Italian spritz with cruditee’

We don’t just drink an aperitif, we EAT it as well!

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Italian pinzimonio, which means cruditee (mostly carrots, celery, fennel, indivia salad) dipped in olive oil, vinegar and salt accompanied by the most amazing Spritz ever!

Saturday night at home, but feels like the best bar.

Here in the UK there is a different tradition around aperitif, even when you move away from the pub & beer combo, to something more “upscale” (noting against beer, I love it from my Dutch days!) there is not much food/appetizer served with your drinks: a few olives, perhaps some chips but you have to ask for more to accompany what’s in your glass.

In Italy you can have a proper dinner while you do your aperitif: there is food to take to your table or to nibble at the bar, “real” food like bowls of pasta with simple sauces, hummus with focaccia or cut vegetables, pizza slices, cold cuts, and mountains of chips. The chic places would bring these pre-arranged plates to your table so you can sit and sip your champagne in peace without mingling with the people at the bar to fill in your plate.

It’s a treat you can have only once in a while, unless you really want to skip dinner every evening, as it’s so satisfying you won’t eat anything else back home (and as an added bonus, you don’t get drunk because the food you have with alcohol prevents you from absorbing all the spirits immediately :))

The magic of ragu’ (or ragout)

How to prepare a juicy and super tasty ragu’ to warm up your evening

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Ragout (ragu’ in Italian) in the making: Sunday is for slow cooking, and batch prepping for the upcoming week.

A little bit of onion, celery and carrot, good olive oil, 5% fat minced beef and some tomatoes, slowly cooking for at least two hours to release all the juices and become soft and tasty…and ready for all the pasta for next week.

Preparation is key in everything: when you have some spare time it saves you time later if you prepare a big casserole of ragout, so that even when you are late from work you have some satisfying and nourishing 15mins pasta ready to eat!

It’s a simple trick and it doesn’t mean you have to eat the same food over and over for the entire week: you can freeze part of the ragout and defrost it later in the week, or use it to stuff zucchini or other vegetables, or to add to hand-made pasta (possibly linguine or tagliatelle not too slick so they can retain the ragout better), or even to use as a bruschetta topper, super yummy.

Preparation is everything, and you better get organized when you have time, because this is not always the case during the work week!