Penne with seitan ragù

In italian cuisine, there is a meat sauce usually consumed with pasta or gnocchi: the ragù, internationally (and improperly) called "bolognese sauce".
Grandmothers love to cook it in big pots, for a long time (sometimes even for a full day), because the minced meat needs to boil with tomato until it's reduced and this process take some hours. You can also add some chilli, rosemary, basil or other herbs and spices... it depends on your tastes and on the recipe you're following, there are a lot of different kind of ragù in Italy.
But there's another tasty way to make ragù: using seitan instead of meat. The best seitan ragù is made with a soffritto of onion, carrots and celery, with the addition of zucchini when the other ingredients are already lightly browned.

This is what you'll need for the soffritto. Then, just add in the bowl some chopped seitan, and olive oil. It will be ready in ten-fifteen minutes.

 

So good! The best idea is to cook a large amount of sauce at one time, and then freeze little portions, so you can have it ready when you don't have much time to cook.
It's a wonderful solution for a meat-free pasta and it's easily digested.

.

Ooops are we late?

Cecilia had these pictures stored in a folder for a while, and just realized we've never posted them! On halloween I spent the morning picking up hazelnuts with my friend Martina. We came back home and decided to use some of the pumpkin to make pasta. Pasta alla zucca :) We chopped a quarter of it in big pieces and cooked it in the owen for about 20 min, then stir fried it until it became a soft salsa.

Sorry for the late update: we've been busy, and stay tuned for the images from London!


.

A(t)SAP

As lazy italians, when hungry and not willing to wait longer then 10 minutes, we cook pasta. It's so good that while water is boiling, you have just enough time to think what the sauce is going to be.

Ever since living in Venice, we've been eating lots of fish. This post is no exception :)
We stir-fried some finely chopped onion, fresh clams, parsley and drizzled with olive oil (please ignore the non-cleanliness of our stove..)

Fifteen minutes later both sauce and pasta were ready. We where ready as well :) 

(Actually, we were starving!)

We wish you a great day while we digest this plate
:)
Bye Bye!
.