All posts filed under: recipes

green ravioli combining innovation and tradition

Sardinia through its culinary culture

Published by Ivo Pirisi

Ravioli are the quintessential tasty meal and perfect any time of the year. These were kneaded using spinach in order to make a green dough and stuffed with a mixture of asparagus, anchovies paste, radicchio and toasted bread crumbles. For the seasoning I took inspiration from a traditional way of dressing the ravioli with batter and sage leaves: a sauce or Italian besciamella made with batter, milk cream and myrtle leaves. What a combination, each flavor will be perfectly recognizable and well balanced.

Spring cabbage velvet sauce with floating cannellone stuffed with bacon and cheese wrapped in almonds

Published by Ivo Pirisi

It comes in handy from time to time to cook a velvet sauce. In a nutshell all you need to do is keep boiling some vegetables, a stroke with a blender, some cheese or butter to make it creamy and it’s a done deal! Problem comes when you have to eat it, perfectly even and smooth without something to bite, I frankly find it little bit boring. Here is an idea to get some chewable stuff.

Tempura lamb feet

Published by Ivo Pirisi

“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock&roll…” Definitely it is not a dish, rather this is rock&roll! The first time I had them cooked during a cooking lesson, the mates I was with where just stunned. At first glance they might be shocking but once you give a try immediately you get crackers about them. Sardinians simply love them and consider this simple and colourful dish a pure delicacy.

Red-leafed chicory rice on pecorino slab with cardoncelli

Red-leafed chicory rice served on pecorino cheese slab with layer of cardoncelli mushrooms

Published by Ivo Pirisi

The risotto with cardoncelli mushrooms is a fall first course made with the king of mushrooms: the delicate cardoncello. I made a blunder ones: I had just tried to melt down some pecorino cheese into a mould to get a nice shape to be used as a container for the rice but unfortunately it crumbled off. I should have used the grana padano for that purpose. To get a proper cheese basket you really need the right amount of fat in it. Nevertheless an idea came to my mind: keeping the cheese flat as a slab and using it as a base for something warm to make it melt a bit. Having some cardoncelli mushrooms at my disposal the line was taken, I had only to focus on the colours to make it work.

Fregola with clams and mussels sprinkled with grey mullet bottarga

Published by Ivo Pirisi

I’ve always been fascinated by how many different dishes you can create using just, eggs and flour. Fregola is a sardinian couscous like rounded shaped kind of pasta the preparation of which (starting from scratch with your bare hands) is a lot of fun. Most people consider fregola with clams one of the staples in the entire cooking Sardinia tradition, especially down in the south. In the current recipe I am going to present a version of mine of the dish, varied by adding mussels and grey mullet bottarga. Simple, yet stylish this dish is a good example of balance between flavours.