QUALITALY 142

October/November 2024 XII MAGAZINE In Bergamo there are casoncelli, as well as in Brescia. Bollito misto and roasts are the main courses for the festive meal, accompanied by mostarda. For dessert, the irreplaceable panettone. The typical dishes of Piedmont during the Christmas festivities are varied, but some are not to be missed: veal in tuna sauce, Russian salad, agnolotti del plin, bollito misto, a good braised beef in Barolo wine and, finally, bignole: small sweet leavened pastry shells filled with custard. The Christmas Eve menu in Puglia smells of the sea and, as in other regions of Italy, fried cod, capitone and eel are undoubtedly protagonists. First courses that can be served on Christmas Day include orecchiette al sugo, lasagna or baked cannelloni. A classic second course is roast lamb with potatoes. The ‘purcidd’ or ‘purcedduzzi’, depending on the dialect, reminiscent of Neapolitan ‘struffoli’, and ‘cartellate’, both sweetened with honey, make Christmas even sweeter. In Sardinia among the first courses, culurgiones de casu dressed with tomato sauce and Sardinian gnocchetti with lamb or sausage sauce prevail. Many people prepare porceddu as a main course, while one of the most representative desserts of Christmas in Sardinia are pabassini, delicious little biscuits made with dried fruit, sultanas, candied orange, aniseed and boiled wine must. In Sicily, Christmas Eve starters include sfinci di baccalà, crispelle con anciova, panelle and crocché. For Christmas Day, one can prepare timballo di anelletti or pasta ‘ncasciata’. Meat-based is the falsomagro, a sort of huge roulade stuffed with anything and everything. The dessert proposal is varied: cuccia, buccellato, cobaita, nucatuli, mostaccioli, sfinci, cassata. The typical Christmas menu in Tuscany includes black crostini with liver pâté for starters, tortellini in broth, boiled meat with tuna sauce and salsa verde. Among the main courses you can also find mixed roast meat or roast guinea fowl. On Christmas Eve in Livorno one naturally eats Cacciucco, a delicious fish soup with slices of toasted bread. Pancakes made of rye and wheat flour filled with ricotta cheese and potatoes (tritlan) are part of the Christmas hors d’oeuvres of Trentino-Alto Adige , where canederli, large dumplings served in broth, or blanched and browned with melted butter, parmesan cheese and sage, are eaten as a first course. The alternative is casunziei, crescent-shaped ravioli usually filled with beetroot and potatoes. Zelten is the traditional Christmas cake: a special sweet bread with a dough of flour, eggs, sugar, butter and yeast enriched with walnuts, dried figs, almonds, pine nuts, grapes and candied citron. Baccalà mantecato and sarde in saor are two typical Veneto Christmas starters. Among the most popular first courses are bigoli, risotto alla trevigiana, gnocchi with duck sauce, while one of the traditional second courses is baccalà alla vicentina. For dessert, pandoro. __________________________________ BOX Christmas from Europe to America In the land of the stars and stripes , Christmas dinner includes stuffed turkey accompanied by mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. The alternative is ‘ham glaze’. Dessert for the holidays can only be Santa’s favourite dessert: mince pies, a cake filled with a filling made of dried fruit, spices, nuts or almonds and a little liqueur. Putizza, on the other hand, is the most typical Christmas cake in Slovenia: a leavened dough, rolled out and rolled up, which is filled with different fillings . It is said that there are more than 80 variants. The classic Christmas dish in Austria is goose, sometimes replaced by duck, accompanied by vegetables and sauerkraut. In Croatia , every Christmas there is the smell of ‘pašticada’, prepared with cuts of beef or veal, marinated for several hours and slow-cooked. Then there is roast turkey with ‘mlinci’ (a thin pastry seasoned with cooking fat) accompanied by French salad. The alternative is duck stuffed with buckwheat. Sweets are also tasty: from vanilla croissants, poppy seed rolls (makovnjača), to walnut rolls (orahnjača), fig cakes and gingerbread biscuits. Fondue chinoise (cheese fondue), raclette, schüfeli (smoked pork) and rolled ham are popular for Christmas celebrations in Switzerland . The ‘bûche de Noël’ is the star among desserts: similar to a log, it is made of sponge cake and buttercream covered in chocolate and decorated with marzipan leaves and mushrooms. In Hungary, the tradition is to prepare fish soup (halászlé) on Christmas Eve, but typical festive dishes also include kocsonya (meat in jelly), roast duck or goose. Desserts include ‘Christmas beigli’, a rolled pastry filled with walnuts or poppy seeds or chestnuts. __________________________________ BOX At Christmas you want to... but can you? According to the Ufficio Studi della Fipe, the Federation of Public Establishments, in 2023 there were 5.4 million Italians (including foreign tourists) who chose to celebrate Christmas in one of the country’s 90,000 restaurants open on 25 December. A figure up by 10.2% compared to Christmas 2022. Overall spending on dining was also up: 400 million euros, 15% more than the previous year. At the time of going to press, the outlook for Christmas 2024 is not yet available, but the Confimprese-Jakala Retail Barometer from last September painted a clear picture: more than one in two retailers declare decreasing results for Christmas 2024. The product sectors reflect the general market trend, with the restaurant sector in particular registering a -0.1% decline. However, thanks in part to the slowdown in inflation and the arrival of the autumn months and Christmas, 54% of companies estimate a slightly higher year-end __________________________________ AT PAGE 46 ON THE ROAD Austria - Christmas magic that knows no boundaries A JOURNEY THROUGH TRADITIONS, SNOWY LANDSCAPES AND UNIQUE FLAVOURS. AMIDST ATMOSPHERIC MARKETS AND LOCAL DELICACIES, THE COUNTRY OFFERS A CULINARY EXPERIENCE ROOTED IN HISTORY. WE DISCOVER HOW EACH REGION EXPRESSES ITS OWN IDENTITY THROUGH TYPICAL PRODUCTS AND RECIPES THAT CELEBRATE THE LINK WITH THE LAND AND ITS TRADITIONS by Alessandro Vergallo