Risotto Seafood Recipe

This declicious recipe from our Italian cooking holidays is a bit of a show stopper and great for big family occasions! The key to success with this dish is great quality, fresh seafood. All of which should bring back great memories of a trip to the wonderful Italian Coast. With so many types of seafood in this dish, it offers a flavoursome melody of coastal flavours. Serves fantastically with a glass of white wine. To see the full recipe visit our new blog here: https://www.flavoursholidays.co.uk/blog/risotto-alla-marinara-seafood-risotto/

Risotto ai Frutti di mare - seafood recipe from Amalfi!

Amalfi is our new favourite cooking holiday destination and certainly a very famous place for its seafood and fish dishes. The Flavours chefs couldn't have come up with a more delicious recipe today when it comes to a typical dish of Amalfi. Try this seafood risotto recipe for dinner tonight and enjoy a special meal that is also very good for your diet.

RISOTTO AI FRUTTI DI MARE 

Ingredients:

• 400 gr carnaroli rice
• 600 gr seafood (mussels, clams,...)
• 1 onion
• 1 glass of white wine
• 2 lt vegetable broth (made of celery, carrots, onion)
• 2 courgettes
• Salt (the right amount)
• 50 gr grated Parmesan cheese
• 50 gr olive oil

Procedure:

Dice the courgettes. Cook the mussels and the clams in a pan on high heat until the shells open. Then separate the shells, keeping the cooking water previously strained. In a separate pan, brown the onion with oil, add the rice and let toast for a few minutes. Simmer with white wine and add the vegetable broth once in a while. When rice is half cooked, add courgettes and seafood cooking water. Keep adding broth until the rice cooked; blend with grated Parmesan cheese and serve.

If you are tempted to learn how to make more seafood recipes from Amalfi and capture the taste of the island in your food, why not join us on a cooking holiday this spring?

A True Italian Pizza Experience

Where can you find the best pizza on earth?  In Italy you will say, that's not even a question! But, in which part of Italy do you think you can eat the best pizza? As Flavours new cooking holiday destination is Amalfi we couldn't resist doing some further research on specialties of the surrounding region it belongs to, Naples! Today's post is brought to you by the Australian journalist and travel expert Megan who gives us some insight on how to get the most authentic pizza experience in Naples. Enjoy!

 

 

You can’t travel to Naples, Italy, without packing on a few pounds, as you can’t claim to have traveled here without having tasted their pizza.  In fact, pizza pilgrims from all over the world let their taste buds lead them here – to the birthplace of the original pizza pie. 

In Naples, everyone loves pizza.  Furthermore, everyone believes they know pizza; the crust; the ingredients; the sauce.  There are hundreds of specialty restaurants which make pizza and nothing else, and when walking the streets of Naples your senses become overwhelmed. 

Pizzas range from the size of a plate to that of a Hummer wheel, and are very different to anything you will find anywhere else in the world – and even throughout Italy for that matter!  Forget everything you think you know about pizza from American fast food chains; a trip to Naples is discovering pizza in its purest form – a form which doesn’t involve pineapple, tinned tomatoes or thick cheese stuffed crusts!

This one was closer to the size of a Hummer wheel!

Special ingredients along with a wood-burning oven are traits of authentic Neapolitan pizza.  The traditional wood-burning ovens used today are identical to those used several hundreds of years ago, producing an entirely different taste to that of an electric or gas oven used in many fast food chains.  Strict protocols are in place for oven sizes and temperatures, enforced by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. Pizza is more than just a dish in Naples.  It is an art form.

Locally grown tomatoes, bubbling cheese, and slightly charred edges are all pre-requisites of Neapolitan pizza.  Don’t expect to have a choice of cheese – only buffalo-milk mozzarella or fior di latte cheese is used. 

Dough is left to rise for 6 hours, and this thin dough produces a thin, soft and crunchy crust.  A leopard-spotted bottom and a soupy centre is the mark of a true Neapolitan pizza.  Long wooden paddles are moved in and out of traditional wood-burning ovens at an incredibly fast pace; a pizza will take between 60 and 90 seconds to cook – fast food at its finest!

Fast food at it’s finest!

Wondering what to try? Marinara is the most basic form of pizza, topped with only tomatoes, garlic, oregano and olive oil.  Margherita is your classic pizza topped with red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese and fresh basil – this actually reflecting the colors of the Italian flag! Capricciosa is a mix of whatever ingredients are at the chef’s disposal at the time; siciliana made with mozzarella and eggplant; diavola with spicy salami; and salsiia e friarielli a combination of sausage and a vegetable similar to broccoli.

The beauty of Naples is that the pizza is phenomenal and available all year round, however travel during September when you can experience the annual Pizza festival. 

Are you hungry yet? If are tempted to have an authentic Italian food experience have a look at our cooking holidays in Amalfi.

 

Bio

Megan is an Australian Journalist who has been travelling and blogging around the world for the last 7 years to inspire others to embark on their own worldwide adventure!  Her husband Mike is an American travel photographer, and together they have made the world their home.Meg has recently launched “Mapping Megan”, an up and coming travel blog which aims to give you the best tips and advice on travelling, volunteering, living, working and holidaying abroad.  She hasn’t been everywhere, but it’s on her list! 

You can follow her journey on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram also.

LIMONCELLO: a beam of sunlight after your Italian meal

One of the most usual questions of our guests in a cooking holiday in Italy is about the local food culture. A very interesting example is when and how Italians enjoy a very popular liquer, the limoncello. 

After a lavish meal Italians usually have an espresso and then an after dinner/lunch drink or digestive, colloquially said ammazzacaffè or coffee killer, because it “kills” the flavour of the coffee and aids the digestion. For this reason in restaurant menus in Italy you will find them under the name “digestive”, but in trattorie and cafés you will always hear the more common and convivial word ammazzacaffè.

One of the most typical “coffee killers” is limoncello, a fresh lemon liqueur. Italy is the world’s largest producer of lemons, harvesting them most of the year; this is probably why Italians have found this pleasing way to use the abundant fruit.

Limoncello was first produced in Southern Italy, overall in the area of the Gulf of Naples, in fact one of the most famous limoncello is the one which is made with lemons from the Sorrentine peninsula. In particular the Amalfi coast is one of the most important centres of the limoncello production. Now it is quite spread throughout Italy (even if in the Northern regions it is more common to drink grappa as after meal drink, probably dued to the weather implication, limoncello is quite refreshing and it is perfect for warmer areas such as the South, the centre and the islands while in the North is usually colder) and now it has become the second most popular drink after Campari.

The actual history of limoncello is not clear: some say it has spread at the turn of the 19^th century, when the wealthy Sorrentine families started to serve it as a special treat to their guests; some say that the monks invented it, others say that the inventors were fishermen, who drank a shot of limoncello it as a way to fight the cold of the nights fishing in the sea. What it is sure is that limoncello has only been commercially produced in the last century.

 

It is a very fresh liqueur, usually kept and served ice cold, and it is ideal after a summer meal in which you had enjoyed fish dishes! Its distinctive yellow colour derives from the infusion of lemon zests in pure alcohol.

Actually there is not a unique recipe for limoncello but they are all unique, since every family makes it following their preference and the family tradition (usually the recipe passed on through generations, Italians love cooking “as Granma did”).

It is quite common to find another version of limoncello, the “Cream of Limoncello”, a delectable cream liqueur. The difference with the regular version is that the cream is thicker, sweeter and paler but what both have in common is the fresh and delicious taste.

All over Italy there are many local shops that show in their window innumerable attractively-shaped bottles of limoncello, and in many of them you will be offered a tasting of what you surely will want to bring back home and share it with your family and friends. So even when you come back home from Italy and it is raining, you can always enjoy a beam of Italian sunlight after your meal: limoncello.

So, if you like to learn more about the Italian food culture and taste the authentic Italian limoncello, why not join us on a cooking holiday in Amalfi?