The typical recipes of Calabria are so many and varied that choosing only some is really difficult, so in majority you will find here the recipes of the regional capital: Reggio Calabria. Calabria is a hospitable, wild and beautiful land with a pristine sea and mountains with breathtaking views, and with a millennial culinary tradition. It is a tasty and tasty cuisine linked to the products of the land and above all to those of the sea.
In Calabria cold cuts are produced that have a long tradition, the most famous being nduja, a soft salami that is prepared with the fat parts of the pig and the peperoncino.Older to the meats also the cheeses. Calabria boasts one of the oldest dairy traditions in our country. The various pecorinos such as pecorino crotonese or pecorino del Pollino, caciocavallo or burrito del Pollino, just to name a few, are exported and enjoyed not only in Italy.
Let's start with the recipes that are both land and sea.
The first dish for Sundays and holidays are the typical macaroni, seasoned with a sausage ragout and a lot of grated salted ricotta
. Macaroni are a type of handmade pasta not very difficult to prepare even if the processing is a little long.
300 grams of flour type 0
grams 300 grits
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of olive oil
about a glass of hot water
Mix the type 0 flour with the semolina, add salt and milk. oil and knead the dough with your hands, adding the water slowly. This is because the final result must be a fairly hard but not moist dough. Make a dough and refrigerate it for at least an hour. After this time, work it a little more with your hands and cut it into pieces and rolling the piece with your hands make a rather long cylinder of dough with a finger diameter. Prepare as many cylinders as there are pieces you have cut. These cylinders must in turn be cut into pieces of about 2 centimeters. At this point we have to give it the original shape and this is done by rolling the 2 cm piece around a knitting needle or if you don't have it available on a wooden skewer stick. Roll the dough into a toothpick and roll out until it has covered the entire toothpick. Remove the toothpick and at this point we will have obtained the first maccaruni which is just a kind of rather coarse perforated spaghetti.
We repeat the processing for all the pieces of pasta.
Let us now prepare the sauce to season our macaroni.
Kilograms 1 - 1,200 of peeled tomatoes
300 grams of ground pork
300 grams of ground beef
2 sausages (if you find those typical of Reggio Calabria with fennel seeds and black pepper)
1 small onion
olive oil, salt and pepper to taste just
salt and grated ricotta for seasoning
Put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan and sauté the finely chopped onion.
Add the meat, both pork and beef, and the sausages peeled and cut into small pieces. Adjust the salt and pepper and after about ten minutes add the blended tomatoes.
Cook over low heat and with a lid for about 6 hours adding a little water if needed during cooking to prevent sticking. Once cooked the macaroni in plenty of boiling salted water, season with the ragù and grate over the salted ricotta.
styleA traditional dish from Reggio Calabria Traditional
For this recipe, it is necessary to find Calabrian broccoli.
700 grams of short pasta like mezze striped
rigs 600 grams of Calabrese broccoli already cleaned
100 grams of provola cheese or similar
5 salted anchovy fillets
100 grams of grated seasoned pecorino
2 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of parsley
salt, pepper and olive oil as required,
Clean and chop the broccoli into small pieces and cook them in plenty of boiling salted water for about 15-20 minutes. Do not throw away the broccoli cooking water as it will be used to cook the pasta.
In a pan with 4-5 tablespoons of olive oil cook the finely chopped anchovies with the garlic also this very finely chopped.
Add the chopped chilli and cook for 3 or 4 minutes. At this point add the broccoli into small pieces, adjust the salt and cook a few more minutes. In the meantime you will put the cooking water back on the heat and as soon as it is hot put the pasta. Once cooked and drained, put it in the pan with the broccoli, add the diced provola and the chopped parsley and mix well. Dust with plenty of grated mature pecorino cheese before serving.
kilograms 1 sword fish
300 grams peeled tomatoes
3 potatoes
1 clove of garlic
Tropea onion
10 grams of capers
grams 50 of olives without stones
olive oil, chili pepper, salt and parsley as required
First, let's cook the potatoes in plenty of boiling water without peeling them for about thirty minutes. (time depends on the size of the potatoes).
Fry the finely chopped onion and garlic with 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan until golden brown. Add the capers and olives and the peeled tomatoes into small pieces and cook for 5 minutes. Adjust the salt, chopped chilli and put the swordfish into slices. Cook about 6 - 7 minutes turning the fish several times. Halfway through cooking, add the potatoes that you have peeled and cut into small pieces and mix everything together. Put the chopped parsley on the table before serving.
1 kilogram of clean and gutted anchovies
80 grams of stale bread or breadcrumbs
80 grams of green olives without stones
25 grams of capers
1 clove of garlic
1 bunch of parsley
salt and black pepper and oil of olive as required
Finely chop the garlic, capers, parsley and add the breadcrumbs and the sliced green olives .. Mix well.
Put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a baking pan, preferably in crock. To cover the entire surface of the pan, now place the anchovies next to each other. Season the layer with the garlic caper mixture and breadcrumbs and wet everything with olive oil. Continue alternating layers of anchovies and the mixture until the ingredients are used up. Wet again with olive oil and bake at 180 degrees for 30 minutes.
And now let's move on to the typical sweets.
Typical sweets that are prepared during the Easter period.
400 grams of flour
150 grams of sugar
3 eggs
50 grams of aniseed liqueur
100 grams of butter at room temperature
1 packet of baking powder
1 lemon
grams 50 of milk
colored sugars for garnish
Mix flour with baking powder, add the eggs. the anise liqueur, the sugar and the butter cut into small pieces. Work with your hands until the butter has melted completely, add the grated lemon peel and form a soft, compact ball. Refrigerate the dough for at least twenty minutes.
Take the dough again and work with your hands again. Now make balls with the dough and give each ball the shape you like best, like a dove, a braid, or a heart shape but with a maximum dough height of 2 centimeters.
Brush the biscuits with milk and decorate with colored sugars.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes or until the surface is golden.
is the Calabrian version of the pignolata that is prepared in Sicily.
350 grams of wheat flour
4 whole eggs
30 grams of butter
200 grams of honey
30 grams of sugar
1 lemon
salt enough
half a liter of seed oil for frying.
colored sugars for garnish
In a bowl, break the eggs, adding a pinch of salt and working the dough with a wooden spoon, slowly add the flour, the butter in flakes, the sugar and the grated peel of a lemon. Take the dough and work it with your hands until you get a compact and firm dough. Put the dough covered with a film in the refrigerator for at least an hour. In this way the dough is better processed.
Cut the dough into many pieces and roll the pieces until they become cylinders with a thickness of one centimeter. These cylinders should be cut into small pieces about one centimeter in which you try to give a round shape.
Fry the pieces in abundant seed oil to fry until they are golden brown, about 4 minutes and pass them on absorbent paper to remove excess oil.
Put the fried pieces in a bowl and sprinkle the whole with honey, mixing well. Sprinkle with colored sugars and serve at the table.