Rachel Roddy’s recipe for gnocchi alla Sorrentina | A kitchen in Rome

This gnocchi dish from Sorrento leans heavily on the local sweet tomatoes and abundant mozzarella

Looking at a map, the Sorrentine peninsula juts into the Thyrrhenian sea as if it’s thumbing a ride. It provides the bottom curve of the Gulf of Naples and the top curve of the Gulf of Salerno, while its tip is a few miles from the island of Capri. The bone of the thumb is the rising and remarkable Lattari mountain range, while towns punctuate the coast, which dips steeply towards the sea. One of those towns is Sorrento, known by the Romans as Surrentum (but a village long before). Now it is a land of wine; before, though, it was a land of lemons and, myth-wise, where sirens (beautiful or monstrous, depending on whom you ask) used bewitching songs (rather than thumbs) to lure unwary mariners.

There are other alluring reasons, too, and confidence around food; there are a good number of dishes alla Sorrentina – Sorrento-style. Saltimbocca (veal, prosciutto and sage), merluzzo (cod), pollo (chicken), paccheri (large tubes of pasta), lasagne, calamaretti (little calamari) and gnocchi are all cooked alla Sorrentina, which means different things for different recipes.

UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado

Continue reading...

from Recipes | The Guardian https://ift.tt/tgeFIui
via IFTTT