Apricots and plums

The color of the apricots of our garden intensifies day by day.

We also have a plum tree (Reina Claudia variety).

The branches of the plum have been suffering from aphid attack.

Today I found the rescuers.

Ladybirds feed on aphids.

The ladybird is right.  What you see on the left is her shell.

Hope that they can clean the plum well.

I have picked apricots that are still unripe.

I'll use them to make liquor.

Italiano

[recipe] Vegetable Ginger Rice Balls

Here is the recipe of Vegetable Ginger Rice Balls.
This type of rice dish is called Takikomi-Gohan (炊き込みご飯) in Japanese. It is similar to Pilaf, which is rice cooked in broth with different ingredients: vegetables, fish, meat etc.

The recipe I want to present today is vegetarian.  If you want it vegan, just use proper wine.

The month of report

I can not believe we are already in June.

June is the closing month of the school year in Italy. So it's the month of graduation and holiday beginning. For many students and their families it's the month of satisfaction and liberation and for others it's of anxiety and suffering. Our family is part of the second category.

For our son Andrea this should be the last year of high school, therefore the year of Maturity Exam. He never liked going to the schools since he was a child (the only exception is when he attended an English language school in Canada for a summer). 

He is an intelligent boy. He just has not yet found the passion of life. I'm sure his time will come soon. 

Unfortunately, the Italian school system is not very comprehensive on students' personal growth.

And here we are, in front of the school's electronic register with Andrea's table of votes, many of which are reported in red (meaning inadequate). Will he be admitted to the Exam? Let's hope so...

The picture is Ginger Rice with Vegetables (Maze-Gohan 混 ぜ ご 飯 or Takikomi-Gohan 炊 き 込 み ご 飯).

I have prepared for the annual party of the aftershool club.

The yellow pieces are Frittata Roll (Tamago-Yaki 卵 焼 き).

With the next post I will show you how to prepare these delicious rice balls.

Italiano

[recipe] Basic white rice - with pressure cooker - shiro gohan

After a little 'break, here I am again.

By looking the date of the last post, I realized that have already been more than three weeks.

Well, let's start from an essential thing ... white rice ... 

Not that Italian white risotto (Riso in Bianco) with olive oil, butter, cheese, etc. even if it's very tasty and I like it, but what I want to write about today is the "Far East" (or Chinese / Korean / Japanese) style white rice, for which you need only two ingredients: rice and water, nothing else.

Thanks to this simplicity, the rice cooked in this way can be served in so many ways: as side dish, sushi, onigiri, donburi bowls, bento, pokè ...

Although it is often called "steamed rice", actually the method of cooking is not steamed but ... well, I don't know the right word to represent this method. However, it is easier to do than to say.

The only problem could be the equipment: pressure cooker.

An evening with polenta e osei

We were at a dinner with friends. The main dish was roasted birds ("osei" in the dialect of Veneto region).

Although this exquisiteness is very popular in northern Italy, it became difficult today to taste it because in Italy the sale of wild little birds for eating is prohibited by law. The only way is to become or to have as a friend a hunter who has got a license to hunt, cook and eat them privately.

The first time I ate the roast birds, their taste reminded me of roast fish I ate often when I was living in Japan. In my opinion, the common factors are the giblets' bitterness and the crispness of the bones.

Ceebu jenn ( or "A story of the mysterious rice - 3")

This post is the third part of: 

A party for friendship ( or "A story of the mysterious rice - 1") and

Tasty Senegalese dish  ( or "A story of the mysterious rice - 2") 

So, I decided to cook Ceebu jenn, the Senegalese dish I tasted at a evening meeting with migrants.
The recipe did not seem very complicated, the only problem was obtaining the broken rice, so I thought to ​​"produce it" at home with a blender.

Well, I'll show you the result ↓↓

You see that the grains are much smaller than normal basmati rice?

No?

Then you've seen well.

The idea of ​​breaking the rice with the blender did not work.

Tasty Senegalese dish ( or "A story of the mysterious rice - 2")

This post is the second part of A party for friendship ( or "A story of the mysterious rice - 1")

Not being so convinced by the cooperative's staff's answer, that the Djibril's dish was made of couscous and not of rice, I did an internet search.

Djibril was right. It was made from rice which is called "Broken rice".

During the processing for refining some of the rice grains get broken. In Italy these broken grains are transformed into other products such as flour, biscuits, puffed, starch etc. While in many countries of Asia and Africa the broken rice is one of the important ingredients for local recipes.

One of these is the Thiebou Dieune of Senegal, Djibril's "Cepo" .