Typical meat menu from Lake Garda (Italy).

1. Italian Meat Menu
from Lake Garda

2. Appetizers:
•Maddalena’s Omelette
First Courses:
•Lean Casoncei
•Vegetable soup with chicken and rice
Second Courses:
•Pork ribs with cabbages
•Polenta Tiragna (with cheese)
Desserts
•Chestnuts boiled in the milk

3. Maddalena’s Omelette
Ingredients: 8 fresh eggs, 5 mint twig, 10 tender new grass leaves, few spring
onions, 3 leaves of one blond onion, 30 grams of grated Grana, 5 spoils of
olive-oil, salt and pepper
Preparation: let wither in the olive-
oil all the new grass cut
in thinstripes and the onion cut very
thin and cook for some minutes. In
the meantime mix in a bowl Grana,
salt and pepper and pour the
mixture in the pan with the new
grass. Cook the Omelette on both
sides. Serve the Omelette tepid or
cold, cut into stripes garnish with
tufts of parsley.

4. Lean Casoncei
Ingredients: For the pastry: 400 g of flour, 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon of extra virgin
olive oil, salt.
For the filling: 300 g of cottage cheese foam ("Puin" mountain), 50 g of bread
crumbs, 3 eggs, 150g boiled chard, salt and pepper.
For the dressing: 70 g of butter, a few leaves of sage, rosemary 80 g of Parmesan
cheese
Put the flour, salt, eggs and olive oil on the
pastry board. Knead well until all ingredients are
mixed and then roll out two sheets, not too thin.
Separately prepare the stuffing in a bowl with
ricotta adding bread crumbs, boiled eggs, and
finely chopped herbs, salt and pepper. Stir all
the ingredients adding breadcrumbs if the
mixture becomes too wet. Put on the pasta, at a
distance of about 2 fingers, many filling balls, as big as a hazelnut, cover with
another sheet, close the dough between a ball and the other with your fingers and
cut casoncelli moon-shaped or triangles as you like. Let them dry on a cloth
sprinkled with flour and cook in plenty boiling salted water in an uncovered panand
let them boil slowly. Drain them well, dress them with melted butter, sage and
rosemary and sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese. Serve hot on hot plates.

5. Soup “Dirty”
Vegetable soup with chicken and rice
Ingredients: half chicken, one carrot, one potato, one onion, chicken giblets,
1.5 liters of good meat broth, one big nut of butter, one cube of stock, one
glass of dry white wine, 250 grams of rice and salt
Preparation: mince thinly the onion, put
it into a saucepan and brown it with
butter. When it appears a good golden
color, add the cubed cut vegetables and
add salt. Let everything season and add
the boned, skimmed and cut chicken.
Brown for a bit then wet with wine.
Let it evaporate add the cube the broth
and the chicken giblets cut into small
pieces and cook at medium temperature.
When the chicken and the vegetables are almost cooked add the rice mix
and cook the mixture. Serve with rich sprinkling of grated Grana.

6. Pork ribs with cabbages
Ingredients: 1 kg. of pork’s meat, 1 kg. of cabbages, 4 onions, 4 spails of
olive-oil, salt, pepper
Preparation: Wash the pork meat with care
under a flux of cold water then put it to drain.
Brown in a pan the sliced onion with the spoils
of olive-oil, when they become gold planted, add
the dried pork meat.
Season the pork meat on both sides and add
the washed and sliced cabbages.
Mix the whole, browning it for a bit, then add hot
a water.
Add salt, pepper and cook with moderate flam
for about two hours, adding if necessary, some
hot water.
Serve them hot.

7. Polenta Tiragna (with cheese)
Ingredients: 300 gr. of integral flour (wholemeal), 100 gr. of Saracen flour,
200 gr. of butter some sage leaves, 200 gr. of lean, full-fat cheese
Preparation: Mix the flours
and prepare a pudding of
maize with 100 gr. of butter
and the necessary water
(about 1,5 lt.)
After 45 minutes of cooking
add the remaining butter
and the cheese that will
have cubed.
Mix for 20 minutes then serve the porridge pouring it into a single holster
and season it with a bit of melted butter seasoned in an other container
with the sage leaves.

8. Chestnuts boiled in the milk
Ingredients: 300 gr. of dried chestnuts, 500 ml. of water, 500 ml of milk, 1
pinch of cinnamon, salt
Preparation: put in tepid water the
chestnuts for about two hours, so that you can
easily remove all the pellicles which cover the
chestnuts.
The boil in a saucepan the water and the milk
with the pinch of cinnamon and salt in a
saucepan.
When the liquid starts to boil, add the
chestnuts, moderate he flame and cook
everything. They are excellent if served with their broth but you can also
add 4 handful of rice when the chestnuts are cooked and eat this sort of
sweet rice of chestnuts. Or you can put the mix (rice and chestnuts) in the
oven in a buttered baking-tin and serve as a rice cake.