Christmas time is coming – as every year – with an intense gift trafficking and an amount of food that would be just enough to feed a football team for a year or so. I will be spending the festivities in Naples, mostly cherishing my idleness and dealing with arguing sisters (they argue at every …
Category Archives: Italian recipes
Pea and Pumpkin Penne
A creamy pumpkin sauce without cream and butter. Just the way I like my “tomato-less pasta sauce” to be. Cream is sickly heavy and cheese is overused. Any solution? Mine is a sauce whose creaminess comes from pureed pumpkin and egg yolks. A sprinkle of Parmesan. A sprinkle or two: I swear, it’s enough. I …
Gluten-Free Tuscan Chestnut Crepes Filled with Sweet Ricotta
Autumn brings lots of chestnuts to Tuscany and Tuscany brings Necci to us. Necci, chestnut crepes stuffed with soft cheese, are one of the most popular traditional Tuscan sweets. Pancakes, to be precise, made from chestnut flour and water mixed to get a smooth batter, slightly thicker than a normal crepe. Then Necci or “Nicci”, meaning …
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Tuscan Pici with Stracchino and Zucchini
Ok, let’s start from the title. I reckon many of you might not know what Pici is. And stracchino? I agree, a name too odd to be associated to something edible. Pici, Wikipedia says, is a thick, hand-rolled pasta, like a fat spaghetti, that originates in the province of Siena in Tuscany. Stracchino is a type of …
Vegan Ravioli with Tomato and Pepper Sauce
I have a moderately strong imagination I mostly use to subconsciously create surreal dreams at night and to entertain myself during my tube rides in London. In the underground I can read or look at people pretending I am indifferent, however, most of the time I entertain myself by fantasizing about pretty much everything. But I …
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Pasta alla Norma
In Sicily it is called “alla Norma” in honor of Bellini, the famous musician born in Catania. I Catanesi (inhabitants of Catania), greatly impressed by that masterpiece of their fellow citizen, used his surname – Bellini – to name every example of excellence, any creation that met high quality standards. No exeption was made for …