The holidays are over and so are all the traditional Italian big meals with family and friends. The thought of many Italians is to get back on track, to go on a diet, to eat moderately: that’s what they say on TV and write in the newspapers.

Anyway we want to share with you some of the traditional dishes we ate during the holidays.

First of all for its simplicity, tradition and colour, the Insalata di Rinforzo(Reinforcing salad), sometimes also called burdiglione, is a typical Neapolitan dish prepared during the Christmas period. It is prepared with boiled cauliflower, green olives, gherkins, spring onions, giardiniera (pickled vegetables), sweet or spicy peppers (papaccelle), and anchovies in salt. The whole thing is seasoned with oil, salt and vinegar.

The Insalata di Rinforzo is so called in Naples because it was originally served during the Christmas Eve dinner, a dinner notoriously lean, which even when it involved gargantuan fish dishes, it was believed to have to be reinforced with this salad.

When ready, it can be brought to the table and, if prepared with a certain abundance, the Insalata di Rinforzo can be eaten the next day, when everything will have reached the maximum flavor.

PREPARATION

15 min

RECIPE

easy

It is easy to prepare and is perfect to accompany important meat or fish dishes.

 

INGREDIENTS

• cauliflower 1
• pickled giardiniera 150 g =3/4 cup 
• black olives  80 g =1/3 cup 
• green olives  80 g =1/3 cup 
• 8 anchovy fillets
• capers 30 g =1/4 of
• extra virgin olive oil
• vinegar
• salt
• pepper

Preparation

The basic ingredient is cauliflower.

After cleaning it under running water, separate the florets from it and boil them in salted water.

The boiling must not be complete and the florets must be drained after about 10 minutes and left to cool normally in a large serving dish.

The florets must then be seasoned with pickled gherkins cut into rounds, capers desalted in water, papaccelle cut into strips, desalted and boned anchovies, then cut into pieces in half or thirds, with green and black olives, boned or even whole, and with a delicately pickled giardiniera.

The whole thing must be sprinkled with a mixture of about 3 parts olive oil and about two parts vinegar. The seasoning must be made in advance, to allow the ingredients to mix well with the cauliflower florets.

Finally, it can be brought to the table and, if prepared with a certain abundance, the salad of reinforcement can be eaten the next day, when everything will have reached the maximum flavor.

 
 

It’s not Christmas if there’s no salad on the table: Neapolitan tradition, in fact, requires this easy-to-recipe dish to be present during holiday lunches and dinners to accompany the other served dishes.

It is easy to prepare and is perfect to accompany important meat and fish  dishes

Of course, nothing prevents you from preparing it for any occasion as soon as the cauliflower season arrives, which is the main ingredient, to which black and green olives, capers, anchovies and giardiniera are added.

Preparing it is easy and quick, once the cauliflower is boiled, just add the other ingredients and the seasoning, but the advice is to let it rest in the fridge for at least a couple of hours so that it can flavor properly.

Once ready, it is perfect to be served the same day or the next day, served alone or as a side dish, taken to the office in the lunch box. Easy and with endless possibilities. Have you ever tried it?