about eating Italian wherever you are
On a Zoom happy hour recently, I asked what everyone was having for dinner. Four for four, pasta. No surprise there. Everyone loves spaghetti and other dried pastas, and naturally they’re among the staples we’re stockpiling these days. Other ingredients I never like to be without: olive oil, bread, anchovies, garlic and hot red pepper….
In the Piemonte region of northern Italy where Margherita Aloi grew up, this potful of spring greens in broth, thickened by fat rice kernels and potatoes, is known as a “cleansing soup”…especially for women. I’ve never been altogether sure what “cleansing” means, but it likely has something to do with the greens, rich in digestion-enhancing…
It’s spring, Easter and Passover are approaching, and I feel the familiar urge to cook lamb. Not the roast leg of lamb with sides that I might cook for the whole family, but a lamb and vegetable stew just for me and my husband–my bunk mate of almost 48 years and now my bunker mate…
Mention crepes, and my mind leaps to the thin pancakes, filled with ham and cheese, that I tasted long ago in Normandy. But Italians eat savory crepes, too. Called crespelle, they are a lovely change from pasta and risotto. The flavor and texture of crepes are improved by incorporating whole-grain flour into the batter. You…
I realize that pretty much everyone has cooked a quick Italian tomato sauce. But would you have been proud to use it for a classic pasta al pomodoro, garnished only with grated cheese? I’m not talking about a sauce made with fresh tomatoes at their seasonal peak, but with the canned plum tomatoes we…
Toasted bread, rubbed with cut garlic cloves and anointed generously with olive oil, is known most places as bruschetta (pronounced bru SKET ta, please). Except. If you are in Tuscany, the word for this treat is fettunta, or fett’ unta, meaning “oiled slice.” My first memory of fettunta goes back to a simple Sunday supper many…
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…