Whenever I meet folks and I tell them I’m interested in food and cooking the inevitable question follows: “so, what do you cook?”  Before I answer I often pause and aim to think of luxurious ingredients and extraordinary dishes, but I always end up describing some variation of a pasta, soup, and/or risotto dish.  I qualify my answer by blurting […]

(photo: our saffron “threads” just prior to adding to the cooking broth for Risotto Milanese) Saffron (or Zafferano) has always had a special place in my heart; more specifically, it’s had a special place in my memory.  I associate saffron with my childhood and the yellow arborio rice my mother prepared for me on special occasions (viz., any time I asked for it […]

  (photo: the highly prized white truffle – courtesy of Alma Gourmet) Truffle Primer  One of my favorite aspects of visiting Italy in the Summer and Fall months is the abundance of festivals scattered throughout the country.  In Calabria alone, for example, the summer months include food festivals focused on bread, salt cod, wild boar, eggplant, red chiles, potato, etc. […]

(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 […]

Chestnuts are revered in Europe with the Mediterranean cultures particularly adamant about including the treasured nut in their diet. Chestnut eating in Italy has been glorified since ancient times and both Homer and Virgil mention chestnut trees and their cultivation near Rome beginning around 37 B.C. Today, Italian chestnuts, with their characteristic flattened side, come in many varieties but the […]

(photo: an old door in Pellegrina, Italy)   There’s a certain comfort in all things deemed old: Old homes, old devices, old parts, old countries, old texts, old people, old trees, old clothes, old friends, etc.  The old can be defined as something not made or experienced recently and having a history (or story) or emotive quality.  An old friend […]

  Iced Coffee or Homemade Frappuccino I’m not a big fan of Starbucks, but I do respect the chain for promoting the concept of a “cafe” or, as Europeans say, “bar” experience in the United States (the “bar” experience in Italy isn’t, of course, about sofas, extra large portions, and wanna be Existentialists, but, like most things American, we can’t leave well […]

One of the biggest fallacies in the Italian culinary world is centered on the idea that Italians do not eat dessert.  Italians do, in fact, enjoy dessert and the items consumed range from creamy gelato to luxurious cakes and icy granita to mind blowing cookies.  Here are some irresistible photos, including gelato, pastries, cookies, and granita – all scrumptious Italian desserts!

To say that bread is an important part of day-to-day life in Italy would be an understatement.  In fact, it’s more likely that the Italian political and economic system will be reformed over the next couple of years than it is that Italians will change their longstanding relationship with pane or bread.   Most modern Italians still buy artisanal bread […]

Walk down any street in the seacoast town of Bagnara Calabra during the summer months and you’ll encounter women dressed in black screaming their lungs out!  No, the ladies aren’t auditioning for a new Jean-Paul Sartre play about existential angst, rather they’re selling fish.  The ladies set up shop early in the morning, usually during outdoor “market day” on Tuesday and […]