This is a very simple recipe that can be perfect for a simple dinner, but also served as an appetizer. But I also like to use it in a sandwich made with a good bread and adding also some cured ham slices for example 🙂

It’s a very old Tuscan recipe, it dates back several centuries and there are recipes on books from Renaissance time. The names it’s related to the main ingredient, the sage (which in Italian is called “salvia“), and the dish is a kind of batter cake, or better an “oven omelette”. In the garden we have luckily two very big sage bushes, so I “have to use it” and this recipe is perfect to use some of it 🙂 As you will see the ingredients are simple so it was a typical dish of the rural tradition, and it’s very tasty! Also the perfume of the sage is amazing.

Moreover the sage it’s a very healthy herb with many good properties.

The recipes of those old times were made for sure with real free range eggs, fresh raw milk, sheep cheese, stone ground flour…with the only exception of the fresh raw milk which is hard to find nowadays here (I used the usual Bio whole milk) then I had all 😀 well, to make it in the same old way I should have baked it in a wood oven but unfortunately I don’t have that 😀

Let’s see how to make it!

INGREDIENTS (2-3 people):

• 5 eggs
• 20-25 fresh sage leaves
• 30 g flour
• 3-4 tablespoons of freshly grated Pecorino cheese (but also Parmigiano is fine)
• half glass of milk
• a pinch of salt
• freshly ground black pepper

1. First of all pick up the sage leaves. I removed the harder bottom part and then I cut most of them in smaller pieces, I just didn’t cut 5 or 6 leaves to use as decoration on the top.
2. Take a bowl and break the eggs, add the flour (sifted) and mix with a hand whisker, without making lumps. Then add the grated cheese, the milk, the salt, the pepper and the sage. Mix together, you don’t need to do it for long.
3. Now take an oven pan (28-30 cm large), spread some extra virgin olive oil on the bottom (or some lard) and simply pour everything inside.
4. Bake at 160 °C, fan-assisted mode, for about 15-18 minutes. It will be puffy and soft.
5. Enjoy…I love the sage perfume 🙂