Italian recipes for national holidays. Which one do you know?

My mother used to make chanterelle soup at Christmas and my in-laws beat an egg at Easter and then eat rice pudding with brown sugar. Every family has its own eating habits. But every country also has its traditions. Some holidays simply include certain dishes in Italy. Shall we go round the year together?

The dishes in this article are eaten all over Italy. In addition, there are of course also all kinds of regional dishes during the holidays. With each specialty I give you a link to the recipe, sometimes on This is Italy and sometimes on another Italy website.

Here are the most famous Italian recipes for it National holidays.

Carnival

At carnival horen Chatter, cookies. A former student once brought them from Italy to Italian class for me.

Women's day

March 8 is the feast of women, Women's day, which gets more attention in Italy than here. Everywhere you see the yellow mimosa flowers that are also used for baking and cooking. I've never done it, but when I'ricetta with mimosa' googled, for example I got this Mimosa cake in the search results and that actually seems pretty nice to me.

Maybe next year I should try to make my socialist mother-in-law happy with this recipe, because she always gives me a card on International Women's Day.

Father's Day

Op Father's Day, (San Giuseppe, March 19), the donuts ate. I made them in 2017, the year I bought a deep fryer. But maintaining a deep fryer is more work than keeping a pet, so in 2018 I parted ways with it again. It's a shame sometimes, because make it arancini, cannoli of potato croquettes over the fire in a large pan with oil. That's not all.

Easter

With Easter is it nice to have a Easter Colomba to make for lunch, a nice sweet Easter bread. very similar to the pannet tone which is eaten at Christmas. Brioche-like sweet bread.

I also made the Neapolitan pastiera before Easter. A very distinct tart with orange blossom water, candied fruit, ricotta and boiled wheat. Very tasty, I once made it for Café Fausto in Schoonhoven (Elsewhere on the site find the other cakes I made for them).

Also very tasty, but more for lunch is the Pasqualina cake with spinach and egg. It is nice that the egg yolk remains whole, which looks nice when cut.

Halloween

Halloween has long been a bit bigger in Italy than in the Netherlands and that includes pumpkin of course. Although the entire party is imported from America, the Italians happily join in. With pumpkin you can make a nice pumpkin pie or you choose ravioli from Mantua.

Christmas

In the run-up to the christmas I always make one too pannet tone. If you are in Italy around Christmas you will see that you can buy boxes of pannettone everywhere. At the Xenos they also sell cheap pannettone. You can often buy such a box imported from Italy at delicatessens in the Netherlands, but the prices are sometimes really ridiculous.

That's why we just make panettone ourselves and we use the recipe from Ziti Zitonic.

Still I sometimes buy a cheaper one PandoroAlso because it is very easy to decorate by slicing it horizontally, turning it a bit, stacking it and then processing it with whipped cream and fruit.

What else is included Christmas? I don't know but I did write for This is Italy this Italian Christmas menu. Things I liked and found easy to make.

struffoli from Naples are also eaten at Christmas in the south of the country.

New Year's Eve

Op New Year's Day eat the Italians cotechino with lenticchie. Sausage with lentils. I've never made it because it doesn't look very appetizing to me. I actually only like lentils in a dahl curry. With coriander, coconut milk, lots of spices… But that's not Italian.

Do you remember a dish I forgot? Let me know in a comment.