for all of us: I, my father Pippo and my mother, my aunt Lidia and Rosetta and Aurora, and my uncles Luigi and Aldo and my cousins Elisa, Dan, Tony, Marzia, my sister and my grand father Antonino, good soul (bonarmùzza) (may be I forget someone).

Usually my grand mother didn't use pizza dough. She used to knead water, bread flour and baking powder on the scaniaturi, or sbrìula. Sorry, I haven't a Sicilian/English dictionary. Here it is:

If you are only two, you don't need it. A table will be ok. But you surely need these

INGREDIENTS
For pizza dough:
- bread flour: 500 gr
- yeast baking powder
- olive oil, 4 spoons
- water, 300 mL

For lomb filling:
- lomb meat, 300 gr, deboned
- fresh peas, 150 gr
- onion, 1

Knead components of pizza dough, not too firm, not sticky. Leave it covered to blow up.
In the meantime, fry onions and lomb meat, chopped, add peas, cover with broth and leave covered, low fire, for one hour and half, two hours. It will become sweet and tender. At the end, put up fire and make it dry.

Now, roll the dough as slim as you can (ok, don't overdo with slimming), put lomb meat in the center, cover and close. Now put in the oven, 450 degrees for 30 minutes:

My grand mother used to buy entire lombs and she did other appetizing things with lomb trimmings and lomb head, but I'll tell you next time.

Just a little and light side dish

Ok. Let's start.
I was only a young boy when my grand mother Matilda, here in Scoglitti, told me:

"Little boy, you have to eat a lot to became a strong a big man. You have to eat a lot and cook your dishes with a lot of olive-oil, because olive oil will make you beautiful."

My grand mother was 4 feet and 11 inches tall and weighed 170 lb. She was beautiful, so I had trusted her.

I've learned from her how to cook an Authentic Sicilian CAPONATA, and now I reveal my secrets to you. Only foolish people can believe that caponata is similar to French ratatouille. The question is simple: caponata is good and ratatuille is stench.
It's a full vegetable recipe, so it's really light (I know, you americans are obsessed by diets). In fact it contains only vegetables.

INGREDIENTS:
- 2 eggplants
- 2 sweet pepperoni
- 2 onions
- 2 stem of celery
- 1 red hot pepper
- a handful of green stoneless olives
- a spoon of capers
- a spoon of sugar
- olive oil (a lot)
- salt (the right)
- vinegar (just a little)

You have to cut the eggplants in big pieces without peeling and put them in a little of water with salt for 1 hour, to take away the bitter.
In the meantime, cut onions and pepperoni pinstriped and celeryin little pieces.

You must cook pepperoni, onion, celery and eggplants SEPARATELY in a frying pan with a lot of olive oil, medium fire, until vegetables are soft and soak of olive oil. Then put all together in a pan, add olives, red pepper and capers, then salt, sugar and finally vinegar.

If you have pine nuts add someone of it.

You have to savour it cold, with fresh olive oil and some fresh basil leafs, with beef steak or other grilled beef. It' just a little and light side dish.

When I finished my caponata, my grand mother always said me: "eat it more, may be are you sick? Just a little" and gave me another dipper. So I've become big, strong and beautiful as her was.
Enjoy.