New Year's Eve

Traditional Roman New Year's Eve dinner of puntarelle and cotechino.

Puntarelle are a member of the chicory family, the thin sprouts shredded raw and dressed with anchovy and garlic.

Cotechino is a sausage made of pig's leg, wrapped in its skin. It is gelatinous and full of flavour. Cotechino is served on a bed of spicy lentils (believed to be lucky, a sign of fertility).

There may have been some wine involved.

I can't keep up any more with the revels. The last drunks were ambling down our street, singing hoarsely, at 6am, as I was getting up.

The Romans love fireworks, for the noise as much as the spectacle, and I usually keep a bucket of water by the window to chuck over anyone lighting bangers in our narrow vicolo. The rain kept most of them away but one time I did hear the telltale fizzing and threw the window open ready with the bucket but it was a neighbour, trying to reject the advances of a romeo, down in the street, by chucking a banger at him. Tough cookies, these Roman girls.