Stracciatella

Stracciatella (Italian pronunciation: [strattʃaˈtɛlla]; in Italian, a diminutive of straccia ("rag" or "shred") meaning "a little shred"; plural, stracciatelle) is a term used for different types of Italian food. Stracciatella alla romana is an egg drop soup which is popular around Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy. A similar soup, called zanzarelli, was described by Martino da Como in his 15th century manual, The Art of Cooking. Other variants exist. The soup provided the inspiration behind the stracciatella variety of gelato—a well-known milk-based ice cream infused with fine chocolate flakes that was originally created in Bergamo in northern Italy in 1962.

Stracciatella is also a variety of soft stretched-curd cheese invented in Apulia (the Puglia region in south-eastern Italy) that is made using a shredding technique. Stracciatella cheese is also used to make burrata, a buttery cheese enclosed in a bag of mozzarella.

Soup

Stracciatella is the name of an Italian egg drop soup which is popular around Rome, where it invariably used to be served at the start of Easter lunches.^[7][8] Stracciatella alla romana is traditionally prepared by beating eggs and mixing in grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon zest, and sometimes semolina; this mixture is then gently drizzled into boiling meat broth, while stirring so as to produce little shreds ("stracciatelle") of cooked egg in the soup.^[9] The resulting soup can be served in bowls containing a few thin slices of toasted bread, with additional parmesan grated on top.^[8]

According to Ada Boni, stracciatella alla romana used also to be scented with marjoram.^[8] Other traditional Italian and Italian-American recipes suggest garnishing with chopped parsley.^[10][11] Some American variations of the soup incorporate spinach as a main ingredient.^[12][13]

A fragrant egg-drop soup similar to the modern-day stracciatella was recorded as early as the 15th century by Martino da Como in his Libro de Arte Coquinaria (The Art of Cooking) under the name of zanzarelli.^{[1][n 1]} The traditional preparation of stracciatella is also rather similar to that of sciusceddu, a rich festive soup from Messina in Sicily that may be a cousin of the Roman dish.^{[2][n 2]}

Stracciatella ice cream with chocolate underneath

Ice cream

Stracciatella is also a variety of milk-based gelato that is filled with fine, irregular chips of chocolate.^[14] This gelato is somewhat analogous to American chocolate chip ice cream, but the chocolate in stracciatella should turn out to be less chunky and more evenly distributed to produce a smooth, delicately crunchy texture.^[15] The effect is produced by drizzling melted chocolate into the ice cream towards the end of the churning process.^[14] Stracciatella gelato can be flavoured with vanilla.^[15]

Called "stracciatella" after the soup, the flavour was created in 1962 by Enrico Panattoni, the owner of La Marianna, a gelateria in Bergamo in northern Italy.^{[4][n 3]} According to Panattoni, the idea came to him after he had grown tired of stirring eggs into broth to satisfy customers of his restaurant who kept asking for stracciatella soup.^[4]

A small burrata

Cheese

Stracciatella is also a kind of soft cheese originally made in Apulia (the Puglia region of south-eastern Italy) from Italian buffalo or cow's milk using a stretching (pasta filata) and shredding technique.^[16][17] When mixed with thick cream stracciatella is also used to make burrata (Italian for "buttered"): this rich, buttery textured cheese which comes enclosed in a bag of mozzarella is thought to have been originally created in the early 20th century in Andria on the Murgia plateau, and is now also made outside Italy (e.g. in the United States).^[18][19] Since neither stracciatella nor burrata keeps well even when refrigerated, these cheeses need to be consumed promptly, while they are still soft and fresh.^[16]

Notes and references

Notes

References