Guanciale Central Italy’s Cured Pork Cheek Guanciale is Italian cured pork cheek. It’s salt-cured with black pepper and spices, then hung to age for at least 30 days. The result is a rough triangle of dense fat with a seam of deep red-pink meat running through it, roughly…
Abbacchio alla cacciatora is a Roman lamb stew from Lazio, cooked on the stovetop with garlic, rosemary, sage, white wine, and white wine vinegar. What makes it distinctively Roman is the anchovy paste which you stirr into the pan juices near the end. The anchovies dissolve completely. There is…
Trippa alla fiorentina (Florentine tripe) is beef tripe slow-cooked in tomato sauce and finished with Parmigiano Reggiano.. Soffritto, tripe, tomatoes, Parmigiano. The sauce should be thick and sticky, and not watery. And the cheese is stirred in stirred in off the heat to stop it going stringy. Florence takes…
Salsa di noci is a walnut sauce from Liguria, on Italy’s north-western coast. It is the traditional partner for Liguria’s filled pansoti pasta, and it has been part of the region’s kitchen for a very long time. The sauce is an emulsion of walnuts, garlic, bread, and olive oil,…
Pansoti con salsa di noci is Liguria’s traditional stuffed pasta – thin sheets of pasta bianchi (white pasta dough) filled with greens and cheese, shaped into small parcels, and dressed with salsa di noci, a cold walnut sauce. The name pansoti comes from the Genovese dialect word for ‘little bellies’ – a reference to…
Trippa alla genovese is a slow-cooked tripe dish from Genoa, cooked with pine nuts, dried porcini mushrooms, white wine, and tomatoes. It is a rich, deeply flavoured secondo (main course) that has fed the city for centuries, sold from marble-countered tripperie (tripe shops) in the caruggi, the narrow medieval alleyways of Genoa’s old town.…
Tagliolini con asparagi e guanciale is a spring pasta with asparagus and cured pork cheek. It’s a popular recipe across across central Italian regions, including Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Calabria. Guanciale is a product in this region and it comes up in many local recipes in these areas.…
Condiglione is a summer salad from Liguria, the thin coastal strip of north-west Italy that curves around the Gulf of Genoa. The core ingredients are tomatoes, red onion, Ligurian olives, capers, good olive oil, and oregano. There is no fixed recipes if you ask ten Ligurian cooks how they…
Trenette al pesto is a Ligurian pasta dish of long flat pasta noodles tossed with fresh basil pesto, potatoes, and green beans – all cooked together in one pot. It comes from Genoa, the regional capital of Liguria, and it has been on trattoria menus there for generations. More…