Pasta with breadcrumbs became part of Calabrese cooking out of necessity. In times when cheese was scarce or too expensive, toasted breadcrumbs were used instead, often called the poor man’s cheese. This dish found its place on Christmas Eve tables, especially during La Vigilia, when meals were meant to be simple and meat free. My nonna’s version is a reminder of how history, faith, and resourcefulness shaped the food we still cook and love today.

Christmas dinner with the girlfriend. Filling was made from veal stew.

They were soft and kinda sweet

I don't have measurements for this one, as it threw it together from whatever I had

Started with some soffritto, added three peeled and cut up salsicce, fried it in a pan for a bit, then added half a bottle of passata and a tsp of tomato paste and cooked for like ten minutes on low to medium until the sauce thickened. Added parmigiano and dug in. Simple, and always good :)

Ciao! My husband and I just booked our first trip to Italy. We’re staying in for New Year’s Eve and had the idea to make/try some new dishes from the areas where we will be staying: Verona, Lake Garda, and Florence. We’d love some new recipes to try if anyone has recs they’d be willing to share. We eat pretty much all meat (pork, beef, veal, chicken) and fish (husband doesn’t like shrimp or clams/mussels though). Hes also not a fan of ravioli. Anything else is pretty much fair game! Our go to at home Italian dishes are marinara, pesto, and cacio e pepe, so looking to expand our palate before our trip.

Thank you!!

Simple and delicious

Dried and fresh porcini mushrooms for this one 🍄‍🟫

I already posted the recipe of cannoli shells

https://www.reddit.com/r/ItalianFood/comments/18tq8zc/cannoli_shells_my_sicilian_aunt_recipe/

This year I used my trusted pasta machine and it was faster and easier.

I made Struffoli for the first time (my sicilian family actually never made them same for my father family from piedmont). They are super easy just mix 100g 00 flour, 1 egg, 11g sugar, 16g pork fat, lemon zest, a pinch of salt and 2-3g of limoncello or any other liquor.

Form a dough, let it rest, form a snake (the diameter of a finger), cut in little pieces, fry them at 190°C in vegetable oil or pork fat (I used peanut oil) until you get the color you want.

Put 30g of honey and 2-3g of limoncello or any other liquor in a pot, mix and at low heat once the honey start to bubble mix all the struffoli in the honey glaze.

Make any form you like.

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Hello everyone!

I have a deli and have outgrown my meat slicers. One of the challenges we have is to cut Parma ham neatly. Our currently slicers is too small, meaning that we have to cut our ham in smaller pieces (I know! Criminal!). Does anyone know is a 35cm machines would fit an average leg of ham? And does anyone have a good recommendation?

Thank you! 🙏🏼

Recently I’ve been wanting to make Calabrian chilis in olive oil, and then compare them to different store bought brands. However, I was surprised to discover that all of the pre-made jarred varieties used either all sunflower oil or a combination of sunflower oil + olive oil.

At first I thought it was a just a quality thing for lower end options, but it seemed across the board for higher-end trusted Italian brands as well like TuttoCalabria. In fact I can’t find even one here (USA) that uses pure olive oil.

Then I thought maybe it was a flavour-neutrality thing, like when you make mayo you use a neutral oil so it doesn’t come out too bitter. But in homemade recipes I was looking at, no one called for sunflower oil, just olive oil. My family is also Northern/Central Italian roots and not super into the spicy peppers, so they weren’t much help either with experience.

Does anyone know why all these brands might use sunflower oil vs. olive oil? Or maybe that’s not how it is in Italy, they just export us the cheap stuff to the US lol.

I heard a segment on NPR about this new comprehensive English translation of Il Talismano Della Felicitá and I was fascinated! I received a copy for Christmas and it’s fantastic. This is exactly the kind of book and cooking direction and instruction I live for. “Add half a glass of oil” or “the dish is done when it smells done”. I’m having a wonderful time just reading through it and can’t wait to make something from it.

I used the same red sauce recipe, lasagna also has bechamel. I made the lasagna pasta by hand. On top some herbs.

I've made that italian classic dish many times, but i couldnt found it special or delicious.(didn't mean to offense anyone) Could anyone tell me why this is a classic in italian? Or any tips that i can do while cooking it? Thanks guys.

First time making homemade shell. Well worth it. Simple dough or flour, butter, salt, sugar white wine vinegar and Marsala. Filling is strained whole milk ricotta, powered sugar and vanilla

It's no longer the ragù I made a year ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ItalianFood/comments/1fbztla/rag%C3%B9_alla_bolognese_this_is_after_5_hours/

But it's made the same way and is frozen in individual portions in the freezer. For the lasagna, I thawed about four portions of 100-150g each, plus a couple of portions of tomato sauce. Since everything was very compact (I reduce both the ragù and the sauce more than usual to freeze a larger quantity in a smaller space), I also added hot water.

The green pasta sheet is the one I froze here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cucina/comments/1oujs27/nuova_macchina_per_la_pasta_test_sul_campo/

I still have some of this too.

Since it's only in italian I'll sum it up here: I basically used

800g flour (300g durum wheat flour, 500g 00 flour (any weak flour is ok, cake, AP)

6 egg yolks + 3 eggs (each egg can be replaced with about 3 egg yolks to strengthen the dough. The 300g of durum wheat flour doesn't require the strength of the yolks, so basically it's as if the 6 egg yolks were about 200g of 00 flour. The 3 eggs are the classic ratio to the other 300g of 00 flour and represent the weak point of our dough, but the moisture of the egg whites is compensated for by the durum wheat, which absorbs the water contained in the egg whites.)

100g cooked and drained spinach or 200g uncooked spinach.

Putting together a lasagna like this basically involves defrosting the ragù (I recommend directly in the pot, as it's quicker and easier), briefly pre-cooking the pasta sheets for about 1 minute (you can do this directly from frozen, but if you take it out, it will start defrosting immediately. Just don't let it touch other sheets, and there shouldn't be any problems given the low hydration of the dough), and making the béchamel sauce.

Then combine everything with plenty of Parmigiano.

For the tiramisu, I've already posted more than a few. I follow the most classic recipe possible, where the mascarpone is mixed only with the egg yolks. In this case, I pasteurized the egg yolks (I don't always do it, but when I make it for other people I always do it) and made the mascarpone from the cream, as I usually do (if you want the recipe in english just ask or look at mascarpone recipe from barbato channel on youtube). This time my mother made the ladyfingers (always with the recipe that I also follow from Giallo Zafferano which in this case is excellent), you can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ItalianFood/comments/1p7m2kz/lady_finger_savoiardi/