There’s Got to be a Morning After, or What to Do With the Turkey Carcass

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Nov 252013
 
There's Got to be a Morning After, or What to Do With the Turkey Carcass

With all the fuss about the Thanksgiving bird and all the sides, we too often neglect to talk about what to do with the turkey carcass. Personally, I look forward to it all year. Here’s why, as told to Molly O’Neill, who first published my recipe in her  Cook ‘ Scribble blog three years ago. It all started with my mother, who didn’t believe in passing lasagne or big bowls of macaroni and meatballs at the Thanksgiving table like many Italian-American families did when I was growing up in New York. She and my father were native Italians and she always […more…]

There is More Than One Way to Skin a Pumpkin

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Oct 272013
 
There is More Than One Way to Skin a Pumpkin

Around this time of year the food press sounds its perennial advice on pumpkin pie, but what is usually overlooked are the endless dishes, both sweet and savory, that you can make using edible pumpkins and squashes. Probably no one reveres the pumpkin as much as the Italians, and the Venetians in particular, the subject of my most recent article for Zester Daily, “Why Venice Adores its Pumpkins.” Read about the Venetians’ love affair with zucca, and find my heirloom recipe for savory pumpkin or winter squash stew with tomato, dry-cured olives, and garlic.  

How to Cook Rapini

 Posted by at 11:23 am  3 Responses »
Oct 072013
 
How to Cook Rapini

Some time back, I wrote a post, “When Bitter is Sweet,” about broccoli rapini, the Italian greens that have taken this country by storm since Balducci’s, the legendary Greenwich Village Italian grocery, imported them here in 1973. Because so many readers said they were relieved to finally learn how to cook them properly to soften their bitter edge, I decided to find out how and why the delicious Brassica, about which there is still such a mystique, was transplanted from the heel of the Italian boot to the farmlands of California. Here’s the update, complete with Andy and Nina Balducci’s […more…]

Lost Recipe, Mother of Spaghetti al Pomodoro, Found in Brooklyn

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Aug 232013
 
Lost Recipe, Mother of Spaghetti al Pomodoro, Found in Brooklyn

It’s not every day that you find a missing link to history–in this case, pasta history. Read about how I found a lost recipe, progenitor of the union of pasta and the tomato in, of all places, Brooklyn, New York. Then again, the site of the find was D. Coluccio & Sons, the iconic Bensonhurst Italian grocery. Maybe not such a surprise after all. After reading the new article, you may never again take for granted spaghetti and meatballs, or any other variation on the theme of pasta and tomato sauce. You wouldn’t imagine such a simple dish could be so splendid–and […more…]

The Squash Racket

 Posted by at 8:55 pm  4 Responses »
Aug 162013
 
The Squash Racket

NOTE: FOR SOME REASON, THE FIRST PART OF MY LAST POST EVAPORATED IN CYBERSPACE AS IT WAS ON ITS WAY FROM ME TO YOU, SO PLEASE HIT THIS LINK TO READ IT NOW–-AND THEN, COME BACK HERE! Right, so as I was saying, every August food writers feel compelled to tell their readers what to do about “zucchini fatigue,” as my NPR radio host called our zucchini abundance only yesterday while interviewing a couple of food experts and myself about “the problem.”  The first interviewee speaking on the program, a fine cook and fellow cookbook writer, accused the poor vegetables […more…]

Zucchini Need Live Up to Their Name: “ini” Means Small, Very Small

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Aug 152013
 
Zucchini Need Live Up to Their Name: "ini" Means Small, Very Small

  Zucca, in Italian, means squash; zucchini, the diminutive, “small squash” (the Italians snap them off the mother vine at three-and-a-half inches). So why are zucchini so often the size of baseball bats? You’ll have to ask the British about that, who call them “marrows,” and win the world records for growing giant vegetables at the Great Yorkshire Showground every summer. To read about the long and short of it, and learn to look forward  to a bumper baby zucchini crop every summer, go to my new article for Zester Daily. There you’ll find the whole story of America’s gift to Italy, and the recipe […more…]

Pistachio Pesto: A Sauce Fit for a Prince

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Apr 082013
 
Pistachio Pesto: A Sauce Fit for a Prince

Last year nearly to the day, I wrote a post about A Day Cooking with the Duchess at the ancestral Lampedusa palace in Palermo, where I spent a weekend that was spectacular indeed. With so many photos to post there was no room for a recipe. Here, you’ll find a version of the Duchess’s pistachio pesto that I adapted for American kitchens. (And by the way, if you live anywhere near Westchester County, New York, the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville will be showing Luchino Visconti’s film adaptation of Il Gattopardo, The Leopard, in this year’s Italian Film Festival on May 19, […more…]

A Whiff of Spring, a Waft of Rome

 Posted by at 9:47 am  3 Responses »
Mar 312013
 
A Whiff of Spring, a Waft of Rome

At long last, a streak of warm sunlight beams through my kitchen window. The day brings to mind Easters in Rome and the city’s abbacchio, butter-tender baby lamb, and the first artichokes of spring. No one, but no one, makes lamb and artichokes taste better than the Romans, though my mother would disagree. Being from Sardinia (Sardegna) where some of the best artichokes in the world grow under that island’s blazing sun, the thistles are a religion in her house. In a region where there are nearly twice as many sheep as people (some 3,000,000 of them to about 1,675,000 Sards), you know […more…]

Hey Mark! Whoa Mario! About Those Potato Gnocchi…

 Posted by at 11:21 pm  16 Responses »
Mar 212013
 
Hey Mark! Whoa Mario! About Those Potato Gnocchi...

If you had a look at Mark Bittman’s recent New York Times column about potato gnocchi, this post is for you. Mark and I are old friends from his Cook’s magazine days when we worked on some stories together. Since then, you and I have seen him on a dazzling journey in the world of food. He’s no slouch when it comes to cooking Italian. But about gnocchi specifically, and his recent article with Mario Batali… some input and insights—I’ve been on my own journey with the little dumpling. Continue reading and you’ll find how my own potato gnocchi (gnocchi di […more…]

Cooking with Julia: June is for Sweet Cabbage

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Jun 292012
 
Cooking with Julia: June is for Sweet Cabbage

“Cooking with Julia” || JUNE 2012 If you think cabbage is winter food, consider this: early summer cabbages are more mellow in flavor than those grown for autumn harvesting, particularly those that are showing up in farmers markets everywhere. One variety I’ve seen quite a bit of  lately and snap up whenever I can is Arrowhead cabbage, a comparatively small and mild early summer cone-shaped brassica. I shot these carts filled with them (or perhaps they are Winningstadt, a German cone-head cabbage?–so similar it’s hard to tell the difference) at a farmers market in South West Germany. Despite the ubiquitous Italian […more…]

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