Christmas lunch is a real ritual, very often the traditions of a family are repeated year after year according to the specialties of the area handed down and we rarely deviate from it.
It is perhaps the only occasion in which the menu is more or less the same as when it was a child who cooks and puts it on the table.
A cuisine of memories as well as tradition
, a comfort food to be prepared slowly, in the previous days, dedicating a time that is itself a gift and love.
Each region has its typical dishes and each family its own
but the main ones are not discussed even if the diffusion of vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diets has multiplied the dishes to prepare.
First courses and desserts are the traditional essentials,
a little more freedom is allowed on appetizers as well as on second courses which, however, traditionally include meat on Christmas day (beef, veal, pork, chicken as long as with elaborate and rich dishes), after abstention on Christmas Eve in which only fish is eaten .
Not everything is always done at home even if it happens in many families and very often you order out but always strictly following traditional foods.
What
do you put on the table on December 25th?
There
is broth almost everywhere
: in Genoa
natalini
(they look like ziti, 20 cm long and with a slightly oval shape) are cooked in capon broth in which sausage balls are placed, considered good luck because they symbolize coins.
Alternatively
pansoti
(ravioli filled with wild herbs)
with walnut sauce
and for the second course cappon magro with salsify and green sauce.
In Bologna, cappelletti ends up in capon broth on Christmas day
followed by boiled meat
(beef, veal, chicken, zampone or cotechino) in green sauce and
friggione
, the typical side dish of onions macerated in sugar and then stewed in tomato ).
In Turin the capon is stuffed and in addition to the cappelletti in broth they are used
agnolotti stuffed with meat
what tradition wants them to be served
with roast gravy
, sage butter and Parmesan.
The capon also dominates the Christmas lunch menu in Milan with
ravioli of red meat in broth
and roasted, boiled second course,
stuffed with chestnuts or truffle slices, and accompanied by mostarda,
preferably pears and pumpkin .
In Venice we start with
panettone di tramezzini
(a tasty specialty now in fashion throughout Italy) and continue with
bigoli (spaghettoni) with duck ragout
or risotto alla trevigiana,
in Trieste gnocchi al Montasio
, a typical cheese of the Friuli.
In Florence
, tortellini in broth
however prepared according to tradition with stuffed neck or chicken in jelly, a rather laborious recipe, often preceded by liver crostini for appetizer, livers (chicken) on croutons also in Perugia where the first course is dry with agnolotti with tomato sauce or pappardelle with wild boar or spaghetti alla nursina (with oil, anchovies, parsley and truffle flakes).
In Naples, the maximum tradition of the (very long) Christmas lunch is
the soup maritata
, where maritata indicates a variety of elements with seasonal vegetables including cabbage, small escarole and borage, boiled and then transferred to meat broth and second the house there are also those who add a few pieces of chicken meat and sausage, but there is also the second first course, i.e.
baked pasta stuffed with mozzarella, ragu, peas, eggs and tomato sauce
.
In Molise macaroni with cauliflower but also polenta with tripe and offal, strascinati with meat sauce in Basilicata, In Bari at Christmas you eat broth made with white meat, chicken or turkey. In Sardinia
with ricotta
or goat cheese ravioli and suckling pig for the second course while in Palermo
the pasta ncaciata
cannot be missing from the table
, a baked pasta made with meat sauce, eggs, aubergines and lots of cheese.
It's in Rome?
We asked Giancarlo Praiola
, owner of the
Il Bocconcino restaurant, an address in the shadow of the Colosseum
, which on the accurate and high-quality recovery of
recipes from the true Roman tradition
(although in an area, the Celio, with a very high tourist density) he based his cuisine.
"For Christmas lunch, my memories confirmed by reading historical cookery books such as those of Livio Jannattoni report as inevitable after some appetizers of cold cuts and some fried food,
the Roman stracciatella
which I believe also had a propitiatory and auspicious function (according to at least my grandfather.) This was followed
by cappelletti alla romana cooked in capon broth
which was served as a second course accompanied by coarse salt and green sauce.
So apart from various side dishes, fried, sometimes lamb cutlets especially for children if present, I would say that the sacred Trimurti, stracciatella, cappelletti in broth and boiled capon is a constant in memories and in literature.
The Christmas Eve dinner is a separate matter because it is preceded by an all-Roman event that is not in my memory but that I discovered in my research and that is
the "Cottio"
probably from the Latin quot , quotation.
It involved the wholesale purchase of fish at Mercati Generali and other markets.
In itself, a festive and noisy event in which rich gentlemen, commoners and the bourgeoisie took part, crowding the stalls on the 23rd and 24th to buy fish for dinner on Friday which followed a day of effective fasting and abstinence.
It was the custom there too to start with an appetizer often of fried food and then a
soup of which the most famous was the sprightly and broccoli
obviously or the mullet broth.
A curious note was the widespread use of cooking eel at Christmas, in Rome the so-called "ciriole", that is, small eels caught in the Tiber.
It should therefore be noted how Roman cuisine made use of fish that have now disappeared from everyday use such as the dogfish or even more the mullet, even fished in the Tiber and which was considered the fish for parties by the populace".
How to make Roman stracciatella?
The dish is very simple.
Beat the eggs with a fork and add the grated Parmesan cheese (50 grams for 4 eggs) and then nutmeg, lemon zest, salt and lots of pepper, as if preparing a sauce.
Then this cream is thrown into the very hot meat broth (preferably with the capon) and stirred for a couple of minutes with a whisk.
Et voila.