Italian food

Italian food

Italian food

Italian food

Italian food

Cut out Christmas Sugar Cookies because your child has sugar and wheat allergies? No way! This article aims to convince you that it is easy to make the infamous Sugar Cookie healthy without using processed sugar and flour. You may know these two white wonders as the evil twins most likely responsible for the symptoms I call the holiday haze. They are sugar binging and crashing, irritability, and tummy aches just to name a few. If you are at all curious how to make healthy cookies that feature an all natural and organic sugar-free icing, read on and get ready to roll out the dough.

Cut in sweets without the ill side affects. This in it self is a miracle. First, I would like to tell you about the origins of this heaven sent cookie and why I want to share this treat with you and your family.

Christmas means make a mess in the kitchen with the kids: white confection masks everyone from head to toe, even the dog and kitty. Nothing lights up a child’s face like making Christmas cookies, not even the Christmas tree.

I love the sugar cookie because it is creatively kid friendly. The dough is durable, can be rolled out over and over, and the character cut outs make a story for all to imagine. As a kid, all I could do was happily anticipate eating the angel, Santa, and Rudolph the reindeer. About five times each. This holiday joy was inevitably distracted by dread. I’d soon feel the sugar rush through my little obese body. I was always 45 pounds overweight. My joints would ache and messed up was my digestion all night long and into the next day. The memory of feeling the warmth of my mother’s kitchen, the freedom to express with cookie cutters, and the ultimate disappoint of ill-health just didn’t mix. This was not a recipe for success. Sugar Cookies used to mean joy and pain. At least they did for me, and so I did something about it. I wanted just joy.

I took a sugar cookie recipe from my Aunt Diane, Sicilian by decent, an expert in dough from pizza to cannolis, and when she belts out the Ave Maria, it brings me to tears. Any woman who sings while she bakes you know is going to roll out a tasty dough. So taking my aunt’s family recipe, I used my transcribing method of converting the white processed sugar and flour to alternative sugar-free/gluten-free ingredients and created a Cut Out Sugar Cookie to share with everyone.

I use alternative ingredients to white wheat flour such as an all-purpose gluten-free flour by Bob Redmill’s that combines garbanzo bean, fava bean, tapioca and potato starch for the right cookie texture. I use white rice flour for a white cookie color and for flouring the dough and cookie cutters. Xanthan gum is a necessary ingredient for gluten-free baking and is added to hold the gluten-free flour together. Just a small amount is needed of this plant based gum.

For the sugar I substitute agave, stevia, and a combination of oligofructose and erythritol in a product called Swerve that can be found at pcflabs.com, some Whole Foods, and health food stores. Organic erythritol is a fermented polyol or sugar alcohol with no digestive ill side affects. Swerve also adds oligofructose which is inulin from chickory. Both ingredients have no glycemic or very low glycemic index and very easy digestion. Neither promotes tooth decay.

Swerve is the most affordable healthy baking sugar replacement that looks and acts the most like sugar in baking. Swerve replaces the volume and firmness as well as adding an extremely low calorie sweetness in a recipe. Just using erythritol products without the added oligofructose like ZSweet and Zero brands of erythritol are not as good for baking because the taste isn’t as sweet, but straight erythritol works great as table sugars to sprinkle on cereals and yogurts. They can both be found at Whole Foods and health food stores on on the internet.

Also in the recipe, my aunt Diane uses sour cream which gives the dough an extra added moistness and elasticity that makes for great taste and a dough that can be rolled out many times over. The easy roll out factor is very important when it comes to making this cookie recipe with kids.

To substitute for the dairy, a soy yogurt can be used but it may change the color of the dough to a darker color. The original look of the dough should be a backdrop of white and the color of the icing could be a pink or green for a holiday theme. Another way to switch out the sour cream is to use Total Greek 2% yogurt. This is a healthy version while still using dairy.

Knowing the substitutes, it time for the tricks of making the recipe.

“Carefully roll out the gluten-free/sugar-free dough with a white rice floured rolling pin between two sheets of wax paper. Make sure both sides of the dough are lightly floured with the white rice flour as well. White rice flour is my flour of choice for rolling out gluten-free dough because it is grainy and won’t stick. Also, flour your cookie cutters in the white rice flour. Dip a thin metal spatula in the white rice flour to lift up the cut out cookies and gently slide onto your baking sheet,” are words you would hear me say in a cooking class or on my Sweet Truth Cooking TV show on Veria. A hands-on interactive class is the best way for eager learners of the gluten-free/sugar-free alternative baking technique to experience a tactile difference in this healthy dough as compared to the old-fashioned white, wheat flour dough. To get a grip on gluten-free, one must see and feel how the new dough behaves: how it takes longer to mix up, looks more crumbly, sticks to your hands, needs more effort to roll out, easily breaks apart, and ultimately bakes and browns faster than a traditional sugar/wheat dough.

Sounds difficult? Trust me. It’s worth the little extra effort and elbow grease to make this dough work like magic and create a healthy cookie that everyone will love. The best part is that you’ll feel good about feeding it to the masses. Practice makes perfect when handling the dough. Use your senses to know when to stop rolling the dough. Also, a kitchen timer is the key safety device for perfectly baked gluten-free cookies.

The above mentioned techniques are just a few of the fun new tricks of the trade to acquire when it comes to the art and science of creating your version of beloved Sugar Cookie, alternative style. Like interval training, these methods go a long way: sugar-free/gluten-free baking allows you to have your cookies and eat them too! There is no extra calories, bloat, weight gain, or binging because there is no sugar or white processed flour. Sugar cookies are not just for holidays as popular culture would have it. Look at Starbucks, Gelson’s, or your local bakery. They all sell fanciful, colorful, kid-like wannabe and want to bite sugar-cookies all year round and for every change of season. It’s not just the winter holidays that sugar cookies intrude our veins and spike our glucose levels. Yet who wants to really give up cookies? And icing. Um, no!

For the icing, again Swerve found at pcflabs.com is the sugar of choice and makes the best tasting. You can also use natural fruits and vegetables for food coloring for your icing by adding beet juice for pink or red and by juicing kale or spinach for green. Use unsweetened coconut and Goji berries for extra charm and creativity!

This Cut-Out Sugar Cookie recipe tastes and looks like the real thing. Now when I make these cookies, the kid in everyone comes to the table and can get up from their chairs feeling clear, vibrant, creative, and healthy. They are at peace with themselves and their stomachs. Have fun!

cut out sugar cookie

a frosted cut-out cookie made with agave – no sugar, no wheat, and no gluten

DOUGH 1 cup vegetable shortening 1/2 cup Swerve sugar alternative 2 eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla 1 cup sour cream 1/2 cup light agave 2 droppers Liquid Stevia Vanilla Creme 3 cups gluten-free flour 1 cup white rice flour 1 cup potato flour 4 packets or 2 teaspoons Stevia Plus Powder 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon xanthan gum

ICING 1 cup Swerve sugar alternative, powdered 2 teaspoons unsweetened almond milk 1 dropper Liquid Stevia Vanilla Crème 2 teaspoons light agave 2 teaspoons beet juice (optional)

For cookies: With paddle attachment in stand up mixer, cream shortening and Swerve. Add in eggs and beat until fluffy. Add in vanilla, sour cream, agave, and Liquid Stevia and blend.

In separate bowl, sift together gluten-free flour, white rice flour, potato flour, Stevia Powder, baking powder, baking soda, and xanthan gum.

With paddle attachment in stand up mixer, add pre-sifted dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix. Scrape down sides of bowl. If needed, add a bit of flour to hands first and then form dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic. Refrigerate 2 hours or over night for best results to firm up dough.

Between two floured sheets of wax paper, roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Peel the top layer of wax paper off dough. Cut out cookies with floured cookie cutters and place on non-greased cookie sheet. This dough is very durable and can be rolled out many times.

Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 minutes. Depending on how thick or thin you roll the dough will depend on long you bake the cookies. Watch cookies carefully. The cookies should not brown or even be golden, but will appear white when they are done. Cookies are done when spring back to the touch. Cool on wire rack.

For frosting: To make powdered Swerve, place Swerve in a high powdered blender and blend on high for about five seconds then measure 1 cup. In stand up mixer with paddle attachment, mix well Swerve, milk or water, Liquid Stevia, agave, and fruit or vegetable powder for coloring. Beat icing for 2-3 minutes until glossy. Frost cookies with icing when cooled.

Yield: Five dozen cookies.

Young and thin? Not until about four years ago when Kelly Keough, a chef from birth who trained along side with her Sicilian family’s famous New York catering business, went sugar-free/gluten-free to heal her hair from falling out! Shedding the cannolis and the pounds, Kelly grew back her hair and created a new identity of beauty and self-confidence with a sugar-free/gluten-free food practice that allowed her to eat more desserts than she ever did before. Kelly was featured in the national publication of “MORE Magazine” in their monthly profile, “Why She Looks So Great” in spring ’06. Why? Because she eats what she cooks.

Kelly E. Keough is Los Angeles’ premiere healthy chef, an expert in alternative ingredients and superfoods, and host of her new sugar-free/gluten-free cooking TV show, THE SWEET TRUTH, Veria. Kelly’s passion is inspiring people with health, weight, and aging concerns related to sugar and wheat to not live without — but to have their sweets and eat them, too. Kelly’s mission is to dedicate herself to the education of sugar-free/wheat free baking and cooking and to show families how easy it is to benefit from her unique food philosophy.

Kelly’s celebrity credits include Martin Lawrence and Jack Black. Kelly’s fun and easy style of “healthy cooking” is currently being staged at her chef demos at Whole Foods Markets. In Los Angeles she received her MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute and self-published her sugar-free/gluten-free cookbook titled, “The Sweet Truth”.

She’s a woman who knows great food, great taste, and how to combine both for optimum health and fitness. It’s an education in a meal that is as much fun to learn as it is to eat! To buy Kelly’s cookbook, visit http://www.kellykeough.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Italian food

Most Americans believe that in 1295 after 24 years of traveling, Marco Polo returned to Venice, the city of his birth. With him, he carried an edible flour product from China. Where or why the idea that the flour product was pasta is lost in the mists of time.

It is has been found that the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans had been cooking a simple form of dough at the time Marco Polo returned to Italy. Greeks cooked something they called Laganon and the Romans called it Lagani. Even more insightful, an Etruscan relief from the fourth century B.C.E. at Caere shows a rolling board with edges that have been raised as well as a rolling pin, jug, ladle, bag and a cutting wheel, which are all the tools needed to roll out pasta dough. Still not sure if those ancient pasta’s were boiled or cooked on hot stones or coals.

The fact that Sicilians were making pasta in the twelfth century, long before Marco Polo would go to China is pretty much a certainty. In the “Book of Ruggero” which was the name of the Norman ruler of Sicily, a twelfth century Arab writer name Idrisi informs us that west of Termini there is a wonderful village called Trabia that has streams and waters and water mills. Many farms are located there growing the abundant grain and gardens and making large amounts of pasta from them, so large in fact it actually filled the needs of all the inhabitants of the whole of southern Italy, it was also exported throughout Muslim and Christian lands.

This document helps us dispel another legend, one that credits the Arabs as having invented pasta. Why would they import pasta from Italy if they could produce it at home. The Sicilians had mastered the art of making pasta, but also the technique of drying it so that it could withstand long sea voyages. Just the smallest amount of moisture still present in sun dried pasta must be totally eliminated or the pasta cannot be kept for long periods of time. So, after a first exposure to sunlight, pasta was made to rest for a few days in carefully heated rooms. That system remained in effect until the beginning of the twentieth century when new procedures took out the residual humidity and consequently the dried pasta can now last up to two or three years.

An interesting note is that tria is the Sicilian word for spaghetti which derives from the Arab itriya. Originally this word meant focaccia cut up into strips. Think of the thread like pasta such as vermicelli, spaghetti, linguine and many other shapes that we relish.

Long before pasta arrived in Naples, it arrived in the port city of Genoa. The Genoese became partial to both maccheroni which included all types of pasta, and to ravioli. From Genoa both simple and filled pastas spread to the entire northern area of Italy.

Naples did not have a pasta staple until the sixteenth century and it took until eighteenth century before a full fledged industry was established. Then with the innovations Naples made on its delicious pasta, it began to export its pastas to the rest of Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century. It did not take long to overwhelm all of their competition. The pasta industry was owned by the Neapolitans.

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, recipes for spaghetti or maccheroni specified that they be cooked in capon broth and seasoned with Pecorino cheese and ground pepper. But, Neapolitan pasta started using a new sauce made with tomatoes. It is this cooking novelty to add this new tomato sauce to fish and meat dishes as well as their more upgraded pasta dishes that further caused the pasta of Naples to become the undisputed food of the world.

This takes us back to our first paragraph of this article proving that it was NOT Marco Polo that introduced the pasta to Italy. Perhaps China did have a type of noodle or dumpling but, it was not pasta!

A simple Sicilian recipe
PENNE WITH BROCCOLI, ANCHOVIES, & RAISINS
2 anchovy filets (Note: Italians use canned anchovies for flavor in many of their recipes)
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 lb broccoli florets
1/3 cup olive oil
1 onion sliced
1garlic clove minced
2 plum tomatoes peeled & chopped (use canned if necessary)
12 ounces penne
chili flakes (optional)

S&P

Soak the anchovies in the milk in a small bowl for 1 hour. This helps get rid of the salty taste. Drain the anchovies and pat dry,chop them coarsely and set aside. Meanwhile, soak the raisins in hot water to cover in a small bowl, let stand about 15 minutes and drain. Toast the pine nuts in a 6 inch skillet until golden about 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly, remove to a plate and reserve for garnish.

Bring 5 quarts of water to boil, drop in the broccoli add salt to taste, cook til just tender, remove and put into iced water, drain and set aside.Heat 2 tablespoons of oil into a saute’ pan, cook the onion and garlic until softened, about 5 minutes over medium heat. Add tomatoes. Cover the pan, simmer for 15 minutes.

Heat the remaining olive oil in 6 inch skillet over low heat, add the anchovies, and crush with a fork to form a smooth paste, stir into tomato sauce. Season wit S&P and add chili flakes if desired. Add the raisins and broccoli, stir well and remove from heat. Keep warm. Meanwhile have the penne cooking til al dente, drain and put into a serving dish.Fold in the broccoli and tomato sauce, sprinkle with the nuts and serve. Serves 4.

This article was written by Gerilyn Feustel. Website [http://www.totallytoptoyz.com]

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Italian food

The tastes of Sicily are as bold as the colours of Sicily – the fiery reds of the shades of tomato or the peperocini, the hot red pepper that the Sicilians prefer to black peppercorns. Memories of the Moors still live on in the air redolent of golden sultanas, and pine nuts, actually a seed harvested from the large cones. The yellows are the bright saffron brought from Ancient Greece, the acidic lemons that dance on your tongue, and molten honey an ancient Roman sweetener. The colours and fragrances of Italy overwhelm the senses yet the Italians are masters at culinary simplicity.

Each wave of conquest by the Romans has shaped the Italian table The culinary traditions of Italy began with the Etruscan, and was later developed by the Greeks and Saracens or the non Arab muslims who settled in the South and Sicily, they treasured rice, the citrus fruits and used dried fruit such as figs and dates to stuff pastries and they brought the aubergine to Italy. Both history climate and geography has shaped the region, Northern Italy so close to the Austro Hungarian empire has completely different tastes than the South. Northern Italy boasts the nation’s richest diet, in variety. The vast plains grow grain,rice, corn, and they support the livestock which give the dairy products.

Whether North or south all Italians love pasta, sometimes served with a simple home made cheese and fresh tomato sauce served with fresh herbs, basil or wild marjoram or oregano. In Piedmont the pasta sauces are richer creamier and loaded with butter and cheese. Sicily is renowned for its olive groves, citrus trees and vineyards. Sicily has been ravages by unemployment, foreign rule, corruption, immense feudal estates, piracy and the casa nostra. The Greeks came with their olives, ricotta, wine and honey. Its land was later colonised by the Romans who needed the vast tracts of land for wheat, grains and pulses. The monasteries developed tangy biscuits and also sharp cheeses.

Ancient Rome gave western civilizations the fundamentals of sophisticated elegant cuisine, that would take centuries to be known as fine dining. The Roman empire brought new products and recipes back to Rome.

Other Mediterranean peoples including the Etruscans already knew the skills of milling they made flour and transformed that into fresh bread. They crushed olives to extract the precious olive oil the liquid gold of ancient Italy, they used the grapes to make wine and vinegar and transformed the creamy full fat milk into fresh cheeses.

Olive oil is fundamental to the Italians but the symbol of southern cooking, curiously enough, came from four hundred years of Aragonese rule in Sicily, the Spanish conquestadores brought tomatoes potatoes and peppers and chocolate. The pomodoro found a promised land alongside the eggplant or aubergine, the melanzane that distinguishes the “parmigiana” classics of the Campania.

Sicilian food is a tutti fruiti all of its own, in fact it should be totally overwhelmed, but it is vigorous and robust the staple tastes of the Mediterranean the tomatoes, pasta, fish, fruit, bread and oil fired by peppers, basil, almonds and pistachios, pine nuts, vinegar and golden raisins. Even the names of the dishes are over the top in Sicily Pasta chi sardi a ‘mmari, which translates as pasta served with fish still in the sea. More prosaically they have lasagna cacati, or faeces lasagna a broad wavy pasta with minced meat often served at the New Year.

Whatever your choice of region there is a recipe that is sublime and even the most jaded palette will appreciate Italian recipes.

I am an ex chef who loves to cook and prepare food. I am a squidoo addict and my Squidoo pages are my hobby. Read more of my recipes at Perfect Holiday Cheesecakes or Italian Recipes

Article Source: EzineArticles.com