Eat Seasonal - Quick Meal

 

Many times I am surprised as to how tasteless certain fruit and vegetables are; not having any taste even when I buy them fresh from the supermarket or small grocery stores. It's a bit disappointing! Well, the answer to my disappointment is that if I start eating seasonal like I used to I could/would enjoy a better taste in my food. Here I am starting to do that.

I have to admit that when there is an abundance of a certain fruit and vegetables around, nobody will be busy growing that in any greenhouse or feeding it hormones to grow fast - the result!? ... get to enjoy the real taste of fresh food.

I will pick on zucchini today which we have in abundance starting in May and going well into the fall. They are easy to pair with a lot of foods or cooked on their own and they are very nutritious – having tons of vitamin A and C and some essential minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and Potassium!

Last night in just a few minutes I sliced a couple of zucchinis and braised them in olive oil (only a couple of teaspoons). In the end I topped them with some crumbled feta on top and fresh mint. It was my side dish that accompanied my meat pies. I cheated a little bit by using ready dough. I prepared my meat filling and then I stuffed my pastry pockets. I even played around with the shapes of my pastries creating triangles, square ….shapes.

Meat Filling

1 pound ground beef

¼ cup finely chopped yellow onion

½ cup puree tomatoes

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon dry mint

Salt

Pepper

¼ cup finely chopped parsley added only a minute before removing from the heat

Enjoy!

Καλη ορεξη!

Orlando's Pizza

Spend a few minutes talking with my beloved Gianluca Orlando and you will figure out very quickly that cooking is one of his biggest passions! He can spend hours talking about food and cooking. It’s easy to understand why he loves food  … he is from Italy! He was brought up in a Country where there is an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables and where people love to cook  and enjoy sharing food with one another – Italy! He comes from the Northern part of Italy, Padova located 20 minutes away from Venice. As most of people in Italy, he grew up in a family where his mom cooked every day and prepared fresh meals for the family. Take aways and fast food were unknown in their household!

Gianluca an electronics engineer and an IT geek :-) is also trained as a pizza maker – true to his food fascination he realized early on that he had to explore his culinary passion and learn new ways to express it. Is there any better way other than the art of making pizza?! A few years ago he decided to enroll in a pizza making course along with other professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers. He proudly finished the course and got his pizza making certificate!

When you visit his home in Padova he will proudly show you his pizza making diploma and not his engineering and computer degrees!

I have already enjoyed his pizzas on several occasions and I can tell you that they are delicious and healthy! They have nothing to do with the average pizzas we eat in the United States. They have a thin and soft crust so that you can easily fold the pizza slice while eating it and the fresh ingredients used on his pizzas are used in moderation like they do back in his home Country Italy. For the Italians when they cook, less is more. Yes, they use garlic and tomato sauce and cheese BUT ALWAYS in moderation. They usually eat these individual pizzas which are about 25 cm in diameter and one wonders how can these people eat all this pizza and not be weighing 250 pounds – the secret is that all the ingredients used are in moderation and there is no oil. They drizzle a little bit of virgin olive oil on top of the pizza just before they eat it.

I have had pizzas made by Gianluca with artichokes. eggplant, zucchini, peas, gorgonzola cheese, roasted red bell pepper, chicken to name just a few of the toppings. All of his pizzas have been simply delicious. His latest adventure was to modify a barbeque grill into a pizza oven! 

Yes, you heard it correctly – grill serving as a pizza oven - only Gianluca can spend hours thinking and trying to covert a grill into a different oven! His new oven can reach 600 degrees F which is the temperature that a pizza needs to bake at for a couple of minutes only! I call it  pizza express!

All he uses for his dough is flour, salt, a bit of sugar, water, yeast and some water! After the dough rises for a couple of hours he starts opening his pizzas.

Here’s his dough recipe.

3 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/3 cups hot water or ½ pint (water’s temperature 110 F)

2 ½ teaspoons dry yeast

Makes 4 pizzas – approximate size 16 inch pizzas

Come join us for a fun evening of making pizza along with a glass of beer or wine!

Buon appetito!