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Easy Tyrolese: Rachel Roddy’s recipe for canederli dumplings in broth

The restaurant was about 100 metres from Fortezza station, in a small town in an alpine valley in South Tyrol, and had high-backed wooden benches and a line of stuffed animals in the window. When I am hungry, my already-limited objectivity dissolves like an aspirin. As I sat on a soft cushion on that hard bench, wondering if the animal next to me was a stoat or a fox, the canederli put before me were, in that moment, the single best thing I had ever eaten. I might as well have discovered a new planet or set of tastebuds. It was short-lived bliss: I had another train to catch, so I wolfed it down, giving myself such indigestion that I found it hard to ask for the bill and run to the platform.

Fortunately, this was, like my bliss, short-lived. Sitting on the train, Alto Adige rushing past like a Super 8 film, I could once again appreciate the chocolate-brown bowl on a lacy doily in which three sturdy dumplings bobbed around in amber, salty meat broth. A perfectly fine food elevated to ecstatic by growling hunger and a train timetable.

Related: Rachel Roddy’s cottage pie recipe | A Kitchen in Rome

Oretta Zanini de Vita includes canederli in her Encyclopedia of Pasta. She remarks, however, that they are not true pasta, but rather large gnocchi di pane, or bread dumplings – versions of which are found in Lombardy and the Veneto Alps, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Austria and the Czech Republic. She singles out canederli as a dish that best embodies the cooking of masi chiusi, farming on difficult land where isolation means everything is used: old bread, ends of cured meat, dried mushrooms and herbs; ingredients brought back to life with resourcefulness, time, milk and broth. In Zanini de Vita’s excellent, if bossy, companion Sauces and Shapes, she includes a recipe for Tyrolese canederli, which tastes most like the one I ate that day in Fortezza. The key ingredient is bread: you want a compact, country-style loaf that is at least two days old, and therefore rock hard and in need of a soak. Speck, which can be substituted with smoked bacon or prosciutto, is also important.

Typical of the South Tyrol region, speck is a lightly spiced (bay leaves, juniper and rosemary) dry-cured, smoked and aged ham. It is the result of the particular climate and geography of the region, both of which precipitated in the happy marriage of two traditional meat conservation methods: curing (typical of the cured hams of the Mediterranean) and smoking (of Northern Europe). What began as the domestic conservation of pork by families was gradually adopted by local butchers and is now an industrial and widely exported product. All producers respect the guiding principles of “a little salt, a little smoke and a lot of fresh air”.

Rich, red, carefully spiced, lightly smoked, while not in the least bit precious, speck tastes elegant. If it were a person, it would be Marlene Dietrich, crossed with a cabaret singer who is just as much at home on stage as at a farmer’s picnic. A cured meat to be eaten by the slice, speck is also a treat of an ingredient, in savoury tarts, as a filling for pasta, and in canederli.

As the canederli are cooked in water and the broth is added afterwards, it is important that you leave them to sit in the broth for five minutes before serving, so the broth can soak into the canederli which, at the same time, relax. Looking at recipes, it doesn’t seem traditional to serve with cheese, but I like parmesan on mine, and served in a brown bowl on a lacy doily.

Canederli allo speck (dumplings in broth)

Prep 20 min
Rest 40 min
Cook 25 min
Serves 4

1 spring onion or shallot, finely chopped
20g butter
300g day-old bread
, diced
100g speck or prosciutto, diced
1 egg, beaten
275ml whole milk
1 tsp parsley
, finely chopped
50g plain flour
Salt and pepper
1 litre broth of your choice
(beef, chicken or vegetable)
Chives, for sprinkling
Parmesan, grated (optional)

In a small frying pan, gently fry the onion in the butter until soft and translucent, then leave to cool.

Put the diced bread and speck into a bowl, pour over the egg, milk and parsley, mix and leave to sit for 30 minutes.

Add the cooled onion to the bread mix, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the flour to form a dough. Use wet hands to form 12 balls.

Bring a pan of salted water to a steady boil, drop in the dumplings and cook for 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the broth. When the dumplings are ready, lift them out into a bowl, pour over the broth and sprinkle with chives.

Leave to sit for five to 10 minutes before serving, handing round some grated cheese for those who would like it.