Recipes

Savor the many tastes of Italy with these luscious Italian recipes. Enjoy a variety of dishes from biscotti to calzones or find a new twist for your traditional pizza recipes.

Recipes and instructions for all your basic cooking needs. Whether you are looking for a good Italian salad dressing, basic bread recipes, or a lesson in making your own pasta at home, you'll find it here.

To talk about the Lombard gastronomy is very difficult, but if we want to find a gastronomic lowest common denominator, it would clearly appear that the Lombard kitchen is one of fat and butter (like almost everywhere above the Appennino boarder), in which prevails the art of long cooking, boiling and stewing. Pasta alone recently has spread in mass by encroaching upon the historically acquired place of rice and polenta. Therefore it is said kitchen of broth, pucie (juices) and soups, it is a spoon kitchen, more than a fork one. It is a kitchen where one can enjoy dishes of the Padana or Alpina tradition, such as Risotto alla pitocca (a risotto prepared with chicken), il risotto alla certosina (a risotto made with frogs), vitello tonnato (veal slices covered with a sauce of mayonnaise and tuna-fish), tortelli filled with a pumpkin mix, Consonsei bergamashi (a particular pasta typical of the Bergamo gastronomy) or most of the typical cheeses such as gorgonzola (a blue cheese) and Grana Padano or the Cremona mustard (a sort of marmalade prepared with different fruits), pickled onions, and pan de mej (a cake prepared with corn meal).

The Tuscan cooking is sober and presents simple tastes prepared with expert mastery. The simplicity of dishes is bound to a cultural story of poverty and misery. The difficult conditions of life imposed the utilization of poor food on the population, that's the reason why oil is preferred instead of lard and soups are preferred instead of pasta. The fundamental food is without doubt bread, that is present in one thousand shapes including the long loaf, the wheel, from crostini (cruncy bread) to focacce (sort of flat bread), from schiacciata (another kind of flat bread) with oil to pan di ramerino (bread dough with rasins and rosmary). Also the absence of salt once too expensive which represents the typical appearance of simplicity, of poverty that characterized the cooking traditions of this territory. It is actually with bread that Tuscan recipes are made for example: the Panzanella, bread that has been soaked in water, and blended with fresh vegetables, the pappa al pomodoro that is bread cooked with garlic, parsley, basil, salt, oil and tomatoes and the famous ribollita that is a soup boiled several times. This recipe was from peasants that warmed up the soup, which was left over from the day before.

The cooking of Lazio is mainly represented by the Roman one, in which all the specialties of the cooking traditions are conveyed. This rich and tasteful cooking includes neighbouring regions culinary peculiarities, firs of all the Jewish ones with its remote historical roots.

Sardinia has a mainly pastoral economy and more than half of the island is suitable for grazing. Ewes milk is used to make the famous Sardinian cheese (pecorino) with its pronounced flavour. The Sardinians often cook their meat over hot embers, under a layer of earth and the pecorino cheese is used to flavour numerous dishes. Specialities include culingiones, the roussette (burrida). smoked ham of wild boar (proscuitto di cinghiale) and a strong meat stock with semolina balls (succutundu). Taste one of the the local wines, red or white: Nuragus and Vernaccia (dry white wine from the Oristano region, which is taken as an aperitif) are the best known.