"Lombard flavor" vanilla Italian wonton

This recipe from Bartolomeo Schipi is the epitome of Renaissance Milanese pasta. "Tortelli" (Italian wonton) is also known as "Tortelloni", and this method of cooking is now also popular in Lombardy and the Emilia Romagna region.

Chop the beet and spinach leaves, rinse several times in water, squeeze the water dry and set aside. The leaves are simmered in fresh butter and a little vanilla such as parsley or thyme is added. Remove from heat and pour the mixture into a clay or tinned copper pot and add equal parts Parmesan cheese (ground) and fresh Recotta cheese, seasoned with pepper, cinnamon bark, cloves, saffron, raisins and cracked raw eggs. Once well mixed, add some breadcrumbs if it's too thin and a little butter if it's too dry. To make a piece of dough at this point, see Chapter 1 for how to make it. The mixture is made into a large or small Italian wonton by placing it on top of the dough, folding it in half and squeezing both sides at the same time, cooked in a rich broth, plated and sprinkled with cheese, sugar and cinnamon bark.

The most famous part of the Opera book is the kitchen illustrations, which are used in the vast majority of books on Renaissance cooking published today. Sgarpi was in charge of the Vatican's (pope's) kitchen at the time, and it was he who first described the modern kitchen of the Renaissance. Opera contains copperplate details of kitchen facilities, tools, and gadgets, such as a pasta cutter and a top-of-the-line barbecue.

The illustrations also show the procedure for preparing meals during the election of the Pope – the process of preparing meals requires a high degree of security to prevent the possibility of poisoning the diet. Each cardinal's food is prepared by his personal chef. Sgarpi was involved in this procedure and described it in detail in his book. "The food was served in sumptuous containers adorned with the coat of arms of each cardinal," Riley wrote, "and after being examined by a team of four bishops, a rotating revolving door was passed into the secret chamber where the Cardinal Conference was located. All wines are clearly marked and served in glass containers. No whole pie or chicken is allowed, and all food has to be cut up. The purpose of this was to rule out the possibility of dangerous knives in the dining room, where the bishops might have the opportunity to collude with the attendants to criticize the cardinal.

To illustrate the culinary arts of Italy more clearly, Schippi divided Italy into three parts: Lombardy (the Po Valley), the Grand Duchy and Rome, and the Kingdom (southern Italy and Sicily). He focuses on three cities: Milan, Rome and Naples, but at the same time, he also clearly shows his knowledge of the local cuisine of Venice, Florence and Genoa. He was the first writer to provide a comparative analysis of Italy's regional cuisines, and only one of the hundreds of recipes in his book is called all'italiana (Italian): the Pieces of Grayling in Broth. As a Lombard, many of Sgarpi's dishes reflect Lombard traditions, such as Lombard-style soups and Lombard-style rice, as well as stuffed meats, pies and noodles that appear several times in the book.

Venetian-inspired dishes are usually fish-based, such as SmallStuffed Squidin Fish Broth, but there are also well-known dishes like Braised LoinofBeef and Cinnamon Cakes. In Rome, Sgarpi's second home, there is a wide variety of dishes, such as minced meat, pasta assortment, Roman-style cabbage and pan-fried fish cakes. Savoury dishes from Naples include PuffPastryFilledwithSquabMeat and CabbageSoupwithMortadella. It is clear that Scarppi understood that the emergence of regional cuisines in Italy was a city-based phenomenon, and decided that the cities he had chosen were representative of the overall culinary style of the region in question, as they were the trading centers and food distribution centers of the region.

Unlike the writings of Martino and Platina, Bartolomeo Sgapi's menu shows us the process of making salads and fruits into beautiful dishes, making them more suitable for lavish banquets. A variety of salads and fruits are served in each of the banquet courses, which can soothe the rich taste of fish dishes cooked with plenty of spices and renew the appetite of the diners.

Sgarpi was so knowledgeable that he even wrote about the making of marinades and Arabic puff pastries. In the book, he recorded two hundred recipes for making waffles, shortbread, and a cake called pizze. Exotic dishes documented in Opera also include Moorish couscous and allatedesca. In the post-Renaissance era, none of the gastronomic writers of Squapi made any attempt to summarize the major gastronomic cities of the Italian peninsula and create a "national" culinary encyclopedia based on them. Instead, they chose to focus on a specific region. For example, Lucernadecorteggiani (The Oil Lamps of the Courtiers), published in Naples in 1643, by Giovan Battista Crisci. The focus of the book is on the gastronomy of southern Italy, especially cheese and fruit, and it lists a list of gastronomic products from Naples to Calabria to Sicily, which has not been done before. The focus of the book is no longer on the big towns, but on the rural areas and those small villages. In fact, the only city mentioned by Cristch when talking about the cuisine of the South is Naples, the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, and the bulk of the list is the record of the origin of fruits such as peaches from Amalfi, apples from Moiano, wild cherries from Somma, salted ricottas from Capua, and fine mozzarella from Aversa.

Sgarpi's Opera and the recipes of the regions in it sparked a trend of cookbooks dedicated to regional cuisine. Not only that, but the authors of these cookbooks have also delved deeper into the flavors that are unique to each region. Another writer with a passion for southern Italian cuisine is Antonio Latini. In Naples between 1692 and 1694, Latini published a two-volume series of Loscalcoallamoderna (The Art of the Planning and Organization of a Feast) (Loscalcoallamoderna, overol?artedibendisporreiconviti). The first volume, "A Brief Facts of Naples", deals with "the precious fruits and other precious products produced in different regions of the Kingdom of Naples", covering the twelve provinces of the Kingdom. In addition to this, Latini also documented the food specialties of the small villages in the provinces, such as Poggioreale in Campania, which supplies Naples with "fine fruits", Chiai for its famous peas, cardoon, artichokes, turnips and horseradish, Ischia and Capri for "a large number of pheasants" and " Veal of the finest" and Urtra (Principato Ultra) for "brainsausages".

In Italy during the Renaissance and beyond, among the many wonderful cookbooks and other gastronomic literature, the books of Christie and Latini are among the best. The last comprehensive and systematic collection of recipes to emerge during this period came from Latini. In the period from the late 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, there was a gap in culinary literature. "This silence," explains the gastronomic historians Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, "embodies the feelings of cultural inferiority that Italians experienced when French cuisine began to sweep across Europe, and the impact of this sentiment proved to be profound." Instead, it is "a return to local traditions and oral transmission, both of which are the main tools for the continuation of national cultural traditions." ”

Leonardo da Vinci's favorite dish

Many biographers of Leonardo da Vinci have mentioned that Leonardo da Vinci's favorite dish was the soup with risotto. Here's a Tuscan soup called Minestrone Toscano, from Leonardo da Vinci's early hometown of Florence. Serve with a whole slice of toast and a little olive oil for dipping the bread. Traditionally, the pasta needed to make this soup is the rice-grained kind, but you can also use rice if you prefer.

9 cups water

1 1/2 cups dried white beans

Salt to taste

1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 onion, chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 stalk celery, minced

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1/2 nest of cabbage, chopped

2 leeks, chopped

2 small zucchini courgettes, chopped

1 fresh basil, finely chopped

1 whole lilac

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped

1/2 cup risono or orzopasta

Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan. Pour the white beans into it and cook for two hours. Remove half of the beans from the pan and sieve above the pan. Cover the pot and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and stir-fry the garlic and onion over medium heat for one minute. Dilute the tomato paste with a teaspoon of water and pour it into the pan. At this point, pour in all the other ingredients and the prepared white bean soup, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Serves 4 people.

Braised chicken breast in sour juice

Commenting on this dish from Martino's Encyclopedia de la Culinary (circa 1465), Gillian Riley, an expert on Renaissance cuisine, said: "As one of the most delicious dishes in the manuscript, its ease of handling reflects the new and simple cooking style of the Renaissance – simple seasoning, freshness, and uncomplicated processing." "If you can't find unripe grapes, add 1/8 cup of lemon juice when cooking with ripe grapes. (Sour juice is made from unripe grapes, so it has a sour taste.) To make saffron pollen, dry the saffron branches in the microwave and mash them with a mortar.

2 slices of bacon meat

4 pieces of chicken breast, deboned and skinned

1/2 cup chicken broth

24 large, half-ripe grapes, each cut in half from the middle and seeded

1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

1 tablespoon chopped spearmint

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 pinch of saffron pollen

Bring the bacon out of the oil in a frying pan and remove the remaining bacon slices. Add the chicken breast and fry for 2 minutes on each side until golden brown. Pour out the excess oil from the pan and add the chicken broth and grapes. Then cover and simmer for 20 minutes, after which remove the lid and add the remaining ingredients before serving.

Serves 4 people.

Roasted lamb with saffron sauce

To make this dish, Martino says that "1/4 of a baby goat" is needed, but in fact a leg of lamb is also sufficient. "All the meat on the baby goat is fit to be boiled or roasted," Martino wrote, "but the tenderloin is better roasted." He also noted that baby goats "need to be eaten hot." The dish is served with risotto (Italian gravy).

1 small lamb shank, about 3 pounds

2 ounces pork loin, or bacon or bacon, cut into small strips

6 garlic cloves, cut into small slices

Salt to taste

1 cup chicken broth

Half a lemon, juiced

2 egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon powdered saffron (microwaved, then crushed)

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Use a sharp knife to cut the lamb into several small cuts, and stuff each small mouth with a small strip of pork back and a small slice of garlic. Sprinkle salt evenly on all the surface of the lamb.

In a saucepan, pour the chicken broth, lemon juice, egg yolks and chopped garlic, stir-fry carefully and simmer for 5 minutes.

Place the lamb on a baking tray and pour the lamb over the aforementioned sauce. Roast for 90 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point the lamb is just ripe. During roasting, remove every 15 minutes and recoat the lamb with the sauce on the plate. Grill, slice, and serve with an appropriate amount of leftover sauce on the lamb slices. You may need to pour a little chicken broth into the pan to scrape the sauce out of the bottom of the pan.

Serves 6-8 people.

Candied marzipan

Some gastronomic historians believe that this dessert was made by the French city of Aix?en? Provence's famous "Calissonsd? AIX). Martino adds a touch of colour to it: "If you have a beautifully carved wooden mold, press it on the almond cake and the finished product will be even more beautiful." "Please note: this dish requires a more complex preparation.

Stuffing required:

2 cups unblanched almonds

1/2 cup rose syrup

1 1/2 cups sugar

Dough required:

1/2 cup flour

2 tbsp granulated sugar or castersugar

1 pinch of salt

2-3 tablespoons rose syrup

To make the filling, put the almonds in a bowl, pour in the boiling water that has just submerged the almonds, let it cool, pour out the water, and rinse the almonds several times. Soak the almonds overnight and peel them easily the next day. Using a blender or food processor, mix the peeled almonds with the rose syrup and sugar and whip until smooth and smooth.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and enough rose syrup to form a non-sticky dough. Wrap the dough in a plastic bag and let it sit for an hour. Sprinkle a little flour on the cutting board and roll out the dough until it is as safe as possible, using a knife to cut the rolled dough into 2-inch cubes. Place nearly a tablespoon of the filling in the center of each piece of sliced dough, using a knife that is not too sharp to spread the filling evenly over the entire small piece. Place the small pieces of dough on a nonstick baking sheet and bake for an hour. The finished product needs to be slightly golden brown and crunchy.

This amount makes 25 candied macaroons.