Discovering Venice

Carnival has started and, together with it, fritole! I've always wanted to make them but didn't find a good recipe. This year, I consulted both my new cooking bible "history of Venetian cooking", where you can find the original, XVIII century dated, recipe, as well as other websites and at the end I put them together with this result.

I received from Santa a very nice book: History and Origin of Venetian cooking by Giampiero Rorato; very interesting as it explains all of the influences during history which brought to nowadays dishes. So, I can now try and share with you plenty of traditional recipes! One of these is risi e bisi (rice and peas), which I actually used to prepare before as well, but I can now share with the authority of the printed book. Enjoy!

For 4 persons:

After all the Christmas meat and salami, it's really time for some fish! This recipe is really refreshing, delicate and good for kids and parents...

For 4 persons:

If pumpkin is maybe the winner in the Winter recipes' presence, Treviso chicory (radicchio di treviso) is probably the second! I love it, and, just like pumpkin, it's open to multiple use: raw, stewed, grilled, baked, it's also a perfect and tasty ingredient for soups, sauces... and for flans like the one I'm presenting today. Here it goes:

For 4 persons:

Here are the ingredients you will need:

I just looooove squillas... and this is maybe the best time of the year to buy them, they're just perfectly fleshy, which is needed for this recipe. One way to cook them is simply to steam-cook and garnish with olive oil, but I found this other recipe which is just as simple and has a little more taste. Try it!

20 squillas
a bunch of parsley
about 50g breadcrumbs
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lemon juice