Preparation: boil the beans (soaked the night before). Drain and do not throw away the cooking water. Blanch pork rind for five minutes in boiling water so lost a bit of fat. Take a pan with the onions, carrot and celery in a few tablespoons of oil. Add pork rinds cut into strips and let them cook for a few minutes. Pour also beans, salt, pepper and tomato sauce. Cook over low heat, adding if necessary, the cooking water from the beans. Serve the beans with pork rind with thick toast.
Preparation: wash the tripe carefully and boil in abundant water for at least two hours along with all the other vegetables (celery, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, a slice of lemon and a splash of vinegar). When it is cooked, drain it, scraping well with a knife to remove the fat. Forcefully rub both sides with half an onion and then with two lemons. Rinse thoroughly under running water, dry, then cut into thin strips. Season with salt, pepper, and spices and leave to gain flavour until the following day. Chop the celery, carrot, and onion and sauté in the butter; add the tripe and a cup of stock containing a little tomato sauce. Leave to cook slowly for about three hours, adding the rest of the stock a little at a time. Serve sprinkled with freshly grated Parmesan. At this point, if possible let the tripe rest for up to a whole day. Then put back on the heat for about an hour. Serve hot.
Preparation: whip the egg whites thoroughly with the sugar. Add the almonds (after cleaning them thoroughly) cut into fillets, the candied citron diced, and the chocolate in pieces (without crumbling them). Add the chocolate last because the cake must remain white. Prepare the pastry and roll it out quite thin. Prepare a baking pan, buttered and floured, and line it with the pastry. Pour in the mixture and bake.
Top photo: “Torta fritta and salumi” (c) 2014 WordRidden – some rights reserved. Preparation: warm the water and dissolve the yeast in it, then pour everything into a bowl. Add the olive oil, the flour, and a teaspoon of salt. Knead thoroughly and with the mixture make a ball and leave to rise for about 30 minutes. Then roll out the dough into a sheet that is not too thin and cut into diamonds. Toss the diamonds into boiling seed-oil and let them inflate and become golden. Finally, lay them on absorbent paper and eat immediately with your favourite deli meat.
Preparation: toss the tagliatelle into a pot with boiling salted water. While it is cooking, put 50g of butter in a frying pan, half of the asparagus, chopped, and a small piece of stock cube for flavour. Julienne-cut the Culatello and set aside to flavour with butter and asparagus. Drain the tagliatelle and toss in the pan with the sauce. Sprinkle a little Langhiparma Parmigiano Reggiano aged 30 months onto a serving dish and lay the tagliatelle on top. Decorate the dish with asparagus on the side, a slice of Culatello in the centre, a dusting of Parmesan and a little parsley.
Preparation: cook all the filling ingredients in boiled honey and allow to stand overnight. The next day, mix together the ingredients for the pastry and form two sheets. With the larger sheet, line the edges of a cake tin and pour in the filling. Then cover with the remaining pastry, pressing along the edges. Bake at 180°C.
Preparation: wash and dry the pork shoulder and put it in a saucepan with high sides, but not too wide. Cover flush with cold water, bring to a simmer, skim off the froth, then add the vinegar, salt, pepper, onion, celery, and bay leaf. Bring back to the boil and from that moment simmer, over medium heat, for about 2 hours. Remove the meat from the stock, cut into thin slices and arrange these on a serving dish.
Preparation of the ingredients: clean the half onion and chop as finely as possible. Clean the mushrooms and slice fairly thinly. Clean the asparagus and cook, retaining only the tips, since only this part of the asparagus serves for the recipe. Cut the ham into thin strips. Dice the tomatoes.
Preparation of the rice: take a pan and sauté the onion over low heat in the butter. Add the rice, stir and fry for about a minute. At this point, add all the other ingredients, the mushrooms but also the ham, asparagus tips, and tomatoes. Continue to stir and wet occasionally with the stock. After approximately ten minutes also add the cream. Continue to stir and pour in the stock a little at a time until the rice is completely cooked. Cooking should take about 20 minutes. At this point stir in the butter and the Parmesan cheese and serve hot.
The recipe for Minestra Squisita (“Delicious Soup”) of Giuseppe Verdi is contained in the first number of the magazine La Cucina Italiana under the heading Soups and equivalent foods, under Genuine rural soups signed by the under-secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Arturo Marescalchi:
“Of this soup was enamoured, in a special way, Giuseppe Verdi, and it was often served in the Palazzo Doria in Genoa, or at the Villa Sant’Agata”.
Preparation: cook the potatoes with salt; then peel them and grind them in a mortar, or mash with the back of a saucer. Reduced to a paste, add the 75 grams of butter, a tablespoon of flour, the grated Parmesan, and the 6 egg yolks. Shake everything well to form a homogeneous mass: then form lots of small balls, and fry these in a pan with oil. When they are cooked put them on kitchen paper to draw out all of the oil and then into a saucepan. Pour in some good stock, especially chicken, or turkey if you have some, and a little meat sauce. You will end up with a perfect soup. For six persons half the amounts.
Preparation: prepare the filling: in a saucepan, if possible of terracotta, melt the butter and sauté the carrot, celery, and whole onion in it, and when everything is well-browned, add the meat and the peeled Salamino. As soon as the meat is browned, sprinkle with the wine and allow to evaporate, then add salt and pepper, pour in the stock – in which you have diluted the tomato paste, cover, and cook over low heat for 2 hours: in the end, the meat must be well cooked and the sauce dense. Pass everything through the meat grinder. In a bowl put the minced meat with the sauce, bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese and eggs, flavour with a pinch of nutmeg, and stir to mix everything well. Prepare the pasta: arrange the flour in a mound, break the egg into the centre, salt, and add a little water or better a tablespoon of oil, and knead until a soft but firm mass forms. Roll out a thin sheet, on different rows line up little mounds of filling, and cover with another sheet compressing the edges with your fingers. Cut out the anolini with a pastry cutter. Cook in the meat stock and serve with grated Parmesan cheese.