SearchUser loginNavigation |
ItalyRisotto with Sausage and Cheese
This uses two very different cheeses: the Taleggio adds robust flavor, but you can substitute Italian Fontina or Parmigiana-Reggiano), and the Scamorza brings a stringy-zingy cheesy fun to the dish (a smoked Scamorza is just at stringy and adds a nice smoky flavor for a snowy night). Pesto di Noce Here's another pesto from Liguria, this one made with walnuts! It's great on different ravioli, especially those filled with butternut squash or with cheese, and it's really something on lobster-filled ravioli! Sole with Peppers
It would be easy to jazz this up with some basil or marjoram, or some olives or chili peppers... but the simple flavor of the peppers is wonderful with the sole and it really should be allowed to come though in its own simple glory. Pasta all'Amatriciana
It's a simple, delicious dish, but not quite as quick as it looks. Pancetta is rendered and then cooked with onions and tomatoes long enough to become soft and mellow, then it's tossed with pasta, typically spaghetti or bucatini. Cotechino with Lentils
Cotechino is an ancient variety of fatty pork sausage that goes very well with lentils. Fresh cotechino are hard to come by, but you can buy shelf-stable vacuum-packed precooked cotechino from Levoni - that's what I used here and it was delicious. Patate alla Scamorza
It includes a teaspoon of curry powder, which might seem out of place in Italian cooking. Remember Marco Polo! Italian chefs included eastern spices in their pantries long before the potato was introduced from the New World. Herb-Perfumed Meatballs
The pork is mixed with ground almonds and fresh rosemary and sage, then formed into meatballs that are cooked on skewers of the rosemary branches that provided the rosemary needles in the pork! There's a lot of ingredients here, but nothing weird. The trickiest part is getting multiple soft, uncooked meatballs intact onto the rosemary skewers! Bell Pepper Risotto This is a nice, light, colorful risotto, bright red streaks against a white-golden risotto, with great flavor too. It's vegetarian, and it could easily be made vegan by substituting something for the parmesan cheese that you stir in at the end. Farfalle ai Gamberi
It cooks up quickly and you can use frozen peas and shrimp and dried pasta so it's one of those recipes that you can whip up on short notice, and it makes an easy weeknight dinner. Valle d'Aosta Polenta Pasticciata
The cheese is not stirred into the polenta when it cooks, but rather you take a stiff cooked polenta and layer it with cheese and butter and then melt it all together into a rich golden gooey mess - a pasticciata. This is a hearty cold-weather treat. 
|
The Foodie Pilgrim is also active on: Newest Recipes
|
Here's one of those hearty rib-sticking dinners that must surely be unhealthy but it's mighty comforting on a cold January night!
This is an easy dish with fine simple flavors, especially if you use farm-fresh peppers and tomatoes in the summertime. 
Amatrice is a small city in very central Italy. Occupied since prehistory, it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 2016. Right after that tragedy, many Italian-American restaurants added this as a special to help raise funds for the stricken community.
Here's a traditional New Year's Eve dish eaten all over Italy! The lentils are supposed to remind you of an abundance of coins, suggesting prosperity in the coming year.
Here's a vegetarian dish that's easy to make and fun to eat. Scamorza is a very stretchy-stringy-melty cheese.
I had some ground pork looking for a way to be useful and this recipe looked intriguing - I love it!
This is a popular combination: shrimp and peas on pasta in a light butter-white wine sauce. 
A pasticciata is a mess of something, and many recipes based on polenta are called Polenta Pasticciata con something or alla someplace. This one is in the style of Valle d'Aosta, way up in the far Northwest, up against the French Alps, so that means is uses the famous Fontina cheese, of which the best is the name-protected Fontina Valle d'Aosta.
