On the Road: That Fine Italian Hand

 Posted by at 9:26 am  10 Responses »
May 152014
 
On the Road: That Fine Italian Hand

Once, Italian merchants were on their own looking for markets to sell their goods. Today, the Italian Trade Commission facilitates commerce between Italian businesses and the U.S., among other countries, sending buyers, and journalists like myself throughout its twenty regions to explore products for export to an American public that is dazzled by the stroke of that fine Italian hand. My mission on a recent trip to the Mostra Internazionale dell’Artigianato (78th International Handicrafts Trade Fair) in Florence, sponsored by the I.T.C., was to ply the  stalls of Italian food and wine producers coming from all over Italy for exceptional […more…]

To Italy with Julia: Venice by Lagoon

 Posted by at 3:37 pm  7 Responses »
Mar 292014
 
To Italy with Julia: Venice by Lagoon

Almost in the very middle of this little sea, enclosed between the water and the sky, lies Venice, a fairy vision, risen as if by miracle out of the water that surrounds it and like green shining ribbons, cuts through its beautiful body. So wrote Giulio Lorenzetti, in his famous 1926 guidebook, Venice and its Lagoon: A Historical and Artistic Guide (updated in 1994 and still the most authoritative guide). Yet there it is, the ancient “Serenissima,” a glittering city decorated with gold, arising out of the lagoon, firm and fixed. We can barely grasp how architects could have imagined its plan and how […more…]

Upcoming Culinary Tours to Italy with Stars as Your Guides

 Posted by at 10:59 am  2 Responses »
Mar 052014
 
Upcoming Culinary Tours to Italy with Stars as Your Guides

Many a tourist has been hustled along the deep-rutted routes of Venice-Florence-Rome-home, yet some travelers got off the highways and criss-crossed the countryside, writing about the cities, small towns and byways. One such traveler is former New York Times staff writer, Zester Daily contributor, author, and Tuscany resident, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, who has savored Italy with great learning and a deep and abiding love. Today, previously overlooked regions that she has captured masterfully in her writings are popular destinations for the American traveler interested in the glorious food of Italy, and there is hardly a better guide. Nancy has announced two upcoming tours to […more…]

Heart of Nicaragua: Grace and Magic in a Corn Masa Cookie

 Posted by at 1:06 am  9 Responses »
Mar 042014
 
Heart of Nicaragua: Grace and Magic in a Corn Masa Cookie

Travels with Julia || Nicaragua Maybe because growing up in a family that endured the last world war in Italy, often hungry, my journey as a writer is concerned with food. For me, everything about it fascinates—growing it, harvesting it, cooking it, understanding its cultural trajectory. The recipes are metaphors, albeit edible ones. When I traveled to Nicaragua recently to meet up with my daughter and make our way together to a remote village in the country’s highlands, I learned such a recipe, one that has come to have meaning for me far beyond the discovery of a new dish. […more…]

Uprooted to Lancaster

 Posted by at 2:47 pm  9 Responses »
Oct 122013
 
Uprooted to Lancaster

Summer is my season. I can no more abandon my garden for a beach holiday than leave a bubbling pot on the stove to burn. I love watching my vegetables grow and the perennials exploding in the flower beds, putting on one gorgeous show after another. There are zucchini flowers to pick in the early morning, and sauces to be made when only fresh tomatoes will do; Romas to be oven-dried and frozen, and peppers to be roasted and put up for the winter. Autumn is a bittersweet time for the likes of me, invigorating and melancholy all at once, […more…]

Reader Mail: Why Does Everything Taste Better in Rome?

 Posted by at 2:10 pm  1 Response »
Aug 012013
 
Reader Mail: Why Does Everything Taste Better in Rome?

  Every cookbook writer loves to hear from their readers and find out how they’re getting along with the recipes that are lovingly tested to make them foolproof before they’re published (but, hey! don’t expect the results promised if you go off and “do your own thing”). Here’s a message I got recently (what a treat—they even sent a photo!): Before my wife had given me your Classic Italian Cookbook, I had only nostalgia for the dishes I had tasted during my stay in Rome. Now I am able to re-create those same dishes in my own home, and I […more…]

Kudos to Canal House on Winning the James Beard Award

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May 112013
 
Kudos to Canal House on Winning the James Beard Award

Felicitazioni!… Hooray!… Toot-toot-toot!… Honk-honk!… Bing-bong!… Cling-clang! Bravissime, Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, my friends and photographers, for winning the culinary world’s 2013 cookbook Oscars for Canal House Cooks Everyday in the category of general cooking. If my readers don’t already know about Christopher (who, by the way, is a “she,” not a “he”) and Melissa, they might start by reading their new book’s foreward, by Julia Child as dictated to Amanda Hesser “from beyond”:   I’ve been an enthusiastic admirer of Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton since they were at Saveur magazine in the 1990s; two forthright women on a […more…]

Pistachio Pesto: A Sauce Fit for a Prince

 Posted by at 1:44 am  4 Responses »
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…]

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