Italian bread is famous for being based exclusively on flour and water, yet this recipe, typical of nothern Italy, includes olive oil in its dough. The presence of fats creates a very soft bread, which is easy to be preserved in the foggy climate of Po valley. Moreover, olive oil can be replaced by butter or suet. In the last case, suet helps to clean the mouth if accompanying cold cuts like salami or prosciutto. It sounds incredibly odd, but fats “refresh” your mouth.

Anyway, if you prefer to make simple but genuine appetizers, you can bake these little amuse bouche, and spread them, still warm, with vodka butter and smoked salmon.

NB: this is a small quantity, just enough to make these bite-sized snacks for a party. If you double the ingredients you can make a very tasty bread, which can last even a week, even longer if you keep it in a plastic bag in the fridge and heat it up in the oven for a few minutes.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cooking Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes (+ 2 hours for leavening) | Yield: Makes 6  servings.

Ingredients

•  1 cup (250 g) bread flour
•  1 tsp (6 g) active brewer’s yeast
• 1 tsp (6 g) sea salt
• 2 tbsp + 1 tsp (35 ml) olive oil
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp (20 g) sugar
• ½ cup + 2 tbsp (150 ml) cold water

Preparation

Add both flours, yeasts, and water to the bowl of a stand mixer. Knead it with the dough hook in place. You can also do it by hand in a bowl, but the process takes around 14 minutes of work.

Add the sugar a bit at a time, and when it is well kneaded, add the salt, again in several batches, slowly. Finally, add the oil, slowly. When the dough sticks to the dough hook in a ball, remove it and knead it on a surface sprinkled with flour.

Place the dough in a floured bowl, cover with cling film, and let it rise for 45 minutes. Times vary depending on the time of the year and how warm the kitchen is. At my house, the winter temperature is around 19 C (66 F), so I prefer to move the bowl to a warm oven with the light on.

After the dough has doubled in volume, roll it with the rolling pin, and cut out small circles.  I use a sherry glass, 4 cm in diameter. Roll all the pieces in the palm of your hands, until you create little balls. Make sure to use the remnants of the cuts, or you’ll have to knead them again and make them rise.

As you make the balls, put the on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Cover with cling film and leave them to rise for 40/60 minutes.

Discard the cling film and cook in a pre-heated convection oven for 8 to 10 minutes at 375 F (190 C).

Pignolata, also known as Struffoli in Naples, is a very popular dessert in Southern Italy, an area that was dominated by Spain for centuries, and its origin is from the region of Andalusia.

These Christmas marble-sized honey fritters are deep-fried and then rolled in honey before being assembled into a cone or a globular wreath.

This dessert belongs to the tradition of “peasant cooking”, and it is about customs, celebration, and sweetness. I decided to make Pignolata for my husband, as it was one of the few Calabrian dishes his mother made that he loved.

Like many Italian Christmas dishes, these fritters are the fruit of a collective effort, of many generations around the kitchen table working together. Rolling these little balls is child’s job, as their little hands are particularly apt to it.

This simple version, with no candied fruit, glacé cherries, or almond dragées is typical of my husband’s family. In other far richer cities like Messina in Sicily, this simple version was despised by the rich. For them, the local pastry chef created a double lemon and chocolate frosting, which could suit the more demanding palates (and bigger budgets) of aristocratic Sicilians. In Naples, the decoration is very multi-coloured, a real visual joy, full of all the most coloured candied fruit and silver dragées.

If you prefer something a bit more original, try the red raspberry version.

Prep Time: 60 minutes | Cooking Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 90 minutes | Yield: Makes 12  servings.

Ingredients

For the dough

• 4 ¾ cups (600 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
• 6 eggs
• A pinch of salt
• ¼ cup (60 ml) Anise or Sambuca liqueur
• 4 tbsp white sugar
• 1 organic lemon zest, finely grated

For finishing

• Vegetable oil (sunflower) for frying
•  28 oz (800 g) honey

Preparation

Mix all the ingredients (except the honey and vegetable oil) in a bowl, you can use a stand mixer with a dough hook. Work the dough until it is smooth. This doesn’t take very long: about 3 minutes or 5 minutes by hand.

Let it rest in the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, for 2 hours.

Flour your work surface and turn out your dough. Then divide the dough into 10 roughly equal pieces, each about the size of a golf ball. Take 1 ball and roll it out into a rope approx. 1/2 inch thick, then with floury hands, divide this into about 20 small pieces, and roll each piece between your hands (flouring them again if this helps) to make marble-sized balls.

Fry them (deep frying) in small batches until they are golden and lay the marbles on kitchen paper. When you have finished frying, discard the oil and clean the pan with kitchen paper.

Pour the honey in the pan and, when the honey is warm, tip all of the fried dough balls into it and, using a soft spatula, turn them gently to coat them.

Get out a large plate or cake stand with a slight lip or rim and place a wet glass or a pastry ring on it. Arrange the balls in the shape of a pyramid or a wreath with a serving spoon.

These mini savoury panettoni are a bit time-consuming but not hard to do, you can decide whatever stuffing you love. The classic recipe included prawns with cocktail sauce, smoked salmon with cream cheese and chives and lemon zest. Or cold cuts and cheeses, or vegetarian fillings.

You can choose whatever filling you love.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cooking Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes (4 hours for cooling down) | Yield: Makes 6  servings.

Ingredients

• ¼ cup (50 ml) warm milk
• 13 g fresh baker’s yeast or 4 g dry active yeast
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 ½ tbsp (50 g) butter, room temperature, cut in small pieces
• 1 cup (240 g) bread (Manitoba) flour
• 1/2 tbsp honey
• 25 ml water
• 1 ½ tbsp (20 g) white sugar
• Butter for the tin
• 4 tbsp fresh cream or an egg yolk + some milk for glazing

Preparation

Add the warm milk, honey, and water to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment on medium speed. Add the yeast and, after a minute, the egg.

Then add the flour, and when it is well mixed, add the sugar, and finally the salt. If the dough is too dry, add some water. The total time including the kneading of the dough takes around 15 minutes.

Let the dough sit in a deep bowl and cover with plastic wrap. If the temperature in your kitchen is around 77 F (25 C) let it rise for 2 hours. If your temperature is around 66 F (19 C) like in my kitchen, add half an hour.

After the dough has doubled, divide it into 6 balls and knead it, bending the folds under each ball.

Butter the muffin tin and place one ball in each hole. Let it rise again for 2 hours, covering with plastic wrap.

Modify the rising time according to the temperatures in your kitchen.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F (175 C).  Using a pastry brush, coat the balls with fresh cream, or an egg yolk mixed with 2 tablespoons of milk. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

When the pannettoni reach room temperature, move to a cooling rack. They will be firm enough to be cut in thin slices the next day. Calculate making 5 cuts, top included. Fill the layers every 2 cuts, in order to make a sandwich. Choose your favourite canapé fillings. Once you have finished, make at least one vertical cut.

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.

Cauliflower is normally not a very exciting dish, but you can give it some pizazz thanks to this recipe: a crispy and flavourful gratin turns a conventional vegetable into a real treat.

This recipe uses the same ingredients as a Mornay sauce, but is a bit lighter because there is no cream added. If you do not have Grana Padano or Parmigiano cheese, add some other cheese that you love, as long as it is not too strong so that it does not overwhelm the cauliflower’s flavour. The gratin needs Grana Padano or Parmigiano though, to which you could add a bit of grated bread if you want to make it even crispier.

Italian sformato, also known as flan, can be prepared with a variety of vegetables. This cauliflower version was once prepared in the French cuisine tradition. The cauliflower was puréed with the same sauce ingredients as our recipe, placed in a fluted pan baked in bain-marie in the oven. This type of recipe dates back to a time when Italians cooked their vegetables until they had no texture, taste or nutritional value left. Thank goodness times have changed!

Cauliflower is a very ancient vegetable in Italian cuisine, already mentioned in the 1st century AD by Pliny the Elder, who included it among his descriptions of cultivated plants in his Natural History treatise. This sauce adds a bit of fat to an amazing vegetable, which is low in calories, has no fat, but it is an incredibly healthy choice. It is rich in sodium, dietary fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium. Last, but not least, since it is mainly composed of water, cauliflower can help keep you hydrated. The list of benefits is not finished yet, since this veggie has a group of substances known as glucosinolates. During digestion, these substances are broken down into compounds that may help prevent cancer , since they help protect cells from damage and have anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antibacterial effects.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Yield: Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg (2 lbs) cauliflower florets, washed
• 1 L (4 cups) milk
• 80 g (⅔ cup) flour
• 80 g (cup) butter + more for the gratin
• Salt
• 50 g (1.5 oz) grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano cheese
• 2 egg yolks
• ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

Boil the cauliflower florets in salted water for 15 minutes. If you have a steamer, even better.

In the meantime, make the bechamel sauce.

Drain the cauliflower when it is cooked but still firm, since it will be baked. Move the florets to a bowl.

Heat the milk.

In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour and stir. When it begins to thicken, begin to pour the milk in batches, stirring constantly until you finish. Add the nutmeg, yolks, salt, and ⅔ of the Grana Padano cheese to the bechamel, and stir, mixing thoroughly. If there are any lumps, use a hand blender. Toss the cauliflower with the sauce to coat. Let cool for 5 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 200° C (400° F).

Brush a casserole dish with oil using a pastry brush.

Move the cauliflower mix to the casserole and sprinkle the remaining Grana Padano cheese and dot with bits of butter on top.

Bake for 20 minutes until the top turns golden and serve warm.