Gratin di patate filanti - grated potatoes cake with ham and mozzarella

This is a very easy 'experiment' I did the other day as I ran out of ingredients for my dinner, but I can guarantee the result was appreciated by Matt as all he could say while eating was: '..hmmm...delicious!' and that kept me smiling as I totally improvised this out of desperation caused by a lack of food in the fridge.
I took some inspiration to it  from the neapolitan gatto' (gateau, one of the many french influences in our neapolitan dialect), though very different as in gatto' the potatoes shoud be mashed and there's also eggs and other ingretients in it... so I named this one ' Gratin di patate filanti'. Here's what I did:

Ingredients for 2/3 persons:
4-5 medium potatoes
100 gr ham (cured)
50 gr parmesan cheese grated
bread crumbs
half glass of milk
120 gr mozzarella cheese sliced 
butter 
pepper 
salt 

I boiled and peeled 5 potatoes
sliced them and placed them in a pre-greased oven tray (I used a pyrex one), and made different layers with
potatoes
ham
mozzarella slices
sprinkled parmesan
and so on until the ingredients are all in the tray

In order to make the outside of the bake crispy and nice I covered it with some bread crumbs and butter flakes  and just a little bit of milk all over the top ...bake in the oven for 30 minutes ...

and this is the result (courtesy of Matt's plate above...) you can also serve it as a side dish for some oven roasted chicken I think, but it's filling enough to be served as a main course! Buon appetito!

Braciole napoletane al sugo (beef rolls neapolitan way)

It's amazing how food and meals names can be so different from region to region of the same country.
I have been living my first 10 years in a small village near Napoli, southern Italy, and then moved north near Milan just until before I moved to United Kingdom. I can cleary see the difference in the meaning of food names between the Italian regions: one of these examples is 'braciola'.
In napoli it actually refers to these delicious beef rolls I am going to describe in the recipe below, while in norther Italy it refers to something rather different as it's the definition of a pork chop with rib just cooked in a pan or grilled.

I am actually going to show you my procedure to prepare these mouth watering  and succulent beef rolls, typical Sunday meal in Napoli. The neapolitan tradition in fact is to cook a 'ragu' sauce for the whole family, and forget the tinned ragu sauce you're used to ...it's something completely different and it also reflects the philosophy of the neapolitan style: take it easy, be patient, and don't worry!

We can consider the neapolitan braciole as one of the several addition to the ragu : they can be part of it or they can simply be prepared in this way (you and your guests won't be disapponted!).

You will need:

fine cut beef steaks (I used about 430 grams for the picture above)
pine nuts
garlic crushed
parmesan cheese grated (if you can find pecorino cheese even better)
fresh chopped parsley (very important)
tomato passata one bottle
tomato paste
olive oil (a good Italian olive oil possibly)
a glass of white wine
salt and pepper
toothpicks  or cooking string to keep the meat in a roll shape while cooking

prepare the ingredients on a board and spread the chopped garlic, parsley, pine nuts all over each beef steak, sprinkle the grated  parmesan on top of it

form the rolls, and hold them in place with some toothpicks (or cooking string). Start 'sealing' the meat in a pan frying it first for some minutes with olive oil, then add 1/2 glass of white wine and let it dry

add the tomato passata sauce, and a couple of spoons of tomato paste (concentrated)...let it simmer for about one hour until the sauce is less liquid and has a nice brown colour to it.

Trick: you can use this as a double meal: use the sauce as condiment for some home made taglatelle and the meat as second course (this is what we do in Naples :)) 

enjoy!