Pasta for stuffing is pasta in shapes large enough to have a large enough cavity to hold a stuffing in it.The pasta is usually boiled first to soften it, then stuffed. Most often, it is then baked after stuffing. Related entries
Italian Food
Pasta Frolla
Pasta Frolla is an Italian sweet shortcrust pastry, similar to French Pâte Sucrée, and somewhat similar to Scottish shortbread (sic.) It is used as the base for tart shells, pies shells, cookies, pasticcini, and crostate, though it doesn’t have to be used for desserts: savoury fillings can be put in tart shells made of Pasta…
Pasta Margherita
Pasta margherita is not pasta, as we think of pasta, but rather a cake that has nothing to do with spaghetti. Recipes vary. Some use flour, some don’t . All use powdered sugar and potato starch. Some versions add lemon juice. The simplest recipes for pasta margherita use only 4 ingredients, but they are deceptive:…
Pasta Paradiso
Pasta here means “paste”, as in “pastry” or dough. Pasta paradiso is a cake, very similar to Pasta margherita. The two cakes can appear similar by the list of their ingredients, but they are different both in the ratio of ingredients, and in the way in which the batter is started.
Pasticci
While “Pasticcio” is a savoury dish in Italian, the plural form of the word, “pasticci”, takes on a different meaning altogether. It has come to mean “cookies.”
Pasticcini
Pasticcini is an Italian word for small pastries and baked goods. It means literally “small pastries.” The term includes small cakes or muffins, éclairs, pastry horns, cookies, squares (bars in the UK), tarts, etc.
Pasticcio
A general term used to describe a dish made from a wide variety of ingredients on hand. Over time, in Italian, it came to denote a pie with a savoury filling with a top and bottom pie crust. Pasta is often even put inside the pie. Language Notes Derived from the word “pasta”, which means…
Pepato
Pepato is an Italian word meaning “peppery”, “with pepper” or basically, with a bit of zip in it. Literature & Lore Comes from the Italian word for pepper, “il pepe”.
Pepperoncini
These are the peppers that Italians have bred over the past few centuries to be sweet with just a bit of zing, perfect to go with Italian cooking. They grow about 3 inches (7.5 cm) long, and have wrinkled skin. They are either picked and used green, or let ripen to a slightly hotter red….
Piena di Napoli Squash
You can harvest Piena di Napoli Squash while still yellow for use as a summer squash; you can also let them fully grow for use as a winter squash. The squash is shaped approximately like a butternut squash, oblong for the most part, though the top neck part will be a bit less wide and…
Pine Nuts
Pine Nuts © Denzil Green Pine Nuts grow on several different varieties of pine trees largely in Italy and Spain. A tree takes 75 years before it is ready to be commercially harvested for its nuts. Gathering is very time consuming as first you have to gather the pine cones, then extract the nuts from…
Pizza
Pizza © Paula TritesPizza is a flat-bread with savoury ingredients on top. It can provide a quick-cook meal. All toppings put on a Pizza are already cooked, though some say the sauce shouldn’t be. Ingredients almost always include cheese and tomatoes. Many purists avoid commercially-made pizza in any form (unless they’re in Naples), and make…
Pizza Base
A pizza base is the bottom crust upon which a pizza is formed. Toppings are placed on top of the base, forming the pizza, and then the assembled item is baked.
Platina
Platina was an Italian Renaissance writer now known in the food world for his cookbook written in Latin, “Concerning Honest Pleasure and Well-Being” (“De honesta voluptate et valetudine.”) The word “honesta” in the title has long been translated as “honest”, but it would perhaps be better translated as “wholesome.” Outside the food world, he is…
Plum Tomatoes
Plum Tomatoes don’t resemble plums in shape. They are more egg-shaped, if anything, though some people try to describe them as pear-shaped, which doesn’t help at all, because their shape is nothing like a pear, either. Plum Tomatoes are more oval than they are round, and smaller as than “normal” tomatoes.” They are really good…
Polenta
Polenta © Denzil Green Polenta is a dish made from cornmeal that is boiled into a thick, porridge-like consistency. You can serve hot scoops of it on a plate, or let it cool till it hardens, then slice it and recook it in baked dishes or by frying. In the north of Italy, polenta is…
Polenta Taragna
Taragna polenta is made from ground corn and buckwheat. The black bits in it are the buckwheat, which give it a slight bitter flavour. It is popular in Lombardy, Italy. In different areas of Lombardy, it is served cooked with different cheeses on it — Taleggio, Bitto cheese in Valtellina, Branzi cheese around Bergamo, etc….
Polpettone
Polpettone are large meatballs that some Italians try to describe to North Americans as “meat loaf cooked on top of the stove.” The meatball can be made as one large pie-sized meat-ball, or as pattie-sized meatballs. They can be made from anything: beef, turkey, calamari, tuna, vegetables, squash, beans, potatoes, etc. For a starch binder,…
Porcini Mushrooms
Dried Porcini Mushrooms © Denzil Green Porcini Mushrooms are pale brown with a meaty texture and a rich, woodsy flavour. They don’t have gills underneath the cap; they have pores instead. The caps can be anywhere from 1 to 10 inches wide (2.5 to 25 cm.) They are still collected from the wild; efforts to…
Pork Brawn
Pork Brawn (aka Head Cheese) is a meat jelly made from pork. The jelly has small pieces of meat in it. You can think of it as sausage, a jellied meat, a potted meat, or as a cold meat loaf with a lot of wobble to it. (Granted, some people don’t like to think of…
Pre-Ferments
A pre-ferment is a dough that has had a head-start on fermenting before the rest of the ingredients are added. It adds taste and strength to the dough.
Punt e Mes
Punt e Mes is a red vermouth made from white wine fortified with alcohol, herbs and sugar. The taste is both sweet and bitter. It is made by the Carpano company in Turin, Italy. If you make a Manhattan with Punt e Mes instead of another regular red vermouth, the drink is called a “Top…
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Purple Sprouting Broccoli is mostly dark green. It’s the outside edges of the florets that have a purple tinge to them, and that too goes green when cooked. The plant is very cold hardy, down to 14 F (-10 C.) You start the plants in the late summer, let them overwinter, and in the spring…
Quintale Seme Giallo Pumpkins
Quintale Seme Giallo Pumpkins are squat. They weigh 5 to 20 pounds (2 ⅓ to 9 kg) on average, but often can grow over 50 pounds (22 ½ kg.) It has sweet, not watery, orange flesh that is good eating. The seeds are also very good eating, and can be pressed for oil. It can…