Making pasta at home can seem like a real drag, especially if it involves making hundreds of hand-shaped creations, like tortellini or orecchiette. However, the moment you put the first one in your mouth will dispel all doubt. The taste and texture, coupled with the tremendous feeling of self satisfaction, will have you reaching for the flour and apron before you’ve even finished what is on your plate.
The word polpetta (plural polpette) is usually translated into English as ‘meatball’. This is a really bad translation because meat is only one of many ingredients Italians use to make polpette. In Rome, for example, there is a restaurant called Polpetta which serves them made from a variety of ingredients, many of them vegetarian. In fact their menu is topped by the hashtag #tuttoèpolpettabile (#youcanmakepolpettefromanything).
Although there are a million and one ways to drink coffee in Italy, I’m always surprised and delighted to discover a new one. Especially one like caffè alla salentina, perfectly suited to the summer weather which has finally arrived.
My friends Claudio and Filippo tucking into the focaccia.
This weekend, my friend Claudio was visiting from Venice. As you may have remember from this post, Claudio was born and has lived in Venice all his life, but his parents are from Puglia in the south of Italy. Claudio’s nonne are therefore a great source of typical recipes from the south of Italy, which always end up being delicious.
A couple of weeks ago this blog celebrated its first birthday and I’d like to start off by thanking you, my readers for all your shares, likes, and comments which have gone to make the first year a real success. What started off as a blog about Tuscany has grown to include information and recipes from all over Italy as I aim to bring you what constitutes real Italian food.
As I say in the introduction to this blog, real Italian food is both seasonal and regional, so I’ve decided to start labelling all the recipes with the icons above, to show you which region they come from. To represent each one, I’ve chosen an iconic building or work of art. So far, I’ve got Puglia (a typical trullo house), Tuscany (Michelangelo’s David in Florence) and Veneto (the campanile of San Marco in Venice). I will be adding more as I travel round the country over the coming months.
I’ve also started writing some quick guides to the regions which you can access by clicking on the icons, as well as a list of the recipes from featured on this blog.
So thank you once again for all your support: a blog is nothing without its readers. And here’s to the next year!
This recipe is from Puglia.
To fully understand Italian cuisine, it’s important to note the major difference between it and, for example, French cuisine.
French cuisine is the cuisine of the chef. Home cooks spend a lot of time trying to live up to the creations and recipes coming out of the important restaurants in Paris and beyond. In France, chefs are celebrities: household names that everyone has heard of whether or not you can afford to eat in one of their stellar establishments. The publication of a new Michelin Guide makes the national headlines.
Italian cuisine is the cuisine of the mamma, or even la nonna (grandmother). Chefs in restaurants spend a lot of time trying to live up the the food their mothers and grandmothers cooked for them when they were young. Restaurants need to equal the standards of the dishes prepared by their customers’ mamme and nonne, which as you can imagine, is not easy.