Cooking in Florence
Florence is the city that made me realize I’m capable of cooking fulfilling and beautiful meals on a small induction cooktop.
Cooking this way hasn’t necessarily been easy, but I would trade the ability to shop at open markets with fresh local ingredients over an oven any day.
Enjoy!
For my first meal in my new kitchen I was craving something healthy and hearty after a week of pizza and pasta. I decided to put a spin on the classic tuscan white bean soup by charring some leeks in the soup, and adding farmers market sausage and a parmesan rind for extra flavor.
I came home from the Sant Ambrogio fresh market with tuscan salami and microgreens. I decided to pair some toasted sourdough with lightly dressed greens, salami, burrata, and a light drizzle of pesto and olive oil. It’s also important to note that each element of this toast was seasoned with salt and pepper, totally game changing.
I came home from the Sant’ Ambrogio market with arugula, heirloom tomatoes, prosciutto, and burrata. Sometimes I feel like I need to be more creative when cooking, but I always fall back on simple and fresh meals like this one. I feel like ingredients from the market deserve to be eaten in their purest form.
After taking a trip to the Korean market in Florence I am completely hyperfixated om this Korean cold noodle dish “Bibim Guksu.” I made a few variations from the traditional recipe with kimchi base instead of gochujang and some roasted vegetables and greens. It’s savory, sweet, hearty, and fresh and it’s really my perfect meal.
The winter vegetable salad with chickpea croutons that revived me. My body could barely handle anymore carb loaded meals absent of vegetables, so I embarked on a much needed trip to the fresh market with no cooking plan in mind. This kale salad with radicchio, pomegranate seeds, yogurt marinated chicken, and chickpea croutons (inspired by my favorite restaurant Kale Caesar from HG Supply Co), was the perfect refreshment.
This is the type of meal I crave, but don’t make often. I feel there’s a pressure within creating food content to be overly creative, or bring something groundbreaking to the table. My reality is though, most of the time I crave something simple like a really well-cooked piece of meat, roasted vegetables, and a carb to go with. This crispy salmon with fresh lime juice, pesto broccoli, and sourdough with cottage cheese reminded me that its okay to cook what I crave, and not what I think other people expect from me.
