A Romagna Christmas menu: from cappelletti in brodo to home baking

Christmas in Romagna starts a few days before the 25th, when the big bag of flour appears in the house and somebody asks what time we are starting on the cappelletti, the small hand folded parcels of filled pasta. That is not a figure of speech: Romagna Christmas lunch is built in the days beforehand, one cappelletto at a time, and the menu has stayed the same for at least a century. The quantities change, the guests change, but the running order is always the same: capon broth, cappelletti, the main courses arriving in waves, and at the end the ciambella, the plain ring cake of Romagna, with sweet wine. Here is how we do it, with some advice for reaching the 25th without rushing.

The days before: folding the cappelletti

The real ritual is not at the dining table, it is at the work table. On the 23rd or the 24th, and in many families earlier still, out comes the big board, the sfoglia, the sheet of fresh egg pasta, is rolled out and everybody sits round to fold cappelletti. One person cuts the squares, one spoons in the filling, one closes them around a finger, one counts them and lines them up on floured trays. The children make the crooked ones, which go into the first pan because nobody can tell once they are in the broth.

The filling is made the evening before, so the flavours settle: the meat is roasted and minced together with fresh cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano, eggs and nutmeg. The full recipe, with quantities for a crowd, is in our cappelletti in brodo. Count at least thirty cappelletti per person and do not be too precise about it: the ones left over are the best of all, eaten on Boxing Day.

If your family is small or time is short, sfoglina workshops all over Romagna open on Christmas Eve with queues outside the door. That is not a betrayal: it is how the tradition has adapted to houses where there is no longer a full time azdora, the woman who ran the farmhouse kitchen.

The capon broth

The broth is always made the day before. It needs time to turn clear, and it needs a night somewhere cold so the fat rises to the surface and can be lifted off with a spoon. Capon is the festive meat: tastier than chicken, more delicate than beef, and in Romagna that is not up for discussion. Anyone who wants a fuller broth adds a piece of beef, but the capon must still come through.

Celery, carrot, onion, a few cherry tomatoes (some people add a potato too) and very little salt at the start. Barely a tremble of a simmer for three hours, skimming at the beginning. On Christmas Day you only need to warm it, adjust the salt and bring it to a gentle boil to drop the cappelletti in. Do not let it boil hard: the cappelletti open and the filling ends up in the broth.

Christmas Eve: no meat, and fish

On the evening of the 24th people eat lean, as Catholic tradition asks. On the coast that means fish: a brodetto, the local fish stew, fried oily fish, cuttlefish with peas. Inland it is simpler: a vegetable soup, passatelli in brodo, the soft dumplings of breadcrumb, egg and Parmigiano, made with vegetable or fish broth, a piece of salt cod. Christmas Eve is light because the following day will not be.

Lunch: cappelletti in brodo

At midday exactly the tureen arrives at the table steaming, and for a few minutes nobody speaks. Cappelletti in brodo are served in a deep bowl, with Parmigiano grated at the last moment and, for those who want it, a turn of pepper. An old Romagna habit, which some people still keep, is to add a splash of Sangiovese to the broth at the bottom of the bowl. It is called doing the bevr’in vin, and not everyone at the table will approve.

In many houses a second first course follows the cappelletti, usually a baked one: the favourites are green lasagne, nidi di rondine (rolled pasta nests) or cannelloni al ragù. It is a habit that comes from the days when Christmas was the only day of plenty, and nobody has had the courage to drop it.

The main courses

The capon that made the broth is not thrown away: it is served boiled, cut into pieces, with salsa verde. Alongside comes a roast, usually guinea fowl, rabbit or pork cooked in the oven with rosemary and potatoes, or else the superb, showstopping veal shank. In larger families there is a bollito too, with tongue and cotechino sausage, and the giardiniera, the pickled vegetables, put up at home in the autumn.

Side dishes are few and simple: roast potatoes, cooked vegetables, peperonata and a salad to freshen the mouth. The star has already been and gone, and the main courses are there to keep the table going into the afternoon.

The sweets: the ciambella above all

The festive sweet of Romagna is the ciambella, the low, close textured ring cake with a sugar crust, made with flour, eggs, butter or lard and lemon zest. It is cut into slices and dipped in sweet wine, Albana passita or Cagnina, never in a liqueur. It is the same ciambella as on any Sunday, but at Christmas three or four of them turn up, one from each aunt.

In the hills behind Rimini they make the porcospino, a dessert of coffee buttercream shaped by hand into a little hedgehog. The rest is made up of dried fruit and nuts, mandarins and the shop bought sweets, torrone, panettone and pandoro, which by now have been on the table long enough to count as tradition themselves.

Planning ahead: our own calendar

The secret to enjoying Christmas is to do nothing on the morning of the 25th except light the flame under the broth. This is how we divide up the work:

• One or two weeks before: cappelletti folded and frozen. Lay them spaced out on a tray lined with baking paper, two hours in the freezer, then into bags. They cook straight from frozen, with a couple of minutes more. The guide to storing and drying fresh pasta has every step.
• The 23rd: the ciambella, which is better after a day.
• The 24th: the broth, three hours over a low flame, then somewhere cold overnight.
• The morning of the 24th: the filling, if you are folding the cappelletti fresh. The afternoon belongs to the board, all together.
• The evening of the 24th: the roast is prepared and set in its tin, ready for the oven the next morning. The salsa verde is made and kept in the fridge.
• The morning of the 25th: skim the fat off the broth, light the oven for the roast, warm the broth at half past eleven. The cappelletti go in once the guests are already seated.

The rest is sitting at the table. Which, in the end, is the only thing a Romagna Christmas really asks for: time, people around you and a tureen that never runs out.