Italian regional cuisine

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Winter recipes from Italy: bread, chickpea and smoked cheese soup

25 April, 2020

Winter in Italy has got particularly cold of late and so here is a perfect Italian recipe to warm us up: soup with chickpeas, bread and scamorza, or smoked cheese. It’s a typical dish from the tiny Molise region and…

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Italian cooking: traditional regional vs national dishes – who wins?

23 April, 2020

Italian cooking will also celebrate 150 years of Italian unification this year, but the regionalism associated with traditional Italian recipes and dishes nearly always outweighs a nationalist interpretation of Italian cuisine. Over recent weeks, as Italy celebrated the date of…

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Rome festivals: the "ciumacata" and snails for San Giovanni Battista

18 April, 2020

You either love them or you hate them: for some snails are at the top of specialist delicacies, for others the very idea of them turns the stomach.While famous around the world as a French dish, Rome has its typical…

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Recipes from southern Italy: "sanguinaccio" pie

13 April, 2020

This regional Italian dish comes from the south of Italy and is particularly famous in Campania. I was very tempted to write “bloody” cake in the title but thought better of it. In any case, the name “torta di sanguinaccio”…

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Finding the best buffalo mozzarella in Rome

9 April, 2020

In a famous scene from one the funny Italian films from Enzo Turco, Miseria e Nobilità, our protagonist, Totò describes what good mozzarella is like. And if it’s not good, “desisti”! Italy’s best buffalo mozzarella comes from the cuisine of…

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International Day of Italian cuisine: celebrating homemade pesto sauce

8 April, 2020

Today is the fourth annual International Day for Italian Cuisine and this year’s focus is the regional Italian cuisine dish of pesto from Liguria. Genoa is the home of Italy’s famous pesto sauce and this edition follows the previous celebration…

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Boutique shopping in Rome: 500 types of pasta at Pastateca

8 April, 2020

It’s true that you can do just about anything with pasta, but I would never have said there were 500 types of pasta in the world. But if you’re shopping in Rome and exploring its boutique stores, you might find…

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Traditional Italian Christmas recipe from Umbria: walnut crunch

5 April, 2020

This yummy Italian Christmas recipe comes from Umbria and is a kind of walnut crunch called “le nociate”. Walnuts are frequently to be found in Italian cooking in various regions, including “nociate romane” from Rome and “copete ternane” from Terni,…

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Italian food festivals: cheese in Tuscany at Terranuova Bracciolini

26 March, 2020

The town of Terranuova Bracciolini in the province of Arezzo will be busy again in May with a local bean and cheese festival taking place. Tuscany is the place to be for Italian food festivals and in the past the…

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Italian summer recipes: pasta with potatoes and pesto

24 March, 2020

Italian pasta recipes can get creative and while it might seem like a strange combination to some, there is more than one example in Italy of pasta and potato served together. As summer in Italy approaches and we’re in a…

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Classic Italian Christmas recipes: cake or sweetbread from Bologna

19 March, 2020

Today we’re going to look at this traditional Italian Christmas recipe from Bologna called the certosino. It’s a kind of cake or sweetbread which is also called panspeziale or ’spiced bread’. It’s made from a series of ingredients including dried…

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Italian ricotta pie from Campania

17 March, 2020

If you were lucky enough to spend your Italian Easter in Naples, you may have had the chance to taste this traditional Neapolitan recipe from Campania - ricotta pie. Called la pastiera, the Italian dessert is made from shortcrust pastry,…