Italian recipes

Fried Green Tomato Parmesan

September 29, 2009

The deed is done. I have picked all the tomatoes, uprooted the plants and put the garden to bed. I’d like to think the tomatoes didn’t want to go any more than I wanted to remove them. I had ambitious plans to deal with the garden on Sunday. But it was unseasonably hot and muggy. [...]

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Eggplant and Chicken Puttanesca Stacks — Almost Meatless Virtual Potluck

July 29, 2009

It’s a hamburger? It’s a chicken burger? No, it’s Eggplant Chicken Puttanesca Stacks! This is my contribution to the Almost Meatless Virtual Pot Luck. Authors Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond have somehow managed to organize a group of 30 food bloggers for this affair. Each of us making a different dish from Manning and [...]

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Italian Meatballs

April 7, 2009

People ask Andrew if being married to a food blogger means he eats wonderful meals all the time. His response? “My life is a series of weeks. Sometimes you eat ice cream for seven days. Sometimes it’s all soup.” In my defense, there was salad in the fridge at all times. Even when I wasn’t [...]

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Herb and Olive Chicken

January 13, 2009

We’re heading into the mother of all cold snaps. If the Weather Network is right, the warmest day this week will be a lip-chapping -15C. Celsius always sounds colder than Fahrenheit, but keep in mind that anything with a minus sign in front of it means you can make ice. Without an appliance. When cars [...]

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Italian Dessert Week – Salute

October 3, 2008

I want to make you tooth-breaking biscotti to dip in your cappuccino. I want to make you flaky, sugar-dusted crostini that shatters as you bite. I want to make you hazelnut gelato so smooth and creamy Italian phrases will roll from your tongue without effort. But there are simply too many choices and too little [...]

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Italian Week — Butternut Gnocchi

September 18, 2008

Not bad for a first try. Gnocchi has intimidated me ever since I visited friends in Italy and returned from a day of sight seeing to find my hosts and their entire kitchen covered in flour. While I was touring the colosseum in Verona, they’d spent the afternoon making enough gnocchi to feed a Roman [...]

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Italian Week — Butternut Risotto

September 17, 2008

Italian cuisine can be full of surprises. Despite calling for two whole tablespoons of minced garlic, this dish is sweet and unexpectedly subtle. Too subtle for some. Like my father, who diplomatically suggested I shouldn’t bother making it again but was open to lemon pie. Or my husband who wanted me to toss in some [...]

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Italian Week — Marinated Olives

September 16, 2008

Reviewing my Italian week line-up, I realized that unless you’re carb-loading for a marathon, you’ll need a break from the starch I’m about to foist upon you before the week’s over. Stromboli, risotto, spaghetti and gnocchi are all wonderful, but I can feel my waistband stretching at the very thought. Since I’m blogging about beer [...]

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Tuscan Sausages

July 25, 2006

I was looking through some old family recipes and noticed how short they were. The instructions, and sometimes even the amounts given for the ingredients, assumed you know how to make the dish. These recipes served mainly to prod the memory, not teach. Unlike the remedial approach taken by today’s TV chefs, these culinary heirlooms [...]

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