(4 Feb 2026)
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – 21 November 2025
1. Various of Casunziei pasta
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Luca Noale, Manager of The Roof restaurant:
“Casunziei is the typical pasta dish from Cortina. It’s made from red beetroots, it’s cooked in the water so it’s liked stuffed dumplings. And it’s served at the end with some fresh butter and some poppy seeds. The original name of this pasta is casunziei. Casunziei is a Ladin term (northern Italian dialect). And also maybe you can find something (similar) in the province of Bergamo, Brescia with casoncelli. It’s like ravioli, in this case stuffed with red beetroots. In other regions of Italy maybe they use grano saraceno (buckwheat) flour. Then the trick is the melted butter, you put it on the casunziei and it will create like a fondue of butter and parmesan cheese. And at the end we put the poppy seeds. This is casunziei, buon appetito!”
3. Various of pasta dish being made
4. Tilt down from an approving Belli and Noale to the finished dish
STORYLINE:
Every corner of Italy has its own culinary traditions and in Winter Olympics co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo, its signature dish is the colourful, stuffed pasta known as casunziei.
The ravioli-type dish consists of homemade half-moon shaped pasta filled with boiled beetroot and topped with a sauce of melted butter, parmesan cheese and poppy seeds.
It’s a simple dish made with few ingredients that harks back to the Alpine region’s poorer past.
Even in the coldest days of winter, local families would have the basic ingredients on hand like flour, eggs, beets, butter, parmesan and poppy seeds.
Casunziei (pronounced cah-SOON-zi-eh) can also have other fillings, like spinach.
Before the Games, SNTV were given a masterclass in cooking the dish by Michelin-starred chef Gianluca Belli and Luca Noale, who manages The Roof restaurant, in the heart of Cortina.
The town will host women’s Alpine skiing, sliding sports (bobsled, luge and skeleton) and curling during the Games which officially begins with the opening ceremony in Milan on Friday.
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