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…
The sauce of this unusual linguini with fresh anchovies combines ingredients that are characteristic of Mediterranean cuisine: olive oil, fish, and the introduction of raisins and dried fruit in savoury dishes. This Middle Eastern touch is typical in the cuisine of Italian cities that were in contact with the Arab world for centuries such as…
This stuffed calamari recipe is simple and incredibly good. Quite unusually, compared to traditional fish recipes, we add cheese which confers creaminess. I added the technique for cleaning calamari, but you can usually find them already cleaned at the fish vendor’s, so you just need to separate the tentacles from the mantle. Calamari are very…
This Imperial Milk is a family recipe and originates from what Italians traditionally call “Portuguese Milk” or what is more internationally known as “crème caramel”. It goes by different names and is very common in all Western cuisines. The ingredients are simple: eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla combined in a pleasant dessert, which is given a…
This way of roasting lamb is incredibly simple but involves some degree of organisation, since you need to calculate the time needed for marinating and cooking. This a very traditional Tuscan recipe, celebrated in Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. In those days, preparation snd cooking times, and ingredient…
A necessary premise to an Italian article about frying is that the most common technique is shallow frying: most Italian fried dishes are in small pieces, whereas deep frying is used mainly in certain specific dishes like “arancini siciliani” and the famous “carciofi alla giudia”. However, these are somewhat exceptions. The first common rule…
This side dish was created in Emilia, and it is the perfect complement to a vast variety of roasted meats, such as beef braised in Barolo wine. It is a unique side dish, rich in fibre without the boring stigma associated with “healthy” foods. In order to peel the onions, I found an American recipe…
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…
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…