Tag:

Italian food

Ravioli al tonno e nocciole (recipe)

by Luca Marchiori April 2, 2019April 2, 2019

Fresh ravioli with tuna and hazelnut filling make a dinner-party dazzler or a comforting weekend meal.

There is something almost spiritual about making fresh pasta. Seeing the combined ingredients turn from disorder to order under your hands is an age old kitchen miracle, witnessed by generations before us. It puts you in touch with them. Respect for them pushes you to make the effort to knead the dough for that extra minute. The pride you feel on seeing that ball of dough, as smooth as marble, in front of you is the same pride they felt, connecting you through the ages.

April 2, 2019April 2, 2019 0 comment

Features Food

How to prepare an Italian antipasto platter

by Luca Marchiori January 29, 2019March 4, 2019

written by Luca Marchiori

Antipasto is the Italian word for starter. It literally means ‘before the meal’. Since the Italian meal structure is different to that found abroad, it requires a little clarification. It’s more akin to the French hors d’oeuvres than to an anglo-saxon starter.

January 29, 2019March 4, 2019 0 comment

Festivals Food

What do Italians eat for New Year?

by Luca Marchiori December 28, 2018December 28, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Happy New Year

The New Year is almost upon us and in Italy people are starting to think about preparing their dinners for the 31 December. Many Italians will go out to dinner on that night, and restaurants up and down the country provide special meals, often quite costly, to celebrate with music and dancing. Whether people go out or stay at home, there is one thing which is usually on the menu: cotechino e lenticchie (a kind of pork sausage served with lentils).

December 28, 2018December 28, 2018 3 comments

Caprese Michelangelo chestnuts Tuscany

A Chestnut Festival in Tuscany

by Luca Marchiori October 22, 2018October 21, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Sagre

Autumn in central Italy is sagra season. These are local food festivals and with so many typical products coming into season in September and October—grapes, mushrooms, olives, and truffles to name but a few—there’s a choice of sagra to attend every weekend. The two last weekends of October are the time of for the small Tuscan village of Caprese to have its chestnut sagra: the Festa del Marrone di Caprese.

October 22, 2018October 21, 2018 5 comments

pasta recipes Venice

Bigoli in salsa: Venetian pasta (recipe)

by Luca Marchiori October 10, 2018October 10, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Bigoli in salsa

Even if the legend of Marco Polo bringing pasta back to Italy from China weren’t disproved by the documented presence of pasta in Sicily exactly 100 years before his birth, the fact that there is only one truly traditional pasta dish from Venice might do the job. If the famous Venetian had introduced the delicacy, you’d expect it to be Venice’s national dish. Venetians are always proud of their contributions to general Italian culture and would be telling it to anyone who’d listen. But no. Bigoli in salsa, long pasta cooked in a tasty fish sauce, is the only inclusion of pasta in the city’s traditional cuisine. Sorry Marco Polo fans.

October 10, 2018October 10, 2018 6 comments

pasta recipes

Tortelli di zucca: pumpkin pasta from Modena (recipe)

by Luca Marchiori October 3, 2018October 3, 2018

written by Luca Marchiori

Zucca

It’s pumpkin season again and the shops are full of all shapes and sizes of squash ready to be made into soups, risotti, gnocchi and so on. Italians love pumpkin, or zucca as they call it, and there seems to be no end to their inventiveness in cooking them. So, I thought I’d share with you one of my (and my dinner guests’) favourite recipes: tortelli di zucca.

So what are tortelli?

Tortelli is a word used mostly in north-central Italy to describe two very different pasta shapes. In Tuscany, it’s used to describe a shape like ravioli. In the province of Arezzo, tortelli di patate, ravioli stuffed with mashed potato—eaten boiled or often deep fried (yes, you read that right)—are a local tradition. Elsewhere, such as in Emilia-Romagna, the word is used for large tortellini, which are often called tortelloni outside the region.

October 3, 2018October 3, 2018 17 comments