Feasting with Leopards: An Unordinary Cooking Lesson

 Posted by at 11:51 am  23 Responses »
Apr 062012
 
Feasting with Leopards: An Unordinary Cooking Lesson

On a recent morning in Palermo, I found myself a guest at the historic Lanza Tomasi palazzo, where Nicoletta Polo, the Duchess of Palma, was planning a cooking lesson for American students who would arrive after breakfast. I first met Nicoletta some twenty years ago when she was living in New York City. Originally from Venice and an excellent cook, she versed me on the food of the Veneto for research on a book I was writing then, which includes some of her recipes. Today the Duchess lives in the ancestral palace that her husband, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, has restored. […more…]

Luxurious Penance: Italian Fast Day Potato Salad

 Posted by at 11:36 am  4 Responses »
Mar 032012
 
Luxurious Penance: Italian Fast Day Potato Salad

The Italians love good food, fast days or not. All kinds of special dishes have popped up over the centuries to get around papal restrictions designed to curtail excess (sumptuary laws), for Lent and other holy days. Take the fast day salad. There are many resourceful variations on the theme. What all have in common is that they’re meatless. This one is a composed warm salad of creamy boiled potatoes, canned tender Italian blue fin tuna filets, hard-cooked eggs, and asparagus. Italian tuna, called ventresca (stay tuned for a future  post about this as yet under-appreciated delicacy), comes from the belly […more…]

About that Stracotto: Italian for Very, Very Slow-Cooked, Sublime Stew

 Posted by at 2:53 pm  9 Responses »
Feb 062012
 
About that Stracotto: Italian for Very, Very Slow-Cooked, Sublime Stew

And for which I promised a recipe in a recent post (December 15). Just the remedy for February’s chill.  Go to RECIPE> After I finished off producer Piero Catalano’s bottle of Suavis, the aged vinegar from Sicily’s desert island (“The Other Face of Balsamic” [December 15 post]), a small flask of Modena aged balsamic vinegar took its place in my cupboard. Unlike the Suavis, a souvenir from my September in Trapani (I drank it as a cordial, an “amen” to the day, blissful thimbleful by thimbleful and it was gone by January), aged Modena balsamico can be more easily replaced. […more…]

FOR THE NEW YEAR: Lentils for Luck and Sausages for Plenty, Infused with Holy Oil

 Posted by at 5:24 pm  10 Responses »
Dec 312011
 
FOR THE NEW YEAR: Lentils for Luck and Sausages for Plenty, Infused with Holy Oil

Put them together for the quintessential Italian New Year dish, lenticchie di capodanno (lentils for the new year). Lentils, round and copper-colored, should remind you of money; pork shouts fatness and increase. And the olive oil? Nectar of the gods. “A drop of olive oil on the head, a drop of wine on the lips” remembers writer Bill Marsano, was an infant’s blessing in Italian households. It anoints the breasts of monarchs at their coronations and marks the foreheads of the dying in their final breath of life. In your food, it’s no less a benediction. New Year is an […more…]

Piero’s “Better Than Balsamic,” Postscript with Pictures

 Posted by at 2:42 pm  6 Responses »
Dec 152011
 
Piero's "Better Than Balsamic," Postscript with Pictures

Frost has snuffed out the last breath of Indian summer in New York, but warm up with these images of Sicily.  From Piero Catalano, the artisan food producer and master vinegar maker I met in Trapani province this past September (see “A New Vinegar is Born,” 26 October post), a postscript in pictures.  Next, go make yourself some stracotto (Italian extra slow-simmered meat stew) with aged vinegar…stay tuned for the recipe…. Piero Catalano’s sun-dried tomatoes and other local products on the shelves in his Trapani shop, KusKus. The most precious item is his vinegar. Since then he has picked all […more…]

Pantelleria, Sicily: A New Vinegar is Born

 Posted by at 8:09 am  1 Response »
Oct 262011
 
Pantelleria, Sicily: A New Vinegar is Born

Day 4   I don’t think there is a place in the world more ideal than Pantelleria to think of the Moon. And Pantelleria is much more beautiful. The endless plains of volcanic rock, the calm sea, the dammusi (traditional volcanic rock houses) where you can see African lighthouses through their windows on windless nights… the bottom of the sea asleep… an ancient amphora with stone garlands and the remains of some wine corroded over the years… bathing in a vaporous bowl in water so thick with minerals you can walk on it… –Gabriel Garcia Marquez, describing the Sicilian island […more…]

The Fine Olive Oil of Trapani

 Posted by at 8:14 pm  2 Responses »
Oct 022011
 
The Fine Olive Oil of Trapani

Day 2 A Revelation Sicily’s topography is as diverse as its vivid human landscape. Lush, subtropical flora and desert landscapes alternate with stunning coastlines, volcanic archipelagos, rugged mountains and an active volcano (Mount Aetna). Trapani province’s vista is softened with endless carpets of citrus orchards, olive trees and vineyards, and studded with the vestiges of crumbled empires, ruined Moorish forts and enchanting medieval towns. The fruits of Trapani are many, among them olives, transformed by masters of olive oil into some of the best oil in the world. Three things combine to make this possible: the mineral-rich volcanic soil, single […more…]

The Trail to Trapani

 Posted by at 6:09 pm  2 Responses »
Sep 302011
 
The Trail to Trapani

Day 1: Under the Sicilian Sun Probably there is no better guidebook to the real and the mythical Sicily than Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, the powerful historical novel about Sicilian life at the time of the Risorgimento [Review of the book from THE GUARDIAN]. I took it with me on a flight to Palermo last week and as we drove on the coastal road toward Trapani and our hotel, past dark-skinned children playing along the roadside and men with the bluest of eyes, yellow hair and ruddy complexions, I remembered his image of Sicily as the “America of […more…]

On the Road with Spaghetti alla Carbonara

 Posted by at 2:32 pm  No Responses »
Jun 102011
 
On the Road with Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Photo by Nathan Hoyt At a recent cooking class at the Silo, the cooking school on Ruth and Skitch Henderson’s old estate in New Milford, CT, I decided to demonstrate one of the quickest and easiest pasta dishes of the Italian kitchen: spaghetti alla carbonara. Call it Italy’s version of bacon and eggs if you will–with pasta added. No question that it’s sturdy fare for cool weather, but it’s also a fast summer fix for lunch or dinner–I first ate it as a young girl on a sizzling August day in a trattoria along the Amalfi coast. Outside of Italy, this […more…]

On Broccoli Rapini: When Bitter is Sweet

 Posted by at 9:03 pm  7 Responses »
May 192011
 
On Broccoli Rapini: When Bitter is Sweet

Cime di rapa (“turnip tops”), broccoli di rapa, broccoletti di rapa, and colloquially, rape or rapini are the Italian terms for what the Americans call “broccoli raab.”  The vegetable was virtually unknown when I was growing up in the States. Today, the pleasingly bitter greens the southern Italians love have become mainstream but they are rarely cooked correctly. Whether prepared in restaurants or carry-out shops, I find they are often too bitter–the result of not  par-boiling first, or undercooking.  This is not a vegetable to cook al dente! This is the Italian way to prepare rapini: Using a sharp paring […more…]

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