Around the time of the grape harvest in Tuscany, in all Florentine bakeries you can find a very popular dessert, flat bread with grapes (schiacciata con l’uva). This a seasonal dessert made with bread dough, , olive oil, rosemary and grapes. Some recipes include red wine, finely chopped rosemary and anise seeds. I prefer a…
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…
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…
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…
This pasta recipe is quite rustic. Savoy cabbage and Italian sausage give a robust quality to this dish, and you can play with different flours. In this case I prefer blending durum wheat and pastry flour, in Italian a “00”, but also using whole wheat or buckwheat is an excellent choice. I do not love…
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;…
With the Bologna Certosino (Chartreuse cake) I want to introduce you to a typical Christmas cake of Bologna cuisine, with almonds, pine nuts, unsweetened chocolate and candied fruit. It is almost unknown out of Emilia-Romagna region: sadly, the fame of many regional cakes is clouded by industrial products, which I am not a great fan…
Gurguglione is a typical stew of summer vegetables eaten by the miners of Elba Island. It was mentioned when I visited the Ginevro gallery, that is a magnetite mine near Capoliveri, now closed because of the competition by developing countries. This stew was a typical dish of the miners of Elba Island, which has always…