Posted in easy, egg, Italian, Italy, Olive Oil, pancetta, Pasta, quick meal, Recipe, Recipes, vegetables on Jun 20th, 2008
Ok, so this is just a quick entry for a nice, summer Friday (where I’d rather be outside than blogging!) for a quick, nice summer meal. It was one of those ‘fridge meals’ where we had to use up some veggies and is not super different from some of the other ‘fridge meals’ (often pasta) [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in baking, butter, cream, easy, egg, hearty, Italian, Italy, pepper, Recipe, salt, side dish, spinach, Steak, Tuscan, tuscany, vegetables, vegetarian on Jun 15th, 2008
On almost every diner breakfast menu in the United States you’ll find eggs florentine – a breakfast dish of poached eggs over wilted spinach sitting on half a toasted English muffin (we’ll get into the Englishness of English muffins at another time) and dressed with a hollandaise or bechamel sauce. What makes them Florentine or [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in beets, Brooklyn, butter, cheap meal, healthy, Italian, Italy, Potato, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, vegetarian on Jun 6th, 2008
The first time I ate a version of this very old Venetian meal was at a very popular restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn called Al Di La. The restaurant serves simple Italian food at it’s best and this is precisely why it is so popular. But since that dinner, a few years ago, I [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in alcohol, alcoholic drink, beverage, biscotti, delicacy, dessert, drink, Food Commentary, grapes, Italian, Italy, madeira, malvasia, sweet, tourism, tradition, travel, trebbiano, Tuscan, tuscany, Vin Santo, wine on May 29th, 2008
Regular readers must find us horrible bores as we bang on about our wedding and honeymoon in Italy last year almost constantly. On our penultimate day of our three week trip, we raided an enormous supermarket in the suburbs of Montevarchi for the Tuscan products we cannot find or cannot afford here in NYC, and [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in anchovies, basil, cream, eating, Genoa, Genovese, herbs, Italian, lunch, mushroom, mushrooms, nuts, Olive Oil, Pasta, pine nuts, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, sauce, tourism, travel, walnuts on May 10th, 2008
There are a handful of things that have made Genoa famous, amongst them pesto and Christopher Columbus. Interestingly, in all the many, many stories told by Scheherazade (to persuade the emir not to have her killed) in the Arabian Nights, the only European city to be mentioned is Genoa. And, when you visit the city [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in butter, Cacio e Pepe, cheap meal, cheese, culture, easy, Europe, Food Commentary, Italian, Italy, language, meal, noodles, Olive Oil, Pasta, pepper, quick meal, Rachel Ray, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, Roman, Rome, savory, spicy, tourism, tradition, travel, vegetarian on Apr 29th, 2008
I think the title of this post says it all about my feelings (and others) about this famous Roman dish of pasta, traditionally spaghetti, with pecorino cheese and a good amount of freshly ground pepper. The name says is all – cacio, meaning cheese, and pepe meaning pepper. We’re not breaking any new ground here [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in beef, cheap meal, culture, eating, ground meat, hearty, holiday, Italian, Italy, language, Meat, milk, Naples, Napoli, pancetta, Pasta, pork, Recipe, Recipes, sauce, Saveur, slow cooking, tomato, tourism, tradition, travel, wine on Apr 22nd, 2008
Click here for more of our photos of Bologna Warning! You are about to read a lot about a dish that many would think could be discussed in one paragraph – Bolognese Ragu. After two trips to Bologna, I really began to understand how seriously the people there take their food. Because we are always [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in anchovies, basil, Brooklyn, capers, cheap meal, cheese, cornmeal, culture, delicacy, easy, Europe, Food Commentary, Garlic, important details, Italian, Italy, mushrooms, Olive Oil, onions, Park Slope, pie, Pizza, rant, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, Roman, sauce, technique, tourism, tradition, travel, truffles, vegetarian, vinaigrette on Apr 14th, 2008
We love pizza. We LOVE pizza. If we could eat one thing for the rest of our lives it would be pizza. During our seven weeks spent in Italy over the past two years, we collectively ate over sixty pizzas. This is not a lie, an exaggeration or a pipe dream. We were not force-fed, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Alba, Barbaresco, Barolo, butter, compound, delicacy, easy, Food Commentary, indulgent meal, Italian, Italy, Meat, Piemonte, Steak, tourism, travel, truffles on Apr 8th, 2008
I don’t think I’m the most creative person in the world, but I do have lots of ideas. Most of them are very mediocre and often focused narrowly on how I can explain being late for work again, or why I didn’t call my sister, but very occasionally I’ll have a good idea. Marrying my [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in anchovies, cheap meal, easy, Garlic, herbs, Italian, lemon, Olive Oil, parsley, Pernil, pork, Recipe, Recipes, skin, slow cooking, thyme on Apr 6th, 2008
One of the tastiest and cheapest things I can buy in my grocery store is a bone-in pork shoulder. When I saw that they were on sale for 79 cents (YES, that’s right) a pound, I figured I’d pick one up. For only two of us, I bought the smallest one I found – a [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in artichoke, cheap meal, cheese, chile, easy, Garlic, Italian, lemon, Mario Batali, meal, Olive Oil, parsley, Recipe, Recipes, vegetables, vegetarian on Mar 29th, 2008
With artichokes on sale for 98 cents each (better than the rabbit we bought the other week!), I just had to pick a few up. For some reason, I only grabbed two thinking I would make an appetizer or a side-dish with them. Well, let me tell you, this slight adaptation of a Mario Batali [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in bacon, baking, bread, Castillano, cheap meal, Chorizo, cornmeal, culture, Easter, easy, egg, Europe, flour, Food Commentary, holiday, indulgent meal, Italian, Italian-American, Italy, Lent, morcilla, Recipe, Recipes, Saveur, Spain, tradition, unhealthy on Mar 21st, 2008
It was as if it was divine intervention. We finally found morcilla (see picture of sausages below – it’s the black one) in a specialty store up the block but we weren’t prepared to make a fabada or cocido – two other Spanish dishes which call for morcilla. I picked up one of my favorite [...]
Read Full Post »