Light Lunch Southern Italy by Ruth Paget
Bargain buyers can find several delicious and inexpensive dishes amidst the Baroque prose and culinary culture insights in Marlena de Blasi’s cookbook A Taste of Southern Italy: Delicious Recipes and a Dash of Culture.
The following 5 recipes and their main ingredients provide an idea of the recipe gems in this book:
p. 21 – Pasta with Green Tomatoes (From the Lazio region around Rome)
-green tomatoes
-purple onion
-basil
-garlic
-bread crumbs
-bucatini or other string pasta
-capers -pecorino cheese
The green tomatoes are used to make a puréed sauce.
p. 126 – Purée of Dried Beans and Bitter Greens Spread (From the Puglia region, the heel of the Italian Peninsula)
-cannellini beans
-fava beans
-olive oil
-fennel seeds
-heavy cream
-dandelion greens, mustard greens, or red chard
-garlic
-country bread
p. 154 – White Bean Fritters (From the Basilicata region sandwiched between Puglia to the east, Campania to the West, and Calabria to the south)
-cannellini beans
-rosemary
-yellow onion
-garlic
-cabbage -rosemary leaves
-olive oil -
-egg
-bread crumbs
p. 168 – Spiced Ricotta Spread (From the Calabria region opposite Sicily on the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula)
-anchovies
-whole milk ricotta
-grappa or cognac
-red chile peppers
-garlic -capers
p. 233 – Sardinian Bread Pudding (From the island of Sardegna above Sicily)
-bread
-whole milk
-heavy cream
-eggs
-pecorino cheese
-olive oil
-garlic
-red chile pepper
For a vacation on an ordinary day, Marlena de Blasi’s A Taste of Southern Italy is a fun read with many appealing recipes.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
