In the trattorie of Florence I have heard shelled beans cooked in this way called “fagiouli all’uccelletto”.
(Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well)

This recipe is a typical Florentine way to eat their beloved cannellini beans which have replaced meat for centuries. The name originates from the way small game birds were cooked in Tuscany, seasoned with a generous amount of sage.
The bean’s abundance in vegetable proteins and fibre has nourished Mediterranean populations for centuries. In these times of abundance, they are still quite appreciated.
Beans are an excellent side dish, but you can add sausages to the basic recipe and create an excellent traditional Tuscan main course.
There are many versions of this recipe, some include onion and seasoning. The recipe reported by our Romagna gentleman consists of sage and tomato, I personally love adding garlic.
The first recipe we find in the original cookbook of Italian cuisine is the one which considers beans as a side dish, excellent for accompanying stewed meats. In it, the beans are browned in a substantial amount of oil and sage, and later enriched with tomato sauce. I prefer to use a milder temperature and less oil.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 500 g beans, already cooked in water with a poached garlic clove, a sprig of rosemary and 3 sage leaves. Reserve the cooking liquid.
• 4 sausages
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tin of crushed tomato
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Sea salt
• 10 sage leaves
• A sprig of rosemary

Instructions

Put a pan on the stove with the oil, sage leaves and garlic. When the oil starts to sizzle, toss in the sausages and brown them, piercing them with the prongs of a fork in order to make them lose their juices.

When the sausages are golden, toss in the beans and season with salt and pepper. Add the tomato sauce to the beans with 2-3 tablespoons of their cooking liquid. Let them simmer for 15-20 minutes without a lid, take them off the stove and serve.

Carbonara pasta is a typical Roman dish. Full of taste and very easy to make, its goodness is thanks to quality ingredients. Be that as it may, it seems that originally, the ingredients were different.

Legend has it that in the Rome of WWII, occupied by allied troops, a local innkeeper was asked to make food for some American soldiers who gave him bacon and powdered eggs from their military supplies. The best way to feed a lot of people with few ingredients is making pasta, so the innkeeper combined these few ingredients to make a dish that is big favourite of Lazio citizens, but it is also loved in many countries.

Later, when things got better and it was possible to have local ingredients again, the recipe was enriched with guanciale (cured pork jowl) and fresh, creamy eggs.

To celebrate Carbonara day, I made spaghetti alla chitarra, reminiscent of Roman tonnarelli (a fresh, long egg pasta) and enjoyed this epicurean dish during this period of quarantine with my husband.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Yield: Makes 2 servings.

Ingredients

For the pasta

• 100 g semolina flour
• 100 g all-purpose flour
• 1 egg
• About ¼ cup water, room temperature

For the sauce

• 3 tbsp grated Parmigiano Reggiano (I did not have Roman Pecorino)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 egg
• Black pepper
• 60 g guanciale (cured pork jowl)

Instructions

On a wooden pastry board, pour the flour in a mound, make a well in its centre and crack the egg into it. Blend by hand, making a dough that you are going to smooth with a rolling pin.  It should be rolled to a 3 mm thickness.  Then cut it into rectangles that will be cut on the chitarra.

Cook the pasta in salted water; if it is fresh, it will cook in a few seconds.

You might need to add some flour if the dough is too wet or some water if it is too dry and impossible to work.

TIPS:

As you work it, keep the dough near your belly, when kneading and rolling.

Lean into the dough as you work, exploit gravity, not your shoulders and arms.

In a frying pan, sauté the guanciale in its own fat. While the water for pasta is beginning to boil, I place the egg and egg yolks in a Pyrex or stainless steel bowl and place it over the pot, whisking them until they are fluffy, gradually adding the cheese and a generous sprinkle of black pepper. Remember to keep the bowl away from direct heat to avoid curdling the egg.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and toss it in the frying pan with the guanciale. Transfer it to the bowl with the egg mixture. Toss until the egg mixture has coated the pasta  and enjoy.

This rabbit stew (the rabbit can be substituted with chicken) is a vintage dish. I found it in a 1970s collection of recipes from an elementary school project in Pergola. Each child was asked to bring one of their grandmother’s recipes to school to assemble a traditional regional cookbook.

Pergola is a tiny hillside village in the heart of the Marche region, a beautiful area that is unfortunately or fortunately out of the tourist mainstream, where a local first-class cuisine still thrives.

In an age where there was no intensive livestock farming in Italy, we followed the seasons for meat consumption so, the end of summer was the best moment to eat rabbit, since those born during the spring had fully grown.

Toss the wonderful fresh home-made noodles with the stew’s sauce in a bowl adding a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cooking Time: 90 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours | Yield: Makes 8-10 servings.

Ingredients

• 2 rabbits, chopped into small pieces
• 2 cans of tomato purée
• 2 onions, finely minced
• 2 carrots, finely minced
• 1 celery stalk, finely minced
• Rabbit liver, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp parsley, finely minced
• 2 slices pancetta or prosciutto, finely chopped
• ½ cup (125 ml) olive oil
• 3 cups (750 ml) water
• Salt and pepper
• Fresh tagliatelle (noodles) 800 grams

Instructions

Place the rabbit pieces in a non-stick saucepan and sauté them until their water content evaporates, about 15 to 20 minutes.

When they are cooked, add all the other ingredients except for the water and tomato, and sauté for 25 to 30 minutes at medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper and when the vegetables and pancetta are browned, add the water and cook for an hour, then add the tomato and cook for 30 minutes.

Chickpea flatbread is a humble but delicious dish, with its origins dating back to ancient Greek and Roman times.   On the Tuscan coasts it is called Cecina, Farinata in Liguria, and is a common dish on the coasts of the Mediterranean, where it was spread by Ligurian sailors.

Porridges and legumes were commonly in use in the Ancient Mediterranean, and it is now common knowledge that this recipe was introduced during the Middle Ages by the Maritime Republics of Pisa and Genoa. The legends which recount the birth of this recipe are fascinating: the first narration recalls the siege of Pisa in 1005, when the Pisan fleet was in Calabria to help its inhabitants, which had been attacked by Saracens. Some Arabic vessels pointed North and assaulted Pisa. Its desperate citizens reacted to the attack, hurling anything they could grab on the attackers. Almost anything was hurled on the heads of the Saracens, furniture and food too; sacks of chickpeas, which were stepped on and mixed with boiling olive oil, among other things.

When the attackers left, the hungry citizens tried to salvage their properties, and the chickpea flour, which had been mixed with olive oil. At the time, wasting food was not an option, and the citizens tried to recover the slop, which had dried in the sun. The citizens called it “Pisa gold” referring sneeringly to the attempts of the Arabs to seize the city’s riches.

Another legend refers to an ensuing battle, the one in Meloria in 1248. Genoa won over Pisa and took the Tuscan sailors as hostages. The Ligurian galleys were involved in a storm, and the sacks of chickpeas and vases of olive oil were thrashed in the hold and mixed with sea water, making a slop which was served to the sailors in wooden bowls. Some of them refused to eat it, but the bowls were left in the sun, which dried and cooked the gruel, making a delicious dish.

Another version tells of the effort to spread the slop on sea rocks, in order to dry it, but the result was still the same; the following and decisive result is added by the cooking the mixture  in a wood burning oven, which is the real secret of its excellence.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes + 5 hours standing | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups (150 g.) chickpea flour
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 4 tablespoons olive oil, 2 for the batter and 2 for the pans
• 2 cups water, room temperature
• black pepper
• 1 baking pan, in steel or copper, diameter 13 inches (32 cm)

Instructions

In a bowl, gradually mix the flour with water, cover with a film and let it sit for 4-5 hours, mixing it every half hour.

The flour will produce impurities which make a kind of foam and must be discarded, using a slotted spoon.

This procedure is used in Liguria, the Tuscans are much quicker and mix all the ingredients together almost immediately and bake them, without the sitting time.

After the resting time, add salt and olive oil to the mixture and pour it into a baking pan, and put into a pre-heated oven at 425 F (220 C) for 10 minutes in the lower part of the oven, then move it to the upper part and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until it is light brown.

An excellent addition can be spring onion, fresh parsley, Italian sausage, or aromatic herbs like rosemary, mixed to the batter before baking them, together with salt and oil.

This way of cooking red mullets is typical of Livorno, nevertheless, I discovered that the within the Italian Jewish community, it is also called “à la Moses”. I guess it’s due to the presence of a substantial Jewish community in the town of Livorno.

Livorno was turned into the official access to the Mediterranean Sea for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Under the Medici rule, Livorno was declared a free port, which meant that the goods traded here were duty-free within the area of the town’s control. It was a very common strategy, applied to all ports of recent foundation, where the ruling classes wanted to attract trade; you can find it in a lot of Italian place names, where you find the particle “franco”, like the many “Francavillas” in different regions of Italy prove.

The Medici family also took care to protect merchant activities from crime and racketeering, and instituted laws regarding international trade. Expanding Christian tolerance, the laws offered the right of public freedom of religion and amnesty to people having to gain penance given by clergy in order to conduct civil business. The Grand Duchy attracted numerous Turks, Persians, Moors, Greeks, and Armenians, along with Jewish immigrants. The latter group arrived mainly in the late sixteenth century with the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal – while Livorno extended rights and privileges to them; they contributed to the mercantile wealth and scholarship in the city.

It seems that the contribution of Italian Jews to Italian cuisine was more significant than what it seems: the oldest community of Jews out of Israel was in Rome before the diaspora, since the II century C.E. Two millenniums of cohabitation with the Italians created an extremely rich and varied cuisine. Jewish bakeries were famous, and Christians clients bought their products, in spite of the condemnations of the Catholic clergy.

Many dishes, now considered typically Italian, were deeply influenced by Jewish creativity, like stuffed pastas, sources of pride of Jewish communities during the Renaissance.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 kg) – about 8 red mullets, cleaned*
• 14 oz (400 g) canned peeled plum tomatoes (fresh if it is summer)
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely minced
• Salt and pepper to season

Instructions

*CLEANING THE RED MULLETS:

Scale the fish gently, cut the fins, and open the belly using a sharp knife. Gut and discard. Wash carefully and dry, using kitchen paper.

For the tomato sauce: if you have very ripe tomatoes, you can blanch them for 3 to 4 minutes, then transfer to a bowl with cold water and peel. Discard the seeds and cut them into small pieces. Otherwise, you can use the canned peeled tomatoes, and crush them with a fork.

In a pan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil. After one minute, add the parsley and tomatoes almost immediately. Season with salt and pepper, stir and let it simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring sometimes.

Add the red mullets, laying them down very gently, making them sink into the sauce.

They must simmer over a low flame with no lid and NEVER BE MOVED OR TURNED OVER, just shake the pan gently in order to prevent them from sticking to the pot. With a spoon, take some sauce and cover the fish. After 10 minutes they are cooked, serve directly from the pan, without moving them, or they will break.

Fried custard is a versatile dish. According to where you are in Italy, it has different variations: it is considered mainly as an appetizer in the Marche and Emilia regions, a part of a sumptuous mixture of fried treats like apples, stuffed fried olives (olive all’ascolana), different meats, vegetables and zucchini flowers. The different components vary according to seasonal availability. There are also slight differences in the batter for this fried appetizer. Our ancestors, who probably had iron clad stomachs, created these dishes in times when there was no heating in the houses, and everyone had a very active life.

A question that many foreign clients ask is “Do Italians really eat all these courses and food in a single meal?” The average person of my generation cannot, unless there is a special occasion. However, we enjoy offering our guests a taste of the richness and variety of Italian cuisine. A generous attempt that is sometimes misunderstood as trying to kill them with kindness through food.

In Venice, this is considered a Carnival dish and it is part of an incredible variety of fried sweets that Italians adore. Like cenci (link ad altra ricetta), it is part of a collection of fried recipes.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Yield: Makes 8 servings.

Ingredients for the custard

• ½ cup (100 g) white sugar plus more for sprinkling after frying.
• 3 medium egg yolks
• 4 tablespoons (35 g) pastry or 00 flour
• ¼ cup (35 g) corn starch
• 2¼ cups whole milk
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 or 3 strips of organic lemon zest

Ingredients for the batter and frying

• 1½ cups breadcrumbs
• 2 medium eggs
• sunflower oil for frying

Instructions

Gently whisk egg yolks, eggs, corn starch, flour and sugar in a saucepan until smooth, then whisk vigorously until light in colour, 1–2 minutes. Whisking constantly, gradually add the milk in a steady stream; scrape the sides of the saucepan. Scrape in vanilla seeds discarding the pod or add vanilla extract. Add lemon zest. Cook mixture over medium heat, whisking constantly, until it starts to thicken. Continue whisking vigorously until the mixture coats the back of a spoon, 6–10 minutes. Immediately remove the custard from heat (do not bring to a boil). Remove and discard lemon zest.

Using a rubber spatula, pour the custard into a baking dish lined with parchment paper.

Let it cool.

Slide a knife around the sides of custard to loosen, cover with a plate and flip over onto the plate. Peel away the parchment paper and cut into cubes or diamonds.

Pour breadcrumbs into a shallow bowl or on a piece of kitchen paper.

Break the eggs in a bowl and whisk. Using your fingers, dip each cube in the egg mixture, then coat with breadcrumbs, shaking off any excess.

Fry until they are golden, and sprinkle with some sugar.

Make Ahead

The custard can be cooked and left in the dish one day ahead.

Orvieto is a beautiful Etruscan town built on a sheer cliff that is mainly composed of tuff and pozzolana, a soft material easy to excavate.

The Orvieto cliff was apt to being easily defendable thanks to its structure; meanwhile its inhabitants started to excavate its underground in order to obtain factories, storehouses and plants without distancing themselves from the powerful walls which defended the town.

Over the three thousand years of its history, the inhabitants bored more than one thousand cavities: I visited the widest, where there are the remnants of an oil mill and some millstones. Toward the interior of the cliff, the cavity is articulated in a series of rooms: among them, three Etruscan wells with their characteristic notches were workers who were excavating put their feet (pedarole in Italian). Another cavity, bordering with it, overlooks the cliff sides, and it is characterized by a great quantity of columbaria or dovecotes. These are rooms with a great quantity of recesses where pigeon could nest. This function is validated by the presence of water tanks and openings in the cliff edge to allow the pigeon keeper to give his animals liberty for purposes of exercise while allowing them to re-enter the house without special assistance from the keeper. At the same time, these houses are constructed to keep the pigeons safe from predators and inclement weather and give them nesting places in which to raise their squabs.

Pigeons were especially prized because they would produce fresh meat during the winter months when larger animals were unavailable as a food source. In the past wealthy landowners often had pigeon houses and there are still remnants of them in some European manor houses. Orvieto dovecots were especially useful in case the town were under siege and deprived of supplies of fresh food from the country nearby.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 hour + 35 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour + 50 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 2 pigeons about 10-14 oz. (300-400 g.) each.

For the stuffing

• 2 fresh Italian sausages, peeled OR 9 oz. (250 g.) ground pork generously seasoned with salt and freshly milled black pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh Pecorino cheese, grated
• 1,5 oz. (40 g.) stale bread (Ciabatta-like), deprived of crust
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely minced

For the cooking

• 3 garlic cloves
• ½ cup dry white wine
• 3 sage leaves
• 4 Juniper berries
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 slices pancetta

Instructions

In a small bowl, pour the milk and soak the bread in it. Squeeze the milk out of it, put it in a bowl with the meat, and mix it with all the other ingredients, using your hands.

Season the pigeons with salt and pepper and the Juniper berries lightly crushed, and then stuff them but not completely, since the stuffing will swell when cooking. Close the pigeon with a toothpick or needle and thread.

Pour the oil in a heavy saucepan and add garlic, rosemary and sage. Place the pigeons in it and pancetta on the pigeons. Pigeons tend to dry, so choose a saucepan that fits them perfectly, not too large.

Roast the pigeons in all their sides and simmer with the wine until reduced.

Make the pigeons simmer for about 1 hour, covered with the lid, and add some tablespoons of water if necessary.

Serve them still warm, cut in two halves. Great with mashed potatoes.

Porchetta is a typical dish of Central and Northern Italy. It consists of a whole pig, emptied, deboned and seasoned with rosemary or wild fennel, according to its origin.

According to the traditional way of making it, porchetta is seasoned with rosemary in Southern Tuscany, in Roman Castles area and other areas in Central Italy; in Northern Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and Romagna they prefer to season it with wild fennel, which gives it smell and taste absolutely unique.

Like the word parmigiana, in porchetta describes also the cooking and seasoning style for other meats, like the rabbit, in this case.

I bought a farmyard rabbit, for this dish. This was a summer dish since in August and September rabbits who were born in the springtime had reached the right weight. Nowadays, industrial agriculture has altered these natural cycles.

I have never tasted the famous porchetta in Ariccia, near Rome, which is seasoned with rosemary.

In Ravenna market, my family has always been buying porchetta from Marche, made by a gentle lady who prepares this fantastic product, together with ciccioli and lard, two products which are used so widely in our family piadine and focacce. The presence of the wold fennel, added with a gentle touch, gives an unmistakable note.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 h + 30 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour and 40 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 3 ½ pounds (1,5 kg.) rabbit, with its liver
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped wild fennel fronds, or a 12-inches branch of wild fennel, in chunks. If you cannot find it, replace with 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 4 oz. (100 g.) pancetta, roughly chopped
• 2 oz. (50 g.) lard, roughly chopped
• 6 garlic cloves
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 glasses white dry wine
• Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Instructions

Wash rabbit and liver with the wine. Season the rabbit (inside too) with salt and pepper.

Roughly chop liver, and sauté it in a pan with pancetta, 1 olive oil, 3 garlic cloves and 2/3 fennel, season with salt and pepper. Stuff the rabbit with it and sew it with needle and thread, in order to avoid the rabbit to lose the stuffing while cooking. Transfer the rabbit to a roasting pan with lard, 3 garlic cloves, oil, fennel, and bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 F (180 C).