TYPICAL REGGIO EMILIA RECIPES
Reggio Emilia
The tradition of high quality cuisine in Reggio is demonstrated by the large number of restaurants and trattorie where you can experience excellent cuisine passed down from generation to generation.
Dishes and Ingredients
ERBAZZONE ("scarpazzòun" in local dialect) - savoury pie
INGREDIENTS for the filling: 1.5 Kg of spinach or chard, 1 bunch of leeks with fresh green stalks, a handful of parsley, 60 g of ham or bacon, fat, 4 tablespoons of oil, 50 g of butter, 2 cloves of garlic, 4 or 5 handfuls of mature parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.
For the pastry: 200 g of flour, 1 knob of lard, 2 tablespoons of oil, salt and pepper, tepid water in sufficient quantity.
For pastry with ricotta cheese: 220 g of flour, 50 g of ricotta, 1 knob of lard, 2 tablespoons of oil, tepid water in sufficient quantity, salt and pepper to taste.
Melt the ham fat over the heat, adding the crushed garlic and leeks which have also been chopped together with the stalks.
Add oil and butter and, after the leeks have been browned, without burning, add in the spinach which you have already boiled and crushed. Leave to flavour with salt and pepper.
When everything has cooled, take away the garlic, add the finely chopped parsley and the parmesan. Prepare the pastry, and having left it rest for half an hour, divide it into two parts. Roll one part with the rolling pin, place it carefully in the greased pie dish and pour in the filling. Roll the other part of the pastry more finely than the first, sprinkle over flour, and roll it up in the floured rolling pin; pull the two extremes of the pastry towards the centre of the rolling pin and let the rippled pastry slide over the filling. After having carefully made lots of small holes in the pastry, put it in the oven at 200 °C.
Leave for about half an hour; a few minutes before it's ready, grease the surface with a piece of lard.
Put it back in the oven and take out after a few minutes. The "erbazzone" is ready.
CAPPELLETTI (caplètt in local dialect) - kind of ravioli
INGREDIENTS for the filling: 2 small onions, 150 g of butter, beef entrecote or another tasty cut of beef, 70 g of mixed ham, 60 g of fillet or lean pork, 90 g of veal or turkey or chicken, pig livers and giblets, 1 garlic clove, as desired, nutmeg, breadcrumbs as required 1 egg, 3 handfuls of parmesan cheese.
Melt the butter with the onions in a saucepan, with salt and pepper. Cut the meat into pieces and put into the butter; cook slowly in the pan and cover with a lid. When the pieces of meat are lightly cooked, but not dry, finely chop it all. Add a whole egg, the breadcrumbs, and three handfuls of parmesan cheese. The parmesan is a primary ingredient, consequently it must have a full taste and smell.
Remember: the bread, crumbled with a pinch of nutmeg, must have been toasted first with the meat sauces.
Variants of the filling include the addition of a minced sausage or a slice of "mortadella". Alternatively, the butter is replaced with ox marrow and the addition of carnation cloves.
Prepare the pastry as for the pumpkin tortelli (see below) and make the cappelletti packets, which obviously, must be served in broth (the famous "broth for cappelletti").
PUMPKIN TORTELLI
Ingredients for 6/8 people: 500 g of flour, 4 eggs, tepid water, 500 g of pumpkin, 200 g of Mantova apple "chutney", 100 g of macaroons, grated nutmeg, grated peel of half a lemon, breadcrumbs, one average-sized onion, 100 g of lard, 50 g of butter, 1 glass of dry white wine, half a tablespoon of tomato concentrate, salt and pepper.
Preparation:
1. For the filling: reduce a cooked pumpkin into pulp (if boiled, let it drain in a colander for two hours) and add the finely chopped chutney with a part of its liquid, the finely crushed macaroons, the lemon peel, a pinch of nutmeg, salt and pepper and a small quantity of breadcrumbs, to bond the mixture. Leave covered to rest for a couple of hours.
2. For the pastry: knead the flour with the eggs, a pinch of salt and a little water.
Work energetically until you have a smooth, elastic and even lump of pastry; wrap it in a cloth and let it rest for about 30 minutes.
3. When the resting time for the pastry has finished, work it again, then roll it with a rolling pin into a thin layer. Make rectangular cuttings from the pastry, about 10 cm. in length, place some of the pumpkin mixture onto the cuttings and close them up in a boat shape, making sure to seal the edges well.
4. Prepare a fried mixture of lard and butter, chopped onions, white wine, tomato concentrate, salt and pepper. This sauce is left to reduce for at least an hour, adding, if necessary, a little water.
5. As an alternative fried sauce to the one based on lard and tomato, you can use melted butter flavoured with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
6. Boil the tortelli in abundant salted water, drain as soon as they are cooked with a strainer, and place them in a soup bowl or in hot serving dishes in the following way: put a little of the sauce and a sprinkling of grana in the bottom of the soup bowl (or alternatively the melted butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese), then place a layer of tortelli, cover once more with the sauce and grana to fill the soup bowl, cover with a cloth and leave to rest for about half an hour and then serve.
Utensils:
Pastry board and rolling pin
NUT LIQUOR
"Compagnia del nocino di Fabbrico" recipe
Ingredients: 1 litre of alcohol, Kg. 1.2 of nuts, 800 g of sugar, 2 carnations, 1 cm. of cinnamon
Preparation: cut the nuts into four parts. Expose to the sun and mix every night. 60 days later, filter and bottle. It is preferable to drink the liquor after one year.
CAPPELLETTI (Caplètt)
With regard to the shape of this noble pasta, there is a curious and amusing legend which finds its origin in the verses of the "Secchia Rapita" by Alessandro Tassoni which tells of an amorous night spent by Bacco, Venus and Mars in a tavern at Castelfranco Emilia. In the morning, according to Tassoni, Bacco and Mars head off for Modena.
However, at the beginning of the 1900s, a certain Giuseppe Ceri, Bolognese by adoption but born in Florence, published the sequel to the licentious story; he recounted that after the night of love-making, while Bacco and Mars head off for Modena, Venus remains in her room where innkeeper host enters to inform her that the Goddess's two amorous friends will only return for dinner. At this point the innkeeper is struck by Venus's navel which he defines as "divine and peculiar".
Returning to the kitchen, the innkeeper "imitating Venus's navel, learnt the art of making tortellini" and, if we really insist, our cappelletto can, for its shape, be compared to Venus's navel.
Now let's turn to the filling for cappelletti from Reggio. It is worth pointing out that every family in Reggio follows its own tradition with its own ingredients.