Nonna Reviews

Good day ladies and gentlemain’t.

Why yes, I am aware that I haven’t posted here in months and yes I do indeed feel terrible, my excuse is as follows: I was depressed and in a rut. Please forgive my lack of content but I’m back for good – unfortunately for you all.

A little over an hour ago, my girlfriend told me she has been stalking this blog for a year; for those of you who don’t know me personally, that’s a lot longer than we’ve been together (four months).

Is that creepy? Yes. Did she tell me off for not posting her zodiac recipe? Also yes. So here it is. Sexy Leo bitches, this one’s for you. It’s as sexy as you are and only requires a very little ingredients and 15-ish minutes. Or half an hour, if you’re as bad as I am.

To encapsulate your girlfriend’s near-perfect personality into a pastry, you will need:

Puff pastry, no I am not going to make that by hand, you should know I’m not that good at baking

Cherries

Sugar

Brown sugar

Water

2 teaspoons of corn starch

I did weigh the ingredients and I do know what I’m doing, I just didn’t write it down because I want you to adjust this recipe to your taste, absolutely. You all forget I’m an Italian grandmother WAY too often.

First off we’re gonna pit and dice the cherries as small or large as you like them, throw them in a pot with equal parts brown and regular sugar, water and corn starch. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil and the ~juice~ thickens. Remove from heat.

Cut some little shapes out of your puff pastry and sandwich that shit together until it looks a lot prettier than mine. Bake until golden.

Now for the important part: hi baby I love you.

PLEASE oh please reblog with pictures of your pies. I love you all little lions but especially my gf.

Bye bye,

You've got exactly the same leftovers as I do? Then this dish is for you!

Ingredients (per 1 person):

- Chicken breasts, I did two

- Some mushrooms of your choice

- Half a bell pepper

- Garlic

- 1 Onion

- Honey

- Mustard

- Cayenne pepper

Preparation:

Chop the chicken in small pieces and start by making the pepper with garlic and the cayene pepper, about five minutes after throw in the mushrooms and onion.

Cook it for 15-20 minutes and add the chicken, salt everything. When the chicken is almost done add half a tablespoon of honey, mix it well and now add the mustard to taste, mix it and and finish by adding pepper and mixing everything one last time.

And you're done! You've made lunch that's so cool!

I added chips because I'm autistic and God knows I won't eat anything that isn't crunchy enough.

It was my birthday two weeks ago, I'm a virgo if you couldn't tell about the everything about me.

Since it was my birthday I decided to make myself a cake, a cheesecake specifically.

* Remember you're gonna need a detachable cake mould

Ingredients:

For the mousse:

- 2 lemons

- 250g of sugar

- 2 tablespoons of cornstarch

- 2 eggs

For the cake:

- 250g of cookies

- 125g of butter

- 2 teaspoons of sugar

- 1 cup of condensed milk

- 2 packets of cream cheese

- The juice of a single lemon

Preparation:

Put the cookies in a bag and, with help of a rolling pin, turn them into dust. We didn't have a rolling pin so we used our hands and the fury of our grandmothers.

Melt the butter and, in a bowl, add the cookies, butter and sugar. Mix it well until it becomes a homogeneous mixture. Press it against the bottom of the bowl and freeze it for 10 minutes.

While in the freezer you can start making the filling. For that mix the cream cheese with a stand mixer until it has a smooth texture, we also didn't have a stand mixer so we used a fork and the fury of our grandmothers yet again.

When that's done add the condensed milk and lemon juice and mix it all well, put it in the mould and into the freezer for 2 hours.

While it's freezing start the mousse:

For that start by preparing the lemon juice and cest.

Start by whisking the eggs, throw them into a pot along with the lemon juice and its cest, the sugar and the two tablespoons of cornstarch. Add half a liter of water and dont stop mixing it until it starts boiling and becomes quite thick. Be careful not to burn it!!! (Not like it happened to us or anything)

Use a really fine coulander to strain it and Into the refrigerator it goes, wait for the cake to be done and add the mousse on top, put it back in the freezer and wait for another 2 hours (although we left it overnight).

And you're set! Your cake is done, you did amazing!!!

The big meal you share with everyone, a summer dish, grandmas and aunts make it when they have people over, a staple food of the catalan countries, NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, have it at the Ramblas.

To make your own paella you're gonna need:

- Prawn

- Onion

- 3 garlic clovers

- One and a half bell peppers

- Laurel

- Tomato

- Cuttlefish or ribs if you dont like it

- Wine

- Bomba rice

- Saffron

- Fish brew

Chop the onion, bell pepper, tomato and cuttlefish in small pieces.

- Olive oil

Preparation:

Cook the prawn at low heat until theyre done and set them apart, now, i dont personally like it but you can do this with mussles and clams too, you can use the shell of the mussle as a spoon to eat it with! Next add the onion to a pan with olive oil and cook it until they look slightly transparent, add garlic and cook it at low heat for another 2 minutes and proceed to add the bell pepper and laurel. Slow cook it until it gets soft, then add the tomato to the mixture.

Now to the rice, add it along the saffron, the rice must take a yellow coloration, mix everything well and add fish brew, boil it at high heat for 4 minutes without moving it. Lower the heat but not so much that it stops boiling and help it doesn't stick together by moving it as least as possible for 14 minutes.

Next it's the cuttlefish! Add it to that same pan and cook it for another 5 minutes. You'll need to add the wine and cook everything at high heat for around 5 minutes until it evaporates.

Now, I say pan but what i really mean is a paella a big round pan with two handles on each side, if you dont own one a normal big-sized pan will do.

Good job you're almost done! Now, salt it if you haven't already and cover it with a cloth or newspaper for 2 minutes, add the prawn and you're set! You made paella! I'm so proud of you.

Lastly, I would like to say: if you add chorizo to this I will personally hit you on the shin with a hammer.

Hello my loves.

As always, here are the BLM resource links.

I don’t know about you lot, but since I moved back in with my parents after six months of living alone, I haven’t cooked much. Which sucks because, as you may have noticed, I really do love to cook. It’s one of my coping mechanisms and helps me release anxiety. Unfortunately for me, that same thing goes for my mom, which is why the only way I have to cook something is to beat her to it and cook as early in the morning as I can get up. Which is why today I’m showing you how to make some breakfast food.

To prove that Italians should have the Mona Lisa back, you will need:

Bread (I managed to make eight slices with this recipe)

Eggs (2)

Milk (1 tablespoon approximately)

Sugar

Cinnamon

In a bowl, mix the eggs and milk. Add the sugar (I don’t like my French toast too sweet, so I only added one teaspoon, but feel free to adjust the recipe to fit your taste) and an equal amount of cinnamon, so neither one overpowers the other. Mix it all up and now that I have your attention, I got a puppy!!!! A Siberian puppo!!!! A baby husky girl sweet sweet baby my love my life my everyt

Once you’ve greased a pan with a small amount of butter or some vegetable oil, dip your bread slices on each side, one by one and quickly toss them in the pan. There’s really no rule to how much egg mixture your toast should soak up, it’s entirely up to you. However, if you soak it too much, it will get soggy and melty and it will be harder to hold together. Cook your toast until golden brown.

I recommend serving these warm with some fresh fruit on the side and honey or maple syrup on top.

Show me your pets please I’m begging you,

Cryssy Teigen

P.S. The Mona Lisa was a gift from Leonardo Da Vinci to the French, so you guys can and should keep it. With that said, novelle cuisine is just small Italian cuisine and I’m prepared to fight you on that.

Please don't make these I hate them

Ingredients for 4 wraps:

- 1 and a half bell peppers

- Pre fried chicken

- Black pepper

- Cumin

- Oregano

- Onion

- Two garlic cloves

- Tomato sauce

- Tortillas

Preparation:

Cut the pre-fried chicken into pieces and make them in a pan. When it starts to get slightly golden add the onion and garlic, once the onion gets a bit brownish add the pepper, season everything with black pepper, oregano and cumin (and salt, please). Cook it for a few minutes and add the tomato sauce and put everything in your tortilla.

They taste like mediocrity.

Before we start, here are some resources regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and what you can do. Here’s our post with some more.

Hello my dears,

I know it’s hard to go on and I know it’s extremely easy to feel helpless. I’ve been struggling quite a bit myself. Let me try to keep you company a while. Please keep in mind that I’m typing this as I sit in bed munching on hot chips dipped in cheese sauce, so results may vary.

I’m gonna show you how I make my favourite Depression Meal, as it could not be any more fitting to these times. It also dawned on me that it’s a perfect gemini recipe – versatile, sharable and fairly simple.

I would also like to apologise in advance for the way I will be undoubtedly butchering this recipe. I’m aware it’s a very special dish to many and this is, of course, just my sad college student take on it.

To perform an unforgivable act, you will need:

Tortillas

Chicken breast

Cheese (I used mozzarella because I’m, you know, *imitates a grandmother trying to secretly pass a 20 euro bill to her grandchild* Italian)

Salt and spices (I used paprika and ground chili pepper)

Ok so between one identity crisis and the other you’re going to cut your chicken breast into bite-sized strips and cook them in a pan, seasoned with salt, paprika and chili. Make sure to save the little juice, that’s the best freakin’ part. As you reminisce about how fucking dope it was to live in the centre of Rome and just be able to go see whatever monument when you had a 15-minute break between classes, heat your tortilla in a pan and place the chicken and cheese in it. Gently fold the tortilla and let it sit for a few seconds before you place it in a plate and slice it.

That’s it. That’s literally it. I used to make this for lunch when I lived in The Big City and didn’t have much time to cook or eat. This and popcorn – I once ate nothing but popcorn for three days in a row - but that’s not much of a recipe, is it.

Here are my ugly ass chicken quesadillas. Once again, I’m terribly sorry. I love you. Happy birthday to all you cute little geminis.

Fideos a la Cazuela !

Bi Fieri here to continue our gastrology series, today a staple of spanish abuela cousine.

Ingredients:

As a grandma recipe, don't expect very good measurements, we do what we can.

- Sausages/ribs

- Onion

- Garlic

- 1 carrot

- 1 tomato

- Salt & pepper

- 1 potato

- 1 bell pepper

- 1 laurel leaf

- Pasta

Preparation:

Chop the tomato and bell pepper, slice the carrot, cut the potato onion and garlic, leave them aside.

Cut the sausages in 3 pieces, cook them in a pot, when they're almost done add onion and garlic, when they start getting a golden-y tone add the bell pepper, wait for 3 minutes and add the tomato and a leaf of laurel. Wait a minute and add the carrot salt and pepper.

Add water and boil it for 15 minutes, add the potatoes wait for another 15 minutes and add the pasta, another 15 minutes and you're done!

As it should be, it doesn't look appetizing at all! Enjoy it :)

(And spill it all over your couch)

Inspired by @prince-witch 's strawberry juice recipe I wanted to have a go at it though upon seeing the instructions I found out you have to boil and freeze things and I, do not have enough patience to wait for things to boil or freeze, so I made it into a milkshake!

(However if you, unlike me, have minimum patience I recommend you do the original one because it looks really good)

Ingredients:

- 4/5 strawberries (or as many as you want theyre really good so who cares)

- 2 cups of milk

- An entire lemon worth of juice if you're not a coward and love lemon or half a lemon if you dont want it to be too sour

- 2 tablespoons of honey

- A bit of mint (optional)

Preparation:

Make the lemon juice if you dont have it premade and add it to the blender with the strawberries and milk. After it's blended add the honey and mint and mix it all together.

Then proceed to take 2 sips, sit on your couch and spill it all over yourself because you dont have enough braincells to do more than one thing at a time without your brain having a short-circuiting.

The milkshake tasted like bizcocho dough and mojito at the same time? So I'm still deciding if it was a good idea or not.

Yours truly,

So, here’s the thing. 

The last post I made featured pizza, which is a recipe that was taught to me by an aries woman. Since I can’t do the same recipe twice, I’ll do the closest thing there is: pasta. Both involve love and affection. Both also require great amounts of rage.

So prick your cute little ears out, because I’m about to teach you how to make fresh egg pasta.

To recall that one time you made carbonara for your aries ex-boyfriend and he told you it was too spicy because you’d put black pepper in it, you’re gonna need:

Eggs - as many as the number of people you’re gonna feed

Flour – 100g for each egg

Pour your flour on your table and make a cute lil hole at the top, so that it kind of looks like a volcano. Break the eggs in it and begin working the dough until it’s nice and bouncy. Be AGGRESSIVE. In the aries spirit.

Let it rest for 30 minutes to an hour. As you do, think about that one time your aries friend slapped the living daylights out of a girl because he thought she was a friend of his. She wasn’t. Realise that you still don’t understand why he would slap her in the first place. Come to the conclusion that aries just be like that sometimes.

Once your dough is well rested – and you are too! Remember to sleep well and drink lots of water – roll it as thin as you possibly can, then even thinner. You do NOT want chunky pasta. Cut it in whatever shape you want. I recommend either butterflies or diamonds for beginners. Cook it for two minutes tops; fresh pasta cooks extremely quickly. Serve however you like. Inhale the whole thing in 3.4 minutes.

Here is my mismatched copy of Anna Karenina! I know, I know… it is not aesthetically pleasing like those beautiful editions you see around Tumblr and Instagram, but I really love second hand books, so here I am. 

What to say about the book? I never read anything by Tolstoy, this was my first, and I was pleasantly surprised. I know everyone ever told me it is great and I should read it… but when you are talking about classics (especially Russian and as long as this one) you are always a bit scared. What if I don’t like it? What if it is boring? What if I lose interest? 

But this didn’t happen and I was honestly entertained and curious about it all from the start. And I manage to finish it! And I read it right after I bought it without leaving it in my TBR for years! 

All in all a great experience lol

Now that we are all quarantined and have a lot more free time, I think this would be a great book to pick up to keep you company!

Funny how in Italian it’s called pan di Spagna while I, a Catalan, make the best one.

Now my (Bi Fieri’s) country is ALSO quarantined so what better than some comfort baking to trick my brain into thinking that a sudden and drastic change in routine is fun and something we can handle!

Basically a sponge cake; an absolute grandma recipe, it’s the ultimate comfort baking since it’s very hard to make it wrong, which you know, things going right isnt something we seem to be getting that much these days.

To make your own bizcochito you’ll need:

- 3 eggs

- 1 yogurt, plain or lemon (125 grams, we’ll use the cup to meassure the rest of ingredients) 

- Flour (3 yogurts)

- Sugar (2 yogurts)

- Baking soda (16g)

- Olive oil (1 yogurt)

- Lemon zest

- Vanilla extract

- Butter or oil for the mold so it

Preparation:

PREHEAT THE OVEN PREHEAT THE OVEN PREHEAT THE OVEN DO NOT FORGET TO PREHEAT THE OVEN 

(at 150ºC or 302ºF)

Mix the eggs first, add yogurt, sugar, oil and lemon zest (a lot of it if you, like me, are a genius and love lemon). When everything is mixed add the flour and baking powder and mix it all together, lastly, when everything is well mixed add the vanilla extract, I use half a small coffee spoon so more or less half a 1/8 teaspoon.

Put this bad boy in the oven at 180⁰C /356⁰F for 40-45 minutes and there you have it! Your son. 

Greetings my children and childrain’t, I have been quarantined for over two weeks and all that’s keeping me sane is the study of latin, which I have hated with a burning passion my entire life. Oh, how the turns have tabled indeed. Anyway, here’s some food.

DISCLAIMER: This is my southern Italian mother’s recipe, so if you think you’re gonna come here and find measurements, you’re a coward and a fool.

To disappoint several generations worth of mothers who probably did this differently and are all simultaneously cursing you right now despite this being a relatively easy recipe, you will need:

Flour (manitoba flour - or bread flour for you all Anglo-Saxons out there - works best)

Salt (always keep a 5:1 flour:salt ratio. eg, if you use 1kg of flour, use 20g of salt)

Yeast - a bit but much less than the salt

Water - however much you’ll need

Years of repressed anger (essential)

As I previously mentioned, we’re Italian - we measure ingredients by summoning the spirits of our long gone great grandmothers and letting them speak to our hearts. So hold the dry ingredients up to your heart and let them speak. Next, you’re gonna want to keep adding water - and flour, if necessary - until you have a soft, gentle dough that doesn’t stick to your hands. If it’s a sticky little boy, add more flour a little bit at a time, if it’s dry do the same with water.

Knead with as much anger as you can channel through your dainty little hands. You need to beat the shit out of that dough. I’m serious.

Cover with a towel and let it raise, ideally overnight. If you’re an impatient little shit, at least leave it alone for a few hours. Please.

Once the dough has doubled in size, divide into little balls of dough that you’re then gonna flatten into discs about the size of your hand. Deep fry those suckers. Take a very Italian picture of the process with a moka and a single cookie in it.

Drain the oil and serve with whatever condiments and toppings you like. However, I must warn you: if I see the shadow of a pineapple on these I will personally come to your house and pour boiling oil onto your hands. I will make you wish you were never born.

Always remember that I love you lots. Stay safe, stay inside, don’t skip meals.

Following up with our Astrology series we've got pisces! Them fishies :-)

What better for the fish sign to eat...well you guessed it, fish! Tuna, specifically, for I, Bi Fieri, will be showing you how to make a tuna empanada or empanada gallega, if you will.

Ingredients:

- Half an onion

- Garlic

- Green and red bell peppers

- Tuna (2 cans)

- Tomato sauce

- Dough

- 1 Egg

Preparation:

Start by preheating the oven.

Cut the onion, garlic, one green pepper and half a red pepper into dice and throw everything except for the garlic in a pan with a bit of olive oil and salt. Cook it on low heat. Once the onion has changed colour to a more brown-ish tone add the garlic. Great! now you've made sofrito. Good job.

Drain the oil from the tuna cans and add them to the mixture, also add the tomato sauce.

The dough we used is rectangular but you can do it with any shape. Add the sofrito to half of the dough and fold the other half on top of it, twist the border around it, paint it with egg and into the oven !

I wish I could tell you how long it should be in the oven, but since this is a mom recipe I cannot. Leave it until the dough is a light brown and slightly crunchy to eat.

At the time of eating, go for the borders!! They go crunch crunch!!!

and you’re a responsible adult citizen who does not take unvaccinated children outside to mingle with grown people during a national epidemic. 

I’m Cryssy Teigen and today I’m revoking someone’s right to vote. And also showing you how to make potatoes in two different ways!!!

To give some context, my family has recently moved into a new house and as of right now we still don’t have a kitchen and with Coronavirus, I doubt we’ll have one any time soon. So we’ve been doing all we could with just a microwave and a single burner.

To satisfy a personal vendetta against shit for brains fucking idiots who don’t listen to the ministry of health and make some yummy pomtatoes!!!!! you will need:

Potatoes

Oil

Pecorino or cheese of choice

Salt

Rosemary

Civic awareness

A conscience 

To make microwave potatoes:

First of all, accept the following apology: I am so, so sorry. They do taste good though.

Then, you’re gonna dice your potatoes until they’re approximately the size of third of your pinky finger, season them with salt and rosemary and cook them for twenty minutes in a microwave-safe container, taking them out to flip them about ten minutes in. Once they’re done, add your cheese and hatred for those who have no respect for professional doctors who are risking their lives as we speak to save someone else’s.

To make my legendary pecorino fries:

Here we fucking go kiddos oohhh yes let’s FUCKING gooOOoOoO this is the perfect quarantine recipe.

Cut your potatoes to fry-shape (or get funky, why not) and put them in water for about two hours. This is gonna make them extra crumchy once you cook them.

Then, you’re gonna want to dry them as much as you can so that the oil won’t fucking splash everywhere and make you grow several appendices on your body when you fry the potatoes. Season with salt and rosemary.

You can either deep-fry or pan-fry the potatoes, I chose to pan fry them because we only have one pot and one pan and my mom was making soup in the pot. I love you mom. 

Once your potatoes are thorougly cooked, drain the oil and add the cheese. 

Eat thinking of how lucky you are to have a brain that allows you to not simultaneously put your friends, your two year-old nephews and your parents at risk just because you didn’t feel like staying inside. Man, could you believe if people did that? Those guys would be some seriously stupid assholes, fuck them.

Send me your quarantine potato pics I love you all,