Calzoncelli are traditional Christmas pastries from Southern Italy stuffed with a cream of chestnuts and dark chocolate and fried… Incredibly calorific and incredibly delicious! They tend to be made in batches and fortunately they keep for quite a few days. You will need (makes 50) For the pastry… 1kg of plain flour 300g of caster…
Tag: italian recipes
Lemon and basil chicken
Pollo al limone e basilico What are some of the flavours you think about when you think of the Mediterranean? For me, the top five have always been: 1. Tomatoes 2. Basil 3. Oranges and lemons 4. Olive oil 5. Garlic This tangy chicken dish incorporates all but the first of these ingredients into the…
Halloween in Italy
Happy Halloween to all of you! Halloween is a funny one… I really love this time of year, and when I was a kid (and when I was a student to be fair) it was a fantastic excuse to dress up in as silly and as outlandish a costume as I could possibly conceive and…
Torta di fichi freschi e noci
Fresh fig and walnut pudding from Campania Well, I say Campania, because I was in Salerno when the idea came into my head, but it’s not exactly traditional… I had a load of fresh figs in my fridge because my green grocer knows I love figs and the season is almost at an end. However,…
White wine escalopes
Scaloppine al vino bianco from Lombardy Scaloppine originally were a Northern Italian dish reserved mostly for holidays and parties. Nowadays, because they are so quick and easy to make as well as being relatively cheap they are eaten every day by many families the length and breadth of the peninsula. You can make these with…
risotto with prawns and courgettes
Risotto con zucchine e gamberetti from Lombardy In Italy, it used to be said that if you ordered risotto in the South and pasta in the North then you would get exactly what you deserve – wallpaper paste. This may have been true at one time as risotto certainly hails from the Milan area and…
Pasta allo Scarpariello
Pasta allo Scarpariello from Campania This is probably the simplest yet most quintessentially Italian dish one can think of. The word Scaprariello may for many of you call up images of delicious bites of chicken, flash fried with garlic and white wine, rosemary and various other ingredients, but this dish, while yummy, is actually not Italian. It’s…
When in Rome…
…do as the Romans do. Rome is one of my favourite cities in the world. I love to visit it, and never get tired of walking around looking at the architecture, discovering pretty corners and eating ice-cream. I swear there are more ice cream shops per square kilometer in Rome than anywhere else on the…
Dark chocolate and coconut bites
Morbidosi al cioccolato fondente e cocco You might be wondering what I did with the leftover spongecake after making my Valentine’s day cupcakes… I hope that if you made them you didn’t throw the sponge out because in this recipe I use it to make soft chocolatey bites – I really hate to waste food,…
Valentine’s day cupcakes
Pasticcini di San Valentino I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s day. Don’t get me wrong, I like the sentiment, the meaning behind it and all of that, but I hate how commercial it has become – it takes away from the spirit of the thing. For me, Valentine’s day is about spending time with…
Aubergine Parmesan
Parmigiana di Melanzane from Campania… no, Apulia… no, Sicily! Nobody is quite sure where this dish comes from and its origins are hotly disputed between the above regions. Some people mistakenly assume that it comes from Parma in Emilio-Romagna because of the name, but that is not the case. In fact, I lean towards the…
Pasta with Chickpeas
Pasta e ceci alla romana from Lazio This is definitely a dish that is eaten regularly in Italy in winter, and it is from what is known as la cucina povera (poor cuisine) because the ingredients are so cheap and readily available. The homely roots of this pasta dish don’t make it any less tasty than…
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