Creating an Italian antipasto or charcuterie platter requires careful selection of ingredients but it’s not rocket science. An Italian antipasto plate usually includes marinated vegetables, e.g., roasted red peppers, pickled eggplant, grilled zucchini—olives, salumi, cheese, and, of course good bread. With antipasto, simple is best. Each decision the home cook makes has an effect on the experience of the eater. […]

Calabrese Mustard Greens Mustard greens are one of the most nutritious green-leafy vegetables on the planet and have more vitamin A, carotenes, vitamin K, and flavonoid anti-oxidants than many generic or everyday fruits and vegetables.  Like many of the greens we prepare our mustard green recipe includes extra virgin olive, minced garlic, and red pepper flakes.  We also quickly blanch the vegetable […]

Gnocchi with Pesto and Canned Italian Tuna When researching our recipe for Gnocchi with pesto and canned Italian tuna we kept seeing recipes that focused on baking the ingredients and our immediate reply was why would you bake your Gnocchi with pesto and tuna dish?  Our dish focuses on high quality Italian tuna packed in olive oil and homemade pesto and […]

Recently I was going over a recipe with an Uncle interested in food and especially anchovy sauce and when I reached for a bunch of clipped recipes from the NY Times Food section he thought I was crazy for being so “old school”  We can debate endlessly about how one ought to save recipes (digitally or with a good scissor), […]

Basic Whole Wheat Bread Recipe A good, easy to make, basic whole wheat bread recipe should be in every home baker’s arsenal.  Our version of a Basic Whole Wheat Bread recipe is adopted from the classic cookbook, Beard on Bread Book (who acquired his recipe from Myrtle Allen, owner of Ballymaloe House, a country-house hotel near Cork, Ireland).  We like this recipe because […]

There are many elegant, yet simple, recipes that every home cook should master; for example, frittata, pasta with olive oil, garlic, and parsley, tomato salad, etc.  Sauteed mushrooms is another home cook essential that is easy to master after a few attempts and will make consistent appearances on your dinner table. Our sauteed mushrooms utilize any mushroom variety but we […]

Preparing and eating mushrooms can be either and an easy or difficult affair.  My Italian born parents, for example, are fans of wild mushrooms and go to great lengths to forage for exotic species and then pickle and preserve the delicacies.  On the other hand, I enjoy garden variety Shiitake mushrooms sauteed with garlic and extra virgin olive oil and plenty […]

As our fans know and understand we’re big believers in from scratch cooking but we’re also food pragmatist; that is to say, we understand that homemade food can, at times, be semi-homemade.  Case in point, is a wonderful semi fresh pasta from the Italian company Giovanni Rana.  Giovanni Rana, a 50-year old Italian pasta company with an excellent reputation in […]

Italian Corn Bread When my wife (then girlfriend) visited my parent’s home for her first Italian themed Thanksgiving she was bewildered by the selection of non traditional Thanksgiving day foods such as pasta, salumi, olives, various vegetables, nuts, fruits, cheeses, and pastries (I offered no explanation, but suggested she eat as much as possible so as to not offend the […]

Grilled Fennel-Crusted Pork Chops Pork in the US used to be an awful affair.  That is to say, the meat was often tough and lacked the well marbled (and fatty) composition of pork found in Italy and France, for example.  Fast forward about 20 years and pork chop aficionados can find high quality chops (and other cuts of pork) with […]