Four amazing Italian meals you can cook at home

February 9th, 2015

Appliance Talk Ovens & Cooking Recipes

Do you have a passion for cooking? Do you want to create amazing meals that take your loved ones and guests from a merely satisfying to a truly transcendental taste experience?

Chef Giovanni Pilu knows how you feel. Emigrating from his native Sardinia in the 90s, he brought with him his love of Italian cooking, which he’s shared with Australians ever since.

ILVE also shares a passion for great cooking. Their classic Italian-designed ovens, cooktops and more are all manufactured with care and precision, allowing you to effortlessly exercise your cooking enthusiasm.

So if you love Italian cooking, check out these dishes from Giovanni Pilu and ILVE – two for primo (first course) and two for dolci (dessert):

Linguine con Vongole

Let’s start off with an Italian classic – pasta.  Mixed with fresh clams, it’s an ideal summer dish, though still delicious at any time of year. And the addition of a bit of garlic, chilli and olive oil gives the dish some additional strong flavour.

Chef Pilu also adds a bit of bottarga, a traditional Sardinian ingredient, consisting of grated mullet roe.  That extra bit of strong flavour can make a big difference to the taste of your dish, and add a bit of extra authenticity. You might be able to find bottarga in your local supermarket if you’re very lucky, but your best bet is to go and make friends with the owner of your nearest Italian deli.

As Chef Pilu demonstrates, an induction cooktop is ideal for preparing these types of dishes, as it’s both powerful and responsive, allowing you to make instant adjustments to the amount of heat you’re using.

Next up, meat!

Roast Lamb

Lamb, as Sam Kekovich will tell you at length, is pretty incredible. Properly prepared, it can be served as the feature dish of a special occasion or family gathering.

The addition of garlic and rosemary under the skin infuses the entire lamb leg with flavour. The quality of your meat can also make a difference to how your meal turns out. Much like the Italian deli owner mentioned previously, it’s worth becoming best buds with your local butcher – they’ll set you up with a leg to write home about.

As demonstrated in the video, a high-quality oven can be a big help when preparing a dish like this. It’s the little features that make the big differences, such as an alarm that alerts you when the oven has been preheated to its correct temperature, and fan-assisted heating to ensure that the meat is evenly cooked all around, with no areas over or underdone.

Right, main meal’s over, time for dessert!

Chocolate crepe cake

What’s better than a pancake? How about a whole STACK of the things, combined together into a cake with a mixture of chocolate, cream, milk, sugar, butter and coffee?

Salivating yet? You should be – this dish is an exercise in decadence.

When Chef Pilu mentions that having dessert is “good for the heart”, I’m pretty he’s referring to “the heart” in the figurative, rather than literal sense. Personally, after eating one of these, I’d stay away from cholesterol tests for a week or so, lest my doctor think my heart is literally, not figuratively, exploding. 😉

While you could use a frying pan to cook your pancakes, Chef Pilu demonstrates that you can achieve equally good, if not better results using the smooth surface of a teppanyaki plate. Several cooktops and stoves have one of these included, and it can be added as an optional attachment to some other designs.

Poached Pears in Vermentino

If that last dessert overwhelmed your sweet tooth, this one includes fruit, so it’s CLEARLY healthier. Even if it does also feature “a lot” of sugar and marscapone (aka Italian cream cheese).

Yes. Healthier. Sure.

This recipe can be a decent choice for locavores, as you can source locally-grown pears when they’re in season. And while vermentino is a Sardinian wine, Australian-made varieties are also available – check around the bottle shop.

Again, an induction cooktop shows its value here, as you can control your cooking temperature very precisely, reducing the heat to a light simmer in an instant. Plus, as Chef Pilu demonstrates, you can touch the surface of the cooktop once the pot has been removed, reducing the risk of kitchen accidents.

Buon appetito!

So there you have it. Four delicious dishes, two for the main course and two for dessert, which can be easily prepared with the help of Giovanni Pilu and ILVE’s designer appliances.

“At the end of the day, it’s cooking, it’s fun, it SHOULD be fun.” – Giovanni Pilu

If you decide to cook one or more of these at home, let us know how you go, and send through a photo! After all, food is best shared!