Thursday 11 December 2008

13 Italian Christmas Foods



13 Italian Christmas Foods


It's the most wonderful time of the year! It's time to sit down at the table with family and friends and enjoy delicious meals to celebrate the holiday season.

In Italy, of course, it's the same - except for how it's different. The food, I mean - I've mentioned some of these dishes in my guest blog on Shelley Munro's site, but I think they bear repeating here.

So I present to you 13 Italian Christmas Foods! Enjoy!

1) Baccalà - better known to the US as Salted Cod.

It starts like this:

and often ends like this:


Then there's arrosto. Meaning "Roasted", this can be one of several types of meat, including:

2) Vitello - Veal


or
3) Coniglio - Rabbit


Two other meat dishes, which are similar to each other, are

4) Zampone - a sort of sausage made of a pig's trotter (hoof)


and
5) Cotechino - another salty sausage.


6) Capitone (also known as Anguilla) - Eel


For reassurance, we often eat all of this with

7) Patatine Fritte - Chips/French Fries


There's pasta, too, of course.

8) Tortelli Erbe - Ravioli with spinach filling


or 9) Cappelletti in brodo - small half-moons of pasta folded over a meat-and-cheese filling (which are said to resemble the navel of Venus), and are served in a chicken broth.


Sometimes you'll have

10) Polenta - a sort of corn bread which can also be served fried


The desserts are fantastic, as you can likely imagine:

11) Panettone - eggy bread with raisins and candied fruit baked in.


12) Pandoro - a tall, golden cake with powdered sugar sprinkled on top.


13) Panforte - a specialty of Siena, this is a sort of dense gingerbread cake
- very sweet and quite intense.



The eye candy this week is a little different. I think it's still quite enjoyable, though, and I hope that you'll agree...









So, just scroll down...
























Keep going...


















Here he is ladies (and gents):




An unknown (to me) Alpino.
(One of the elite mountain warfare soldiers of the Italian Army).

15 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm sorry, but most of those foods look rather.... yucko lol Sorry. Is that an Italian version of Robin Hood? lol Happy Holidays!

Amy's Blah, Blah, Blogging said...

I'm going to have to agree with the previous poster and say I probably won't be eating most of those for Christmas dinner. LOL The last three though could easily make a lovely breakfast. Pannetone makes a delicious french toast!

Ms Menozzi said...

I can only vouch for the yumminess of the polenta (in small doses), the cappelletti in brodo, the tortelli di erbe and the desserts, myself. LOL!

I hate fish, can't stand the eel, and the zampone and cotechino I have to skip each year (my tummy is on the weak and wimpy side).

I have, however, developed a taste for vitello. The bunny rabbit, however, still makes me a bit sad. Am I pathetic or what? ;)

Inez Kelley said...

I love Tortelli Erbe-spinach ravioli-and we have it often at the holidays! Guess some Italian made it through the redneck genes.

http://talesfromthecrit.wordpress.com/

Anonymous said...

Ummmm .... I have to agree with Adelle and Amy. LOL Great list though! *HUGS*

Robin L. Rotham said...

Yeah, I think I'll stick with holiday dinner in the States. But thanks for making me appreciate what we've got! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Okay, I'm weird then. I think they all look YUMMY. Even the pig's hoof tastes good, I'll bet.
And my husband's aunt makes polenta for New Years Day and I LOVE it. I can't make it, but I love to eat it.
Thank you so much for this, Ms. Menozzi!!!!! I think it's SO cool to see how other people do Christmas.

Gwen Hayes said...

I'm sort of anti-fish most of the time too. Or any meat that resembles the animal it came from. I hate it when restaurants serve shrimp with the tail still on. ~shudders~

Shelley Munro said...

I'll give the meat and fish a pass but the rest looks okay. Interesting eye candy. :)

Heather said...

I'm with most everyone else who has posted - I'd have to pass on most of those dishes. Can I just have dessert for supper? *g*

Heather said...

BTW, the first time I looked for today's TT I didn't see it - wasn't until I followed your link from RD that I saw why. Did you know you had it posted for Dec 1 instead of the 11th? :D

Ms Menozzi said...

Thanks for the heads-up, Heather! I hope I have it fixed, now...

Anonymous said...

They do a lot of meat over there. All my family does is a turkey.

Janice Seagraves said...

I usually like Itallian food, but I could have done without looking at the pig hoof platter.

Sorry, but happy TT.

Janice~

Janice Seagraves said...

I gave you an award, check out my blog.

Janice~