Timballo facts for kids
A slice of Timballo Pattadese, showing the various layers
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| Place of origin | Italy |
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| Region or state | France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Latin America |
Timballo is a delicious baked dish from Italy. It's often made with pasta, rice, or potatoes. Chefs add other tasty ingredients like cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, or fruit. There are many kinds of Timballo. For example, the Timballo Alberoni uses mushroom and shrimp sauce. Another one, Timballo Pattadese, has veal and tomato sauce.
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What's in a Name? The Origin of Timballo
The name Timballo comes from the French word timbale. This word means "kettledrum", which is a type of drum. This might be because the dish is often shaped like a drum.
Timballo recipes change from one region to another in Italy. It can also be called by different names. Some people call it a bomba or tortino. In Naples, a type of Timballo with rice and tomato sauce is called sartù. Another similar dish, pasticcio, is usually baked inside a pastry crust. You might also hear it called timpano or timbale. It's a bit like a casserole or a savory cake.
How to Make a Timballo
To make Timballo, cooks use a special dome-shaped pan or a springform pan. They use eggs or cheese to help hold all the ingredients together.
In the Emilia-Romagna region, rice is a common ingredient. There, it's called a bomba. It's often baked with pigeon or other game birds, peas, local cheese, and a base of dried pasta. In Abruzzo, people use crêpes as the base. Other regions might use ravioli or gnocchi. If you go to Sicily, you'll often find Timballo made with pasta and eggplant.
Sometimes, mushroom sauce or fonduta is added. Fonduta is a rich Piedmontese cheese soup and sauce. A famous food writer, Anna Del Conte, said that Béchamel is almost always used in Timballos.
Timballo in Movies
Timballo was a very important dish in the 1996 movie Big Night. In the film, they called the dish timpano, which is another name for it.
The dish "Timpano" also appeared in an episode of the TV show American Dad (Season 18, Episode 1).
See also
In Spanish: Timbal de pasta para niños
