Summer: fresh beans season, time to sit on a porch overlooking the sea with a bag of full pods on one side and a bowl on your knees. If you (like me) don’t have a sea view nor a porch on hand, go buy some fresh beans and find some consolation in fagioli alla maruzzara, a very simple and fulfilling recipe from the most traditional repertoire of Neapolitan cuisine.
Making pasta is easier said than done. Ask the French website lambasted for defiling the recipe of pasta alla carbonara in a recent video that ignited international outrage before being removed by popular demand. Don’t mess with the sacred things in life! There are places where this typical Italian food is taken very seriously. As Soup As Possible travelled to the Italian town of Gragnano, allegedly the capital city of pasta, to see how it’s made.
Never take the good things for granted, especially when they’re your favourite food! I lived a spoiled life in the world’s biggest artichoke garden without even knowing, until I moved to an artichoke-deprived land in 2012.
This week As Soup As Possible takes you on a trip to Bra, Northern Italy, to discover Piedmont’s cuisine. The Piedmont region is one of the greenest in the country and the second largest after Sicily. Its majestic landscapes hold treasures of taste for foodies and wine lovers.
In case you were wondering how to dish up the matcha cake you just baked, and you happen to be in Amsterdam, I would recommend visiting Arita Porcelain Today for some inspiration. Japanese porcelain has been on European tables for centuries; this exhibition will plate up some food for thought too. Arita Porcelain Today – in the Asian Pavillon of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam until October 9th 2016 – conjugates traditional and contemporary design while celebrating the 400 years old cooperation between the creative industries of The Netherlands and Japan. The design project behind the exhibition originates from the collaboration between the Dutch design duo Scholten & Baijings and Japanese designer Teruhiro Yanagihara. Over the past two years, they coordinated sixteen designers from Europe, America and Japan and ten porcelain companies from the province of Saga, Japan, to create a 300 pieces contemporary porcelain collection using traditional methods. The aim was to revive and celebrate ancient knowhow and traditional craftsmanship from the Southern Japanese town of Arita, where Japanese porcelain industry originated in the 1610s. The flood of low cost ceramic imports in recent years …
Why accept a piece of (matcha) cake, when you can have (both the cake and) the recipe? When I started giving away my sourdough starter, last winter, I didn’t expect it to become such a surprising way to connect with people of all paths of life. In weeks, I saw my Elvira being kneaded into beautiful breads of all shapes and types by the hands of many friendly strangers. One of those pairs of hands was Yuki’s.
Last week I showed you where to have a great meal in jail. I wouldn’t be living up to Italian hospitality rules if I didn’t offer you dessert and coffee after lunch. As Soup As Possible met Pasticceria Giotto and Caffé Lazzarelle to tell you how they’re made in jail.
Some people find cooking therapeutic. Food helps us connect with each other across differences. Everybody eats. Truisms, aren’t they? But the most obvious things can be revolutionary in unexpected places. I realized that last month, when I went to jail. [Watch the video below]
I hate to break it to you, but there’s no such thing as Italian cuisine… Ok, perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch, but let me clarify with a recipe that will make ripples in the fabric of space-time: piconi ascolani, brought to you by theoretical physicist Giuseppe D’Ambrosi (with a gravitational waves topping).
Being surrounded by coughing people and feeling a tad under the weather myself, I feel in the perfect mood to present you with a flu-busting soup, the second of Nina Subramani’s Indian recipes for As Soup As Possible YouTube channel. Let her Kitchen Story warm your stomach and entertain you with this spicy and distinctively South-Indian takkali rasam with toor dal.
