Homemade Pasta made at home with hands and stuff ;)

@David could be my dad. In fact they´re about the same age and I belive as much as I know about the two had they grown up close enough to each other they certainly would have been friends. At least I´m certain they´d definitly get along.

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Well, obvoiusly this is not an italian recipe… :slight_smile:
But not because of the recipe itself, but because of its name.
I mean: this is a smart variation of a typical italian recipe from Milan (the cotoletta alla milanese) which is very similar to a wiener schnitzel, with the adding of ingredients typical from Naples (tomato and mozzarella). You understand it’s not an italian variation because of the name: first of all, every single word contains a typo: the correct spell would be “milanesE ALLA napolEtana”.
Second, “milanese alla napoletana” doesn’t mean anything, anyway. Its literal translation is “Milan style in Naples style”.

The name of the meat slice is “cotoletta” which means “cutlet”, and not “milanese” which indicates the style.
So, if this variation was made in Italy, probably its name would have been “cotoletta alla napoletana” or something like that.

Anyway, the food from Milan is very different from the food of the south.
In the south we have the influence of mediterranean food, while in the nord we have the influence of european food.
We say we have a “fat border” in Italy. On the northern side, people cooks with butter, on the southern side people cook with olive oil, for instance.

And, if you wonder why a “cotoletta alla viennese” is practically a “milaner schnitzel”, just let me inform you that Milan used to be part of Austria in almost the whole 18th century and half of 19th century.

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I couldn’t get flour double zero in my supermarket. After a little bit of research I found out, that 405 is pretty similar to double O.

Very interesting. I didn’t know that. But what DO I know, right?

So, finally I made ragù yesterday. I was pretty easy, thanks to the good description of Ema. Except for “let dry”, that one I didn’t understand.

However! It was very delicious and lecker! For cost reasons I used mixed minced meat (pork and beef), and the white wine on the picture was replaced later, when I found out that it wasn’t white anymore, if you know what I mean. Here we go:

Does it look anything like that what you had in mind @Ema? Anyway, my wife and I liked it a lot and we thank you very much for this recipe. We are looking forward to heating it up again. :slight_smile:

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It’s fantastic, and congratulations for the high quality ingredients: Mutti tomato sauce (one of the best!), extra virgin olive oil, Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese, and the unmissable Tavernello wine! :it:

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It’s the number one in Italy! :wink:

Ah, but it’s an idiom in Spanish, not intended to be a literal translation. A “Milanesa” in Spanish is the typical name given to the Schnitzel, because it was apparently taken from cotoletta alla milanese and just shortened. Then, losing all understanding of the etymology and adopting the origin of the style as its name, “Milanesa a la Napolitana” means then breaded cutlet in the Napolitan style.

This sort of word soup happens quite often. I’ve seen cooking shows on TV when they talk about making “potato risotto” using potatoes instead of rice (mistaking “risotto” for the name of the preparation instead of the rice), or when Americans say “Champagne from California,” as if the name “Chamapgne” was intended to represent just the sparkling wine.

One that I always find funny is that English speakers have adopted “salsa” to mean some specific mexican condiment (or any vegetable-based condiment), when in Spanish it just means “sauce” and we use it for any sauce. As a matter of fact, serving me something and calling it, say, “with avocado salsa” is confusing because the lump of chopped avocado does not look at all like a sauce. :laughing:

-dZ.

Mario, congratulations!!

I’m so happy you decided to follow my recipe and you liked it!
I have to congratulate, too, for the quality of ingredients, and your attention to choose ingredients from Italy.
Just a little note on Tavernello… I sometimes use it to cook too (not to drink, obviously), but usually since this recipe only needs a small quantity of wine, I usually use some leftover wine if I have it; if I don’t have it, I make ragù without white wine…
Regarding “let dry”… I meant that you should pour wine with high flame and let the wine evaporate completely before adding the tomato sauce.
Regarding your result, you have to be proud of you it looks wonderful!
Just a little nitpicking: usually in this recipe the vegetables are cut in smaller pieces… like dices of 5mm or so per side, you know.
… and let me know, if it is true that when you warm it up after one day or two it tastes better :slight_smile:

Oh, almost forgot: with ragù you can also make lasagne! You just need to learn how to make besciamella, and you’re done.

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Yes, I wasn’t arguing it is a wrong name.
I just noticed that the name reveals that the guy who named it couldn’t have been italian, for obvious linguistic reasons.

It is a good name, indeed, for its purposes.

yes, it is a normal linguistic extension. Even in Italy sometimes we refer to “cotoletta alla milanese” simply saying “milanese”, but only when the context makes it clear we are referring to the cutlet and not to the “risotto alla milanese”.
By the way, I have no idea of how a “potato risotto” could be done.

Anyway, something similar happens to “salame al cioccolato”.
That literally means “chocolate salami”, but it doesn’t contain any salami.
It’s a dessert named like that because of its resemblance:

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What’s in it? Looks interesting. Can you recommend it to try?

You don’t find it in shops or restaurants. It’s classically a home made dessert.
It is basically chocolate with amaretto biscuits in it. I’ll look up for a good recipe to translate for you, but now I don’t have the time. Stay tuned

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Just send/post it in Italian if you have it handy. :slight_smile:

I don’t have it handy, but google comes in handy :smiley:

This is generally a good and reliable website for recipes. let me know if you can manage the language (or the automatic translations)

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I warmed it up today. It was wonderful. Just a done ragù with some pasta. It was worth the whole work I had the other day.

Just one another question for you though:
There was a lot of oil in the ragù left, is that normal or did I put too much in the first place?

Was the warmed up ragu more delicious?

Uhm… That’s strange. Actually, layers tend to separate, and the oil comes up. But you definitely shouldn’t find more oil than you put :smiley:
Probably you put too much oil from the beginning (the recipe only needs a thin layer of a few millimeters in the pot), or maybe the fat melted from the meat and mixed with the oil…

Actually I don’t know why, but it is so indeed for ragù. Obviously it is not advisable to have leftover pasta!

I mean, make a lot of ragù, and refrigerate or freeze it.
But boil only the amount of pasta you’ll eat immediately. If you mix ragù (or any other sauce) with your pasta and you leave it over, you’ll waste it.

There’s an exception: lasagne and -more generally- oven baked pasta can be cooked, refrigerated or freezed and then warmed up again. It happens that they are bettere re-heated, and this phenomenon is even more evident with lasagne than with plain ragù. I don’t know why, but I find this true for some foods…

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And for some other foods, for example some sorts of pea soup.

I’ve tried that and I don’t like warmed up lasagne. :slight_smile: But indeed you can warm up some kind of pasta.

btw: Nothing is more delicious than a Italian pasta made by an Italian cook - or an Italian mother. :wink:

Why not?

I have a pretty unpopular opinion (as an Italian) here, but years of living abroad had me question my views on food and other stuff.

Pizza Hawaii is not that bad. I mean, I’m also a bit terrified by the idea of pineapple on a pizza, but still, it doesn’t taste that bad (and if it did, why would it be so popular everywhere except Italy?).

The main problem with Pizza Hawaii is the mere idea of someone else putting pineapple on a pizza. It happens the same if you say you like pizza with kebab. Why? Because those dirty foreigners are ruining our national dish with their stupid toppings, but those very same complainers can praise strange pizzas if the idea comes from a fellow countryman, as I saw personally on my Facebook feed, where a friend of mine (as well as other people) was complimenting a Sardinian pizzeria who put… pork meat and mirto sauce on a pizza. I mean, it’s still meat. If you can put pork, sausage, whatever, then why not kebab? Why not chicken?

I could argue that pineapple is a fruit, and fruit is sweet, so it is strange. But then you can find pizza with gorgonzola and pear (and no sauce). So what?

To sum it up: I don’t really like Hawaii, but I’m not shocked by it. It will NEVER be my choice when I order a pizza, but if someone offers me a slice of it, or someone besides me orders it, I won’t vomit.

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New York Style Pizza vs. Chicago Style Pizza seems to be another argument that almost has religious undertones. While I never tasted Chicago style Pizza because it doesn´t have quite the reach of it´s Hudson Bay competitor it seems to be more akin to the Quiche. Might not taste bad but not what I want from a Pizza.

Yeah, I figured that after almost no reaction to my earlier comment on pasta not being Italian, even the mere mentioning of Hawaii and Pizza in one sentence wouldn’t cause the usual storm of insulted Italians it usually does.
Me, I don’t like it either, but it’s a pizza anyway.