CNN
Janelle Davis and Foren Clark, CNN
It’s hard to get enough of delicious Italian dishes.
In the second season of Stanley Tucci: In Search of Italy, viewers are once again salivating over food prepared by chefs from across the country. Some home cooks have even tried to replicate these dishes at home.
In case your attempts weren’t successful, CNN has compiled recipes from the chefs for season two’s most mouth-watering dishes.
Here are five recipes that many viewers may want to replicate at home.
Recipes are in US and metric units and have been adapted for home use by a restaurant or chef.
Black Venetian classic
Risotto with black ink and cuttlefish
(Risotto al Nero di Seppia)
Recipe provided by Giovanni “Gianni” Scappin.
Venice is a magical, mysterious, romantic place, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room: it has a reputation for bad food.
City-born and raised chef Giovanni “Gianni” Scappin was delighted to prove this stereotype wrong. To showcase the best of the Canal City and its surrounding lagoon, he made a classic Venetian risotto with black ink and cuttlefish.
Cuttlefish (sepia in Italian) is a cousin of the squid and octopus. And cuttlefish ink is a key ingredient.
“Precious ink is used to color the risotto black, making the dish as theatrical as Venice itself,” Tucci explained.
This risotto dish is so great that some neighboring countries consider it their invention. It’s impossible to know exactly who created the dish, but the ink in the Venetian cookbook has dried up a long time ago.
RECIPE: Risotto with black ink and cuttlefish
Risotto Tucci called “revelation”
Risotto with Grana Padano cream, beer and coffee
(Risotto with Crema di Grana Padano, Riduzione di Birra e Caffè)
Recipe provided by Christian and Manuel Costardi.
Piedmont, a region in northwest Italy, is famous for risotto. And the beating heart of this gastronomic tradition is the city of Vercelli, where risatori, restaurants specializing in risotto are everywhere. One of the best places to sample it in Italy’s rice capital, the Christian & Manuel Ristorante, is tucked away behind a 1960s tourist hotel called Hotel Cinzia.
The restaurant is run by two brothers who give this dish a modern touch. Christian and Manuel Costardi’s signature version is a risotto with Grana Padano cream, beer and coffee. It should taste like cappuccino or tiramisu, but risotto is all in one dish.
Inspired by Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, the Costardi brothers playfully serve their signature dish in individual metal cans.
The unique risotto prepared by the chef’s owners earned them a Michelin star.
“It completely changes everything I thought about risotto,” Tucci said. “This is a revelation. That’s a thousand things in one bank. Wow!”
RECIPE: Risotto with Grana Padano cream, beer and coffee
This fondue is so delicious you need a spoon
Fonduta Valdostan
(Valle d’Aosta fondue)
Recipe courtesy of Lorella Tamone from Alpage Restaurant.
The Swiss are famous for fondue, but their neighbors in Italy have a different take on this delicious melted cheese dish. It is called fonduta.
Instead of Emmentaler and Gruyère, the Italians of the Valle d’Aosta region use only one cheese: fontina.
Fontina is a creamy semi-hard cheese with a mild nutty flavor.
“Italian fontina cheese, from cows fed sweet grass high in these mountains, makes fondue so juicy that it doesn’t need the white wine that is made in France or Switzerland,” Tucci said.
“Oh my God, this is so good,” Tucci said, enjoying fonduta at the Alpage restaurant at the foot of the Matterhorn. “So tasty!”
RECIPE: Fonduta Valdostan
Demonstration of the famous black truffle
Assoluto di Bosco
(Essence of the Woods pasta with porcini mushrooms and truffle)
Recipe provided by Alice Caporicci of La Cucina.
The Umbria region in central Italy is one of the main producers of the highly sought-after black truffle, an earthy, aromatic mushroom known throughout the world. The traditional method of hunting truffles with dogs and lots of digging in mountainous terrain can be difficult to maintain.
Carlo Caporicci was able to take up truffle hunting and turn it into truffle cultivation on his family estate of San Pietro a Pettine. Using a method that takes more than five years to create, Caporicci is able to produce black truffles that he says are identical to their counterparts in the wild. His daughter, Alice Caporicci, adds her family’s products to dishes at La Cucina.
Essence of the Woods Paste, also known as Assoluto di Boscocombines delicious flavors of beets, porcini mushrooms and black garlic to create a mouth-watering pasta sauce that complements, but doesn’t overshadow, the star of the show, lots of truffles.
“A fitting ending,” Tucci concluded, enjoying the dish, “in honor of Carlo, Alice, the future of truffles, and perhaps the future of Umbrian cuisine.”
RECIPE: Assoluto di Bosco
Pan pizza from an Italian family pizzeria
Pizza Al Padellino
(Pizza in a cast iron skillet)
Recipe provided by Adriano and Alfredo Lazzeri from Il Cavalier Restaurant
Most people think of pan pizza and think of mega-American pizza chains, but one family-run Italian pizzeria has been baking this classic pizza for over 60 years.
When Father Adriano Lazzeri opened Il Cavaliere in 1958, the concept of Pizza al Padellino (meaning “pizza in a small pan”) was a completely new concept. A restaurant in Turin, Italy, catered to factory workers who were crazy about it.
It is based on a traditional Tuscan crust inspired by the region where Ladzeri’s father grew up.
“Pizza in a pan is cooked for a very long time, because the dough is prepared in the morning, laid out in a pan and left with tomato sauce for many hours in the air. This is how, once cooked in an old wood-fired oven, it remains crispy, easily digestible and very tasty pizza, ”the restaurant’s website explains.
Each pizza in the pan is a small personal pizza. Each client can download it with their own individual fillings. When Tucci visited the restaurant during the filming of the second season of Stanley Tucci: In Search of Italy, he chose sausages as the topping. He also added anchovies on the recommendation of Chef Lazzeri.
“Usually I like very thin pizza, but this one is delicious, very creamy,” Tucci said after tasting the dish.
RECIPE: Pizza al Padellino
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