Recipes

- Boil water and salt it as if you were making pasta - you decide how much flour you need, but consider 100/120g per person

- Flour and warm water [tepid - not hot], mix it make the usual paste consistency - sticky like Plaster!

- Get a spoon and when the water is boiling, keep the boil and start to create (with the point of the 'table' spoon ) small blobs the size of a third of the spoon

- It should look like a Gnocco (singular for Gnocchi)

- Start to lay them in the boiling water and be fast to make all of them

- after a few minutes, they will have the pasta al dente consistency

- quickly put some butter in a tiny pan and make it melt and then get a bit of blackness - brown and black

- pour it over the gnocchi and add Feta grated cheese - actually the recipe is with the classic Italian 'salted ricotta

- enjoy!

This is an old recipe from Friuli Venezia Giulia county in Northeast of Italy - my Gran used to do it when I was little boy!

The poor people recipe and it is simple and has a great taste!

W A T E R

It is the main ingredient - that is what makes a good coffee a 'better' coffee

That is why 'for example' in Rome and Naples coffee is really good - there is good water over there and Rome gets water from many 'natural' sources.

Not only the quality of it, as in 'without any impurities' but also the hardness.

What hardness?

Well, water has calcium in many different % and the more there is in it, the hard it becomes. Rome and Naples have (for what I remember) a good balance and they are generally slightly 'sweet' to drink.

Now, I do live in Langley Park [County Durham] and for what I can taste and see, water is good up to a point.

What I notice is that it is a bit bitter (I bet it comes from 'old' main water pipes!) and it is regularly disinfected by the water company and that, althought it keeps us from getting sick (!), it does not help its taste.

Also, it seems to be very light (low calcium content), but I may be wrong there - It does taste light and I have never seen calcium deposits on kettles after many years I have been living here.

My simple tip is: use a water filtered jug! The one many of us already use for drinking water.

Weather you do English coffee of Italian or Turkish, etc. - just get the water from the jug and remember to replace the filters regularly.

You may loose some of the minerals in it, but it takes the bad taste off it!