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How to Make a Typical South Tyrolean Meal from Selva Gardena at Home
Ciao Italianista,
Let’s explore some typical dishes of Selva Gardena and South Tyrol and prepare a meal. Here is the menu I came up with that we can make at home. Please join me a casa!
South Tyrolean Seal of Quality
The first requirement for making recipes at home inspired by Selva Gardena and South Tyrol is to buy high-quality organic ingredients. Until recently, this area used to be poor and isolated with few restaurants but the quality of the food has always been pure, rich, hearty, and robust because it comes from the mountains. Nowadays, this region is home to many Michelin star restaurants made with the South Tyrolean seal of quality produced food. Here at home, choose high-quality local ingredients since we can’t buy directly from the Alpine farmer.
Marende with Speck, Mountain Cheeses and Schüttelbrot
Marende is a typical hearty snack of meats, cheeses, and flatbread called Schüttelbrot. (I found I had to increase the oven temperature and the time following this recipe.) Perfect with cold local craft beer after a long hike up the mountain to one of the Alpine huts described in my related travel article.
The preferred cheese for marende is Alp cheese. By definition, you can only get this cheese in South Tyrol and it’s best to buy it directly from the farmer. You can only call cheese Alp cheese if the cows, goats, or sheep graze on Alpine summer grass and the milk and cheese are produced on these mountains themselves.
Speck from Alto Adige
Marende also requires Speck. Speck is a lightly smoked, cured ham unique to Alto Adige and is celebrated for its delicious flavors and hearty cut. You can learn all about the 5 stages of production here.
Unlike Alp cheese, you don’t have to go to South Tyrol to buy speck straight from the farmer — you can buy it on Amazon! Or you can substitute it with other sausages and pork meats. But I say let’s get it fresh at the annual Speck festival in this iconic village of Santa Maddalena in Villnöss/Funes. The next one is in February 2021. Andiamo!
Instructions:
Put the speck, Schüttelbrot, and mountain cheeses on a platter and garnish with radishes, cucumbers, chives, and anything else like rosemary, grapes, other salamis, sausages, prosciutto, etc.
Canederli with Speck
We will make two entrees today for our menu. Canederli and Crafuncins. Canederli is the Italian word for dumplings. It comes from the German word knödel. Canederli are part of the cucina povera, or cuisine of the poor, because, in their most basic form, they are made from stale bread and milk to moisten them and eggs to bind them with a little flour. But they can also be made more flavorful by adding speck or cheese. Today let’s follow this recipe and make canederli with speck.
Canederli with Speck
Ingredients
- 100 g Speck Alto Adige IGP
- 200 g diced white bread
- 40 g flour
- 50 g braised onions
- 1 tbs. finally chopped chives or parsley
- 3 eggs
- some milk
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Mix together the diced bread, speck, flour, and the braised onions. Season with the salt and parsley or chives.
- Add the eggs and some milk and bring the mixture together until all the ingredients have combined well.
- Let it rest for 10 minutes, then shape the dumplings and cook for 8-10 minutes in salted water.
- When cooked, remove them with a slotted spoon. Place 2 canederli in each bowl with stock and serve hot.
Video
Crafuncins
Crafuncins are basically ravioli. To make the Crafuncins, watch this Pasta Grannies video at the end of the recipe. She only uses spinach in the filling but some people also use ricotta. Especially in the mountains when they had a cow or two to produce milk for cheese but not very much spinach.
Crafuncins
Ingredients
Pasta dough
- 500 g 00 flour
- 500 g farro flour
- generous pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 eggs
- 300 ml tepid water
Spinach filling
- some olive oil
- 1 minced onion
- cube stock
- 1 tbsp flour
- a little water
- 1 bag defrosted spinach
- some nutmeg
- some parmesan cheese
Instructions
Pasta dough
- Mix the flours and the salt together.
- Add the olive oil.
- Make a well and crack in the eggs. Fold the flour mixture into the eggs and mix. Add the tepid water as needed.
- Knead the dough until it forms a nice consistency. Let the it rest for an hour to overnight.
Spinach filling
- Sautee the onion in the olive oil.
- Add a stock cube.
- Add the flour to make a rue.
- Add a little water.
- Add the spinach, nutmeg, and parmesan cheese.
- Let the mixture cool.
Forming the crafuncins
- Use a pasta maker or a rolling pin to roll out the dough.
- Use a 8 cm round cookie cutter to cut our the circles for the crafuncins.
- Use a piping bag to squeeze our a dollop of the spinach mixture onto the dough circle.
- Fold them over and gently pinch them down.
Cooking the crafuncins
- Bring salted water to a boil.
- Gently put some crafuncins in the boiling water.
- Cook for 3-4 minutes.
- Gently remove them and put them on a dish.
- Grate a generous amount of parmesan cheese on tope and then pour melted butter on top. Enjoy!
Video
Tëurta de Furmenton
Ingredients
- 1 package vanilla yeast
- cinnamon as needed
- 100 g wild berries
- 4 g powdered sugar
- salt as needed
- 450 ml heavy whipping cream
- 150 g blueberry jam
- 6 eggs
- 100 g potato starch
- butter as needed
- 100 g sugar
- 100 g buckwheat flour
Instructions
- Mix the sugar, the buckwheat flour, the potato starch, the vanilla yeast, the cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.
- Beat the eggs until foamy.
- Mix the flour mixture into the eggs until evenly mixed.
- Pour the dough into a 7" buttered round cake pan.
- Cook for 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven.
- Let it cool. Take it out of the pan, and slice it into 2 discs.
- Spread the bottom one with blueberry jam and put the other disc on top.
- Whip the heavy cream with the powdered sugar.
- Spread the whipped cream on top and complete it with wild berries. Serve and enjoy!
Our meal inspired by Selva Gardena would not be complete without some apple strudel. Especially because it’s October and the Alpine apple trees are heavy with juicy apples. Let’s try this recipe from Waltraud Runnggaldier.
Apple Strudel
Ingredients
Dough
- 100 g sugar
- 125 g butter
- 250 g flour
- 1 egg
- 1 packet vanilla sugar
- grated lemon zest
- 1/2 packet baking powder
Filling
- 500 g apples cut into slices
- 60 g sugar
- 60 g breadcrumbs browned in butter
- 25 g pine nuts
- 50 g sultana raisins
- grated lemon zest
- vanilla sugar
- cinnamon
- a little rum
- eggs for brushing
Instructions
Dough
- Work all the ingredients into a smooth dough, adding a little cream if too dry or some flour if too sticky.
- Leave to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Filling
- Cut the apples into thin slices and mix with the sugar, breadcrumbs, sultana rasins, pine nuts, rum, vanilla sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest.
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Roll out the dough on a floured board and lay on a buttered baking tray.
- Put the apple filling on the dough and fold the dough over it.
- Brush the strudel with the egg. Decorate with the remaining strips of the dough and bake it in the oven.
- Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream.
- Bake for 35 minutes. Let cool and enjoy!
Gherdëina Craft Beer
Our meal would not be complete without some craft beer from Selva Gardena. As I write this, the Gherdëina Craft Beer festival is taking place today in Selva Gardena! And we are just in time for Oktoberfest in the Dolomites. For our menu here a casa, I say any Bavarian or Belgium beer will do!
Thank you for coming to casa mia. Now the menu is the meal! Let’s eat! It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. As we say in Selva Gardena – Bun prö! To learn more about the Ladin language spoken in Selva, read my related travel article.
Con amore,
Justine
