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polpette

Polpette biscotte al finocchio: fennel meatballs (recipe)

    Italian food may be simple, but often it’s not fast: but that’s one of its charms. Good ingredients, cooked well. It’s no surprise therefore that the Slow Food movement started in Italy. Traditionally, a lot of the more time-consuming dishes would have been cooked by housewives while their husbands were out at work, …

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Back to Bologna and real bolognaise (recipe)

  La dotta, la rossa, la grassa. These are the nicknames given to the city of Bologna by Italians. La dotta (the educated) because it boasts one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. La rossa (the red) because of its distinctive red-brick architecture. And la grassa (the fat)? Because of its …

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The Other Face of Florence: Review

  Last week I was invited by Eating Italy Food Tours to take part in their new guided tour, The Other Side of Florence. The tour covers two quarters of the Oltrarno area, San Frediano and Santo Spirito on the southern side of the river, and area not usually visited by tourists despite their proximity …

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Polpettone alla Madera: Tuscan meatloaf (recipe)

This recipe is from Tuscany. Polpettone, aka meatloaf, is one of the dishes I remember my mother preparing as a child. She in turn, had been taught to make it by my real nonna, who I never met since she died before I was born. My mother’s polpettone was delicious, roasted in the oven with …

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Lasagne bianche ai noci: lasagne with white ragù and walnuts (recipe)

White ragù—Italian meat sauce without tomatoes—is one of my all time favourite dishes. I learnt it as a teenager from my Italian step-grandmother in her kitchen in Venice. She was noted for her ragù and people were forever asking her how she made it but, of course, she wouldn’t tell. But one summer morning while …

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Florence at Christmas: a photo essay

  The magic of Florence is legendary. The city, with its red-tiled roofs fills the wide valley of the river Arno, straddled by the ponte vecchio, literally paved with gold shops. The enormous cupola of the duomo, also red-tiled, has given Florence one of the most recognized skylines in the world, to rival, Paris, London, New York, but …

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