RECIPES

Cicerchie soup
Ingredients: [Serving size: 4]
dry cicerchie: 200 grams
4 pig’s cheek cubes
minced herbs (celery, carrots, onion, marjoram, garlic)
extra virgin olive oil: 1 spoon
4 slices of stale bread, cut in pieces

Preparation: Pre-soak cicerchie the evening before; the day after boil them on a low heat for about 90 minutes; fry extra virgin olive oil lightly, add pig’s cheek and minced herbs; after add boiled cicerchie and cook everything until it will be blended; pour the content on the stale or toasted bread slices and add good extra virgin olive oil as much as you like and… enjoy your meal!

Mussels and cicerchie
Ingredients: [Serving size: 4]
cicerchie: 300 grams
mussels:  1 kilogram
7/8 Campi Flegrei “cannellini” little tomatoes
1 “nano” celery rib
1 onion
1 garlic clove
2 bay leaves
Extra virgin olive oil: 80 mL
salt: the right amount
pepper or chili pepper: as much as you like

Preparation: Cook cicerchie, after pre-soak them in fresh water for at least half a day (is better to do it all night long). Some minutes after boiling, strain and add hot water. Add herbs and salt. Cook on a middle heat first, on a low heat after, for at least one hour and half. Meanwhile clean mussels, open them hot or even cool (which is better) and keep both mussels without shells and their water. In a saucepan brown a garlic clove in hot oil. Pour mussels in the saucepan and cook on a high heat for a couple of minutes, then add cooked cicerchie and a share of the filtered mussels water. Let everything take flavor for a couple of minutes more. In the end, sprinkle generously with pepper or chili pepper powder.

U' Carrere di Alici (anchovy soup)
Ingredients: [Serving  size: 4]

Anchovies: 1 kilogram
Water: 3 liters
1 garlic clove
extra virgin olive oil: 1 deciliter
3/4 hill little tomatoes
salt: the right amount
parsley
stale bread 

Preparation: Clean anchovies from heads and entrails, wash and let them rest half hour in a colander so that you can eliminate all blood.
Put in a big container (U’ Carrere) water, salt, garlic, little tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil. Boil it for about 20/25 minutes, to reduce the soup. At this point, turn off the fire and add anchovies and let them cook in the soup, for about ten minutes.
After, take stale bread slices, toast them, if you prefer, and put them on a dish, adding anchovies first, and soup after. You can also add a drop of extra virgin olive oil more.

Sauriello balls (sauro blue fish)
Ingredients: [Serving size: 4]

Sauriello (sauro blue fish): 500 grams
Stale breadcrumb: 300 grams
Flour: 100 grams
Pecorino cheese: 50 grams
Parsley: the right amount
Sultana and pine kernels: a handful
Pepper: the right amount
Salt: the right amount
1 garlic clove

Preparation: Clean saurielli from heads and entrails, wash and let them rest half hour in a colander so that you can eliminate all blood.
Boil fish in hot water for about 15 minutes; after, take the fishbone off and cool down the fish for a couple of hours, so it will lose all remaining water.
In the end, crumble it in a terrine adding wet stale breadcrumb well squeezed, eggs, cheese, parsley, sultana, pine kernels, salt and pepper; blend all ingredients together carefully. If the mixture is too soft, add some flour to get a consistence to create balls as big as a walnut. Balls are ready to be fried; if you want, before you put them in oil, you can add breadcrumbs. You can also cook them in the oven.

Anchovy and green pepper tagliolini pasta(A meal that proves Pozzuoli two souls, the sailor one and the agricultural one)
Ingredients: [Serving size: 4]

Tagliolini pasta: 400 grams
Anchovies: 800 grams
Green peppers: 200 grams
Vesuvius tomatoes: 500 grams
“New” onion: 50 grams
garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
Nepitella (a sort of thyme)
Basil

Preparation: At first heat some oil in a pan and after add minced garlic and new onion. After, put green peppers in, keeping some whole and some cut in washer shape.
And now anchovies: put half of the anchovies in the pan, all cut to little pieces; you will use the other half – the whole ones – later. Now you can add tomatoes and cook everything on a high heat for 10 minutes: almost done.
Cook tagliolini pasta in the usual copious salted hot water and put in the pan the other half of the anchovies too – the whole ones – and nepitella (if you can’t find it, use thyme). Now strain tagliolini pasta, put them in the sauce pan and serve with basil in addition.