When fall rolls around it’s time to make dishes that bring together some of the season’s best ingredients. Radicchio Ravioli with Chestnut Cream, Sizzled Pork Jowl and Fried Sage is one of those dishes! This recipe was adapted from a La Cucina Italiana recipe. Since these delicious ravioli can be made in advance and frozen they…
Pasta
Penne with sizzled garlic & hot pepper, anchovies and parsley
Olive oil, garlic, a touch of hot pepper, a few anchovy fillets and fresh parsley are all you need to make this scrumptious pasta dish, in just three minutes! Well, a few more if you include the ten minutes it takes for your pasta to cook. Penne with sizzled garlic & hot pepper, anchovies and…
Penne with Eggplant Sauce (alla Norma)
If you saw my recent Instagram post then you know we had a mega-festa for the ferragosto August holiday. I made enough Penne with Eggplant Sauce (alla Norma) for over 30 people and by the time we got to the pasta course we had eaten so much else that I ended up with leftover pasta!…
Corzetti Pasta
What are corzetti? I love making unusual pasta shapes and forms and one of my favorites are corzetti, a disk shaped pasta with an imprinted design; the below corzetti have a giglio fiorentino (fleur de lis) design. The Encyclopedia of Pasta, by Oretta Zanini de Vita and masterfully translated into English by Maureen B. Fant, dedicates a…
Orecchiette with Spicy Baby Calamari
Orecchiette with Spicy Baby Calamari When our now 31-year-old daughter was an infant we started spending our summers in Sperlonga at the seaside home of a delightful Italian family of contadini (farmers). Although already well into retirement age this couple still dedicated their days to their vegetable garden, lemon orchard, chickens and many plants on…
Ricotta and Pear Filled Pasta Sacks
Pears are delicious when in season; I adore baked pears and pear tarts but my favorite by far are these delicious ricotta and pear filled pasta sacks. I first tasted these ricotta and pear filled pasta sacks at one of our favorite restaurants, located in the northern Lazio hill town, Civitá Castellana. We’ve not been…
Pasta alla Carbonara
Pasta alla Carbonara is a delectable and quite simple pasta dish that is a cornerstone of the Roman cuisine. There’s not a restaurant in Rome that doesn’t serve it. Follow these simple tips and it’ll be perfect every time! One of the key ingredients in Pasta alla Carbonara is guanciale (pork jowl) which adds amazing…
Pasta and Wild Boar Sauce
Pappardelle and Wild Boar Sauce is my favorite dish on cold winter days! If you don’t have pappardelle on hand then use another pasta like rigatoni or fettuccine. There are many dishes that I love but make infrequently because they just take too much time to prepare. I found that a pressure cooker allows me to…
Penne all’Amatriciana
Amatriciana sauce in the making… Amatriciana or matriciana, the sauce is still the same: rich, spicy, with crunchy bits of guanciale. The name varies based on who’s trying to lay claim to this pasta sauce’s origins. The sauce is supposedly named after the town of Amatrice in the Appenine hills to the North East of…
Ferretti pasta, a Southern Italian eggless pasta
It’s even colder today than yesterday with lots of freezing rain, so what’s a person to do? I decided to hunker down at home with a roaring fire in my tinello and make some delicious heartwarming ferretti pasta! Ferretti eggless pasta are a short thick pasta similar to bucatini, about 5-10 cm long. How to…
Green onion and tomato fettuccine
The recipe for green onion and tomato fettuccine came about on a whim at the last minute. We went for our morning walk much later than expected, just before lunchtime. On the way home we stopped by our garden to see what, if anything, was left of last summer’s produce. Oddly enough the long red…
Ravioli Caprese
Ravioli Caprese have a pillowy, dumpling-like dough filled with mozzarella, caciotta cheese, eggs and fresh marjoram. They’re unlike any other ravioli you’ve ever tried and if ravioli can melt in your mouth, they do! Ravioli Caprese are so distinctly different from any other ravioli because of the way the dough is made, along with its…