about eating Italian wherever you are
It’s hunting season in the Tuscan countryside and we occasionally hear gunshots in the distance. Which, through a sequence of random associations, led me to thoughts of “hunter’s style” chicken alla cacciatora. As the story goes, the hunter’s wife made chicken like this to feed her husband, returning from a long day in the woods….
In Tuscany, it’s easy to be a lazy cook and still eat well. Usually when I arrive here, in the Valdarno area south of Florence, I start cooking furiously. But the weather has been hot and this time I’m opting for more reading, more naps, more outings. So my emphasis has shifted to shopping for…
Meat cutlets, breaded lightly and fried. Germans call that schnizel. The Japanese name is tonkatsu. Italians cook meat this way, too. The version I’m talking about, with Northern Italian roots, is cotoletta alla milanese, pounded as thin as you can get it. The meat is boneless, but if you substitute a bone-in chop, the name…
A few weeks in Portugal and Spain wasn’t enough, for all kinds of reasons. Here’s one: I wanted to keep eating their soups. Sometimes chilled and refreshing. Sometimes warm and comforting. Sometimes thick and sometimes brothy. With deeply satisfying flavors, always. In the end, my favorites were gazpacho and caldo verde. I knew these classic…
I’ve been spending time with a Syrian cook named Mayada Anjari. Not face to face, regrettably. Instead, I’ve come to know Mayada through reading her splendid cookbook, The Bread and Salt Between Us. I cooked one dish, then another, and soon I’d made eight of Mayada’s beguiling recipes. Not that I’m through. My favorite so…
Seafood stews and soups are everyday eating all over Italy. And also special-occasion eating. Western Sicily is known for its fish stew with couscous. Venice’s contributions include an inky cuttlefish stew. Cacciucco, a seafood soup from the Tuscan coast, is seasoned abundantly with garlic and hot pepper. It’s supposed to be made with five kinds of…
Roasting is my go-to method for cauliflower. But what if you spoon the tender, bronzed florets onto a bed of creamy whiteness that also turns out to be cauliflower? Top that with savory granola? Finish with a fine drizzle of turmeric honey? Whether this dish tastes better than roasted cauliflower on its own is a…
My path to making a shiitake tart started with a walk in the North Carolina woods. It had rained and fungi had popped out. I wasn’t tempted to cook with them, but they were worth a look. Some were gorgeous and others just weird. Toward the end of the stay, our friends took us to…
When I was growing up, my mom often asked me to make salad for our family dinner. Invariably, it was iceberg lettuce or romaine, tomatoes and maybe one other thing, such as cucumbers. Usually I tossed it with an orangish Wishbone dressing. Hey, it was the 50s. That’s how we rolled. Our supermarket’s selection of…