Arcadia Italy

What is the Italian dish that is easy to make, delicious and inexpensive? Let's leave aside the ubiquitous but ever-variable pasta for a moment and talk about polpette!

Polpette in Italy can be made of tender beef, pork, chicken or veal (meatballs) or with other ingredients like vegetables, cheese or fish. It is a satisfying and nutritious secondo piatto which is, unlike in the US, never served on top of pasta but, rather, following the pasta course. Polpette were, like so many delicious Italian foods, created by nonne and mamme during harsh times (during or after the wars), using every last scrap of food leftover in the pantry: stale bread serves as the base, grated cheese or cheese rinds, herbs and eggs (if there were any to be found) and whatever else was hanging about.

We spent a relaxing afternoon with Valeria at her cooking school “Cuoche per Caso” making a variety of breaded polpette with cheese, meatballs with lemon and pistachios or meatballs alla Romana with tomato sauce. These mini-meatballs were so good!

So, here's a polpetta challenge to our Roman students: how many varieties of polpetta can you come up with?