Italian Cuisine - BLOG - MY COLOURFUL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA

On Christmas Eve I was invited for dinner by my neighbours! For the occasion I prepared "Baci di Dama": hazelnuts cookies filled with chocolate! So tasty that you can’t eat just one!

According to my grandmother’s recipe, these are THE INGREDIENTS:

- 300gr chopped hazelnuts,

- 200gr sugar,

- 200gr butter,

- 300gr flour 00,

- a pinch of salt,

THE STEPS TO GET THEM READY:

- knead the ingredients in a bowl,

- once the dough has become soft,

- refrigerate it for at least 2 hours,

- shape semi-circles with the dough,

- bake the semi-circles in the oven at 160° for 20’, - allow them to cool completely before filling, - meanwhile, put the chocolate into a small bowl and melt it, - put a dollop of melted chocolate on the semi-circle flat sides, and press them onto the chocolate

And then ... enjoy!!!

What I really missed in Australia was the delicious taste of freshly oven-baked focaccia bread. Focaccia is a typical Genoese piece of crunchy bread on the outside and moist on the inside. I usually eat my favourite focaccia (with rosemary) as a sort of "snack" when I feel a bit hungry!

In Melbourne, despite numerous Italian restaurants, bakeries, cafès, there was no chance to find out a piece of focaccia. So I decided to bake focaccia on my own... but I had no idea how to make it... so I checked recipes-tutorials on the internet... and I ended up to visit Viva la focaccia website: a blog written by an engineer from Genoa settled down in the United States, - with nostalgia of focaccia too! I followed the instructions given and made every effort possible to bake my focaccia... and the result was pretty good!!! It was so yummy!!!

Italian Cuisine - BLOG - MY COLOURFUL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA

So tasty that you can’t eat just one!

Nostalgia of Genoese focaccia bread!