a sweet treat: Coccole with ricotta cheese, coconut and cocoa powder super easy and yummy!

These cute yummy little fluffy snow balls are a very easy yet delicious sweet treat for your guests and family, and I tasted them first during a bbq we had last June to celebrate our house warming party.

A friend of mine prepared the 'coccole' (cuddles) and everybody absolutely loved them! The bonus is that you don't have to bake anything, so if you 're very busy and don't have so much time to spend in the kitchen, this is the ideal solution to impress your guess ...in a positive way!

The main ingredient for this recipe is ricotta cheese: this is one of my favourite ingredients as it's so versatile and light (and cheap!) and I use it for both sweet and savoury dishes.
Living in UK, I found my ricotta at asda, but this can be found in many other main supermarkets:

You will need:
250 gr of Ricotta cheese
100 gr of sugar
150 gr essicated coconut powder
50 gr of cocoa powder


food colors, and aromas (I used vanilla and almond aroma) , and if you like some rhum or brandy for the chocolate ones

Start by softening the ricotta cheese in a bowl using a fork , and then add the sugar keeping mixing.

Add  100 gr of essicated coconut and keep stirring until you have a quite firm texture

I divided the mixture in 4 different bowls, so that I could color and flavour each bowl differently using food colorants and aromas: I went for a blue-vanilla coconut flavour, a yellow -almond one and kept the white just with coconut and the coccoa ones with brandy ...just followed my personal tastes, but you can decide to have them all chocolate if you like and mix the cocoa powder without dividing the compost.

once you have mixed and you get the desired shade of colour, leave the bowls to cool in the fridge for about  20 minute, so they are firm enough tobe worked.

and with the help of a teaspoon and your scuplting skills...form some little balls

...and roll them in the remaining coconut flour you left aside, and you're done!


Store in the fridge, and serve chilled...enjoy!

Artichokes, memories, and missing holidays!

One of the main problems I have had when I moved to UK was: how I will cope with the new eating habits I will find? Where will I find my usual ingredients? How will I be able to ...survive?? :)
Well, I need to say that  my fears were fueled more by my imagination than what I would have found here: I can actually see it's so easy to find many of the ingredients I used to cook when living in Milan.
Ricotta, Mascarpone, pasta (I bought some nice De Cecco penne packets at Asda recently), cheeses and more specialties are not so hard to find. And I have to confess I do also like to put the Italian thing aside sometimes, and enjoy some proper English food :) (but don't tell my partner, he still thnks I am suffering sooo much!)
On the other hand, we recently bought a house, and as it has a quite good size garden I thought to start growing some of my favourite vegetables...like ARTICHOKES
Ohh I could write a poem about these heavenly tasty veggies: they also make wonderful flowers if you don't crop them...but  to be honest...I would prefer to eat them (sorry, flowers)!

I remember my mum had such a yummy way to cook them : she cleaned them and removed the external leaves, and cleaned them inside removing the fluffy part. Then prepared a mixture for the filling using bread (softned in water and well squeezed), grated parmesan, crushed garlic, fresh chopped parsley and extravirging olive oil. She filled the cleaned artichokes and placed them in a pan with a little bit of water (not to boil them, but sort of 'steam') and let them slow cook covering with a lid.
If I close my eyes, I can almost smell them in this moment, such strong is the memory

As soon as I will manage to grow some of my artichokes (my dear cousin sent me these 'Romanesco' artichoke seeds last spring) I will for sure share recipe and pictures of my Mum recipe described above.


I guess I am still feeling a little bit homesick after the Italian holiday, thought to share with you some of the pictures. I have been to Assisi, Perugia, Cortona, and other lovely places...will surely go back there again!

sunflowers fields everywhere

we went to a medieval banquet one night, in citta' della Pieve...fantastic meal!

We had a dinner in one of these 'Taverne Medievali' , these are special places open

just ten days per year and the food is simply amazing! We had starter (like the Tuscan antipasto in the post below), wild boar tagliatelle, charchoal cooked meat (I had spicy chicken it was amazing), dessert and red wine...all for 15 euros! 

Boar tagliatelle, sorry this picture cannot describe the taste!

And this is the little corner of paradise where we spent the week in Italy

My first post!

I thought to give a simple kickstart to a simple blog about simple Italian food, just sharing my feelings at the moment with this short post.


I will tell you why I decided to start this blog today.



Well, I have just recently came back from a wonderful holiday in Tuscany and Umbria with my family and as I am back to Uk with all these gorgeous images in mind about all the fantastic places I have been, and how amazing was the food that I decided to share my impressions by using this blog...and why not also let you know about my everyday life and moments (hoping I won't bore you!)

The place we have been is called 'Agriturismo' and these are very popular rural accomodation in Tuscany and central Italy regions: 'rural' is actually the settings and the feeling you get from your stay even if you actually get all the comforts of a 4 star hotel :) We even had a luxourious swimming pool overlooking a splendid sunflower field! Ohhh it's almost painful thinking the holiday is now over :(



I remember one night my sister wanted to try to cook 'fiorentina' , that is actually a very thik cut of Tbone steak ...and the owner of the agriturimo kindly offered to cook it for us on his charcoal open oven ...it was so succulent and delicious, the most amazing steak I have ever had

Fancy a dinosaur rib, Wilma?

Tuscan antipasto (starter): Hams, melon and bruschetta