What do you really love to eat?
For me this is such a difficult question because I love almost all kinds of food but I think mediterranean is my all time favourite

Thai!

And I love Falafel

Italian cooking is the best
I'm from Naples and I always eat pizza and pasta!!!

Hmm I love pizza and pasta as well You do a lot of italian cooking yourself too? Maybe you can share some of your recipies with us

Yes Kiara that would be great!
I'd love to be able to cook a real Italian meal for my friends

Which recipes do you want? (..pasta, pizza, cakes.....)
Now I write the recipe for Babà..It's a typical "cake" of Naples.

Babà Ingredients:
flour 500g
eggs 10
brewer's yeast 35g
butter 150g
sugar 70g
salt 10g
Syrup Ingredients: (rum, sugar 500g)


Preparation:
Dissolve yeast with salt in one spoonful of lukewarm water and
mix it with a small amount of flour (1/3).
Knead (by hand) the dough vigorously, and put it on a plate dusted
with flour to rise for an hour.
When it rises put it in a deep bowl, add the eggs and the rest of the flour
Knead for 25 minutes.
Once the dough is soft, knead it by repeatedly lifting it and then dropping it, vigorously, into the same bowl.
At this point leave it in the same container to rise
for approximately 2 hours
Then add butter and sugar and knead for 10minutes and put it in 20 moulds greased with butter, filling them halfway.
Leave it to rise and then bake it at 180° for 15 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the rum syrup by boiling (for 5 minutes) the water (1/2 l), rum(as you like) and sugar (500g) until this last has completely dissolved.
Soak one or two Babà toghether.
If you want, melt a spoonful of apricot jam with a spoomful of water and brush it on Babà!
PS: if you like it, you can garnish your Babà with cream and fruits (like apples, pineapple, strawberries and cherries.)

you MUST eat Babà with hands!


(sorry if my english is not so good)

Mmm this sounds delicious! Do you make it often? Maybe this will be a good recipe for me to bake for Christmas, I always try to make as much international recipes as I can when we host dinner for our family .

And if you have a recipe for a pasta someday . I love pasta but I'm not a very creative cook so most of the time I'm making pasta with lots of vegetables, red pesto and sour cream (or creme fraiche, I always forget which one is for warm dishes...)

ps kiara don't worry about your English ! I think it's perfect, and you're practising a lot with posting here so you'll become even better and faster

Thank U so much!!!
No, I don't make it often because I live near a good bakery!
I write two quick and easy recipes for cooking pasta

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Ingredients(4people):
Spaghetti 400g
Bacon 150g
Eggs 3
3 tablespoon of Grated Pecorino
3 tablespoon of Grated Parmigiano
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 clove of garlic
salt
pepper


Cut the bacon into small cubes, and brown the bacon with oil and garlic in a pan.
When the garlic is golden brown, remove it.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.Cook spaghetti for 8-10 minutes.
[Cook pasta "al dente" (“Al dente”, literally meaning “to the tooth”.The pasta is cooked but not overly soft!)]

Next, whisk the eggs in a bowl with black pepper and salt.
When the pasta is cooked, drain it quickly and add spaghetti in the pan with bacon. Mix it. Remove from heat. add the eggs, 1 parmigiano tablespoon, 1 pecorino tablespoon. Mix quickly again.
Add the rest of cheese, more pepper and serve immediately.

Tagliatelle del goloso
Ingredients (4people):
Noodles 320g
Assorted mushrooms, cleaned and sliced 300g
1 chopped onion
1 slice of ham (100g)
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons cold cream
1 small glass of brandy
2 tablespoons of grated Parmigiano
salt
pepper

In a pan, add the mushrooms in heated butter with garlic and onion.
cut the ham into small cubes.after 5 minutes add the ham.
wait a few seconds just to let it flavor, than add brandy, salt and pepper.
Next cover and cook over low heat 20 minutes.
Cook the pasta "al dente" (“Al dente”, literally meaning “to the tooth”.The pasta is cooked but not overly soft!)
Drain the pasta and put it in the pan of mushrooms.
Mix it and add the cream and cook everything together at high heat for 2 minutes, turning frequently.
Sprinkle with Parmigiano.Serve it hot!
Wine product from Riesling (it's a white grape variety from Germany) are very good with this pasta!

Yummy they sound delicious! Definitely will try to make them soon
I'm not really good in the kitchen, but this sounds do-able. The explanation is really clear and gratefully there are not a 100 different ingredients in it, like mostly in recipe books! That makes it too hard for me
So thank you Kiara!

Hmm this sounds really good Kiara, thanks
Unfortunately I have no oven here, so I have to wait a while before I try to make babà, but I will definitely make the pasta's here
I quoted your recipies so I could place them in the "Recipies from your country" topic, to make them easier to find for other globals Hope you don't mind! If you do, let me know and I will remove those

No,no..its ok!
Do you have a traditional christmas food in holland??

I think traditional Dutch Christmas food is red cabbage with compote of apples, mashed potatoes and meat that has to be on the fire for a long time? I'm not really sure though... The Dutch kitchen in general is not that good to be honest! With Christmas I guess people are mostly cooking French cuisine and things like that... Well, just everything they like a lot!

And in Italy, what is typical to eat for Christmas?

Yeah it's difficult to talk about Dutch christmasfood in general.
I know that loads of people do the thing where everybody has there own small pan. How's that called again in English?
I think rabbit can be a Dutch christmasfood as well and I think that load of Christmasdinners indeed involve red cabbage with compote of apples and mashed potatoes.
I think that all people definitely put some extra effort in their cooking around Christmas but as Dutch people in general are not as fond on cooking as Italians are, I think that there must be more Italian christmasrecipes than Dutch ones.

Christmas holidays are the best days to gain at least 10 kilos!!!
The most "critical" days are 24-25-26-31 dec and 01-06 jan!The table
is set for no less than 20 people (usually we are all family, but often there are also many friends who have joined us!)
And the menù is: (24 dec)
- Aperitif and Canapés
- Shrimp cocktail
- Seafood salad
- Spaghetti with clams
- Another plate of pasta (again based on fish)
- Cod
- Fried Eel
- Salad of reinforcement
- Broccoli
- Fruits
and candy like:
- Chocolate salami
- Babà
- Capri cake (an old neapolitan cake, from the island of Capri, made with chocolate and almonds)
- Struffoli (neapolitan little balls of fried dough covered in honey and
wrapped by a thousand tiny colored sugar candies)
- Roccocò (neapolitan cake made with almonds,candied fruit and spices)
- Mostaccioli (neapolitan biscuits covered with dark chocolate,
melted, mixed with almonds and honey.)
- Susamielli (Neapolitan sweet in the shape of "S" with almonds and honey,
and flavored with cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg)
- Craft Panettone and Pandoro (are typical cakes of Milan and Verona but are eaten throughout Italy)
and hazelnut,nuts and all dried fruit in the world!
Drink: homemade wine (but not made by us..is very good
but also very strong),beer (as nothing to do with the Christmas menu, but
me and my mom must have it at the table!),champagne, sometimes water,
and many spirits!..My "Limoncello" is very good!

The menu is also more broad because the guests bring a few dishes prepared from them.

I love xmas!!!!

Wow that sounds really good !
I think my Christmas dinner will be about 4-5 courses only, which is quite extensive for a Dutch Dinner. Don't know yet what is on the menu but most of the time we have a soup, a main dish, which is usually some kind of meat with mashed potatoes and salad, a cheese plate and a desert, which is either ice cream or a cake. And than there sometimes is another course in between but that depends.
I think you eat more fish and seafood than we do for christmas. I'm not sure but i think fish and seafood are not very common christmasdishes in the Netherlands. What do you think Steffy?

Five courses are not so few Do you celebrate xmas in Netherlands or in France?
I wanted to send you some sweet by courier, but it takes too long and the food becomes bad!
Maybe next time I come to Amsterdam I bring to you and Steffy, a tray of sweets !

Hihi that would be really good, than I could say to my family: LOOK! Real Italian sweets! But I we have a really cool shop with food and sweets from Greece and Italy, so I think I will go there to buy some nice things. You bring me on good ideas!

I think fish and seafood are not really traditional with Christmas in Holland.. Although, I have eaten gamba's, salmon and oysters many times. Which is a good thing about Christmas love all of them.

I always celebrate one of the Christmas days at my friend's family, and the other we spend at mines. Her mum is such a good cook, so it's delicious to eat there! At my place the food is not so good but there are a lot of people and everyone brings along something, so it's always a lovely family day!

Getting excited for Christmas right now!!

Wow that sounds good
No for me 5 courses are not really few, but compared to an Italian Christmasdinner it is probably not that much
I celebrate Christmas with my parents in the Netherlands this year Looking forward to it, it has been half a year since I saw my family apart from skype.
But the nice thing about living in France is that Christmas is far mor important here than in the Netherlands. So there is already a christmasmarket here and the shops are nicely decorated so I can really get into the christmas mood

I love Italian food and desert most and kiara share all good recipes here that's so nice.