How Your Wood Oven Cook Cope with Italy’s 20 Sunday Dishes

Keeping an eye on Italian culinary mentions on social media, as we do, our wood fired oven specialists could not help spotting a VisitItaly.eu graphic that featured Italian Sunday dishes by region.

This meant that were 20 dishes in total, ranging from the Sunday delight served in Val d’Aosta, to that rustled up in Sicily.

Cooking regional Italian dishes in a wood oven

What struck our wood fired oven specialists was the fact that so many of these regional delights can be cooked in a wood oven, either in their entirety or in part. On that basis, we thought we would bring them to your attention and explain how to cook some of them in the Valoriani wood-fired oven that you could have in your own back garden.

The Sunday dishes and their regions were as follows:

Carbonade Valdostana – Val d’Aosta

Canederli – Trentino-Alto Adige

Frico con Polenta – Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Rigoli in Salsa – Veneto

Risotto alla Milanese – Lombardia

Brasato al Barolo – Piedmonte

Trofie al Pesto – Liguria

Lasagne alla Bolognese – Emilia-Romagna

Arrosto con Patate – Toscana

Strangozzi al Tartufo – Umbria

Vincisgrassi – Marche

Chitarra alla Teramana – Abruzzo

Abbacchio al Forno – Lazio

Ragù Napoletano – Campania

Cavatelli al Ragù - Molise

Orecchiette al Ragù – Puglia

Baccala alla Lucana – Basilicata

Pasta al Forno – Calabria

Malloreddus alla Campidanese – Sardegna

Pasta ‘Ncasciata – Sicilia

Cooking ragù and meatballs in your wood oven

In several cases, these dishes feature types of pasta – bigoli, trofie, strangozzi, cavatelli, chitarra, orecchiette and malloreddus (semolina pasta) – with a type of sauce or meat accompaniment. The wood oven can often be the star that creates the flavoursome pasta accompaniment, infusing it with a smoky depth of flavour that has no comparison to a sauce or meat dish cooked on a hob.  

Take ragù, for instance. A ragù relies on complexity of flavour and that can be superbly created in a Valoriani wood-fired oven, slow cooking the pork and beef meat and the accompanying vegetables on a low heat, to deliver the flavour sensation that a true ragù requires.

You may not be familiar with Teramana, but these are very small meatballs made from pork and beef and flavoured with paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper and a sauce combining strips of roasted red pepper and traditional Italian tomatoes. The red pepper strips can be very easily cooked on a tray in the wood oven and the meatballs formed and browned in the oven. The sauce can then be constructed and brought to the boil, before popping in the meatballs and cooking them for around 10 minutes.

Cooking regional Italian baked pastas in your wood-fired oven

The list of Sunday dishes also features baked pasta delights, such as Pasta ‘Ncasciata, the favourite dish of Sicilian fictional detective, Commissario Montalbano. This features aubergine, cascio cheese, basil and ragù, and sometimes salami and hard-boiled egg. Other Sunday lunch regional delights in Italy are lasagne bolognese and pasta al forno (literally baked pasta). These are regular dishes for a wood oven to cook. Then there is Vincigrassi – a posh lasagne with seven different layers of what were traditionally leftover farmhouse meats, including chicken livers and hearts. Featuring chopped, rather than ground meat, this is a hearty dish and one of the baked pasta dishes that tastes absolutely sensational when cooked in a Valoriani wood oven.

Risotto, fish and roasts in a wood oven

There’s nothing to stop you cooking risotto in a wood-fired oven either and to do so will impart a truly sensational smokiness. Many a Risotto alla Milanese will be cooked in a Valoriani wood-fired oven in Italy.

Never thought about cooking fish in your wood oven? Perhaps baccala alla lucana could be a starting point. Learning how to cook with a skillet is part of the skill of wood-fired cookery and this salt cod, popped into a skillet with garlic, red pepper, parsley and white wine, for a little searing before baking in the oven, will taste amazing.

Roasting is another culinary method you can use in the oven, with this allowing you to cook a Tuscan roast with potatoes with ease. You can also create the Lazio dish of Abbacchio (roast baby lamb) cooked over potatoes and served with what is often an anchovy-infused sauce.

Stews, Brasato and Carbonade Valdostana in a wood-fired oven

Learn to control the temperature in your oven and make the most of low and moderate heat and you can also stew and slow-cook regional Italian dishes. This is the method to use for Carbonade Valdostana – strips of beef simmered in red wine with herbs and juniper berries. It’s also the technique you would use for Brasato al Barolo – pot-roasted beef slowly cooked in Barolo wine and with an accompaniment of carrots, celery, garlic and bay leaves in the stew. Cook this for 2-4 hours in a wood oven and it may well be the best stew you ever tasted.

Northern Italian dishes cooked in a wood oven

Canederli may seem to be more problematic, with these south Tyrolean bread dumplings being formed from stale bread, soaked in milk and fried with speck and onions. Once the mixture is formed into balls, with seasoning and parsley thrown in, and left to rest for an hour or so, they are easily cooked in the oven. Just boil the broth in the oven and add the dumplings and they should rise very quickly, usually signifying that they are cooked through.

Carbonade Valdostana is typically served with polenta and you can also cook that in your wood oven, simmering in a heavy, covered pot, typically using stored heat on the oven floor. This will allow you to also have the essential polenta part of Frico con Polenta, leving you to just get the skillet out again and create a crispy but cheese-filled potato and onion pancake. This is also often served with caramelized onions which can be cooked in sensational fashion in your wood oven, on a slow cook basis.

Finding an authentic Italian wood-fired pizza oven

The key thing to remember here is that not all wood ovens or pizza ovens can cook up all these regional Sunday delights from Italy, as they do not have the capacities to do so. That may be because their cooking environment is poor, due to inadequate materials used in the wood-fired or pizza oven’s construction. It could be poor design, or restrictions in size that do not allow for cooking in pans and skillets. Insulation may be so deficient that you simply cannot slow-cook dishes using retained heat in the oven, once the fire has died down. In many ovens, once the fire is out, the oven temperature plummets, rendering cooking impossible.

None of this is true of a Valoriani oven, in which many of these Sunday-best dishes from Italy will be being cooked each and every week.

If you want an authentic oven that can conjure up the authentic tastes of Italy, and are keen to have your own Italian culinary adventure, you need a Valoriani oven from Orchard Ovens. Call us today on 07743 847647 to talk about the best one to suit you.

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Editors notes

Orchard Ovens is the domestic and commercial pizza oven supplier in the UK of Valoriani, based in Reggello, Tuscany - the manufacturer of Italy's hugely respected Valoriani pizza ovens, known as the Maserati of pizza ovens and the kings of clay. These ovens are made from superb refractory clay - cotto clay - found in the family's quarry and unique, thanks to having just the right alumina. This allows Valoriani ovens to heat up quickly and retain heat superbly, bring huge advantages to homeowners, as well as restaurant owners, hotels, pubs, mobile caterers, pizzerias, takeaways and more.

Orchard Ovens supplies some of Britain's best-known restaurants and chefs, whilst it is also a specialist creator of outdoor kitchens and wood-fired oven builds for the rich and famous, as well as everyday homeowners wishing to add value to their home and enjoy an outdoor lifestyle to the full.