Skip to main content

Featured

Lagane e Ceci (Pasta & Chickpea Soup)

  Lagane e Ceci is a well-known southern Italian dish whose roots stem from ancient times when legumes were the staple ingredients, easily accessible with a very long shelf life.  Chickpeas, beans or lentils were alternated and cooked with hand made pasta, feeding the whole family.  This soup is made with dried chickpeas and hand-made ribbons of eggless pasta, but can also be made with  canned chickpeas which are just as good,  and  a short store-bought pasta like ditaletti. Mamma would make it this way when she was time poor.   We however preferred this soup with home-made pasta, rendering it more creamy. Lagane are believed to be the ancestors of today’s lasagne and the oldest form of pasta. The word lagane , like lasagna , comes from ancient Greece where it was used to describe a pasta made of flour and water, cooked on a stone, and then cut into strips. The Roman statesman  Cicero wrote about his passion for the Laganum  or laganas ...
1 comment
Read more

Lemon & Polenta Tea Cakes



My Grandparents as others baked with polenta (corn meal), as this was one of the bi-products of their land and quite simply what was readily available to everyone.  Who would have known then that they were eating what we call today a gluten free diet!  

Cakes were very dense and heavy, but as my father recounts "...when there was hunger everything tasted great."  Now-a-days we substitute flour with almond meal, but I have never made cakes with polenta.

I came across a recipe that needed to be  modified several times as I wasn't happy with the consistency and heaviness of what should have been 'light cakes'.  I reduced the amount of polenta and increased the almond meal. 

 For those who are wheat and lactose intolerant, these are a delicious little treat with a cup of tea.

Lemon & Polenta Tea Cakes
Ingredients:

90gr almond meal
50gr polenta (super fine)
40gr corn flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
100gr castor sugar (super fine)
3 eggs
1/2 cup olive oil ( I found this to be too heavy, and recommend you substitute with vegetable oil)
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
Icing sugar (for dusting)


Beat eggs, oil and sugar until creamy.  Add zest and juice of lemon.  Fold in dry ingredients. Pour into small cake tins. Bake at 180c for 20 minutes.  Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.  Decorate with fresh lemon rind and if you like more tang, you can make a lemon curd and fill them!






Lemon Curd 

6 large lemons
1 1/2 cups (375g) butter, cut
1 kg caster sugar
8 eggs, beaten

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and cut the rinds into thin strips.
Put the lemon juice, lemon rinds, butter, sugar and eggs into the top of a double sauce pan.
Place over very hot (not boiling) water and cook, stirring constantly, until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved.
Pour the mixture through a strainer and discard the rind.
Return to a clean double sauce pan and cook over very hot water,stirring frequently,until the mixture is thick and smooth
Pour into warm sterilized jars and seal immediately. (Use within four months)

Enjoy!



Comments

Post a Comment