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neapolitan food

la salsa per pasta e pomodoro
Pasta and tomato: a Neapolitan love story! 1024 536 cmdo

Pasta and tomato: a Neapolitan love story!

Tomato is certainly the main ingredient of Italian cuisine, but what makes it as a key symbol of the Peninsula is its marriage with PASTA. A marriage that has its roots firmly planted in the Neapolitan soil. Let’s find out why.

A fully-fledged prince

Thanks to its versatility, tomato can be matched with so many Italian dishes, from starters to desserts, from pizzas and focaccias to salads and appetizers.

Such an essential ingredient deserves cutting-edge preserving techniques as those of Ciao – Il Pomodoro di Napoli that allow it to come to the table as if it had just been harvested, regardless of the season.

A lucky marriage

Pasta has always been the main course that better represent the Italian passion for good cooking. And in the same way as for pizza – the other great Queen of Italian cooking – pasta too has its roots firmly planted in the history of the Parthenope’s city!

In fact, it is in Naples that the press and the draw-plate were invented, transforming the city into the pasta capital, spreading its preparation technique on an industrial level.

The history

And Naples is also where the historic marriage between sauce and macaroni was celebrated.

Celebrating it were two key chefs of the history of Italian cuisine, both Neapolitans, and their recipe books: Vincenzo Corrado in 18th century with his Cuoco Galante (the romantic cook) cookbook and  Ippolito Cavalcanti in 19th century with his Cucina teorica pratica (theoretical-practical cuisine) book.

Even the habit of pasta al dente is believed to be of Neapolitan origins and dates back to the maccaronari, the street vendors who sold the pasta courses in the city alleys, and that to save time and sell more were used to a brief cooking time!

The Neapolitan tradition

In short, the marriage between sauce and macaroni is of Neapolitan origin, just like the best products for your condiments, those of Ciao – Il Pomodoro di Napoli.

Better, because thanks to its processing method the tomatoes are harvested and preserved within just a few hours, keeping all the scent of the Vesuvius land.

Better, because our products undergo strict controls both before and after the packaging, to ensure the quality that our craftsmen have been accustomed to for 40 years.

In a word, Naples is passion: the innovations, the recipes, the cult pasta courses and the best products of Italian cuisine were born under the shadow of Vesuvius!

dieta mediterranea
Ciao and the identikit of the king of Mediterranean cuisine 845 445 cmdo

Ciao and the identikit of the king of Mediterranean cuisine

Tomato is a pillar of Neapolitan tradition at the table, a mine of creativity in so many international cuisines and a precious help for our health, not only in summer. Let’s discover together the thousand virtues of the prince vegetable of Made in Italy
Iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium and vitamins, the well-known C vitamin, but also the precious vitamins of the B-group, and the A and E vitamins, useful for skin, eyes and hair.
In short, even if it looks like a simple food, tomato is actually a real wealth of nutritional treasures.

Roman tomatoes,  San Marzano, cherry tomatoes or yellow tomatoes from Mount Vesuvius – it does not matter which one you choose, their virtues are always the same.

In very few calories, there are benefits for the whole body.

In the beginning it was the lycopene.
Tomatoes are very rich in this antioxidant substance that colors of red their skin and pulp. They are therefore excellent allies against all cellular degenerative diseases and obviously against aging, too.

Do you suffer from hypertension?
Tomato can be of help in this case also, thanks to the high content of potassium that helps to lower the blood pressure.

And if that weren’t enough, tomato goes hand in hand even with the digestive system!
In this case the help comes from the fibers that together with the water contained in the vegetable give a hand to the intestinal transit.

So, to be in shape, do we need to wait for the summer?

Not at all!

Most of tomato’s antioxidants, such as lycopene, become more available with heat.
And not just a little. The cooked tomato brings to the body three times the amount of lycopene compared to the freshly picked tomato and the tomato paste can contain up to 20 times more lycopene than the fresh tomato.

Before ending in their packaging, the Ciao tomatoes are subject to a searing phase makes both the antioxidants more easily assimilated and keeps all the flavor of the Neapolitan summer.

How?

No aromas or chemical preservatives: the secret of Ciao is:

– attention to the raw material
– a timely harvesting
– a strict quality control
– and cutting-edge technology for processing and controls throughout the entire production phase!

What would the Italian cuisine be without tomatoes?
At Ciao, we are proud to contribute every day to the wellbeing of the Mediterranean diet and to the success of the goodness of Italian cuisine.

soffritto e pomodori ciao
Neapolitan recipe book: Soffritto soup tastes even better when made with Ciao tomatoes 845 445 cmdo

Neapolitan recipe book: Soffritto soup tastes even better when made with Ciao tomatoes

This homage to Neapolitan cuisine is for all those people around the world who love our region, hoping that they can find through our blog scents, colors and flavors of a land that never abandons us, thanks to the fact that products like those of Ciao – Il pomodoro di Napoli are now available even very far away from Naples. Here, then, the secrets of the zuppa di soffritto, a typical meat-based condiment suitable for robust stomachs of the Neapolitan people, which despite its name is a sauce and not a soup.

‘o suffritt is a dish from the popular tradition of the past, when the poverty-stricken housewives of the most poor alleys of Naples that couldn’t afford to go buy food were used to claim the meat scraps from the tables of the lords in their aristocratic palaces shouting: ‘e zendraglie – a Neapolitan word derived from the French les entrailles, i.e. the entrails, the scraps.

And with those scraps they knew how to create dishes that are now part of our tradition.

A spicy meat-based dish in which is the tomato to make the difference, the soffritto became after the war the typical filling for the sandwiches of the workers, made by housewives that threw a living cooking pans of this sauce to be sold to fill the “palatoni” – the typical Neapolitan bread – of the workers.

So, thanks to the genius of those women, for next to nothing you could buy a single plate made appealing by suet, bay tree, and ancient wisdom.

The soffritto soup changes name from place to place in Campania, – zuppa forte, zupp’ ‘e suffritt, cioffritto, zuffritto, sfrionzola – but the result does not change, especially if you make it with ingredients rigorously from our region, as the tomato concentrate Ciao.

Nowadays, housewives no longer fill the streets with the aroma of the soffritto soup and this sauce has become a dish almost bourgeois, that you buy ready-made at the butcher shops and is stored in the fridge in aluminum trays without the romance of terracotta bowls of the past.

But the taste is still the original one, strong, yummy, apt for dressing pasta and bread and that should always be accompanied by a glass of local wine: alla faccia ‘e chi ce v’o male – in the face of those who wish us bad – as we say in Naples!

Here is the recipe:

Soffritto soup
Ingredients:

• 2 kg and a half of pork offal

• 2 cans of tomato concentrate (300 g)

• 2 cans of extract of sweet peppers (2 x 900 g)

• 1 can of 900 g of extract of hot peppers

• A deciliter of extra virgin olive oil

• 150 grams of lard

• 4-5 bay leaves

• Salt to taste

Wash the offal and put it to soak for a few hours. Then boil it and cut it into small pieces before frying it in lard oil and bay leaves for 15-20 minutes.

Then add the tomato paste and chilies and a bit of water if the mixture is too dense.

The mixture is then cooked until it reaches a thick consistency and then allowed to cool down.

It can be stored in the refrigerator for several days, but will tend to thicken. Before serving, just heat it up by adding a little water.