Torta salata con funghi MAKES: One 24cm tart PREPARATION: 10 minutes COOKING: 1 hour Ingredients: • 300g chestnut or button mushrooms • 30g dried porcini mushrooms • a few tbsp of olive oil • knob of unsalted butter • 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed • 2 free-range eggs • small bunch of fresh parsley, […]
Pappardelle con ragù di anatra. Discover this dish from Pappardelle, the classic fresh egg pasta of the region. This is often served with a rich, slow-cooked sauce – often made from wild duck, hare or boar, reflecting the Tuscan passion for game. SERVES 6 PREPARATION 20 minutes COOKING 2 hours INGREDIENTS • 1 onion, peeled, […]
Creamy Tuscan Cannellini Bean Pasta with Tenderstem® broccoli Super-quick and easy to make, this vegan pasta dish is a great store cupboard supper, using mashed cannellini beans to create a creamy sauce to coat the delicious pasta. Topped with walnuts, chilli flakes and perfectly cooked Tenderstem® broccoli, this recipe is packed with the flavours of […]
Meascia, a type of bread cake, was a staple of cucina povera – an inexpensive way to make dessert using whatever was in the store cupboard. Mario Matassa shows us how to make it I’ve used apples from the nearby Valtellina in this version of meascia, but it can also be made with pears and you […]
Mario Matassa brings us this trout dish, known in Italian as filetti di trota con pesto di olive e capperi – make it tonight! Lake fish, like trout, naturally features strongly in the cuisine around the lakes. It was once a staple but overfishing was such that, for a time, other sources of fresh fish […]
This gnocchi dish originates from the Como area, and uses a local taleggio cheese, which combines with the tomato and pancetta to make a flavourful sauce, says Mario Matassa There is a long tradition around the Italian lakes of making homemade gnocchi – this dish is an easy way to recreate the flavours of the […]
Bresaola is air-cured beef fillet, which works well in a salad because the olive oil moistens the cured beef. Mario Matassa shares his recipe here… Bresaola comes from the Valtellina and the Valchiavenna in Lombardy. This is an easy and delicious recipe to try, but be sure to serve your bresaola salad soon after it […]
Mario Matassa shares his paradise cake recipe – a cake that miraculously improves with age and is better if made one or two days in advance… The name ‘paradise cake’ comes from the fact that the cake is as light as air (like paradise). It has a dry, fragile texture, so is usually filled with a […]
For a festive centrepiece Italian-style you can’t go wrong with roast guinea fowl (faraona ripiena). Mario Matassa gives us the low-down… There are a number of ways to cook guinea fowl, but at Christmas a roast seems almost obligatory. The key to a good roast is to make sure you do not overcook. You might […]
This delicious appetiser is perfect in its simplicity and requires minimal preparation time. Mario Matassa shares the recipe with us… For this crostini dish it is important to find plump prawns and to make sure that the pancetta is sliced very thinly as it has to become crisp just as the prawns are cooked: Serves 4 […]