Growing up in a southern Italian household in the United States, polenta wasn’t standard dinner or lunch fare; in fact, corn hardly made an appearance at our kitchen table.   Fast forward about 20 years and we can’t wait for the Fall season to come around so we can prepare a bit pot of steamy polenta flavored with wild mushrooms […]

We’re big fans of the classic eggplant pasta dish pasta alla norma but when we have a big appetite and are craving a pasta dish that is slightly more substantive we turn to our Eggplant Bolognese recipe prepared with large rigatoni. Eggplant Bolognese is a meal in and of itself and combines delicate pieces of fried eggplant with satisfying ground beef and tomato […]

Orzo resembles a large grain of rice (risoni) but is in fact a type of pasta.    Orzo means barley in Italian and it’s the Swiss army knife of pasta shapes; for example, it can be used in soup, as a side salad, and even baked in the oven.  Our Italian mother, used orzo primarily in soups such as chicken brodo and, […]

Our standard pickled eggplant recipe, or  Melanzane Sott’Olio, is a staple in our household, but when we crave a slightly more refined version, with a bit less work, we turn to sweet and sour eggplant or melanzane in agrodolce. Most melanzane in agrodolce begin by frying the eggplant but our version includes a quick boil and steeping technique that yields wonderfully delicate […]

The best broths usually contain chickens that have been butchered with fully attached heads and feet; this little known fact was made abundantly clear to me when I asked my grandmother when she would be removing these parts after slaughtering chickens for a large family meal (I won’t elaborate on her response but you can take a guess).   The simple idea […]

Canned pears or pere sciroppate used to be a mainstay in most rural villages in Calabria (one of the southern most provinces in Italy) as were canned and preserved peaches and other fruits.  These days, you’re more likely to find supermarket canned fruit in the cupboards of most southern Italian kitchens, especially during the winter months when there is a lack of […]

Friselle bread, at times referred to as freselle, frisedde, fresedde, frise, are made from durum wheat.  Friselle are baked twice and usually have a rough side and smooth side.  Friselle are found throughout all of Italy but especially popular in southern Italy (Apulia, Calabria, Campania, etc.).  Friselle have a very long shelf life and were especially popular during difficult, economic, […]

Strozzapreti pasta is translated as “priest choker” and is an elongated form of cavatelli.  The legend has it that the priests of  Emilia-Romagna and the surrounding regions enjoyed the long pasta so much that they choked while eating it.  I can certainly understand eating strozzapreti quickly as it is, indeed, a delicious pasta. Strozzapreti is a fairly straight-forward pasta shape to make at […]

The Best Food Season of the Year and Hot Peppers: Pickling and Drying We can assert, without much doubt, that late August through early September is the best time of the year for fresh fruit and vegetables here in the United States.  Backyard gardens, local markets and farms (including ones participating in CSAs), and even large, chain, supermarkets, for example, carry […]

Pickled eggplant (Melanzane Sott’Olio) has been a staple of our Italian American pantry for 40+ years.  Along with giardiniera (a mix of pickled vegetables including carrots, cauliflower, celery, etc.) sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, and pickled mushrooms, our family keeps large quantities of pickled eggplant in our cool, basement, pantry.  We use both melanzane sott’olio and giardiniera (and all of […]