Forktales – Page 13 – Italian foods, recipes, tradition, nutrition.

Readers Write: Victor Hazan on Marcella’s Pumpkin Love

Posted by Julia della Croce at 9:13 am 4 Responses »

Oct 312013

In response to my story in Zester Daily, Love and Zucca: Why Venice Adores its Pumpkin, a reminiscence of Marcella Hazan, sent from her husband, Victor… Bravissima. You have shined your knowledge and intelligence on an ingredient as unfamiliar to American cooks as it is sought after by the cooks of the Veneto. And by the Emiliani as well who use it to stuff cappellacci. Marcella substituted orange-fleshed yams, which come close to the zucca’s taste, and called them Cappellacci del Nuovo Mondo. Every year, when we had not yet installed an elevator and lived 82 steps above sea level, Maurizio […more…]

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Readers Write: Victor Hazan on Marcella's Pumpkin Love

There is More Than One Way to Skin a Pumpkin

Posted by Julia della Croce at 10:20 pm 7 Responses »

Oct 272013

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.

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There is More Than One Way to Skin a Pumpkin

Canal House Interprets Italian Cooking–With Deft

Posted by Julia della Croce at 12:50 am 2 Responses »

Oct 242013

This is not the first time I’ve touted Canal House Cooking, but time and again, in the midst of our burgeoning American food revolution, the remarkable talent of the two women behind this homespun, deeply felt culinary venture, inspires. I first got to know Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, the photographer-artist publishing team a few years back when they were photographing my book, Italian Home Cooking: 125 Recipes to Comfort Your Soul. While many gifted chefs are turning the American restaurant scene into a mecca that even the most discerning foreign traveler now marvels at, Christopher and Melissa have, instead, […more…]

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Canal House Interprets Italian Cooking--With Deft

How to Become a Food Writer

Posted by Julia della Croce at 10:54 pm 7 Responses »

Oct 202013

In thirty years of writing about food and cooking, people have so often asked me how I became a food writer. A few weeks ago I was invited by my friend Carol Durst-Wertheim to talk about cooking the Italian harvest to the Pleasantville Garden Club in that bucolic village in Westchester County, NY. A few days later, Carol interviewed me on PCTV, Pleasantville’s hometown television station, about how I found my way to food writing. It was the kind of talk you’d have with a neighbor over a cup of tea at your kitchen table. How I merged a predilection for art, […more…]

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Uprooted to Lancaster

Posted by Julia della Croce at 2:47 pm 9 Responses »

Oct 122013

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…]

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How to Cook Rapini

Posted by Julia della Croce at 11:23 am 3 Responses »

Oct 072013

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…]

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

Posted by Julia della Croce at 2:36 pm 8 Responses »

Aug 232013

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…]

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

The Squash Racket

Posted by Julia della Croce at 8:55 pm 4 Responses »

Aug 162013

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…]

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

Posted by Julia della Croce at 1:30 pm 10 Responses »

Aug 152013

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…]

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

Julia on NPR Radio and Zester Daily: Global Warming Leads to Pine Nut Plagues

Posted by Julia della Croce at 9:00 am 2 Responses »

Aug 092013

If making basil pesto is a rite of summer for you, you’ll want to check out my most recent stories on Zester Daily and NPR radio about the disappearing pine nut and substituting pistachios for pesto instead. As our planet warms, we’re losing our pine forests. Everyone I spoke to, from the American pine nut gatherers in the southwest dustbowl, to the pesto makers in Genoa who have relied on the Mediterranean fir forests for centuries, said the same thing: the nut-bearing conifers are an endangered species. It was a tough story to digest, but digest it I did. Because I write about food […more…]

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Julia on NPR Radio and Zester Daily: Global Warming Leads to Pine Nut Plagues

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