As I’ve stated in the past, much of what we cook at home is what I like to call “ad hoc” cooking; that is to say, I usually go the market and buy what looks fresh and is moderately priced. I, of course, have a standard list of items I purchase on a weekly basis but when it comes to […]

Book Review: Salumi by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing was a popular and more general look at making cured meats.  In the author’s latest pork crazed book, Salumi, Ruhlman and Polcyn focus on eight basic categories of Italian salami (plural salumi), including: guanciale, coppa, spalla, lardo, lonza, pancetta, […]

(photo: The cover of John Mariani’s How Italian Food Conquered the World.) After reading through the first chapter of John Mariani’s How Italian Food Conquered the World I felt both enlightened and stimulated and overwhelmed and short of breath.  The former feeling was a result of the numerous “fun facts” scattered throughout the first chapter ranging from the history of the restaurant in Europe […]

(photo: the author of Cucina Povera, Pamela Sheldon Johns) If you were to tell people that Italy and America have a few things in common you’d most likely receive some awkward stares.  After all, America is a country driven by capitalism and rationality while Italy operates under a lifestyle driven worldview with importance placed on living well and understanding the subtleties of day to day existence […]

When folks discover that I have an Italian last time, as well as parents who were born in Italy, they immediately ask if I speak Italian.  My answer is a definite yes though I always qualify my fluency with the fact that I grew up speaking a regional, southern Italian, dialect. Dialects, of course, are examples of full blown languages with […]

(photo: the photos found in the Glorious Pasta of Italy are truly impressive; on the left is a photo of our pasta pesto)  There’s no way around the obvious fact that Italians are slaves to pasta.  The typical Italian (northern or southern in origin) consumes pasta multiple times per week, in various shapes and sizes, and in varying dishes from […]

(photo: grapes in Calabria, thanks to Pierro Morello for the photo) A Student of Italian Wine  Dan Amatuzzi is a modest guy when it comes to wine.  And modesty isn’t the word that comes to mind when you consider Dan served as the sommelier at Del Posto in New York City with an estimated 2300 bottles of wine and arguably the most comprehensive […]

Our 22 month old son Tommaso has been on a frenetic streak over the last 6 months, that is to say, he has both the energy and ferocity to take on any task including doing full fledge sprints with theatrical spins and twirls, pooping dramatically, greeting family members and complete strangers ad nauseam, separating his parents from a warm embrace and kiss […]

A while back I wrote about my definition of the la cucina povera or the kitchen of the poor.  I view la cucina povera as a style of cooking centered on cooking with whatever, non bourgeois, ingredients are in the house.  My family in Calabria once cooked in the above manner (mostly due to economic reasons but also because what was “in […]

See Below for Contest and Book Give Away! contest closed You have to admire any book that documents well over 110 authentic Italian pasta sauces and the hundreds of pasta shapes that marry best to a given sauce.  If a book goes further and contains beautifully rendered graphic shapes for each pasta then you have a timeless cookbook that should be […]