A tale of two traditions | our 2025 Christmas crossover recipes
This year, Christmas in the Puglia Kitchen is about translation. Taking the rhythms, techniques and flavours of Puglia and adapting them with ingredients from the Great British Christmas table. A blend of two traditions, viewed from a different angle.
Unlike last year, our 2025 Puglia Kitchen Christmas crossover menu is not a “leftovers project” (though we remain great believers in that tradition). Instead, it is a consciously planned Christmas menu that borrows structure from Apulian cooking and a seasonal nostalgia from the ghosts of Christmas past, spent in London.
The result is a Christmas table that feels both recognisably festive and entirely at home in southern Italy.
The main: orecchiette with roasted sprouts and Christmas polpette
At the heart of this year’s menu is a dish inspired by one of Puglia’s great classics: orecchiette con cime di rapa e salsiccia. It is a dish that defines the region’s winter cooking — bitter greens, robust pasta, and meat used thoughtfully rather than extravagantly.
Our Christmas version keeps that structure intact, but adapts it to the British festive larder.
Instead of cime di rapa, we use Brussels sprouts, drizzled in olive oil and roasted “al forno” until nutty and slightly caramelised. Like cime di rapa, sprouts are part of the brassica family, and the substitution makes culinary sense. The flavour profile, earthy, faintly bitter, deeply savoury, is remarkably aligned.
Instead of crumbled sausage, we introduce another cornerstone of Puglian home cooking: polpette pugliesi. Not restaurant meatballs, but the domestic kind. Small and soulful, made with breadcrumbs, egg, cheese, herbs and restraint.
For Christmas, we prepare two versions:
- Turkey polpette, light and gently seasoned, a respectful nod to the British Christmas centrepiece
- Pork and sage polpette, echoing classic stuffing flavours while remaining unmistakably Puglian in technique
Served together, they become the bridge between two food cultures, sitting comfortably side by side.
Recipe: orecchiette with roasted sprouts and Christmas polpette
Serves 4–6 (as a generous main)
Ingredients
For the sprout base
- 700 g Brussels sprouts
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 dried chilli (or chilli flakes, to taste)
- 2 – 6 anchovy fillets (optional but recommended)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the turkey polpette
- 400 g turkey mince
- 80 g stale breadcrumbs (soaked briefly in milk, then squeezed dry)
- 1 egg
- 40 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- Zest of ½ lemon
- Salt and white pepper
- Olive oil, for frying
For the pork and sage polpette
- 400 g pork mince
- 80 g stale breadcrumbs (prepared as above)
- 1 egg
- 40 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 6–8 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
- Salt and black pepper
- Olive oil, for frying
To finish
- 500 g dried orecchiette
- Extra grated Parmigiano or aged Canestrato, to serve
Method
1. Roast the sprouts
Trim and halve the sprouts. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 200°C until deeply golden and slightly crisp at the edges (about 30–35 minutes). Set aside.
2. Make the polpette
Prepare the turkey and pork mixtures separately, combining each mince with breadcrumbs, egg, cheese and seasonings. Mix gently. Overworking will make them dense. Roll into small, slightly less than sprout-sized meatballs.
Shallow-fry in olive oil until golden all over and cooked through. Remove and drain on kitchen paper.
3. Cook the pasta
Boil the orecchiette in well-salted water until al dente. Reserve a cup (or two) of cooking water.
4. Build the sprout base
While the pasta is cooking, in a wide pan, warm olive oil gently. Add garlic, chilli and anchovy, allowing the anchovy to melt into the oil. Add the roasted sprouts and gently crush some with the back of a spoon to create a rough, textured sauce. Stir to combine, season generously with black pepper, and add a ladle (about 70 ml) of pasta water.
5. Bring it together
Drain the orecchiette, and add them to the sprout base. Add a generous glug of olive oil and stir over a gentle heat for a further 1–2 minutes. Add some of the reserved pasta water if it feels too dry. You want a glossy sauce that clings to the pasta and greens. Fold through the polpette gently and allow everything to warm through together
Serve immediately with grated cacioricotta cheese (traditionally we don’t serve orecchiette with Parmesan, but feel free to use this if you can’t find cacioricotta) and peppery golden extra virgin olive oil from Puglia.
Puglia Kitchen notes: salt, mantecatura and spadellare
Salting the water
Wherever you are in Puglia, it’s never far from the sea. In our Puglia Kitchen we season the pasta water so that it tastes like the sea: mild, like the Adriatic. Use roughly a generous fistful of salt for every 4–5 litres of water. Properly salted water transforms the final flavour of the pasta.
As the pasta cooks, the water turns cloudy with starch. Always reserve a generous cup of the pasta liquor before draining. That starchy water helps emulsify sauces and gives them body when you bring everything together.
Mantecatura
This is the art of finishing: combining fat (olive oil, butter, or both) with sauce and a splash of hot pasta water to create a glossy emulsion. It’s the secret to silkier ragù and more luxurious pasta.
Spadellare
This is the moment you often see restaurant chefs perform at the stove — tossing the pasta in its pan just before serving. At home, in our Puglia Kitchen, we use a wooden spoon or tongs to stir the pasta and sauce together.
Regardless of whether you toss or stir, you need to work the pasta vigorously with the sauce over heat for at least 30 seconds, adding small splashes of starchy pasta water to keep it loose. This step is essential: the water evaporates, the starch thickens, and the sauce binds perfectly to every piece of pasta.
Dessert: Christmas cake semifreddo
For dessert, we move away from the oven entirely.
This year’s finale is a Christmas cake semifreddo, transformed into a festive Yule log (tronchetto). Light, frozen, and elegant, it brings a frozen Arctic roll blast to our Puglia Kitchen.
Spiced sponge, dried fruit, citrus zest and a whisper of liqueur come together in a dessert that feels unmistakably Christmas, but sits comfortably alongside Italian holiday traditions of semifreddi and frozen desserts.
It is certainly Christmas — but not as we know it!
Look back in larder: last year’s Christmas leftovers, revisited
Last Christmas, our focus was firmly on leftovers.
- Burrata over roasted Christmas vegetables (click here for the Puglia Kitchen recipe)
- Orecchiette with sprouts and stuffing, baked al forno (click here for our Puglia Kitchen Christmas orecchiette recipe)
- Christmas cake tiramisù (click here for our Puglia Kitchen TiramiYu(le) recipe)
We also created one crossover that immediately became a favourite: mincemeat pasticciotti — a British mince pie reimagined through Puglia’s most beloved pastry. A small, joyful act of culinary diplomacy.
