Pici all’aglione

I already talked about pici all’aglione in a previous post (https://journaly.com/post/39938).

Gnudi

As the name suggests, gnudi is a naked dumpling, consisting of the filling without the pasta shell. The ingredients for the dough are spinach, ricotta cheese, hard cheese, eggs, plain flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Gnudi is traditionally shaped into a ball, but can also be gnocchi- or oval-shaped. Thanks to the ricotta, gnudi has a lighter, fluffier texture than classic potato gnocchi.

Just this once, I’m going to touch on the pronunciation. Bear in mind that gnudi means naked in the Tuscan dialect. Now, non-italian speakers tend to mispronounce the gn pair as two different sounds: the hard /g/ sound (go) and the /n/ sound (no). Frankly, that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. If you try to pronounce it correctly and fail, gnudi might sound like nudi, which you may not want, since nudi means naked in Italian. Well, I’m sure we’d all love to see Yumi stand on a chair in a restaurant shouting, "Virginia ed io stiamo aspettando gli nudi da mezz’ora. Quando arrivano?" (Virginia and I have been waiting for the nudes for a half hour. When are they coming?) Yumi, I’m joking. Lots of love🤗🧡.

Below is a list of foreign words that have the same or similar sound used for the Italian gn.

• Japanese: n in 庭 / niwa;

• Spanish: n in español
• German: ng in gängig
• English: the first n in onion

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