Gia's Italian Kitchen's Podcast

Episode 3.19 - Cooking with Giada!!!!

• Gia's Italian Kitchen • Season 3 • Episode 19

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Have you watched any of my cookbook challenges? I take a favorite cookbook and test a few recipes (and dress up a little like the featured book). I started with Audrey at Home (a cookbook/memoir written by Luca Dotti, Audrey Hepburn's son). This was followed by Stanley Tucci and Ida Garten. How fun is that??!!

GIADA, one of my all-time favorites, has a new cookbook and I am going to test out a few LIVE at the Marion Library FREE on Thursday, May 15 at 6pm CST.

Virtual folks can watch LIVE on my Facebook or YouTube. https://www.facebook.com/giasitaliankitchen/ OR
http://www.youtube.com/@giasitaliankitchen9079

If you want the grocery list ahead of time and are going to cook at home with me, simply send me an email at kelley@giasitaliankitchen.biz

IN PERSON folks, you can register on the library site (groceries will be provided): https://marionpubliclibrary.libnet.info/events

Support local and preorder your copy of Super Italian by Giada:
https://swampfoxbookstore.com/item/wCIDqQu6pg8QGRKxd6hJlQ

We will be making two DELICIOUS DISHES:
1 - Calabrian Chili Garlic Oil
2 - Casarecce with Sicilian Pesto and Shrimp


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Check out our website for delicious recipes, upcoming events, and more!

Speaker 1:

Hi, this is Kelly with Gia's Italian Kitchen. Do you like Giada, the Giada? Well, she has a new cookbook, it is called Super Italian, and I am going to cook out of it and we are going to record an episode. So if you've watched any of my prior episodes, in the past six months I've been doing a cookbook challenge. That started with me finding the Sopranos family cookbook at a used bookstore and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to cook out of this thing. So I dressed up and we cooked a couple dishes out of it and that kind of rolled into this collaboration with a local bookstore, a small, small business owner. So I was super excited for this collaboration and we did Audrey at Home, we did Ina Garten, we did Stanley Tucci, who I just love, and now Giada has a cookbook out, a new cookbook out, and we are going to cook a couple recipes live. So if you are in the Eastern Iowa area, where I am, you can join us in person for free, and if you are not, you can join us for free virtually, and you're welcome to cook with us. I'm going to create my classic, you know, class packet with the grocery list and the recipes and the cooking guide, which is kind of the sequence of how we do it, so that everything is pulled together at one time and you can join in or you can just watch. We'll be live on Facebook and YouTube, and so I'm going to share with you some of these excerpts from her book. I'm so excited.

Speaker 1:

So the theme of her book is what is it called? More than 110 indulgent recipes using Italy's healthiest foods, and the book is called Super Italian. So one of the staples is she's giving us a pantry of Italian superfoods to be the starting point to longevity and better health. Recipes to help create meals that are nutritionally dense, supportive of health and still downright craveable. So she then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By using carbs and fats and amplifying vegetables, lean proteins and flavor-boosting superfoods at every meal, giada shows you that you can have your pasta and eat it too. That's totally what I'm doing, so I'm super excited. This is going to be awesome.

Speaker 1:

Now she's not going to be there, but like, wouldn't that be amazing? I did meet her, um, several years ago, though, at one of her book tours. So, uh, I'm going to post, I got to print that picture, I'm going to find that picture and, uh, display that. Um, so the the event is Thursday. Let's see, let me get the date right here. Thursday, may 14th, I think 15th, oh goodness, hang on, hang on, yeah, may 15th, may 15th, six o'clock central time, we will go live and we will be one hour max.

Speaker 1:

So the recipes that I chose she has 110, as she said, it's a beautiful book. I love cookbooks with pictures. They have to have beautiful pictures and this one absolutely does so. She has, you know, this cool section on the essential condiments and basics and like things that you should always have in your pantry, which is super helpful. I mean, what I run across a lot of times is that people are either afraid to cook Italian or they're intimidated because they think it's too complicated, um, or maybe unhealthy. So, um, she's obviously addressing the healthy side, um, but you know what are some of the staples that you should have in your house, that that is gonna help any user, you know. Be prepared to just kind of make things on the fly, but you know, sometimes that's hard. Some people don't Don't know how to do that all the time. So it's, it is a great book but, like some of the things that are in her pantry, these, all of these are in my pantry olives, olive oil, beans, vegetables, fish, mushrooms, garlic, nuts, capers oh yes, chilies vinegar, citrus herbs, eggs, tomatoes, like. I have all of those pretty much every day of my life. Now I don't eat them every day of my life, but like they're in there, they're in the house somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, so the two recipes that I picked we're going to make the Calabrian chili garlic oil, which doesn't really sound like a dish, but it's going to be a condiment that we're going to drizzle onto the next recipe. But it's something that you can keep and put in your fridge for, um, you know, well, over a month and drizzle on really any, um, you know, like avocado toast, to kind of spice that up Any seafood or pasta dish. It is so amazing I can't even describe this to you, how delicious this is. So we're going to make Casareche, which is a shape of pasta with Sicilian pesto and shrimp. How amazing does that flippin' sound. And we're going to make our homemade pesto. So her homemade pesto is a Sicilian version which actually has tomatoes in it. So let me read a little bit about this.

Speaker 1:

So in the United States, the term pesto has become synonymous with the Genovese basil and paste. That has become popular here in the 70s. Traveling through Italy, though, you will quickly come to realize that pesto looks and tastes different from region to region, and refers to a wide and delicious variety of herby pastes, all made with the ingredients that are most plentifully local. Totally true, you know, like if you think about food in Chicago versus food in Texas, it's regional even though it's American food. So that's definitely the case. When you get to Italy, if you're in Sicily, you're getting completely different food than if you're getting food from Tuscany, which is north of Rome, which is where my family is from.

Speaker 1:

So this Sicilian pesto has some of the classic ingredients in it, of course, olive oil, garlic, salt cheese, but it has a couple other surprises in there and tomatoes, so it is delicious. So we'll combine that with this quesadilla and shrimp and turn that into a beautiful dish, and then I'm going to go even a little bit further and drizzle that Calabrian, homemade Calabrian chili garlic oil on top of it. It's going to be ridiculous. I'm so excited. So hopefully you can join us.

Speaker 1:

It will be Thursday, may 15th, 6 pm Central Time. I will go live in YouTube and live on my Facebook page, and if you are in Eastern Iowa. Please come and join us in person so that you can actually join in the fun and taste. And I'm doing this in collaboration with the Swamp Fox bookstore here locally, so the owners will be there and you will be able to purchase the cookbook there if you haven't purchased it ahead of time. So super excited about that collaboration too. So that is Super Italian Cooking with Giada, part of my cookbook challenge, and hope to see you there. Look for more information on my website and my socials. Gia's Italian Kitchen G-I-A-S. Gia's Italian Kitchen dot biz B-I-Z. Let's get cooking.