This creamed codfish version is another example of the extreme variety and richness of Italian cuisine: stockfish and salted codfish were introduced to Southern Europe centuries ago, and they were adapted to hundreds of recipes across the Mediterranean.

Creamed codfish is a delicate appetiser which exalts two typical ingredients of Northern Italy, codfish (also popular in all of Southern Europe) and polenta. Yellow or white, hot straight from a copper polenta pot, or sliced and grilled, polenta is an excellent and gluten free food that is delicious in every season.

Even if it is referred to as baccalà (salted codfish) in this venetian recipe, the fish used in this dish is stockfish. Venice was the first city in Southern Europe where stockfish was introduced by the nobleman Pietro Querini in 1432. This gentleman was bound for Flanders, but his merchant ship encountered a terrible storm off the western coast of France. The storm ravaged the ship, and the few surviving sailors, after weeks spent fighting the storm and cold temperatures for weeks, finally drifted on the Gulf Stream far across the North Sea. Stranded on an island off of Norway amid the small Lofoten Islands, they were found by local fishermen and spent months with the Røst inhabitants.

This dramatic incident was the origin of trade between northern Norway and Italy, which made the combination of Norwegian stockfish and Italian cooking possible.

This kind of preparation consists of cod fish dried on wooden racks, where cold-adapted bacteria matures the fish. The word stockfish is a loan word from West Frisian stokfisk (stick fish), possibly referring to the wooden racks on which stockfish are traditionally dried or because the dried fish resembles a stick.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes (3 hours for cooling down) | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 300 g stockfish, already soaked
• 4 cups (I L) cold water
• 3 garlic cloves
• ¼ cup (50 ml) delicate olive oil
• 1/3 cup (100 ml) vegetable oil
• 3 black pepper grains
• ¼ cup (80 g) milk
• 3 juniper berries
• 1 bay leaf
• Sea salt

Instructions

A day before, infuse two chopped garlic cloves in the combined oils. Filter it and discard the garlic before using it. If you prefer, you can rub the bowl you are going to use the cream the fish with the peeled garlic.

In a pot, add the milk, water, pepper, bay leaf, juniper berries, and the stockfish.

When it reaches a boiling point, reduce the heat and let it simmer for thirty minutes. Turn off the heat and let it cool down in the cooking liquid, until it is room temperature.

Take the stockfish and crumble it, using your fingers, discarding the bones and the skin. Put it in a food processor and finely mince the stockfish.

Move the fish to a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. While whisking, drizzle with the infused oil and a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid, alternating them, and add salt. The stockfish is ready when it has turned into a velvety and soft cream.

Store in the fridge and serve it cold on warm grilled polenta slices.

“Stoccafisso” is a particular way of preparing cod fish which comes from Germany where it is completely dried on a stick from which the name originates: stock (stick) and fisch (fish).

In the trattorie of Florence I have heard shelled beans cooked in this way called “fagiouli all’uccelletto”.
(Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well)

This recipe is a typical Florentine way to eat their beloved cannellini beans which have replaced meat for centuries. The name originates from the way small game birds were cooked in Tuscany, seasoned with a generous amount of sage.
The bean’s abundance in vegetable proteins and fibre has nourished Mediterranean populations for centuries. In these times of abundance, they are still quite appreciated.
Beans are an excellent side dish, but you can add sausages to the basic recipe and create an excellent traditional Tuscan main course.
There are many versions of this recipe, some include onion and seasoning. The recipe reported by our Romagna gentleman consists of sage and tomato, I personally love adding garlic.
The first recipe we find in the original cookbook of Italian cuisine is the one which considers beans as a side dish, excellent for accompanying stewed meats. In it, the beans are browned in a substantial amount of oil and sage, and later enriched with tomato sauce. I prefer to use a milder temperature and less oil.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 500 g beans, already cooked in water with a poached garlic clove, a sprig of rosemary and 3 sage leaves. Reserve the cooking liquid.
• 4 sausages
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tin of crushed tomato
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Sea salt
• 10 sage leaves
• A sprig of rosemary

Instructions

Put a pan on the stove with the oil, sage leaves and garlic. When the oil starts to sizzle, toss in the sausages and brown them, piercing them with the prongs of a fork in order to make them lose their juices.

When the sausages are golden, toss in the beans and season with salt and pepper. Add the tomato sauce to the beans with 2-3 tablespoons of their cooking liquid. Let them simmer for 15-20 minutes without a lid, take them off the stove and serve.

Green beans are an excellent fresh vegetable, but there are not many variations for their preparation. They are usually boiled and eaten accompanied by simple olive oil. But Italian creativity enriched a dull preparation with a touch of herbs and the beloved tomato, inventing a unique and tasty side dish, a symbol of summer and its fruits.

There are many versions of this dish: mine is the simplest, but an excellent one is using minced onion instead of garlic and adding chili pepper. Another version that is very popular in Tuscany, the land of meat-eaters where it is difficult to make vegetables appetizing for children, some grandmothers prefer preparing a soffritto with finely minced onion, celery, and carrot, and diced pancetta.

While up to few decades ago vegetables were boiled for an unnecessarily long time, or as my vegetarian brother complained, they were “tortured to death”, now we prefer crispy vegetables.

They are easy, quick to prepare, and impossible to get wrong, unless you abandon them in boiling water for hours. The result is a half-destroyed yellowish hay that not even a horse would eat.

Break off the top and wash them, leaving them whole. Today’s green beans have no strings, since only the fresh and best ones are harvested.

An excellent way to cook green beans and vegetables in general is to cook them in simmering water for 6 to 7 minutes (test them, they must be cooked but still al dente), and then immediately drained in a colander and plunged into ice cold water to bring the temperature down.  A rule of thumb is that the beans should spend as much time in the cold water as in the hot water.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely minced
• 500 g fresh green beans, washed
• 1 garlic clove, finely minced
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tin crushed tomato or peeled plum tomatoes

Instructions

Preparation 1

Cook the green beans in simmering water for 6 to 7 minutes, immediately drain in a colander and plunge them into ice cold water to bring the temperature down.

In a deep pan (the one you use for sautéing pasta is ideal) sauté the garlic in the olive oil. Add the tomato sauce and cook for 10 minutes. When the tomato sauce has lost its acidity, season with salt and pepper and add the green beans and parsley.

Stir for 2 to 3 minutes and serve.

Preparation 2, the original

In a deep pan sauté the garlic in the olive oil. Add the tomato sauce, season with salt and pepper and add the green beans and parsley. Add water to cover the beans. Simmer for 10 minutes covered with a lid. Remove the lid and simmer for another 35 to 40 minutes, checking the green beans by tasting them, and if necessary, adding a bit more water.

This way of cooking them has the advantage of using less saucepans and bowls, and of course the green beans have more taste because they absorb the tomato sauce while cooking.

Capon is a traditional Christmas bird in Europe. It is used either to make a very tasty but fat stock to accompany minestre, such as tortellini, or as a main course, usually stuffed. This stuffing is very simple. I had some cured meats leftover and I thought of giving them a second life. It is a very simple dish, and although there are other ways to cook it, for an Italian Christmas lunch, where there are also children who do not love exotic tastes and spices, this is the ideal cooking method.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 1 4lb (1.8 kg) capon, cleaned and trimmed
• Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the stuffing

• 12.5 oz (350 g) ground pork and beef
• 3 oz (90 g) Emmental cheese
• 3 oz (90 g) rolled pancetta
• 3 eggs
• 2 potatoes, boiled and peeled

For cooking

• 2 garlic cloves
• ½ cup (125 ml) dry white wine
• 30 g butter
• 4 tbsps. olive oil
• 4 sage leaves
• A sprig of rosemary
• 2 ladles of chicken broth.

Instructions

Remove the giblets from the capon. Rinse out the cavity with cold water and pat it dry. Season it with salt and pepper.

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and mix. If you like the giblets, coarsely chop them and add to the stuffing.

Stuff the capon and sew the cavity. Put the capon in a big saucepan, brown the capon in butter and olive oil, with the aromatic herbs. Roast it for 20 minutes, then turn it on the other side and roast it for another 20 minutes. Add the wine and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Cook for two hours, basting and turning very carefully, to avoid the skin from breaking, adding some broth and cooking on a medium-low temperature.

To serve the capon, present it at the table whole, then carve it. Remove the stuffing in one piece if possible and slice it.

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 for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Under the Medici rule, Livorno was declared a free port, which meant that the goods traded here were duty-free within the area of the town’s control. It was a very common strategy, applied to all ports of recent foundation, where the ruling classes wanted to attract trade; you can find it in a lot of Italian place names, where you find the particle “franco”, like the many “Francavillas” in different regions of Italy prove.

The Medici family also took care to protect merchant activities from crime and racketeering, and instituted laws regarding international trade. Expanding Christian tolerance, the laws offered the right of public freedom of religion and amnesty to people having to gain penance given by clergy in order to conduct civil business. The Grand Duchy attracted numerous Turks, Persians, Moors, Greeks, and Armenians, along with Jewish immigrants. The latter group arrived mainly in the late sixteenth century with the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal – while Livorno extended rights and privileges to them; they contributed to the mercantile wealth and scholarship in the city.

It seems that the contribution of Italian Jews to Italian cuisine was more significant than what it seems: the oldest community of Jews out of Israel was in Rome before the diaspora, since the II century C.E. Two millenniums of cohabitation with the Italians created an extremely rich and varied cuisine. Jewish bakeries were famous, and Christians clients bought their products, in spite of the condemnations of the Catholic clergy.

Many dishes, now considered typically Italian, were deeply influenced by Jewish creativity, like stuffed pastas, sources of pride of Jewish communities during the Renaissance.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 kg) – about 8 red mullets, cleaned*
• 14 oz (400 g) canned peeled plum tomatoes (fresh if it is summer)
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely minced
• Salt and pepper to season

Instructions

*CLEANING THE RED MULLETS:

Scale the fish gently, cut the fins, and open the belly using a sharp knife. Gut and discard. Wash carefully and dry, using kitchen paper.

For the tomato sauce: if you have very ripe tomatoes, you can blanch them for 3 to 4 minutes, then transfer to a bowl with cold water and peel. Discard the seeds and cut them into small pieces. Otherwise, you can use the canned peeled tomatoes, and crush them with a fork.

In a pan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil. After one minute, add the parsley and tomatoes almost immediately. Season with salt and pepper, stir and let it simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring sometimes.

Add the red mullets, laying them down very gently, making them sink into the sauce.

They must simmer over a low flame with no lid and NEVER BE MOVED OR TURNED OVER, just shake the pan gently in order to prevent them from sticking to the pot. With a spoon, take some sauce and cover the fish. After 10 minutes they are cooked, serve directly from the pan, without moving them, or they will break.

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 easy to cook, and the main thing to remember is that the squid flesh is kept tender by a short cooking time. It can be prepared and kept in the fridge in advance and cooked at the very last moment.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 4 calamari
• 40 g breadcrumbs
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsps. grated Pecorino or Caciocavallo cheese
• 2 small garlic cloves, deprived of the green germ
• Parsley
• 3 tbsps. olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 tbsps. dry white wine

Instructions

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 distancing themselves from the powerful walls which defended the town.

Over the three thousand years of its history, the inhabitants bored more than one thousand cavities: I visited the widest, where there are the remnants of an oil mill and some millstones. Toward the interior of the cliff, the cavity is articulated in a series of rooms: among them, three Etruscan wells with their characteristic notches were workers who were excavating put their feet (pedarole in Italian). Another cavity, bordering with it, overlooks the cliff sides, and it is characterized by a great quantity of columbaria or dovecotes. These are rooms with a great quantity of recesses where pigeon could nest. This function is validated by the presence of water tanks and openings in the cliff edge to allow the pigeon keeper to give his animals liberty for purposes of exercise while allowing them to re-enter the house without special assistance from the keeper. At the same time, these houses are constructed to keep the pigeons safe from predators and inclement weather and give them nesting places in which to raise their squabs.

Pigeons were especially prized because they would produce fresh meat during the winter months when larger animals were unavailable as a food source. In the past wealthy landowners often had pigeon houses and there are still remnants of them in some European manor houses. Orvieto dovecots were especially useful in case the town were under siege and deprived of supplies of fresh food from the country nearby.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 hour + 35 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour + 50 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

• 2 pigeons about 10-14 oz. (300-400 g.) each.

For the stuffing

• 2 fresh Italian sausages, peeled OR 9 oz. (250 g.) ground pork generously seasoned with salt and freshly milled black pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh Pecorino cheese, grated
• 1,5 oz. (40 g.) stale bread (Ciabatta-like), deprived of crust
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely minced

For the cooking

• 3 garlic cloves
• ½ cup dry white wine
• 3 sage leaves
• 4 Juniper berries
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 slices pancetta

Instructions

In a small bowl, pour the milk and soak the bread in it. Squeeze the milk out of it, put it in a bowl with the meat, and mix it with all the other ingredients, using your hands.

Season the pigeons with salt and pepper and the Juniper berries lightly crushed, and then stuff them but not completely, since the stuffing will swell when cooking. Close the pigeon with a toothpick or needle and thread.

Pour the oil in a heavy saucepan and add garlic, rosemary and sage. Place the pigeons in it and pancetta on the pigeons. Pigeons tend to dry, so choose a saucepan that fits them perfectly, not too large.

Roast the pigeons in all their sides and simmer with the wine until reduced.

Make the pigeons simmer for about 1 hour, covered with the lid, and add some tablespoons of water if necessary.

Serve them still warm, cut in two halves. Great with mashed potatoes.

Paccheri is a new pasta shape particularly well suited for being stuffed. With truffle sauce, sausage, and porcini mushrooms, it is ideal for festive occasions. In winter, I always look for occasions to turn on the oven, and this recipe is perfect for holidays and meals with friends and family around a festive table.

It is a rich dish, and a bit time-consuming, but you can prepare the filling in a piping-bag and the sauce in advance, and compose the dish at the last moment.

Porcini mushrooms and white truffle are seasonal and are considered  the sovereigns of Italian cuisine.

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

Ingredients

• ¾ lb. (300 g.) Paccheri pasta

Ingredients for the stuffing

• 13 oz. (400 g.) potatoes, boiled and mashed
• 6,5 oz. (180 g.) Italian sausage
• 1 big egg
• 1,5 oz. – 1/3 cup (50 g.) white truffle paste
• Sea salt and black pepper for seasoning

Ingredients for the sauce

• 1 + ½ tablespoons (20 g.) butter
• 3 tablespoons (20 g.) flour
• 1 cup (200 ml.) milk
• 3 oz. (100 g.) Porcini mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of fresh parsley, finely minced
• 1 garlic clove, finely minced
• For the final touch:
• Parmigiano Reggiano, a piece

Instructions

In a blender, combine the ingredients for the filling. Mince everything finely and pour them in a piping bag.

In a pot, make a béchamel melting the butter over low heat, combining the flour and salt and whisking with a fork as you add to prevent lumps. Add the milk a little at a time, whisking as you pour. Raise the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes to thicken, whisking to prevent and break up any lumps (eventually use an immersion blender).

In another small pot, combine olive oil, parsley and garlic and simmer for 1 minute over very low heat, then join the mushroom, cover with a lid and cook for 2 minutes.

Join half of the mushroom to the béchamel and mix with an immersion blender.

Pour the sauce on a serving dish that can be used in the oven.

In a pot with salted water, boil the pasta for 2/3 of the cooking time indicated on the box.

Drain pasta and sprinkle with a tablespoon of olive oil and mix. When it is tepid, stuff it with the filling and gently lay it on the sauce, vertically.

Arrange the remaining mushroom around pasta and grate chips of Parmigiano using a potato-peeler.

Bake it in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes at 400 F. (200 C).

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; in Northern Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and Romagna they prefer to season it with wild fennel, which gives it smell and taste absolutely unique.

Like the word parmigiana, in porchetta describes also the cooking and seasoning style for other meats, like the rabbit, in this case.

I bought a farmyard rabbit, for this dish. This was a summer dish since in August and September rabbits who were born in the springtime had reached the right weight. Nowadays, industrial agriculture has altered these natural cycles.

I have never tasted the famous porchetta in Ariccia, near Rome, which is seasoned with rosemary.

In Ravenna market, my family has always been buying porchetta from Marche, made by a gentle lady who prepares this fantastic product, together with ciccioli and lard, two products which are used so widely in our family piadine and focacce. The presence of the wold fennel, added with a gentle touch, gives an unmistakable note.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 h + 30 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour and 40 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 3 ½ pounds (1,5 kg.) rabbit, with its liver
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped wild fennel fronds, or a 12-inches branch of wild fennel, in chunks. If you cannot find it, replace with 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 4 oz. (100 g.) pancetta, roughly chopped
• 2 oz. (50 g.) lard, roughly chopped
• 6 garlic cloves
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 glasses white dry wine
• Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Instructions

Wash rabbit and liver with the wine. Season the rabbit (inside too) with salt and pepper.

Roughly chop liver, and sauté it in a pan with pancetta, 1 olive oil, 3 garlic cloves and 2/3 fennel, season with salt and pepper. Stuff the rabbit with it and sew it with needle and thread, in order to avoid the rabbit to lose the stuffing while cooking. Transfer the rabbit to a roasting pan with lard, 3 garlic cloves, oil, fennel, and bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 F (180 C).