Secrets of Italian Tomato Sauce

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Jul 022013
 
Secrets of Italian Tomato Sauce

If you’re like me and love a good tomato sauce, you’ll want to read my new article in Zester Daily, “How to Master the Tomato Sauces of Italy” for tomato sauce wisdom and maybe, just maybe, my favorite “red sauce” recipe.   I wrote it because—I kid you not–even after having written thirteen cookbooks about Italian food—four of them about pasta and the sauces it wears–and one about how to make tomato sauce specifically*, people still ask me what prepared tomato sauce I buy! My answer, “I wouldn’t dream of eating tomato sauce from a bottle!” The response, inevitably: “You make tomato sauce from […more…]

A Sweet Remembrance: Love Knots for Papà

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Jun 142013
 
A Sweet Remembrance: Love Knots for Papà

Actually, I never called my father “Papà.” I know he would have preferred it, but at some point after “Giulia” was changed to “Julia,” unofficially but permanently at the insistence of an elementary school teacher, he became “Daddy.” His name had also been anglicized, much earlier, at Ellis Island, from Giovanni della Croce to John Dellacroce. Still, he was more Giovanni than John when it came to most things. Born in Toritto, Provincia di Bari, Regione di Puglia, Italy, on April 13, 1908, he died a couple of months shy of 100, on my birthday. My father had an extraordinary […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…]

A Lentil Soup for Christopher Peacock’s Kitchen

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May 032013
 
A Lentil Soup for Christopher Peacock's Kitchen

My formative years were spent not only cooking alongside my Italian mother and aunts, immersed in beautiful food, but also, studying art. I love design especially–interior, graphic and fashion design, architecture… all of it.  And so I feel excited to be teaming up with celebrated designer, Christopher Peacock, to kick off this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, a quintessentially New York spectacle. Every year, the most acclaimed interior designers transform a grand Manhattan home into an exhibition of state-of-the- art interiors for the show. The idea was hatched in 1973 when several dedicated advocates of the Kips Bay Boys […more…]

A Mouthwatering Gift for Mother’s Day

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May 022013
 
A Mouthwatering Gift for Mother's Day

My children love the cozy family food I make, like Baked Clams with Bacon, Stuffed Squash Blossoms, Juicy Meatloaf with Red Wine Glaze, Braised Cauliflower Smothered with Scallions and Garlic, Nonna Clia’s Apple Cake, and other dishes that ooze comfort. After you make Mother breakfast in bed, cook her a luscious dinner following my clear and simple recipes while she curls up with a good book–and the aromas of Italian cooking drift through the house. At Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, or your local bookstore. For information about Italian Home Cooking or any of my other award-winning cookbooks, see my website. […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…]

Travels with Julia: Under the Swabian Sun

 Posted by at 2:33 pm  4 Responses »
Dec 102012
 
Travels with Julia: Under the Swabian Sun

Travels with Julia || Southern Germany Traveling through southwestern Germany recently, I thought I could have been in France or Italy’s wine-growing regions. But then, Baden-Württemberg (the two states merged to form one in 1952), the region’s official name, was once in the duchy of Swabia, a swathe of land that included parts of France and Switzerland. Today, it shares its borders with both countries and the French connection endures. There are nine Michelin-starred restaurant-hotels in this important fruit- and wine-growing region and they are all family-owned (as such establishments have been for centuries–tradition is important here). But if the chefs […more…]

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