Ready to make your Christmas lunches truly special?
Get inspired by our regional first course recipes, authentic delights from our cookbooks. Perfect for celebrating the holidays with flavors that speak of home and tradition!
1. Scarola bundle stuffed with gnocchi and garum
(from Puglia in Cucina - The flavours of Apulia)
Ingredients for 4 people:
• 200 g of potato gnocchi
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 tablespoons of garum (maceration of anchovies in olive oil)
• 2 tablespoons of capers
• 2 tablespoons toasted breadcrumbs
• 100 g of extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• pepper
Select the 4 outermost leaves of the escarole and set them aside.
In a saucepan, place the oil with the finely chopped garlic, the capers, the cherry tomatoes cut in half, the 2 tablespoons of garum and season with salt and pepper.
Chop the remaining escarole and sauté it in the saucepan.
Cook the gnocchi and add them to part of the mixture, sautéing them for a few minutes.
Using a spoon, place a little of the mixture into the large leaves and close everything with kitchen straw threads.
Place the stuffed leaves in a baking dish and season with the remaining sauce set aside.
Sprinkle with toasted breadcrumbs and bake at 150°C for 15 minutes.
2. Pici with garlic
( from Toscana in Cucina - 'The flavors of Tuscany)
Ingredients for 4 people:
For the pici:
• 500 g of soft wheat flour 0
• 250 g of water
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt
For the sauce:
• 500 g of fresh tomatoes
• 6-8 cloves of garlic
• chili
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• pepper
Preparing the pici
On a pastry board, make a well with the flour, add the salt and pour in
little by little the warm water.
Knead for a long time, add a teaspoon of oil and continue working with your hands until you obtain a homogeneous, smooth and very consistent dough, adding water or flour if necessary.
Leave to rest for 30 minutes and roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1 cm, grease with oil and cut into strips as wide as they are high.
Dust the pastry board with flour and with the palm of your right hand
rub and roll each strip while using the fingers of your left hand
pull gently to lengthen until you obtain a long spaghetti that is quite thin and of uniform diameter. Sprinkle with flour to prevent it from sticking.
Cook for about 6 minutes in plenty of boiling salted water.
Preparing the sauce
Crush the garlic to remove the skin and the central shoot and fry over a very low heat for 8-10 minutes in plenty of oil in the pan where the pici will be sautéed, turning to prevent it from browning too much.
Once wilted, crush the cloves with a fork, add the chopped tomatoes, the chilli pepper and leave to flavour for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally and adjusting with salt and pepper.
When the pici are cooked to perfection, sauté them in the sauce and serve with aged Pratomagno pecorino cheese, if desired.
3. Eggplant pie
(from Calabria in Cucina - The flavours of Calabria)
Ingredients for 4 people:
• 500 g of penne or smooth celery
• 250 g of minced veal
• 1 l of tomato puree
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 kg of purple aubergines
• olive oil for frying
• 300 g of sliced caciocavallo cheese
• 200 g of grated parmesan
• salt
Fry a large finely chopped onion in oil, add the minced veal and brown everything together, add salt and tomato puree. The sauce should then be seasoned with salt and sweetened with a pinch of sugar, with continuous additions of water and its cooking will slowly accompany the morning and the preparation of all the other ingredients.
Separately, prepare the aubergines: after peeling them, leave them to 'slaughter' in a colander for about twenty minutes with a weight on top, after having arranged them in layers with salt. Once this operation is finished, wash them under running water, squeeze them and fry them in abundant olive oil.
In the meantime, cook the pennoni or smooth celery and drain them while still al dente. Dress them with the sauce, which should not be poured all over the pasta (a part is kept aside for the preparation).
Then you need the sliced caciocavallo, the grated parmesan and a baking pan with high edges of the desired shape: a drizzle of oil on the bottom of the pan, a little sauce, a layer of pasta, one of sauce, a sprinkling of cheese, a layer of caciocavallo, one of fried aubergines and so on until you run out of ingredients. This pasta tends to dry out particularly: I therefore recommend using plenty of sauce, and that it is not too dense, but rather tending towards liquid.
Bake at 190°C for about twenty minutes and serve hot.