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 British, calamari, chile, chipotle, easy, fish, Garlic, grilled, grilling, Jamie Oliver, lemon, Meat, Mexican, morcilla, Olive Oil, onions, parsley, racione, Recipe, Recipes, sauce, sausage, savory, seafood, Spain, spicy, Squid, tapas, tomato on Jun 4th, 2008
A lot of people love Jamie Oliver for his informal, cheekie-chappie attitude and antics, which they welcome as a nice break from the seemingly unapproachable TV chefs of the past. Personally, I find his mockney styles and instant familiarity grating, and have let this issue influence my opinion of his cooking. However, I’m big enough […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in appetizer, cheap meal, easy, grilled, grilling, Japanese, Korean, lemon, mirin, miso, offal, Recipe, Recipes, veal on Jun 2nd, 2008
So I know what you’re already thinking (if you’ve even dared to read this post at all!) – tongue?! WHA-WHA-WHAT!? I think i just threw up a little. Nasty. Or, maybe you’re thinking, “interesting… I’d give it a try… I trust these two.” And possibly you’ve been lucky enough to have tried tongue before and […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in America, holiday, Recipe, Recipes on May 25th, 2008
It’s one of the biggest grilling weekends of the year here in the good ‘ole US of A, so why not buck the BBQ Chicken/Burgers/Hot Dog trend and give one of these grillable beauties a try instead? HAPPY MEMORIAL WEEKEND! See recipe here: AUTHENTIC CARNE ASADA TACOS See recipe here: GRILLED STEAK WITH TARRAGON […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in blogging, Castillano, castille, chicken, chicken stock, easy, Europe, Fino, hazelnuts, nuts, poultry, Rachel Ray, rant, Recipe, Recipes, saffron, Spain, tradition, wine on May 17th, 2008
Usually if I’m trying to make an authentic dish, I always try to make it just that – authentic. That means that I want to use traditional ingredients and I attempt to research the many traditional ways to make that specific dish. I then decide how to combine the best bits from all those traditional […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Barolo, batter, Bologna, breadcrumbs, broccoli raab, chops, crispy, dining, flour, fried, Garlic, herbs, lamb, polenta, Recipe, rosemary, tourism, travel, vegetables on May 14th, 2008
I feel like we go on and on ad nauseam about our trip to Italy last summer, and I suspect that if it hasn’t happened already, our faithful readers will begin to tire of our constant references to those halcyon days of pastoral bliss, romantic nuptials, and devastatingly good food. So, before your goodwill towards […]
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 calamari, Clams, easy, fish, healthy, lemon, Madrid, meal, peppers, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, rice, soup, Spain, spices, Squid, tomato, vegetarian on May 5th, 2008
On our final day in Madrid, it was pissing down with rain. We spent about 4 hours walking around the Reina Sofia drooling over Picasso’s Guernica (the size of a giant museum wall) and the large amount of Dali and Miro works. We’re not really artsy-fartsy folks, but that museum made me wet myself with […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in asparagus, baking, chicken, dauphinoise, easy, fennel, gravy, hearty, milk, onions, Potato, poultry, Recipe, Recipes, side dish, thyme on May 2nd, 2008
Jeffrey Steingarten famously declares in It Must Have Been Something I Ate that every time he is bored, he roasts a chicken. Calculating that he gets bored approximately once a week, this translates into 52 roast chickens a year and more than one thousand since he began as food critic at Vogue. That’s a lot […]
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 Asian, broiled, chili, fish, Garlic, ginger, healthy, Japanese, Korean, mirin, miso, movies, noodles, peppers, quick meal, Recipe, Recipes, salmon, seafood, side dish, skin, udon, vegetables on Apr 26th, 2008
Lately, we’ve been making a lot of southern European dishes and we felt we needed a break, but we were also looking for a dish that wouldn’t take all night to make and require us to buy a load of ingredients we’d use for one dish and then sit and rot in our refrigerator. So, […]
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 Asturias, cheap meal, easy, Europe, fabada, french fries, fried, meal, offal, onions, paprika, parsley, Recipe, Recipes, restaurant, sauce, Spain, thyme, tradition, travel on Apr 18th, 2008
If you are a regular reader of our blog, perhaps you remember this post on my husband’s near-death by gluttony as he ate his way through a giant Asturian meal – fabada. While I had to listen to his groans and watch the thick beads of sweat roll down the side of his head as […]
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 apples, Asturias, cabrales, cheese, easy, eating, food TV, hazelnuts, healthy, herbs, Jose Andres, nuts, Olive Oil, Recipe, Recipes, salad, side dish, Spain, travel, vinaigrette on Apr 12th, 2008
There are some things that just strike you as being astonishingly simple, yet brilliantly devised. For example, the interface of an iPod- the way you use it – is unbelievably clever in its design. One “wheel” and one button, and that’s it. Everyone – even me – can figure it out in about 8 seconds. […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in barbecue, beef, cabbage, cheap meal, chile, chili, cilantro, culture, easy, language, lime, meal, Mexican, oregano, peppers, Recipe, Recipes, serrano, spicy, Steak, technique, tomatillos, tortilla, tortillas, tradition on Apr 10th, 2008
Normally we wouldn’t post a recipe for something as everyday as a steak taco. Most people know how to make them, right? But how many take the time to cook them really, really well? It actually doesn’t take much longer to make them more authentic. I’m not being a food snob here, I’m just talking […]
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 adobo, barbecue, chicken, crispy, eating, grilled, grilling, healthy, important details, lemon, oregano, poultry, Puerto Rican, Recipe, Recipes, salt, savory, skin, spices, Steven Raichlen, technique, television show on Apr 4th, 2008
So, rather like the DJ I never was, but always secretly thought I could be if I could just get my hands on 1,000 records, 2 gold Technics 1200s, and 5 years to practice in my bedroom, I’m starting this post, or jam, if you will, by giving a series of shout outs. The first […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in baking, blood orange, cake, dessert, embarrassment, flour, frosting, icing, important details, juice, martini, orange juice, oranges, Recipe, Recipes, strawberries, strawberry, sweet, sweets on Apr 1st, 2008
I tried… after my first failed attempt at baking a strawberry cake in order to use up some nasty-looking, dying strawberries (that I bought hungry and on sale… natch) in my fridge, my ego was so bruised I didn’t think I was up for it again. You see, stupid me kind of forgot one ingredient […]
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 »
Posted in anchovies, asparagus, braised, broccoli raab, chicken stock, chops, dining, easy, eating, food TV, Garlic, healthy, hearty, Italian, Italian-American, kale, lamb, Meat, mustard, Olive Oil, Potato, quick meal, Recipe, Recipes, salt, sauce, savory, shallots, side dish, television show, vegetables on Mar 20th, 2008
If you’re anything like us then you’ll probably have a couple of dishes that you crave more often than anything else. And, again, if you’re like us, you probably always have the ingredients for such dishes in your pantry in preparation for whenever that craving strikes. These are the dishes that, like a line-cook in […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Food Commentary, Recipe, Recipes on Mar 19th, 2008
Today I spent 7 long hours fixing this blog. One month ago we bought our own domain name and cut our ties with wordpress.com. They were great to us but we were ready to try some new things that you can only do if you have your own site. Was I smoking crack? I believed […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Blogroll, butter, culture, egg, embarrassment, indulgent meal, Italian, Italy, Olive Oil, other regions, Pasta, radicchio, Recipe, Recipes, sauce, tourism, travel, tuscany, vegetarian, watercress on Mar 15th, 2008
Ever since we bought our Kitchen Aid Mixer (kneel down, bow your head in a moment of silence, please), I have only used it for one thing – making pasta. I am not a baker. I can not even pretend to be one. In fact, the other day, I thought I’d be cute and also […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in baking, cheap meal, cornmeal, easy, Food Commentary, fried, fritters, healthy, important details, lemon, lower fat, parsley, Recipe, Recipes, salt, sauce, seafood, side dish, snapper, tradition, vegetables, vegetarian, whole fish on Mar 11th, 2008
Salt. Does this word get your stomach growling? Get your mouth salivating? Lips smacking? Make you want to just ‘dig in’? Probably not. But could we live without it? Most definitely not. Doing some brief research on this dietary mineral not only “schooled” me on its lengthy history, but it also made me majorly appreciate […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in America, broccoli raab, cheap meal, chile, culture, healthy, Italian, Italy, lemon, Little Italy, New York City, Pasta, quick meal, Recipe, Recipes, sausage, side dish, spicy, vegetables, vegetarian on Mar 4th, 2008
How many of you out there in We Are Never Full-land have never heard of Broccoli di Rape? Anyone who has heard of it but never saw or ate it? I ask this only because, after researching this delectable, delicious and healthy green, I discovered that it’s U.S. roots (or that the vast majority of […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in breadcrumbs, butter, California, cheap meal, cheese, drink, easy, egg, flour, gnocchi, holiday, indulgent meal, Italian, Potato, quick meal, Recipe, Recipes, sage, sauce, travel, vegetarian, wine on Mar 1st, 2008
Last year, Amy and I spent a very enjoyable long weekend with her cousin and cousin’s husband visiting the Napa and Russian River Valley winelands. Throughout the course of the weekend we must have tasted fifty different wines at twelve or so different wineries, and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I did not […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in allspice, beans, Blogroll, Caribbean, cheap meal, chicken, chile, cilantro, culture, easy, fried, Garlic, grilled, history, Jamaican, orange juice, paprika, pinto beans, plantains, pork, Recipe, Recipes, red beans, rice, spices, spicy, tostones, weather on Feb 27th, 2008
Ahhh, jerk chicken. One of my favorite dishes. It’s spicy, kind of sweet and when made well should almost melt in your mouth. On a cold winters night, there’s nothing that can snap you out of a cold-weather-depression than cooking up something from the Islands. Jerk was used as a way to preserve and cook […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in beans, bread, cabbage, cheap meal, healthy, Italian, Italy, kale, parsley, Potato, Recipe, Recipes, sausage, soup, stew, tradition, tuscany, vegetables, vegetarian, weather on Feb 21st, 2008
Continuing with more comforting winter foods, I decided one night to make Ribollita again. Traditionally, this Tuscan dish is usually made one day using whatever leftovers were around and reboiled (what ribollita literally means in Italian) the next for even more of a flavor power-punch. I also read that ribollita should take a total of […]
Read Full Post »
Posted in avocado, beans, black beans, cheap meal, chicken, chile, chili, Chorizo, cilantro, cornmeal, cream, lime, Los Pollitos, masa, Mexican, onions, peppers, pinto beans, Recipe, Recipes, red beans, serrano, sopes, spicy, tomatillos on Feb 14th, 2008
Almost every time we eat out at one of our favorite local Mexican cheap-eats, it is difficult for me to resist the crunchy and tasty sopes. These traditional Mexican dish involves fried masa cakes and can be topped with a variety of things – chorizo, beef, chicken, pork, veggies or beans. Some are made small […]
Read Full Post »
