About eating Italian wherever you are
Panissa is one of those Italian foods that defy a simple definition. In Liguria, it’s a fried version of the chickpea-flour polenta known as farinata. (For the record, Sicilians do similar things with their panelle and Provencal cuisine gets into the action with its socca.) On restaurant menus in Rome and elsewhere, I’ve also encountered…
I’ve been making mushroom dressing–or stuffing, depending on where you’re from–for half a century or so. And I’m just getting around to writing up my recipe. Usually I wing it, chopping vegetables while drying the bread. In addition to mushrooms, the saute always includes onions, celery and fresh herbs, mixed with the best white bread…
During our month-long stay in Italy this summer, the weather was relentlessly hot and dry. It had been three years since our last visit, with the pandemic lingering like an obnoxious dinner guest who refuses to leave. So we were looking at Italy with fresh eyes. Overall, Italy is still Italy and one of the…
I’m back from a month in Italy, with record temperatures, and I have to say that every day was a good day for a spritz. The first time I spotted a spritz, 20 years ago, was on a hot summer day in the town of Reggio Emilia, when I suddenly noticed that many people…
Granddaughter Grace’s verdict on my homemade mango gelato: “It tastes as good as store ice cream.” Not quite the endorsement I was hoping for. I think what Grace was “complimenting” me on was the gelato’s consistency, smooth and creamy, free of the stabilizers and other additives found in commercially made ice cream. Mango’s gelatinous quality…
I won’t be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but I’m thinking of all the gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, king cakes, Sazeracs and Vieux Carres that go down in our most food-centric city. Accompanied by jazz and enthusiastic crowds. New Orleans is famous for its muffulettas, too, and Fat Tuesday is as good a…
I just made a potful of soup, packed with seasonal vegetables. Italians call this minestrone, a “big soup,” compared to a less ambitious minestra featuring fewer ingredients. Pellegrino Artusi, the so-called “father of Italian cuisine,” tells an amusing but sobering story. In 1855, he found himself in the coastal city of Livorno. Entering a trattoria,…
This seems as good a year as any to break with holiday eating traditions if you’re in the mood. One of our family’s favorite Thanksgiving side dishes could be called nontraditional: cipolline onions, braised to caramelized perfection in an Italian sweet-sour mixture of wine vinegar and just a little sugar and butter (recipe). Another route…
Biting into a piece of focaccia–crunchy, chewy, fragrant–I try to picture Etruscans eating this ancient flatbread. Their flour, milled from whole grains, was surely coarser than my bread flour. The degree to which their flatbread rose depended on whatever helpful microorganisms could be captured from the air. I rely on commercial yeast for consistent results. Their…