We’ve been waking up to temperatures of about -4°C at La Madera this week, proving that the Mediterranean climate is an extreme one. So, while we wait for the return of the 38°C days we experienced last summer, it’s time for winter comfort food: and here’s some from my childhood, pasta e fagioli, or as they say in Venice, pasta e fasioi.
Hazelnut, cherry, and chocolate panforte.
This has been a great first year for Chestnuts and Truffles and I would like to thank each and every one of you who has visited, read, liked, shared, or commented on the site. I can promise you that 2016 will be an even better year with lots of authentic Italian recipes, how tos, reviews, and videos to come. I only started this blog in the spring but its been very successful already, achieving amongst other things the blue badge of approval from the Tuscan Tourist Board, which you can see on the right. And, if you’ve not seen it already, I’d like to draw your attention to the recipe for Hazelnut, cherry, and chocolate panforte which I created for their blog Tuscanycious! and which is pictured above.
This period is known as capodanno (head of the year) in Italy, and tonight Italians up and down the peninsula will be eating zampone or cotechino (types of sausage made with pigs trotter) with lentils, which are a sign of good luck and affluence for the year to come (the lentils represent coins).
I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my top five posts for 2015 and then to tell you what was the most memorable thing I’ve eaten this year.
Tramezzini
Tramezzino, the diminutive of ‘in the middle’ is the Italian word for sandwich. Said to have been coined by the early-twentieth-century poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, the word is used to refer to sandwiches made with white pancarré bread, again said to have been invented in the Bar Mulassano in Turin. Notwithstanding their Piemontese origin, the most famous tramezzini are those made in the city of Venice.