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.

The stuffing of this gnocchi is very similar to the one of Ascoli olives, a skilled mix of meats cooked in a soffritto, whose taste is made lighter by a touch of lemon zest. The only complicated phase is finding the procedure to fill the gnocchi; I think that using a piping bag makes the operation a lot easier.

It is quite hard not to find intriguing recipes in Italy: its regional cuisine is extremely rich and varied and, Marche region, not very known by mass tourism, offers us wonderful dishes with meat, vegetables, and fish.

In the near future, I am going to propose some Marche recipes: I learned to appreciate various dishes thanks to some sibling who introduced me to many treats. In addition, some trips in which I explored wonderful restaurants made me appreciate this region even more.

The scarce knowledge of the regional treasures contributed to maintaining an Italian atmosphere, not wretched by the mechanisms of great masses of tourists.

I have always been thinking that the real atmosphere of a country is much better seized in small towns, which tend to be more conservative and contribute to keeping the great Italian culinary tradition alive.

Now the region is living a new awakening, also as a reaction to the destructions caused by an earthquake, which stroke it in 2016: concerts like “Marche Rise Again” and new cycles of art exhibits propose a panoramic view of artistic treasures of the region, like, for instance, the cycle dedicated to Lorenzo Lotto.

Prep Time: 50 minutes | Cooking Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour + 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients for the stuffing

• 2,5 pounds (1 kg) white, russet or other starchy potatoes, steamed and peeled
• 2 cups (250 g.) pastry or “00” flour, plus more as needed
• 10 oz. (300 g.) mixed meats (chicken breast, pork, and veal)
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 carrot, finely minced
• 1 onion, finely minced
• 1 celery stalk, finely minced
• ½ glass of white wine
• ½ glass water
• ¼ organic lemon grated zest
• 1 tablespoon grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoons butter

Ingredients for the sauce

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 14 oz.  (400 g.)  finely chopped tomato sauce
• Sea salt

Instructions for making the gnocchi

Heat butter and oil in a saucepan and sauté the vegetables in it. When they are cooked, add the meats roughly chopped. Cook the meats, adding water and wine. Stir the meats and, when the wine has evaporated, cover with a lid and make the meats simmer for half an hour. When it is cooked, take the meats, draining them from the cooking liquid, and put them in a mixer.

Filter the cooking liquid with a sieve, and put it aside. Ground the meats in the mixer, then add the yolks, the Parmigiano, the lemon zest, and the cooking liquid. Mix again. Move the stuffing to a piping bag.:

While the meat is cooking, steam the potatoes for the gnocchi.

For making gnocchi, follow the instructions in this recipe.

Divide the dough into parts bigger than usual, since it must contain the filling. Stuff the gnocchi and close the little balls by rolling them quickly between the palms of your hands.

Lay the gnocchi on a paper tray previously sprinkled with flour.

Instructions for making the sauce

In a non-sticking pan, sauté garlic cloves in oil and discard them when golden. Add the tomato and make it simmer for 10 minutes.

Cook the gnocchi in boiling salted water for few minutes, it can be drained when it floats and poured directly in the pan with the sauce. I suggest using a pastaiola or draining them in batches, using a slotted spoon.

Cacciatora stew is one of those simple dishes which comfort you, above all if served with mashed potatoes on a cold winter day.

It is an incredibly rich and simple dish, the result is an amazing sauce in which you can plunge bread and collect it in the famous “scarpetta”. It is a gesture not be made in a restaurant, still the most of us would not resist the temptation. It is almost a moral obligation, none could waste such a treasure.

With some variations, this Tuscan dish is loved and prepared in all Italy. Some cooks add olives, they use dry white wine and no tomato, probably the version I am proposing is revised compared to it. Tomatoes appeared on the tables of Central and Northern Italy quite late, only in the second half of the nineteenth century, I guess that this addition was made more recently.

For the white version, follow the same recipe replacing the red wine with a dry white one and do not add tomato. Some also add pitted olives half an hour before the end of the cooking process.

The same recipe is used for the rabbit too, and the result is always excellent.

It is those of these dishes that represents Italy at its best: Mediterranean herbs, vegetables, wine. The frequent use of wine allows us to use fewer fats and keeping the meat or fish moist. In the meanwhile, it enhances the taste of the seasoning, letting us to use less salt.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 2 hours + 20 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours + 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients