Italian OK

What a delicious name! This is my own take on a recipe I found lying round in an old cookbook, enjoy!

Ingredients

• 320g Butter
• 150g granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 300ml Natural yoghurt
• 300ml Nutella
• 300g plain sifted flour
• 4 large handfulls of toasted hazelnuts
• 2 Tablespoon plain flour
• 7 tablespoon double cream
• Butter and flour for the tin
• Rind of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons of baking powder
• 250g white whocolate

Method

Beat 270g of the butter with 100g sugar until creamy. Now stir in the eggs one at a time, beat until the mixture is smooth. Beat in the 300g of flower and baking powder. Add the lemon rind and all but 2 tablespoons of the yogurt and beat until smooth. Butter and flour a 25cm tin and pour half the mixture into it.

Make sure the Nutella is soft by placing it in a pan of hot water, spread as liberally as you like over the cake mixture in the pan, spinkle some hazlenuts over the nutella. Cover with the rest of the mixture. In a bowl add the flour, butter, sugar and breadcrumbs and mix until the mixtures resembles breadcrumbs. Sprinkle these over the cake.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees (350F) for about 45 minutes. Set aside to cool. Whip the cream until stiff and pour in the remaining yogurt, add the melted white chocolate and mix again, serve drizzled over the cake or beside it.

Risotto has never been my favourite Italian dish, coming from the South, where pasta is the staple dish I rarely ever had the chance to taste it and in fact I find myself eating it more in the UK than when I go back home.  This isn’t really surprising as until recently Italy could be divided into 2 distinct gastronomical areas, in the central and southern regions pasta reigned, and in the north risotto and rice was more common.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 40g Dried porcini mushrooms
• 250ml warm water
• 1 onion (cubed)
• 150ml dry white wine
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 400gr Arborio risotto rice
• 1.5 Litres vegetable stock ( if you don’t have time to make it yourself use a stock cube, I would however encourage anyone wanting to make risotto dishes to make their own stock as it give much greater depth of flavour!)
• 1 good handful of parsley
• Salt and pepper to season

Method:

Follow the instructions to soak the mushrooms. Drain but keep the water, chop the mushrooms roughly. Saute’ the onion in olive oil and add the mushrooms, saute for another 3 minutes. Add the rice and give a stir to make sure the rice isnt sticking. Add the wine and when it’s been absorbed add the mushroom water.

The trick with risotto is to not constantly stir it, just a few stirs on the edge to make sure its not sticking and that will be fine. Now add the stock 125ml at a time, make sure the last 125ml has been absorbed before adding more. Keep adding the stock until the rice is tender, this should take around 15-18 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, add the parsley and mix well.