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 […]

Our friend and avid home cook Dr. K. continues his mastery of all things Italian with a terrific homemade bread from Sicilia; namely, Durum Pane Siciliano – a bread shaped in the form of the Occhi di Santa Lucia (i.e., a pair of eyeglasses in homage to Santa Lucia, the patron saint of vision). Dr. K. utilized a recipe from Carol Field’s, The […]

  (photo: cauliflower carrot soup finished with extra virgin olive oil, parsley, and Sriracha sauce). One of the prized crops on the small Calabrian family farm Nonno Lattella worked until a a few years ago was Cauliflower and like many Italian farmers he respected the vegetable for both it’s taste and value.  In fact, Italy is the top producer of Cauliflower […]

Like many of the kitchen tools we recommend, we like foods and ingredients that are versatile and when it comes to fish there’s no more versatile type than Hake.  Hake has a delicate and almost sweet flavor profile (a little bit like crab or lobster) with thick firm white meat. Hake can be grilled, baked, poached, roasted, or sautéed. Hake […]

(photo: close up of panforte made by Pasticcerie Sinatti in Siena) We’ve never been much of a dessert type of site here at Scordo.com – holding the view that sugar and chocolate can’t compete with salt and fat!  So, when we had the opportunity to try a traditional Italian dessert we were a bit skeptical given our countless posts on pastas, salumi, crocchette, eggplant parmigiana, […]

I almost hugged our TV last night.  Well, I didn’t exactly get up off the couch to embrace our electronic box because I was under a fleece blanket and several layers of wool and cotton and getting up would have meant losing the precious body heat trapped in my vicinity.  What prompted the urge to hug our TV was the 4th […]

You’ll be hard pressed to find a person who does not enjoy the occasional jazzed up hamburger.  You can approach a serious Foodie, a European transplant, and even a borderline vegetarian and they’ll all light up when you mention the idea of putting together a perfectly grilled hamburger with the appropriate toppings!  In my view, the hamburger is the greatest […]

(photo: some of Dr. K.’s homemade duck prosciutto sliced thin and eaten with bread and Prosecco)   I’m a big believer in chasing happiness in life and not the 30 minute kind that’s associated with a new car, electronic device, or a bigger house (sorry all you hedge fund managers and Goldman employees).  Happiness, after all (and there’s empirical evidence for this) is derived […]

(photo: grapes ready to be run through the press for homemade wine) Well, what wine should you buy? This is a big question, maybe even equivalent to other big questions such as, “Does God Exist?” , “Do we have free will?”, and the classic, “What is Truth?” Unlike big philosophical questions, however, figuring out which wine to buy for dinner, […]

Homemade Italian Breadcrumbs with parsley, lemon zest, and oregano I love versatile foods because, like many home cooks, I’m lazy and time deprived.  I look for shortcuts and want my food to taste good with minimal effort and, moreover, I think even the most respected food experts on the planet secretly feel this way.  After all, there’s more to life than […]