Summer is by far my favorite time of the year!

I love the heat and when I say that I really mean it, it can never get to hot and if it does you will never hear me complaining.

Even though I am born and raised in Sweden, Stockholm to be more precise, and have lived in Montreal for the past 13 years, I am not a person that has enjoyed the cold weather. The winter activities are fun though but as we all know with work and our daily working and household schedules we don’t get to enjoy them as often as we all would wish we could.

Having that said; I do enjoy the cooking more in summer, we are able to use more of our local products and produce and I also love shopping at the Jean Talon market.

All the beautiful colors and fragrances from the different fruits and vegetables and now as we are in the beginning of the harvest and thanks giving being just around the corner it has become a must to visit the market every saturday and sometime sunday morning.

Since we are in the topic of of seasonal fruits and vegetables I have a very easy and nice recipe for you this week that can be prepared with this weeks product; the Truffle oil.

ARTICHOKE WITH TRUFFLED VINAIGRETTE

Another quick and easy summer recipe.

1. Trim the tips of the leaves of your artichokes and put in boiling salted water. I like to add a half lemon so the artichokes stay as green as possible.
2. While artichokes are boiling, whisk together evoo, lemon juice, salt ,pepper and some truffle oil . Add a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard to the mix so that the oil and lemon juice are able to bind together.
3. Drain your artichokes, peel the leaves and dip into the vinaigrette.

Total cook time is about 15 min depending on the size of the artichoke. You can tell when there ready because the leaves can be pulled off with only a little bit of resistance.

Hope you will enjoy this as much as I do!

I love Truffled Dwarf Peaches with everything but mostly I love them on their own.
Here is how I had them on Sunday night after dinner: as a side dish with our cheeses. “Miss Diva” appeared elegantly in whole and sliced on top of Gorgonzola. I can tell you that at that moment, I was as happy as Gorgonzola was!

TRUFFLED DWARF PEACHES … ON A TOAST!

Another one of my recipes where I chose to top the finished dish with some thinly sliced Truffled Dwarf Peaches, sooo goooood!

How to prepare it

1. Boil eggs and chop them
2. Chop green onion
3. Slice tomatoes
4. Shred some Bottarga
5. Slice truffle dwarf peaches
6. Add Salt and pepper

After having your ingredients ready, arrange them on your whole wheat toasts and enjoy!

This evening I was in the mood to have an earthy meal for dinner. Knowing that the fresh summer truffles just arrived this morning at Macchi Inc., I decided to ask Paolo if he could do his magic tonight, and prepare something for us specifically to satisfy my cravings, and to use one of these beautiful fresh summer truffles.

Since the summer truffle initially has an earthy taste, I felt like enhancing the flavors with truffle paste an a bit of black truffle oil. I also felt like bringing all these flavors together with the nice texture of some beautiful and “meaty” button mushrooms. And, last but not least, finalizing the dish by topping it with an exhauggerated amount of shaved truffles.

I’ve been blogging about summer truffles since the beginning of the week, both here and here. And to tell you the truth, my mouth was watering just thinking about it every time I blogged. I was waiting impatiently for Wednesday to arrive, as I knew I would finally get to savour some.

So Paolo ( that rarely refuses an occasion to cook ) made this nice pasta plate, as he always does, the way I had hoped for it to taste, and a little bit better, if you don’t mind me saying so

Well, now that my craving for truffle is satisfied, I can go on blogging with more serenity!

Do we always eat like this? The answer is: “NO…….but, very often!”

If you’re salivating here is the recipe:

• Cook your pasta in heavily salted water and put aside.
• In a deep saucepan, melt some butter with olive oil
• Add shallots, garlic, fresh thyme and sliced button mushrooms.
• Add a little salt and pepper to help sweat out the moisture from the mushrooms
• Sauté the mushrooms until soft.
• Remove the mushrooms mixture and chop them finely.
• Using the same saucepan, warm up some heavy cream, truffle paste and truffle oil
• Stir in your mushrooms in the mixture.
• Introduce your pasta to your sauce, mix everything together and finish off with as much freshly shaved summer truffle as your heart desires.

Buon Appetito!

PAOLO’S BOTTARGA RECIPE:

One of Paolo’s absolute favourite pastas is the “aglio et oglio” ( oil and garlic ) . After discovering the very particular taste of Bottarga and experimenting with it, Paolo found that by adding grated Bottarga di Muggine in his favorite recipe, and grating some on top of the finished pasta, the dish took a whole new dimension. The bottarga gave it a nice kick.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic
• parsley
• desired amount of grated Bottarga di Muggine or Bottarga di tonno

Preparation:

• slice the garlic and add it with the olive oil in a saucepan
• grate the bottarga into the pan and heat the oil over medium-low heat for 2 to 3 min, so that it flavors the oil (it is important to add the garlic and bottarga to cold oil to avoid burning the garlic and cooking the bottarga)
• add the strained pasta and toss it so the oil coats every strand of the spaghetti.
• add the parsley at the very end to keep its flavor and texture
• once the pasta is plated you can grate some extra bottarga for presentation.

MY BOTTARGA RECIPES:

I like to keep things simple and being a mother of two very young children, I like things done quick. I absolutely love bottarga! The Bottarga di Muggine is my favourite but I have found a recipe that made me enjoy the Bottarga di Tonno just as much.

Here are my three ways of preparing Bottarga in 30 seconds:

The first one:

• Drizzle some olive oil on top of toasted whole wheat toast and grate bottarga di muggine on top. Serve!

The second one:

• slice bottarga di muggine and place in a plate with some depth to it.
• poor olive oil on top and leave in olive oil for at least half an hour before eating.
• accompany with bread.

The third one:

• slice some bottarga di tonno, place in a flat plate.
• poor some olive oil on top, press one clove of garlic on top.
• accompany with bread

Bottarga is traditionally accompanied with garlic, red peppers, and olive oil. Even though it has a distinct flavor it can really be used with anything that requires a touch of saltiness.
I would recommend full bodied wines to pair with a recipe that contains bottarga, a lighter wine might be overpowered by the strong flavor of this ingredient.

Buon Appetito!

Spinach salad with parmigiano Grana Padano – Picture taken by Montreal photographer Vadim Daniel

Previously today I showed you how you can really enjoy having parmigiano on it’s own without hardly any preparation! I will now show you one of my favorite recipes, with my favorite parmigiano cheese, The Grana Padano. I really love this cheese, it is similar to the reggiano but creamier. This cheese is off course a cheese that we supply our clients with here at Macchi Inc. It is important for me to let you all know that we do not import our cheeses ourselves since we  do not have any cheese quotas. What we import here at Macchi Inc. is the Citterio brand, bottarga and truffles and in the future hopefully we will import more.

Baby spinach salad with strawberries and Grana Padano

This is a perfect light salad with lots of flavour, assemble in a bowl: Baby spinach leaves, sliced strawberry’s and some Grana padano shavings. For this, all you need to add is a little  cracked black pepper, evoo and some balsamic vinegar. There  is no need to add any salt because the parmiggiano brings all the salt you need to the dish. Buon Appetitio! As usual, let me know how you liked it or if you made your own recipe, don’t hesitate to share it with me.