Pasta with Pumpkin and Parma Ham

Welcome in autumn!
I believe that autumn is magic, because you can see how many colors there are within yellow and brown.

 

I love colors,  that's why I don't like using black and white pics, I guess you can use black and white colors just if you need to communicate something sepecific that goes outside of the colors and to underline the subject.

Pictures like the one above without any color loose their meaning, becoming just a melanchonic pics. Colors, instead, give a meaning and a feeling depending from the viewer, for example this picture brings up to my mind a wonderful movie: What Dream May Come, an union of love and colors.

"What's true in our minds is true, whether some people know it or not."

What Dream May Come

Going back to food, today I'd propose the autumn vegetable par excellence : pumpkin!

Do you mind how to prepare pasta with pumpkin, let's try together! 

Ingredients

(2 people)

300 g pumpkin

150 g pasta

100 g Parma Ham

extravergin olive oil

onion

vegetable stock
Pamesan

Vinagre glaze to decorate

Place the pumpkin in a pan, add a bit of water and let boil it. Once ready add the stock and let cook other 10 min. Blend the pumkin to have a cream.

In an other pan, cook the extravergin olive oil with a bit of onion and hot pepper, add the parma ham sliced and cook for 30 sec. Add the pumpkin cream, cook and mix.

Cook the pasta al dente (turn off the burner 3 min in advance) add 3 tablespoon of parmesan cheese and pan-fry.

Now, it's time to eat!

Enjoy!

Black carrot savoury

"Enamorarse es sentirse encantado por algo, y algo sólo puede encantar si es o parece ser perfección."

José Ortega y Gasset

("Falling in love means feeling delighted for something, and something can be delightful if is o seems be perfection." José Ortega y Gasset)


When Ortenga talks about falling in love, he refers to "things" and not to people and even if could sounds strange, for me it totally explains that it's possible falling in love with  conceptual things as well.
Yes, ok, I'm not here to telling you how you feel when you discover to love something, but I'd like to show how many things we love, that could be actions, gazes, smells, feelings, instants, situations or even places.
If I have to choose a picture to show things I love, one couldn't be enough, for sure I can start from something that makes my heart pound.

 
The colorful city I love, Barcelona, that better represents who I am.
In particular, the most depicting place of Barcelona, for me, is the Boqueria. The famous market on the Ramblas where you are throw into the magic of the city.
My last receipe lets occur on my mind when I was usual to cross the city from Saints to Liceu just for buying fruits and vegetables, who knows if even in the Boqueria are selling black carrots? 

Black carrots savory 

(for two people)

Ingredients

300 g boiled carrots
1 egg
2 tbsp of pamesan cheese
salt

-Spinach cream-
spinaches
vegetable stock
oil
1 tbsp natural yoghurt
thyme 
 

Boil the carrots and blend them, add the egg, salt and parmesan, mix and place in the ramekins, let cook at bain-marie for 30 min at 180/190 °C.
In the meanwhile, toast 1 tablespoon of flour in a pan with hot extravergin olive oil, add the boiled spinaches, after 3 minutes add the stock and let cook for 10 min.
Blend the spinach unitl make a cream, then add the yoghurt and the thyme and mix.
Prepare your plate putting the spinaches cream and the savoury up.

The carrot savoury has a really soft flavour that I suggest to contrast with a parmesan cream to place on the top. Making the cream is really simple: in a pan let warm the pamesan with a tablespoon of liquid cream (depending on how much parmesan you placed), it should be quite thick, not too much liquid.
Place the parmesan cream up the savory and ENJOY IT!

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Cannoncini alla crema

"A partire da una certa età, per amor proprio e per furbizia, le cose che desideriamo di più sono quelle a cui fingiamo di non tenere."
(M. Proust) 

"Starting from a certain age, for self-respect and cunning, things we wish more are the ones for which we pretend to do not care."
(M. Proust) 

Happy birthday my love.

From Sep the 1st to October there are a lot of birthdays in my family. Any time I try to give everyone his/her sweet gift baseed on his/her preferences.
This time my boyfriend told me: "please do not make cakes anymore", such a strange request. Well,  I thought: "Fine, cakes are not the only thing I can do, there is also the patisserie" :)
...Such a women devilish idea!
Taking advantage of the time for his gym, I made such delicous cannoncini with vanilla custard in only...."wait for it"...30 min (this time includes preparing, cooking, dishing out, cleaning and hiding everything). You don't believe me? Ok, you are right, I also took advantage of the shower, using my dissumulation talent to hide what I was doing when he cames back! yeah!

Let have a look!

Cannoncini alla crema

Ingredients

French pastry
Sugar
Water

Filling

Vanilla custard


Cut french pastry stripes wide 1 cm, brush with a bit of water and put them around the cannoli form, taking care to overlap each strip to the other. Brush with a syrup made with water and sugar.

Oven at 220°C for 15 min and then let gild at 250°C for 5 min.
Cool them down and fill in with the vanilla custard.


Now, let's go to celebrate!!!