This old Italian recipe for bread-crumb balls comes from Apulia, a region in Southern Italy; it’s delicious and will leave your taste buds hungry for more!

Here are the ingredients: bread crumbs; 1 egg; grated pecorino cheese; 1 garlic clove; parsley; extra virgin olive oil; salt.

Preparation: soak the breadcrumbs in a bowl of milk, then drain ( squeeze to expel all the remaining liquid) Next add to it the egg, pecorino, oil, garlic, chopped parsley and salt. Roll into balls and then fry in a little oil. Cook the breadcrumb balls until golden brown.

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There are many Italian cheeses that you can treat yourself to, and often the enjoyment is increased by choosing the right side serve for your cheese. With soft cheeses, aged cheese and everything right down to the simple ricotta or mozzarella, Italy has much to offer. But if you experiment with other traditional Italian products like marmalade, jams and other sweet or savoury accompaniments, you will find yourself in a real cheese paradise.

For example, with the asiago cheese from Trentino, you could try a “radicchio” or chicory condiment, where the bitter taste of the vegetable works well with the slightly mature cheese. A soft cheese, but with a strong taste, like “caciotta” blends nicely with a forest fruit or strawberry and raspberry jam, with its slightly sour taste.

A classic marriage of Italian cheese and condiment is a vintage pecorino with fig jam. Its perfume and sweetness blends nicely, and the fig accompaniment can be used for harder cheeses like parmigiano reggiano (parmesan) or grana padano.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: How to serve Italian cheese: condiments

Try this easy and quick pasta recipe. It’s simply heavenly ! Here are the ingredients:

200 g spaghetti; 10 anchovies; 20 stoned olives; 2 garlic cloves; oil; 1 tablespoon tomato sauce; two tablespoons sour cream; 50 g pecorino cheese; salt and white pepper; lard

Preparation: Brown the crushed garlic in a little oil (use a non stick pan), add the lard, the chopped olives and the anchovies. Next remove the garlic and stir in the other ingredients. In the meanwhile cook the spaghetti in slightly salted water, drain and throw in the pan. Stir for a while and then serve with a sprinkle of pecorino cheese and pepper. Bon appetit!

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Italian recipes: spaghetti with garlic, olives and anchovies

Easter in Italy is a time of traditional Italian recipes, where every family pulls out the old recipe book and makes something from times gone by. In Umbria, the “crescia” is famous, and often better known as a cheese pizza. In fact, the main ingredients are parmesan cheese, pecorino and milk, creating a dish that goes with just about anything.

Ingredients: 500 g of type 00 flour, 50 g of butter, 25 g of lard, 30 g of beer yeast, 150 g of grated parmesan cheese, 50 g of fresh pecorino, one glass of milk, three eggs, salt and pepper.

Heat the milk in a pan, and melt the yeast in the milk, mixing and letting rest for a few minutes. Add the flour and some sugar. Beat the eggs, add salt and then add to the mix, kneading for about 15 minutes. Add the softened butter and then leave to rise for two hours.

Knead the mixture again, adding the grated parmesan, shaved pecorino and lard. Place in an oiled and floured tin and leave to rise again for another hour, before baking in the oven at about 200°C for an hour.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Italian recipes for Easter: cheese pizza from Umbria

This is an old-school recipe from Rome that some might remember their grandmother’s making, which is easy to make as long as your butcher has the right ingredients.

Ingredients for four people: 2 kg of chicken intestine, an onion, one carrot, celery, chopped parsley, 100 grams of butter, 50 grams of parma ham chopped into cubes, five tablespoons of tomato paste, some grated pecorino.

Preparation: after leaving the chicken bowell or intestine to rest in some cold water for a few hours to become white, place in a pan and cover with cold water. Add the celery, carrot and half the onion and bring to the boil before simmering at moderate heat. Cover the pan and leave to cook until the liquid is almost entirely reduced. In a flat pan simmer the butter, parma ham and the rest of the onion. Add the bowels, leaving them to take on the flavour for a few minutes. Add the tomato paste with a bit of water and cook for another 1o minutes. Serve after adding the parsley and pecorino.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Italian recipes: how to make Roman dish of chicken bowels with sauce

While this might be confusing for Italians who can’t understand why you want to cook while on holiday, culinary tours in Tuscany and other regions, are nothing new for tourists to this country. Generally aimed at promoting local specialties, the tours often combine Italian cooking classes with dinners and wine tasting.

The most famous are in Tuscany and Abruzzo, where in the former you can learn how to prepare a traditional Sunday lunch. Much focus recently is placed on sustainable agricultural practices, along with the re-discovery of fresh and seasonal produce. Visits are organised to butcher shops in business since 1628, or to cheese producers where you can buy pecorino directly from the facilities.

In Abruzzo, where the traditional specialties are different, you can learn to make (and then taste) homemade pasta, and desserts where the ritual of making sweets is linked to courtship. One dessert that is simple but really good, is homemade lemon sorbet.

While you can come away from a culinary tour having learned many mouthwatering recipes, they’re an important means for the Italians to preserve some of their agricultural traditions such as olive oil production, milk and milk products, wine and many more. There is an ocean of websites dedicated to culinary tours, Italian cooking schools and guides to wine tourism. You just need to explore.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Culinary tours and Italian cooking classes

Of all the famous sauces you can put on pasta in Italy, today we look at Carbonara. While the traditional recipe doesn’t involve cream, in Italy every mother, grandmother and house wife has her own recipe. Pasta alla carbonara is a home-style dish from Rome, famous for the simplicity of the ingredients used, and its intense and sometimes spicy flavour. Our experts over on Gustoblog are traditionalists: for them only Roman carbonara exists. Everything else doesn’t count.

Carbonara requires guanciale, or fried bacon (from pig’s cheeks), and a sauce made of egg yolk added after serving the pasta. This is important because otherwise the egg cooks too much in the pan and loses its creamy texture. The dish is then abundantly covered with pecorino and pepper.

The quality of the recipe lies in the balance between the sweetness of the egg, the succulence of the bacon and the spicy pepper. In the video you can see a nice example of how to prepare this typical dish.

Continue reading: How to make carbonara

Pasta without cheese is like the cake without icing. Seriously - the Italians have a proverb that goes “come il cacio sui maccheroni” (like cheese on maccheroni) which is when you’ve reached the point of sublime perfection. There are various cheeses you can use on pasta, such as grana padano, pecorino or cacio (this also is a sheep or goat cheese). But whatever pasta you choose to make and whatever you throw in, without the cheese it’s just not pasta.

But overseas there are some experiments you can do, things that Italians would never ever permit, and one of them is using ketchup. No we’re not kidding, it has been done and here is a recipe from ketchupketchup.splinder.com on penne, ketchup and pecorino. So how do you start? Well first of all, you need your home-made ketchup, using fresh tomatoes.

If all the boiling, chopping, seed-removing, season adding and jar sterilising is too difficult, just pop down to your local supermarket and buy a bottle of the stuff - you favourite brand will do. Now you’re ready for your pasta and ketchup and, of course, your pecorino cheese. This might be a scandalous recipe for the Italians but if you love ketchup, then it couldn’t be easier. You basically boil your pasta and after draining it, throw it in with some ketchup and pecorino. That’s it! Maybe a little Americanised but there you go, ketchup on your pasta (with cheese!).

Photo | Flickr

Via | ketchupketchup.splinder

Continue reading: Ketchup on pasta? You must be kidding...

In Italy, especially on certain days of the week in towns throughout the country, you can find markets which sell fresh and local produce and they’re really great places to shop. You can mix it with the oldies who’ve been going for years and know all the secrets about who’s got the best cheese, or the freshest vegies or the crustiest bread.

Our colleagues at Gustoblog have done their homework for the month of May and discovered that the best dish around, especially in Liguria, is pesto. And the essential ingredient is basil, preferably from this region of Italy. So how do you make Genovese pesto?

First of all the traditional accompaniment is potatoes and beans, always bearing in mind though that the Italians are very serious about their cooking so don’t get too imaginative. To reinforce this, just last month the World Pesto Mortar Made Championships took place in Genoa, Liguria’s capital (hey why not get yourself a nice marble Mortar to get fit for next year Championsip?). Here’s how to prepare a good pesto.

Continue reading: May: pesto season in Liguria

It’s obvious that I am not from Sardinia. In fact the first time I heard someone talking about culurgiones I thought they were simply trying to insult me. Well I soon found out that I was wrong and culurgiones were instead just a variety of stuffed pasta.

The dough is made from white flour, semolina flour, eggs and salted water and then filled with potatoes and cheese (pecorino from Sardinia to be accurate) garlic and mint. It’s usually shaped like a grain of wheat.

Culorgiones are usually served with tomato sauce, basil and a sprinkle of pecorino. Here are the two most famous recipes, the traditional one and the one with onions. It’s up to you now.

Continue reading: Culurgiones: ravioli from Sardinia