friuli Archives - Very EATalian

Crostoli: a perfectly crisp Carnevale treat

January 23, 2020 By very EATalian Leave a Comment

Carnevale is the period falling right before Lent when Italians indulge in rich foods, silly costumes, and pranks. Kids (and sometimes adults) dress up for Carnevale and even go to school and local parades, all dressed up. I was an adorable Pierrot at age 3 and a cute gypsy at 4. Then there’s no other photographic evidence of my Carnevale outfits…until I was about 10. That’s when I wore my unforgettable (cringe!) 1800s-style Principessa Primavera dress. I looked like a pink cloud, covered in tulle and frills, with a silly hoop at the bottom of the skirt, bouncing back and forth as I moved anywhere. The best part of the costume? The wide-brim hat covered in pink tulle, leaving my poofy bangs intact. In the picture I looked all cheerful, right next to my cousin wearing the same exact dress (yikes!).

As I grew older, my interest shifted from wearing costumes and throwing confetti in the air, to savoring delicious Carnevale treats, i.e., frittelle, castagnole, and crostoli. My mom usually makes one batch of each and they all disappear pretty quickly. Crostoli are the treat that goes the quickest, as they are utterly and sneakingly addictive!

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Creamy Polenta with Grana Padano Cheese Fondue

January 14, 2020 By very EATalian Leave a Comment

As strange as it may sound, my dad always says he grew up eating “polenta e latte” (polenta and milk). In the morning, he would break a slice of hardened polenta into his bowl of warm milk and call it a breakfast. Although I never had the pleasure to try it, my mom confirms it’s delicious!

WHAT’S POLENTA, ANYWAY?

Cheap and filling, polenta is the quintessential peasant food of Northern Italy; it’s coarsely ground cornmeal cooked in water for a long time. Polenta is very versatile. Do you remember that Forrest Gump’s scene where Bubba goes on and on about shrimp? Well, I could go on and on about all the different ways to eat polenta! It can be yellow, white or dark (polenta taragna, a blend of buckweat flour and cornmeal). When soft, it’s the perfect companion for stews or any dish that includes a little sauce. When hard, it turns into a loaf that can be easily sliced and then pan-seared, grilled or fried. Here are just a few examples of how people in Friuli and Veneto like to eat it: polenta with sauteed mushrooms, polenta with melted cheese, polenta with grilled meat, polenta e baccala’ (salt cod), polenta con polastro in tecia (stewed chicken), polenta e spezzatino (beef stew), polenta e osei (birds!), polenta with eggs, polenta with salami cooked in vinegar, polenta with fried sardines…and the list goes on and on!

Creamy Polenta with Grana Padano Cheese Fondue | Very EATalian

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Soft Frico

April 20, 2016 By very EATalian 3 Comments

If you’re a cheese lover and you want to take your cheese experience to a whole another level, you MUST try soft frico — the quintessential and most loved dish from Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Soft frico is basically a cheese & potato pie, crispy on the outside, and soft and gooey on the inside. Just like the people from Friuli, frico is a no-frill, essential, and straightforward dish. Created out of necessity, when people had few ingredients on hand, frico was made using the leftover scraps (strissulis) of Montasio, a cheese produced locally.

If you’d like to try this recipe and you want to keep it authentic, you definitely need to use Montasio cheese. Similar to Swiss and Asiago, fresh Montasio cheese has a mild, delicate, and somewhat fruity flavor. It comes at different aging stages, ranging from fresh (60 days-4 months), to slightly aged (5-12 months), to aged (over 12 months). As you can imagine, the flavor becomes more intense and sharp with time….

Pasta e Fagioli Soup

January 27, 2016 By very EATalian Leave a Comment

I’ll start off by admitting that Pasta e Fagioli isn’t the sexiest soup around (and I can assure you it was quite hard to photograph)…BUT it definitely makes up for its humble (and messy) appearance with a world of flavor and goodness. It’s peasant food, made with cheap ingredients — it only needs few veggies and pasta. It was a staple dish on my grandparents’ table and it’s still a dish we cook quite often around here.

We love it because it’s incredibly versatile: you can eat it warm or cold; you can use different pasta shapes (as long as it’s small dry pasta); you can make it more or less liquid. If you’d like to have it cold, just throw in some torn radicchio and lightly dress it with vinegar, for a nice touch of acidity. If you want to be really old school, you can do what my grandfather used to do — instead of vinegar, just pour a dash of red wine in it…better if straight from your glass!

The recipe is courtesy of my mom: it’s definitely simpler and lighter than many other versions that include pancetta, lard or pork rind. The cooking time depends on the type of beans you are using: we typically use fagioli borlotti (cranberry or Roman beans). Many people like to add shaved cheese on top — we only add a bit of good-quality extra-virgin olive oil and a couple of crostini as a final touch.

Mmmm. Che bontà! So good!

Pasta e Fagioli Soup [Pasta and bean soup]

Author: Very EATalian

Serves: 4

Ingredients

200 g (7 oz) dry cranberry beans, previously soaked in water for at least 24 hours*
1 celery stalk, cut in big chunks
1 carrot, cut in big chunks
1 onion, halved
2.5 lt (10 cups) water
150-200 g (5.2-7 oz) short dry pasta (ditalini or elbow macaroni are perfect!)
coarse salt
freshly ground black pepper
extra-virgin olive oil
(optional) crostini*

Instructions

Pour water in a pot and add carrot, celery, onion, and beans. Add some coarse salt (like when you cook pasta). Bring to a boil and cook on medium-low heat for 50 min-1 hour or until beans are cooked through.
Take out some cooked beans and, if you like, some carrots; these will be added back in the soup at a later moment.
With a hand-held blender, blend together all the ingredients contained in the pot. Add pasta in it and cook according to package instructions. Stir often as pasta will tend to stick to the bottom.
Once pasta is cooked, add beans and carrots (cut in smaller pieces) back in the pot. Keep in mind that pasta will thicken the soup. Depending on the density you like to achieve, you can make it less liquid by adding boiling water or you can make it thicker by cooking it a little longer. Add more salt, if necessary.
Serve warm with crostini, some freshly ground black pepper, and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

Notes

* When you soak your beans, it's a good idea to change out the water a couple of times.
* To make your own crostini (croutons), cut a pieces of bread in slices and then in small squares. Drizzle bread squares with extra-virgin olive oil and pan-roast them until golden.

Fluffy Pumpkin Gnocchi with Smoked Ricotta

November 5, 2015 By very EATalian Leave a Comment

My birthday is coming up. May I make an early wish?

I want a little helper. Somebody who’s tech-savvy and patient enough to save my cell and computer’s memories from exploding on me – I’d like all files transferred & copied on multiple devices and not on a cloud, thankyouverymuch. That’s priority #1. THEN, it would be so darling if he/she could recover all my old photos from my crashed external hard drive – that’d be like a huge patch on my broken little heart. It definitely wouldn’t hurt if my little helper happened to be a web designer with great social media skills….

Get to Know the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region – My Favorite Fall Events!

September 18, 2015 By very EATalian Leave a Comment

If you are a foodie, traveler, and fun-seeker like me, do not miss the awesome events taking place around this time of the year in my favorite corner of Italy, a.k.a Friuli Venezia Giulia, a.k.a HOME! Fall is pretty sweet here and there are so many fun things to do – I thought it’d be nice to share a list of my favorite events to make you want to explore this area. These are great opportunities to part-take in the local community life, experience the delicious food and get to see the beautiful places around which I’ve been blessed to grow up. Maybe I’ll see you there??…

Cjalsons: Sweet and Savory Dumplings from Friuli

April 30, 2015 By very EATalian 2 Comments

I’m back home! Alabama was nice–but 3 weeks in a hotel room with only a microwave was loooong. Our hotel quality-of-life was definitely improved by the espresso machine we brought from home. Although it’s highly probable the housekeeper thought we were a couple of cuckoos, we felt exceptionally proud of our survival forethought.

YAY for being back at having fun in the kitchen!

There’s nothing better than homemade “ravioli” to start cooking again. Well, these aren’t exactly ravioli per se…but kind of similar. These tasty dumplings are called cjalsons (or cjarsons) and they’re traditionally cooked for festivities in the mountains of Friuli (the most Northeastern Italian region and where I call home).

The dough is usually prepared with water, flour, salt and, sometimes, potatoes. The filling usually features a nice combination of sweet and salty ingredients like mashed potatoes, raisins, smoked ricotta cheese, cinnamon, cookies, herbs or chocolate. Like for many other Italian dishes, there are many versions of cjalsons. Back home, we use this recipe: we jazz up the traditional filling by using apple, pear, pancetta, and amaretti cookies. These ingredients give the filling a nice variety of textures and an intriguing flavor: they’re sweet with a nice kick of saltiness. The best part is the butter/parmesan/cinnamon finish. I used parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano!) because it’s hard to find smoked ricotta here. If you do find it, use it by all means. Just shave it on top. It’s absolutely the best way to serve this wonderful dish.

Expect more cjalsons recipes in the future. I looooove food from Friuli!

5.0 from 1 reviews

My family's Cjalsons (or Cjarsons)

Prep time

1 hour 15 mins

Cook time

6 mins

Total time

1 hour 21 mins

Recipe type: Entree

Serves: 2

Ingredients

75 g (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
75 g (1/2 cup) whole wheat flour
40 gr (a bit less than 3 Tbsp) of butter, melted + 1 Tbsp for final seasoning
40 ml (1.3 oz or 2 Tbsp and 2 tsp) of water
1 yolk
55 g (about 2 oz) of pancetta, minced
½ apple
1 small pear
4 regular-sized (or 10 mini) amaretti cookies, crumbled
pepper
sugar
salt
cinnamon

Instructions

Mix flour, water, melted butter and yolk in a bowl. Once the ingredients are combined, transfer onto a clean surface and knead until dough becomes uniform and smooth. Cover with plastic film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Cut the apple and the pear in small cubes (about ¼ inch or 6 mm).
Add minced pancetta to a medium-sized skillet and sauté over medium heat. Once pancetta changes color, add cubed apple and pear. Cook until pear is soft, but not too mushy. Add a sprinkle of sugar, salt, and pepper. Remove skillet from the heat, add crumble amaretti and transfer to a plate.
Take dough out of fridge and roll it with a rolling pin or a pasta machine until it becomes thin (see photos above), adding a bit of flour if necessary (not too much!). Cut rolled dough in 3.5 inch (9 cm) rounds.
With a teaspoon, place a small dose of filling in the center of each round. Brush some water on the outer part of the round. Fold round in half, forming a dumpling and making sure no air is trapped inside. Press the edges together to seal them tightly.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Melt butter in a large skillet and set aside.
Gently place the cjalsons in batches in boiling water. Remove them with a slotted spoon once they come to the surface and transfer them in a skillet with melted butter over low heat. Cook for about 2-3 min, turning them gently. Sprinkle with cinnamon, pepper and parmesan cheese.