Maltagliati pasta is a very traditional shape in Emilia-Romagna, used for rustic soups like pasta & chickpeas or pasta & beans. Literally, its name means “badly cut”.

All good Italian housewives never waste food and this pasta is made from the remnants of dough cut for other shapes. When you roll pasta dough with a rolling pin you get an irregular shape, when you wrap it in a roll in order to cut fettuccine, or squares for tortelli, you cut the irregular edges.

I set the remnants aside, pile them up one on top of the other, and cut diagonally, first in one direction, then in the other, creating very irregular diamonds. I even cut small pieces into smaller ones by hand.

I then let them dry for an hour and freeze them in a bag.

If you need to make them from scratch, this is the recipe for 4 servings:

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Sitting Time: 2 hours minutes | Total Time: 2 hours and 15 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 7 oz (200 g) all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs

Instructions

On a wooden pastry board, pour the flour into a mound, make a hole in its centre and pour the eggs in it.

Mix by hand to make a dough that you are going to roll out using a rolling pin.

Let the dough sit for at least 30 minutes, wrap it in cling film or, even better, cover it in a glass bowl.

Roll the dough into a sheet about two millimetres (1/24-inch) thick. Let it dry for at least an hour and 1/2.

Flour it lightly, fold a few times to form stacking layers and, using a knife, cut fettuccine about ½ inch wide.

Follow the instructions above.

Pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans) is a very typical Italian soup, simple, easy, yet incredibly versatile, as it is prepared many ways all across Italy.

For thousands of years, beans have nourished people from every social class, but its richness in proteins allowed the survival of the most of population who could not afford meat. Every region and corner of Italy has a version of this kind of soup, the simplest soup. It is prepared with an incredible set of variations: with the trinity of onion, carrot and celery, the fundamental ingredients of the majority of Italian sauces and stews; just simply with sliced onion and tomato in order to highlight the flavour of the beans, or parsley, or rosemary. In every Italian town and family there is always the addition of a personal touch.

Yet, despite its modesty, it is considered a comfort food, nourishing, simple but heart-warming.

This recipe is the one I rely on as a Romagnola, and I used it to civilize my husband: he had never eaten beans and soups before meeting me, and since he was such a carnivore, my trick was to blend all the vegetables and add some pancetta or ham to disguise the vegetables. It was like a kind of weaning.

Nowadays, sometimes my pasta e  fagioli (the Italian for pasta & beans) is vegan: I often refer to a recipe I was given in Le Marche region by a restaurant owner/chef, which used just onion and tomato for his soffritto. Then of course you follow the recipe as usual. I always have a supply of frozen maltagliati (fresh egg pasta) in my freezer, but if I use dried pasta, I even create a vegan and even lighter dish.

If I am using fresh pasta which cooks quickly, I cook it in the soup directly, in which case some attentive stirring is in order or the pasta will stick to the bottom of the pot. If you prefer using dried pasta – you should  cook it separately and then add it to the soup.

The only tricky part of making this dish is remembering to soak the beans, which if you are me, can be quite tricky, but is most satisfying when you remember. Then you need to remember to cook them, at a gentle simmer for at least a couple of hours while you spend  your time reading everybody’s latest posts. You can use tinned beans. but then you will miss the water the chickpeas were cooked in which provides agreat stock for your soup.

Usually, in most cookbooks, the beans and the soffritto are cooked in 2 different pots, whereas, since washing too many dishes is against my religion, I use always the same one.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 250g dried chickpeas soaked overnight OR 700g fresh Romano beans
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 small carrot, finely chopped
• ½ celery stick, finely chopped
• 50 g fresh pancetta or pork jowl, diced
• ½ cup (130 g) tomato puree
• 4 tablespoons cup olive oil
• 6 cups (1.5 L) water
• 200g maltagliati pasta (fresh pasta) or ditalini

Instructions

In the pot, sauté the vegetables in olive oil, and after 2 minutes, add the pancetta or pork jowl. Cook for 5-6 minutes on medium-low heat.

When the soffritto is golden, add the tomato puree and simmer for 15 to 17 minutes. Add the beans and 4 cups water (1 L water). Season with salt and let it cook, simmering. It takes about 80 minutes if you decide to cook with a normal pot; if this is the case, I strongly recommend a cast iron pot. In a pressure cooker it takes 20 minutes.

In the cast iron pot, you’ll have probably to add the rest of the water, or even more. Just add it gradually. Preferably hot, or you will lower the cooking temperature and it will take longer.

When beans are cooked, remove a ladleful of beans with some liquid and blend with an immersion blender in a container and add it back to the pot. It will give the soup a creamier texture without adding cheese.

Add pasta and follow the indications for cooking time.

When it is cooked, let it sit for 3 minutes and serve.

The cuisine in Emilia-Romagna is permeated with sexual innuendos, expressed in its iconic stuffed pasta, tortellini. Local legends say that the creation of tortellini was inspired by the goddess Venus herself, who was spotted by an innkeeper while staying at his inn. Stricken by this vision, he rushed to the kitchen, rolled out a sheet of pasta and shaped it like the only part of his beautiful guest’s body he had seen from the lock. Today, the hole in the centre of a tortellino is still called “Venus’ navel”.

I follow my grand-grandmother’s recipe, who was from Modena, and made an all-pork stuffing, whereas in other parts of Emilia they prefer substituting pork loin with beef.

Tortellini are a typical Christmas dish in Emilia, but nowadays you can find them at any time during the winter season.

At Christmas, my family cooks them in a warm capon stock that I prefer preparing one day in advance, in order to refrigerate it in a smaller container overnight to remove the solidified fat from the top of the chilled stock. On normal Sundays, we have tortellini in our traditional meat stock (link).

Making tortellini is quite complicated and time-consuming, and it has always been a team effort. Traditionally, the entire family gathered around the “arzdora” (the mother, the real family boss in Ravenna dialect) to put the filling on the small squares of pasta and shape the tortellini. With their small fingers, women and children were the most capable when it came to sealing the tortellini.

In order to be efficient, the filling and the dough can be prepared one or two days in advance. I love using a piping-bag for the filling, and recently, a chef suggested I refrigerate the dough in a vacuum-bag, since the absence of air in the bag prevents oxidation and the dough from changing colour. Still, it is better to work as a team – at least two skilled people – in order to shape tortellini in time to prevent the sheet of pasta from drying.

Prep Time: 4 hours | Cooking Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 5 hours | Yield: Makes 10 servings.

Ingredients

For the filling

• 3.5 oz (100 g) pork loin
• 1 tbsp dry white wine
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp (30 g) butter
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 small rosemary sprig
• 2.8 oz (80 g) Parmigiano Reggiano
• 3 oz (90 g) Parma ham
• 3 oz (90 g) Bologna mortadella
• 2 eggs
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated

For the pasta

• 6 eggs
• 4 cups (500 g) all-purpose flour

For the capon stock

• 1 medium onion, peeled
• 1 medium carrot, peeled
• 1 celery stalk
• Half capon
• 3 parsley sprigs
• 4-5 black pepper corns
• 1 kg (2.5 lbs) various beef cuts used for Italian braised meat like beef tongue, tail, shin bones with meat, marrow bones and bones with a little meat on them, such as oxtail, short ribs, or knuckle bones (cut in half by a butcher)

Instructions

For the capon stock (one day in advance)

Place a large stockpot on the biggest burner. Fill with 4-5 litres/4.5 to 5.5 quarts of cold water (about two-thirds full) and add all the ingredients. Bring the water to the simmering point.

Gently simmer the stock, covered, for 3-4 hours, or even longer if you have time, topping up with water if necessary. Skim the white foam that bubbles to the surface with a slotted spoon.

Strain stock using a fine-mesh sieve and discard bones and vegetables. Let the broth continue to cool until barely warm, then refrigerate in smaller containers overnight. Remove solidified fat from the top of the chilled stock.

For the filling

Add the butter, rosemary, and garlic to a small pan, and sauté the meat. When the meat is roasted externally, add the wine and season with salt and pepper. Cook for five minutes and let it cool down. When it reaches room temperature, coarsely chop and put in a food processor with all the other ingredients. mince at maximum speed until the filling is perfectly blended and is pink in colour. Fill a piping-bag and keep in the fridge. Take it out and keep at room temperature an hour before using it, or it will be too hard to squeeze it out of the piping bag.

For the pasta

On a wooden pastry board, pour the flour into a mound, make a well in its centre and crack the eggs into it. Blend by hand, making a dough that you are going to smooth with a rolling pin.

Divide the dough into two halves, wrap them in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Roll them out, remembering to sprinkle them with flour. Roll each ball of dough into a sheet about 2 mm (1/24 inch) thick.

Cut each dough into small 2-inch (5 cm) squares, and put little piles of filling in each  centre.

Fold the squares into rectangles enclosing the filling. Gently lift one of the long sides against the stuffing at a time, roll around your baby finger and overlap the two corners. Lay on a paper tray or a normal tray covered with parchment, make regular rows and avoid that they come into contact with one another or they will stick together.

Cook them in the boiling stock and serve them still fuming hot.

Imperial soup has an Austrian origin, and was introduced to Emilia-Romagna by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the second wife of the Emperor Napoleon I. As usual, this soup which can be traced back to Krinofel, went through a major process of adjustment to adapt to local ingredients. Yet, this recipe is “heretical” in a country where caconic recipes are considered with religious devotion: the traditional preparation includes semolina and butter, as Marcella Hazan shows in her Marcella’s Italian Kitchen, which my mum replaced with ricotta cheese.
This soup is therefore lighter and gluten-free, not a bad option for celiacs, still extremely tasty and comforting. Cooked and served in a sumptuous meat stock, it is a luscious dish, a festive delicacy once offered during the Christmas and Easter festivities, but now quite common at Sunday lunches.

Meat stock or broth (nowadays the distinction is quite blurred) is a very popular dish in Northern Italy. It is not only used for adding juices to roasted meats, stews and meat sauces during prolonged cooking, but it also creates wonderful dishes on its own. Northern Italy offers a wonderful variety of pastas created to be cooked and served in broth. There is a whole world of different stocks, made with vegetables, beef, chicken, or fumetto made with fish.

This is a family recipe, it includes hen and beef, and the Italian tradition provides many ways to reuse meats that have lost their juices in the stock.

In order to make a sumptuous stock, meats and vegetables are added to the stockpot when water is cold and left simmering for hours.

The traditional family recipes are very simple, you just need to use a very big stockpot, put the ingredients in it and cover with water. Then it must be put on the stove and left gently bubbling for a long period of time.

Now chefs have enhanced the recipe by cutting the onion into two halves and roasting it for few minutes in a non-stick pan. It adds a stronger flavour to the stock, as it extracts the essence of the vegetable.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 4 hours | Total Time: 4 hours and 20 minutes | Yield: Makes 2 servings.

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, peeled
• 1 medium carrot, peeled
• 1 celery stalk
• 2 medium potatoes
• 3 cherry tomatoes
• Half hen or 2-pounds chicken wings
• 1 to 1.5 kg (2.5 to 3.5 lbs) various beef cuts used for Italian braised meat like beef tongue, tail, shin bones with meat, marrow bones and bones with a little meat on them, such as oxtail, short ribs, or knuckle bones (cut in half by a butcher)
• Makes 2.5 litres/10.5 cups

Instructions

Place a large stockpot on the biggest burner. Fill with 4-5 litres/4.5 to 5.5 quarts of cold water (about two-thirds full) and add all the ingredients. Bring the water up to the simmering point.

Gently simmer the stock, covered, for 3-4 hours, or even longer if you have time, topping up with water if necessary. Skim the white foam that bubbles to the surface with a slotted spoon.

Strain stock using a fine-mesh sieve and discard bones and vegetables. Let the broth continue to cool until barely warm, then refrigerate in smaller containers overnight. Remove solidified fat from the top of the chilled stock.

Freeze it in ice cube trays and add it to your risotto, stews and roasts.

Dogs love the boiled carrots, and can be given some of the beef bones. The boiled beef is recycled as a stew, in a dish called lesso rifatto or francesina. I add the hen to vegetable soups, to improve the texture.

Usually “potage” and “sea” contradict each other. This recipe is connected to “land” ingredients like potatoes, leeks, and a lot of fresh cream.

I created this recipe when trying to exalt Autumn vegetables, and trying to propose something healthy but extremely stimulating. I have always been inspired by French cuisine, but the recipe of the normal potage sounded really a bit too rich with all that cream. I decided to keep potatoes and leeks, add squash and a good fish stock and prawns, and I have to admit that it is very appreciated.

This encounter of fresh ingredients, poor in calories and rich in vitamins and fibers, is an excellent way to taste an unusual dish, light but full of taste.

In Italy, there are other dishes, mainly first courses, that enhance squash, like butternut squash gnocchi, the Ferrara squash ravioli, the Mantua ravioli. This vegetable is wonderful and versatile, rich in fibers, minerals and increases the sensation of fullness, helping a lot for the diets.

While in traditional Italian first courses squash is processed and squeezed, here the labor is extremely reduced; the addition of prawns and chili pepper balances the sweet note of squash and leeks.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.