(photo: cooking at home begins with basic ingredients; olive oil is key) “By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind, creating more healthful, less expensive and better-tasting food that requires less energy, water and land per calorie and reduces our carbon footprint. Not a bad result for us — or the planet.” Why Don’t Americans Cook at Home? […]

Zeppole Recipe The word zeppoli is Italian dialect for zeppola (the plural is zeppole).  Zeppoli are deep fried dough balls or fritters that can be made savory or sweet and are often made on Saint Joseph Day in various parts of Italy (made specifically as as sfinge or a cake on March 19th). Our family, which hails from Calabria, prepares zeppoli […]

  (photo: The Scordo.com World Cup flag; unfortunately, we didn’t have a reason to bring it out this past World Cup) I wanted to wish our loyal Scordo.com readers a Happy New Year and Buon Anno! and also list our top ten articles of the year.  We posted over 200 articles this year but the following stories were deemed most […]

(photo: street scene in Bagnara Calabra, courtesy of myworldshots.com ) I’m going to make a statement that may upset serious cooks, but here goes: It’s almost impossible to cook foods from other places in the world outside of their place of origin.  I’m not stating an absolute truth because you can get pretty damn close to replicating a pizza from […]

Don’t tell my wife but I had a secret lover on my wedding day.  That’s right, in addition to my beautiful wife I secretly adored the Potato Croquettes (Crocchette di Patate) that were being served at our party!  The potato croquettes were made with a mashed potato filling, stuffed with cubes of fresh mozzarella, and breaded with fresh breadcrumbs, dried oregano, […]

Rice Balls Arancini Recipe One of my favorite dishes at a local trattoria in New Jersey is an appetizer consisting of potato croquets, mozzarella in Carrozza  (mozzarella sticks), calzoncini (friend pockets of dough), and arancini (rice balls).  All of the items in the dish, officially called frittura Napoletana, are expertly fried and generally well executed.  However, it’s the arancini that […]

Our traditional, homemade tomato sauce, uses crushed, uncooked, tomatoes from our annual Fall tomato canning event.  Tomato sauce is easy to make and incredibly versatile.  We use tomato sauce for pasta, other sauces, soups, etc.  Making homemade sauce is a no-brainer, so don’t purchase the canned variety at your local supermarket.  Plus, our recipe hails from Calabria, Italy – a region that produces […]