My Italian food
Well, that title IS misleading in its conciseness. It should read “apple, pumpkin, amaretti, chocolate, figs and sultana cake with brandy and rum” – no less!. Continue reading “Torta monferrina di mele e zucca (apple and pumpkin cake from Monferrato, Piemonte)”
Miascia (mee-AH-sha) is a bread cake typically found in the lovely villages dotting Lake Como. It is an impromptu cake, made with cheap ingredients: stale bread, milk, some fruit, fresh or dried, polenta flour, sugar, a little chopped rosemary to give an elusive perfume. Nothing fancy and yet the final result is truly delicious. The bread is soaked in milk and then fruit is added, with very little flour to bind. This creates a lovely custardy texture that contrasts well with the crunchy topping. Continue reading “Miascia (Bread, grape and rosemary cake from Lake Como)”
It took a leap of faith and my avid curiosity to try this cake: could a basic sweet batter and some grated courgettes make a good cake? No nuts, no sultanas, no spices…really? A resolute “yes!” is the answer.
This is a most unusual and excellent cake come dessert: delicate, plain and light, but not at all boring, with a delicious custardy quality. Burnished golden outside, yellow with specks of green inside, it is also pretty.
Scarpaccia means “nasty/old shoe” and no one really knows why such an uninspiring name; it is possibly something to do with the appearance of this dessert: a genuine scarpaccia should be a fairly thin and crusty affair – like an old, over-worn shoe. It is the contrast between the sugary and crusty exterior (due to a good drizzle of olive oil) and the custardy, vanilla scented interior that make this unposessing looking dessert sing.
It is a Tuscan speciality and you will not find anywhere else in Italy – Continue reading “Scarpaccia viareggina (sweet and custardy courgette cake from Viareggio, in Tuscany)”
“Pasta china” is the name of a sumptuous, festive, baked pasta dish from Calabria, the heel of Italy, in the deep south. In the local dialect, “china” stands for the Italian adjective “piena”, full, and that’s exactly what this dish is about: a riotous affair of short tubular pasta dressed with a spicy tomato sauce, layered with marble-size meatballs, gooey cheese, crumbled boiled eggs, spicy Calabrese sausage, grated parmigiano and pecorino. Definitely, one of those Southern Italian dishes where restraint is out of the question.
Continue reading “Pasta china – baked pasta with mini meatballs and lots of other lovely things, from Calabria”
Panzanella
On a hot, summer day in Lucca, few places are more agreeable to have lunch at than under the stone arches of the old trattoria Da Giulio, well protected from the gaze of the sun. The menu never changes (dreary to be a chef there, one would have thought) and the food is solid rather than exceptional, but the combination of decent food, smiling service, reasonable prices and perfect location, makes this place dear to its many customers. I generally stick to the usual summer suspects: either pappa al pomodoro or panzanella, both stalwarts of Tuscan cookery. The former is a a thick bread and tomato soup served at room temperature; the latter a salad of crumbled stale bread, tomatoes and red onions.
Continue reading “Notes on panzanella”
Italian home cooking 