Lolli con Fave is a traditional Sicilian dish from Modica, featuring creamy fava beans, vegetables, and homemade pasta. This hearty, naturally vegan one-pot stew is a prime example of Cucina Povera, Italy’s “kitchen of the poor,” turning simple ingredients into a flavorful, rich meal.
Cucina Povera, Italy’s kitchen of the poor, has long been known for its use of simple, humble ingredients and frugal cooking methods. With a lack of expensive ingredients, resourcefulness became a priceless way to make food more flavoursome and nourishing. And often that resourcefulness would start with making use of leftover bread. Among poorer communities, bread was considered far too valuable to be thrown away. Instead, it was simply left to naturally dry out, at which point it became an entirely new ingredient for a whole range of dishes. Pappa al Pomodoro is one of them.
Using only a few key ingredients, Biancomangiare (translating to “eating white”) is a dessert of purity and elegance that shines a spotlight on one of Sicliy’s most prized treasures. Almonds.
Amongst many other treasures, Tuscany is known for an abundance of chestnuts. Once considered a food of the poor, who foraged the fallen nuts in the forests, dried them and ground them into flour, chestnuts are nowadays considered somewhat of a luxury. And as such, this dessert has long conquered the heart of many Italians, while still remaining fairly unknown elsewhere.
Ask locals about traditional Palermo street food and Cazzilli will be high on the list. Also called Crocchè di Patate (potato croquettes), they are made from mashed potatoes, flavoured with pepper and mint and finally fried until golden and crispy.
When I travelled to Sicily to discover Italy’s traditional plant-based dishes for my series Vegan Cultures, Panelle was on the top of my list. It’s a popular street food in Palermo, but what surprised me was the use of chickpea flour to create thin chickpea fritters that are then served with a generous drizzle of lemon juice in a bread bun.
Ribollita, Tuscany’s famous bread soup, dates back to the Middle Ages, when servants gathered leftover bread from the banquets of their superiors and combined it with vegetables into a nourishing meal. The name of the dish translates to ‘reboiled’.
One of my favourite twists to making chickpea tofu is to turn it into farinata instead. Farinata is a thin chickpea pancake that originated in Genoa and is known in France as ‘socca’. Traditionally, it’s made from chickpea flour, but just like with the Burmese-styled tofu, you can start with whole, dried chickpeas.