Hi, this is the fourteenth post about Italian recipes.
Yesterday we taught you how to prepare pesto sauce.
Today we tell you how to use it.
In Italy we use pesto sauce to toss different pasta shapes. Especially long pasta. We prefer trenette called also linguini or bavette. Perhaps you know them as flat spaghetti. They are 2-4 mm wide and they are the best pasta shape for pesto sauce.
In Italy we haven’t the habit of tossing spaghetti with pesto sauce but  we also use pesto sauce to toss trofie or  lasagna. Recently we have seen  pesto sauce  on the top of pizza even if this is a new recipe  for the Italians too.

Read in this page how to make trenette al pesto (trenette tossed with pesto sauce), the authentic recipe, Genoa-style.

Trenette (flat spaghetti) tossed with pesto sauce

As you can see in the photo we serve pasta only after stirring it with the sauce.

Greetings from Italy

Hi, this is the thirteenth post about Italian cuisine.
Today’s post is dedicated to pesto sauce.  Why pesto sauce if the last posts were about Italian pasta recipes?
For pesto sauce is used in Italy to toss a lot of pasta shapes: trenette, trofie, linguini, lasagna …
You can also use it to toss gnocchi (potato dumplings) and for pizza topping.

Homemade pesto sauce

You can find ready made pesto sauce or you can prepare it at home: but homemade pesto sauce is fantastic!
Read the authentic recipe of Italian homemade pesto in this page.
If you prepare pesto sauce at home you can choose between two ways: mortar or food processor. Obviously you save your time using food processor but you have the best result with a mortar.
The most common questions about pesto are:
- how can I preserve pesto sauce?
Keep pesto sauce in the fridge up to 4-5 days but remember to cover it with olive oil as you can see in the photo.
You can also freeze your pesto sauce (up to 2 months) but remember to divide it into  the portions you use to toss pasta.
- I like pesto sauce very much but how can I make it in winter when there is no fresh basil?
In Italy we use winter pesto during cold months. We make it with the most tender leaves of Swiss chard.

Ingredients / Serves 4

50 g (1 3/4 oz)  tender Swiss chard leaves, cleaned
1 garlic clove
15 g (1/2 oz) pine nuts
10 g (1/3 oz) Pecorino cheese, grated
10 g (1/3 oz) Parmesan cheese, grated
9-10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt

Swiss chard leaves must have no veining. Combine the ingredients as you can read in the summer pesto recipe.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

Hi, let’s go on with short pasta tossed with creamy cheese sauce. We know exactly how these recipes are bad for our health but in the art of Italian cooking we don’t forget these examples of pasta tossed with white sauce. Pasta is the main Italian ingredient and cheese from Italy are well known all over the world.
And then,  according to our opinion, these kinds of pasta dish, if eaten once a time, aren’t bad for our health.
Certainly you have to complete your meal only with vegetables and fresh fruits!
Today’s post is dedicated to penne tossed with creamy gorgonzola sauce.
Gorgonzola outside Italy is also known as blue cheese.

Penne with creamy gorgonzola cheese

We recommend you to choose a creamy gorgonzola for this recipe.

There is another version of this recipe with less calories and fat. You only need to substitute light cream with some tablespoons of milk and not to use butter. You have only to melt gorgonzola cheese in the milk in a bain-marie.
Note the difference in nutrition facts (read more on the page dedicated to the recipe)

Energy: kcal 377  kJ 1578
Protein: g 15.6
Fat: g 11.2
Carbohydrates: g 57.0
Sugars: g 4.6

Greetings from Italy
Carlo & Loretta

Hi, this is the eleventh post about the art of Italian cooking. The ingredient about which we are talking is pasta.
In the last posts we have pointed your attention on the white sauces. Yesterday we presented four cheese pasta, today  penne au gratin.

Penne au gratin

But what is the real difference between these two recipes? Pasta is tossed with a white sauce in both cases.
Four cheese pasta sauce  is made with a great variety of cheese. Pasta is boiled, tossed with this sauce and served at once.
Penne au gratin  are tossed with béchamel sauce, Parmesan cheese and butter and baked until the surface is golden and crunchy.
If you want you can bake four cheese pasta too but it’s different from pasta au gratin whose main ingredient is béchamel sauce and not cheese.

But be careful: both the recipes are rich in calories and fat. You can’t eat them often even if we tried to use less fat than in other Italian-style  recipes.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo &  Loretta

Hi, this is the tenth post about Italian cuisine. It isn’t difficult to make Italian-style recipes as you could read in the past posts.
You’re mastering how to cook and toss pasta in these days. What about these first pasta recipes? Have you tested them? What about them?
Do you prefer macaroni, penne or spaghetti?

Today we tell you about another pasta dish famous all over the world: four cheese macaroni.
Perhaps you know it as four cheese penne. In fact four cheese sauce is a perfect cheesy white sauce for many kinds of short pasta: macaroni, penne, pipe …

Four cheese pasta, Italian-style

It isn’t difficult to prepare this recipe but be careful: it’s very rich in calories and fat. So you can’t eat it often!
We explain to you how to make a perfect four cheese pasta without using too much cheese and pasta in this page.

If you search  for this recipe in Internet you’ll be able to find millions of pages about cheesy white sauce by which to toss pasta. The recipes can be very different and the amount of pasta and cheese too!

Be careful about the right amount of pasta and cheese.  If you follow our instructions the nutrition facts are as you can see in our page but if you use 400g (14 oz) of pasta and 100 g (3 1/2 oz) of every kind of cheese the nutrition facts are these:
energy: kcal 870 (kjoule 3639)
protein: g 35.7
total fat: g 47.1
total carbohydrate: g 80.7
sugars: g 5.8

Somebody are used to add milk or light cream to the other ingredients in Italy but we haven’t this habit. According to our own taste the recipe is perfect in this way!

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta