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Recipes with sage leaves

9 recipes that use sage leaves, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Shai bil maramiya, takes 8 minutes. It is most often cooked with garlic, butter and egg.

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Sorrentinos de calabaza

Mar del Plata claims the sorrentino, a big round stuffed pasta about the size of a jam-jar lid that Italian-Argentine cooks made their own in the mid-20th century; despite the name, you won't find it in Sorrento. Every fresh-pasta shop in Buenos Aires province sells them by the dozen on Sunday mornings, and the squash version, with roasted calabaza, ricotta and nutmeg, is the most loved. The filling is sweet and soft, the pasta thin but sturdy, and the sauce is either brown butter with sage or a plain tomato filetto. The classic mistake is boiled squash: it carries too much water, the filling weeps and the parcels burst in the pot, so the squash is roasted until dry and caramelised. Grated hard cheese is usually made with animal rennet; choose a vegetarian hard cheese if needed. Chef's tip: chill the filling until firm before you shape it; a cold, stiff filling is far easier to seal without air pockets.

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Cacciucco alla livornese

Cacciucco is the great fish stew of Livorno, the port city on the Tuscan coast, where it is said to need at least five kinds of seafood, one for each C in its name. Fishermen once made it with the unsold catch; today the harbour trattorie ladle it, thick and fiery with chilli, over slices of toasted bread rubbed with garlic. This version uses firm white fish, squid, mussels, clams and prawns cooked in tomato and red wine; the wine is traditional, and the note gives an alcohol-free option. Serve it as a whole meal, with more garlic toast on the side. Chef's tip: add the seafood in stages, from the firmest to the most delicate, so nothing turns rubbery.

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Porchetta

Porchetta is the street food of central Italy: in Ariccia, in the hills south of Rome, and across Umbria, vans at markets and village festivals carve thick slices of this slow-roasted pork, stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel and pepper, straight into crusty rolls. Whole pigs are used there; at home, a piece of pork belly rolled around the loin gives the same juicy meat, herby centre and shatteringly crisp crackling. Serve it in rolls, or hot in slices with roast potatoes and greens, and the leftovers are just as good cold. Chef's tip: leave the tied roll uncovered in the fridge overnight; a dry skin is what turns into blistered crackling.

280 minItalianMeat
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Shai bil maramiya

Offer a guest tea in a Palestinian home and it will most likely come in small glasses, sweet, strong and fragrant with maramiya, the soft-leaved sage that grows on every terrace and is said to settle the stomach after a heavy meal. In winter the leaves are dried; in spring they are picked fresh. Common mistake: boiling the sage with the tea, which brings out a medicinal bitterness; it goes in after the heat is off. Chef's tip: bruise the sage leaves between your fingers before dropping them in, and let them steep only 2–3 minutes.

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Agnolotti del plin

In the Langhe and Monferrato hills of Piedmont, agnolotti del plin are the Sunday and feast-day pasta, made from whatever roast was left from the day before and pinched shut with a quick twist of the fingers (plin means pinch in dialect). Each parcel is barely a mouthful of thin egg pasta around a savoury filling of roast veal, pork shoulder and beef with a little cabbage, egg and parmigiano, so this is a pork dish as well as a veal one. In the trattorie of Alba they arrive either glossed with butter and sage or simply dressed in the reduced roasting juices, sometimes with no plate at all, served in a napkin. They want nothing alongside except a green salad afterwards. Chef's tip: keep the filling quite firm and the blobs small, no bigger than a hazelnut, or the pasta will not seal tightly around them.

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Casoncelli alla bergamasca

Casoncelli (casonsei in Bergamo dialect) are the pride of the old upper town of Bergamo and of nearby Brescia, eaten at weddings, village festivals and Sunday lunch. The filling is a thrifty mix of pork sausage, leftover beef, breadcrumbs and grana, perfumed with a crushed amaretto biscuit, a few raisins and a little pear, so it tastes faintly sweet and savoury at once. The folded half-moons are pressed into a little saddle shape and served in plenty of butter with sage and crisp cubes of pancetta, which makes this a pork dish twice over. A green salad is all they need afterwards. Chef's tip: cook the sausage filling first and let it cool completely; warm filling makes the pasta soggy and hard to seal.

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Fagioli all'uccelletto

Florentines are nicknamed mangiafagioli, bean-eaters, and this is the dish that earned it: creamy cannellini simmered in olive oil with whole sage leaves, crushed garlic and a little tomato. The name, 'little-bird style', comes from the sage and garlic once used to cook small game birds, though there has never been a bird in the pot. In trattorie it sits next to grilled meat as a side; served with crusty bread and greens it makes a full vegetarian supper. The beans should be soft and glossy in a thick, rust-coloured sauce. Chef's tip: let the sage and garlic sizzle gently in the oil before the tomato goes in; that scented oil is the whole flavour of the dish.

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Saltimbocca alla romana

The name means 'jumps into the mouth', which is how fast these little Roman escalopes vanish from the plate. Thin slices of veal are topped with a sage leaf and a sheet of prosciutto, seared for barely a minute a side, then glazed with white wine and butter in the same pan; it is a classic second course in Rome's family trattorie and takes about 20 minutes start to finish. The prosciutto crisps, the sage turns fragrant and the veal stays tender under a short, buttery sauce. Pork loin or turkey escalopes work just as well. Serve with roast potatoes or sautéed spinach to mop up the pan juices. Chef's tip: pound the meat to an even 5 mm between sheets of cling film and pin the ham and sage on with a cocktail stick, so everything cooks in the time it takes the ham to crisp.

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Cucumber soother

A cool, pale-green juice of cucumbers, sweet pineapple, carrots and celery with a few fresh sage leaves. Soothing and lightly sweet. Serve cold.

15 minDrinksVeganGluten free
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Goes well with sage leaves