My Italian food
This year’s pastiera (ricotta and wheat Easter pie). For a change, I made a lard and butter pasta frolla (italian sweet pastry): super crumbly and a nightmare to work with, but it tastes delicious (humbly, he said). Very happy to have found the original fialetta, the extra-tiny glass bottles full of excellent and powerful orange blossom water, from Naples, which gives this splendid cake its haunting perfume. The recipe is the traditional one, from Carola Francesconi. Happy Easter everyone.
Outside Italy, few know that apple strudel is actually a very Italian dessert and not just a Viennese speciality. You will find it in patisseries all over Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, all territories that, historically and culturally, have had strong links with the old Austro-Hungarian empire and (partly) share the same culinary heritage.
In Veneto and Friuli dialect it is called strucolo de pomi, whilst in Trentino Alto Adige it is called either strudel di mele or apfelstrudel, its Viennese name. In all these three Northern Eastern regions you can actually find different types of strudel/strucolo: sweet, savoury, baked or boiled. Sometimes they are based on the traditional paper-thin strudel pastry, other times on a yeasted dough or even a potato dough (like gnocchi).
Strudel di mele (apple strudel) is perhaps the most famous: crackling extra-thin pastry enclosing a cinnamon-spiked filling of apples and raisins. Continue reading “Strucolo de pomi o strudel di mele (apple strudel from Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and from Trentino Alto Adige)”
Zaeti is Veneto dialect for the Italian gialletti, literally “the little yellow ones”. They are buttery, crumbly polenta (maize or cornmeal) biscuits, plump with raisins and you will spot them in patisseries and bakeries in Venice, Padua and other Veneto towns.
There are many versions, more or less rich, but they all share a charming culinary humbleness, which is one of the key marks of genuine Italian cooking. Continue reading “Zaeti (polenta and raisin biscuits from Veneto)”
Oss de mord is Lombardy dialect for the Italian ossa da mordere, which literally translates as “bones to bite”. They are almond, lightly spiced, crunchy biscuits traditionally made only around All Souls Day (il giorno dei morti, in Italian, the second day of November,) – they should resemble dry bones and are meant to honour i morti, the deceased ones. Continue reading “Oss de mord (Almond biscuits for All Souls Day from Lombardy)”
Update 2023: here in London, we can now buy fairly good cow ricotta, freshly made every day from Eataly, in Bishop’s gate. I can also recommend sheep ricotta made in Yorkshire by Yorkshire Pecorino (they deliver nation wide). If you live in London, you can order sheep ricotta from Sicily (giving plenty of notice) from my local Italian deli in Highbury Barn, called Da Mario. Having said all this, I still prefer to make my almost ricotta when I need it and occasionally I succumb to the supermarket variety.
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One of the foods I miss most from Italy is fresh ricotta – the real deal of course, not the industrial type which I can get also here, a tasteless and pappy substitute. Fresh ricotta is another thing altogether: sweet, milky and light, creamy and yet not insubstantial: with a sprinkle of sugar or with a drizzle of olive oil, it is culinary nirvana. Here in the UK, even in London, fresh ricotta is still very hard to come by: I tried the Neal’s Yard’s one (made in England) and I was not impressed, but I also saw beautiful looking Italian fresh ricotta at Gastronomica, in Borough Market (I was told it is flown in every few days).
Because it’s so hard to find good ricotta in the UK, many years ago I started making “home made ricotta” – though it is actually nothing more than fresh cheese: milk coagulated with some acid (lemon juice, vinegar, rennet, citric acid the most common) . Continue reading “Ricotta al caffè (coffee ricotta cream and tips on home-made “ricotta”)”
Italian home cooking 