Candele spezzate alla 'Genovese' di Baccalà - MYSOCIALRECIPE (2025)

FAQs

What are candele spezzate? ›

Candele Spezzate (broken candles) are a delicious variety of Candele, originally from the south of Italy, and their name and shape are derived from the candles that were carried during religious processions. This pasta is excellent 'au gratin' and perfect for capturing and soaking up all the sauce.

The sauce is prepared by sautéing either beef or veal with onions, and slowly cooking for two to ten hours. The onions are typically accompanied by minced carrots and celery in what is known as a soffritto.

Genovese in Pasta Alla Genovese actually refers to the city of Genoa, which is located in the Liguria region of Italy. It's a beautiful coastal city known for its rich culinary traditions. The dish is believed to have originated there, hence the name.

That basil sauce is known as pesto alla Genovese. This dish is from Naples, most likely brought from Genoa in Northern Italy, though it might refer to the inventor's last name. Confused? Yeah well, it's a recipe that dates back at least 400 years, so the uncertainty of its origin is not surprising.

Genovese is generally categorized as a non-tomato ragù, much like Bolognese. But, again like Bolognese, that doesn't mean it's completely tomato-free. It's common for cooks to work a small amount of tomato paste, or a handful of cherry tomatoes, into the sauce, and I found that both were welcome additions.

Genovese pesto is the classic, raw basil sauce that we all know and love, while Genovese sauce is a slow-cooked meat sauce that, despite its name, is most associated with Naples in the Campania region of Italy.

Salsa di Pomodoro

A versatile classic, made with vibrant Mutti tomatoes harvested at peak ripeness. If there's one staple in any Italian home, it's a simple tomato sauce.

Cosa nostra is Italian for 'our thing'. Want to learn more? Find out which words work together and produce more natural-sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.

Genovese is an Italian surname meaning, properly, someone from Genoa.

In Italian in some cases the preposition could be “semplici” (simple) “articolate” (with the article). For example the preposition “Dalla” is fusion between the simple preposition “da” + the feminine article “la” . “Alla” can be translated to "in", "at", "on", or "to", depending on the context in which it is used.

What city invented spaghetti? ›

Although Greek mythology shows the god Vulcan using a device that made strings of dough, it's widely believed “spaghetto” (the singular for spaghetti in Italian) originated in 12^th century Palermo, in sunny Sicily. Made from durum wheat, each strand used to be 50cm long (in contrast to the 20-25cm we see today).

The name pesto is the past participle of the Genoese verb pestâ (Italian: pestare), meaning 'to pound', 'to crush': the ingredients are "crushed" or ground in a marble mortar through a circular motion of a wooden pestle. The same Latin root gives us pestle.

Pesto, on the other hand, flourishes best when paired with thinner noodles, such as spaghetti and linguine, and with shapes that have plenty of twists, grooves, curls, and troughs. Fusilli is not only one of the most well-known pasta shapes; it's also the UK's most popular and our ultimate shape to use with pesto.

Flavorful Pesto

The name "Pesto" comes from the Genovese word "pesto," meaning to pound or to crush, referring to the traditional method of preparing the sauce using a mortar and pestle. However, this translation might be somewhat misleading, as the preparation involves more grinding than pounding.

What makes it different from Pesto Alla Genovese is that it uses almonds as opposed to pine nuts, and gets finished with fresh tomatoes, which are bountiful in the south. In Sicily, they use the Pachino tomato - which are small, sweet, and similar to cherry tomatoes.

That's because, for all its simplicity, pesto is a pungent sauce. Don't believe me? Just think of what's packed into it: heaps of fresh, aromatic basil (an assertive herb all by itself); raw garlic; aged cheeses; and rich nuts, plus a good glug of spicy olive oil to hold it all together. There's nothing mild about it.

Pesto Rosso, or red pesto in Italian, is a pesto that is tomato-based instead of the more classic green basil pesto Genovese. There are fresh versions of pesto rosso that use fresh tomatoes, but for this version, we're using umami-packed sun-dried tomatoes.