For 4 persons you need: 
4 small panetoncini 
2 tablespoon sugar 
1 orange 
½ lemon 
200 g red ribes 
200 g wild berries 
¼ fresh pineapple 
½ banana 
2 tablespoon orange liqueur 
1 tablespoon castor sugar

Ingredients
180 g dark chocolate
180 g butter
5 fresh eggs
180 g sugar
180 g flour
water

Instructions
Break the chocolate into small pieces, put it in a saucepan adding a tablespoon of water. Let the chocolate melt, add the butter and mix. 
Let it cool, add one by one the yolks mixing very well. Add the sugar and mix, whip the white of the eggs and sieve the flour. Ad flour and the white of the eggs by and by, add also a little glass of Kirsch. 
Bake in oven at 180° C.

Ingredients
300 g old bread
300 g dried figs
300 g walnuts
150 g almonds
100 g pine-seeds
2 small cups of strong coffee (if you desire)
1 glass of oil
as much sugar and honey as you need
It is also possible to add grated chocolate.

Directions
1. Let the bread cook with the dried figs cut into smaller pieces
2. Then you add the pine-seeds, the almonds and the walnuts cut in small pieces and all the other ingredients.
3. Let the mixture rest for a night.
4. Then you put it in a cake tin and bake it in the oven at 160° for 1 hour.
Have a look at the cake during the baking, you may cover it with baking-paper.

To serve 6 persons

Ingredients 
A torta Margherita
200 g butter
200 g sugar
8 yolks
100 g dark chocolate
4 teaspoons potato flour
vanilla
½ lt of milk

Directions 
While the cake is baking prepare the cream. Let a ¼ lt milk boil, then switch of the cooker, add the vanilla.
In a bowl add the 4 yolks one by one, 100 g sugar and 2 tablespoons of potato flour.
Add by and by the milk. Let the cream thicken and add the butter. Stir the yolks and the sugar, adding 2 tablespoons of potato flour and hot milk.
Let it thicken again, remove from the cooker, add the melted chocolate and the last butter.
Take the Margherita cake from the oven, cut it horizontally getting many 'plates', 8-10 cm large.
Spread each one with the vanilla-cream adding plates by plates. Spread the nut-cream on the surface of the cake and with a fork make the lines of the bark of the log.
Let it cool in the fridge until you serve.

Cut the lamb in small pieces, put it in a large pan with oil and let it brown.
Add parsley, garlic, and laurel and let it flavour for 10 minutes.
Add a glass of dry white wine, let it evaporate.
Add salt and pepper and now and then some water.

Ingredients 
1 duck of about 1 kilo 
2 oranges 
celerycarrots
garlic
laurel
salt and pepper 

Directions 
Blaze the duck and clean it. 
Prepare a minced with the orange peel (without the white part), celery, garlic, carrots and laurel. 
Filled the duck with this minced, add salt and pepper. 
Put the duck with oil in the oven for one and a half hour, now and then dip with orange juice.

Ingredients 
300 g sweet almonds 
10 g bitter almonds 
200 g sugar 
150 g castor sugar 
1 egg 
wafers 

Directions 
Scald the almonds, toast them in the oven and crush them up. You must have 200 g. 
Mix the almonds with the sugar in a bowl. 
Then add the castor sugar and whip the white of the egg . Put it on the table covered with castor sugar. 
Make the biscuits with your hands giving the a rhombic form. 
Put each biscuit on a wafer and let it rest for 1 hour before baking them in a lukewarm oven, the biscuits must not get hard. 
Strew with castor sugar.

To serve 4 persons you need 
400 g flour 
4 eggs salt 
500 g asparagus 
a cup of béchamel 
basil 
butter 
pepper 
¼ of cream 

Prepare the flaky pastry and make as many flakes as possible. Cook the asparagus and put all the green parts in a plate. 
Add the asparagus in the béchamel, the minced basil, the half of the cream, butter, salt and pepper. 
Cook the lasagne and the put them in a heat-resisting and cover them with the béchamel, cover with other lasagne. 
Put butter on the surface, bake in oven at 180° C for about 25 minutes.

Ingredients 
300 g flour 
150 g butter 
150 g sugar 
3 yolks 
pinch of salt 
a grated lemon

Cooking time 10 minutes. 

Christmas shapes for biscuits.

Ingredients 
a tablespoon of herbes
3 tablespoons oil 
300 g chicken liver 
1 teaspoon of anchovy-paste 
1 tablespoon of capers 
salt and pepper 
nutmeg 

Fry the herbes in the oil for 5 minutes. 
Add the livers and all the other ingredients. 
Let it cook with ½ glass of water. 
Blend it. 
Toast the bread and spread with the pâté.

Time: 15 minutes and the time your ice-ream machine indicates.

For 250 g ice cream you need: 
150 g chestnut marmalade 
1 yolk 
1 tablespoon of sugar 
100 g milk 

Whip the yolk with the sugar until it is foamy and light, add the marmalade and the milk. 
Pour the mixture in your ice-cream machine box and switch on. 
In stead of chestnut-marmalade you may use Marron Glacéd* in small pieces. 

* Marron Glacéd: candy chestnuts

Time: 20 minutes and 3 hours in freezer. 

To serve 1 person you need: 
120 g ricotta 
1 yolk 
25 g sugar 
candied fruit in small pieces 

Whip the yolk with the sugar. 
When it is foamy and light, add the ricotta, and a last the candied fruit. 
With a wet gauze cover a little tin or bowl, pour the mixture, cover with aluminium and pass into the freezer. 
Serve the "ice-cream" on a plate decorated with candied fruit. 

*Ricotta is a typical fresh cheese.

Directions 
Fry the garlic with butter and oil.
Add the mushrooms, salt and let it cook for 15 minutes. Take the pan off from the cooker and add cream adn persil. 
Boil the half moons in salted water. When cooked, mixed delicately and heat all together (pasta and the mushroom-cream) in the pan.

 
Take an oven pan big and add to it several cloves of garlic, olive oil, dry white wine, rosemary, salt, and pepper. 
Lay the pieces of lamb over it, cover the pan with aluminum foil, and set it to roast in the oven at 175 C for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
When the meat is about 20 minutes shy of being done remove the foil and let it brown.

*Italian for a very young lamb

Ingredients

To serve 4 persons 
1 kg big headed eel 
2 dl strong white wine vinegar 
2 dl olive oil 
2 clove garlic 
3 leaves laurel 
salt and pepper 

Directions 
Clean the eel skinning it, cut it into small pieces which you put in a pan, and while it is still cold, add the oil, laurel, garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper. 
The eel must be completely covered. 
Heat the pan very slowly and let it boil until the eel is cooked. Put the pieces of eel on a big plate pouring the sauce. 
Let it at least 48 hours in the fridge before serving.

Ingredients (use the yogurt-glass to measure the ingredients) 
3 eggs 
1 glass white yogurt (150 g) 
2 glasses sugar 
3 glasses flour 
grated lemon/orange peel 
Vanilla 
1 glass Indian corn oil 
1 packet leaven.

Bake in oven at 150 ° C for 40 minutes. 
You may sprinkle the cake with cocoa.

Valentina wrote the recipes with her computer and translated it with some help from her father!

Mrs. Antonietta and Mrs. Germana
are the teachers of the class.
Pisa, Italy, December 2003 - Layout Mrs. Mette