Pesto Lasagna

This is incredible dish thanks to its simplicity and its exceptional quality. In few words it is delicate, delicious, quick to produce. It reminds me all the great moments spent with friends between dinners and chatting, and this makes it even more delicious to me.

Ingredients:
- 100 gr of pesto sauce
- 250 gr of Lasagna pasta
- 1 lt besciamella sauce (1 liter of milk, 100g butter, 100g of flour, Parmesan cheese, black pepper and nutmeg)
- 50 gr speck or thin bacon
- 200 gr mozzarella cheese
- Parmesan cheese

Besciamella sauce is also known as white sauce, and is one of the mother sauces of french cuisine and is used in many recipes of italian lasagna. It is traditionally made by whisking scalded milk gradually into a white flour-butter roux (equal parts of butter and flour by weight).

Take a pan and let melt the butter over low heat, once melted add white flour and stir with a wooden spoon, until you get a thick but soft "ball". Meanwhile, heat the milk, and when it is warm, add the butter/flour mixture aand stir vigorously with a kitchen whisk, so as not to create lumps, and cook over low heat. Finally add Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Continue stirring with a kitchen whisk until it boils. Then stop cooking and cool, then mix besciamella sauce with pesto.

In a baking dish, spread a layer of bechamel "plagued" and alternate layers of pasta, then add speck (or thin smoked bacon) and mozzarella cheese.

Make about 4 layers, then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
Bake at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Fish stew with shrimps

This is one of those recipes that reminds me of childhood. It is an easy dish to make, lightweight and fast. It can also be realized as "main course", or accompanied by spaghetti pasta sautéed with fish sauce.

Ingredients:

- 500 g fish (we used n.2 cod, but would be also fine pheasant, redfish or monkfish etc.)

- 150 gr shrimps

- 300 g tomatoes

- 1/2 cup tomato sauce

- 2 tablespoons white flour

- Extra virgin olive oil, garlic, parsley, salt and black pepper

Sauté garlic with olive oil, once golden add chopped tomatoes. After some minutes add the tomato sauce, salt and let cook for about 5 minutes.

In the meanwhile, flour the fish and add it to the sauce, then also add shrimps, pepper and cover the pan with a lid.

After 10 minutes, use a spoon to turn the fish to cook the other side and then add the chopped parsley. After other 10 minutes it will be cooked.

Homemade gnocchi pasta

Ingredients:- 500 gr potatoes;- 1 egg;- "00" flour and durum wheat q.b.- Salt q.b.
Boil the potatoes with their skins and salt for 10 min in a pressure cooker (obviously, since whistle!). Go around the masher, and let cool.Then add the egg, and then slowly the flours until dough is soft but not sticky. Finally get the small cords, making sure to flour well the mixture.

Get lumps of dough, and then proceed to make the gnocchi with a fork or with the specific gnocchi tool. To make green gnocchi, you need to add to the mix a little chopped basil, or, better, 2 pesto teaspoons. After this step, it's important to put a little more flour, because th dough eith pesto addiction becomes softer. Finally, in a pot, boil some water, add salt and cook until the gnocchi rise to the water surface.