Taralli are one of the most iconic foods from the Puglia region. Eat them any time of day as a delicious snack food (stuzzichini) or served as an antipasto with aperitivi. They are made either plain or with a variety of flavors like fennel seeds, hot chili pepper (peperoncino), or even sweet. The flavorings are...
Vegan
Parboiled Baby Turnips Sautéed in Olive Oil and Garlic
Springtime is the perfect moment to find beautiful baby turnips. You won’t always find them in the market but when you do grab them and whip up this delicious Parboiled Baby Turnips Sautéed in Olive Oil and Garlic dish. You may think turnips don’t appeal to you and that their flavor is too strong: think again!...
Homemade bread with home-ground flours
This has now become my go-to homemade bread. It's a recipe I've been working on for over a year now, adding and subtracting ingredients, and working with different flours and grains. I’ve started grinding my own flours and it really does make a difference. My favorite is farro, a 7,000 year old grain which is...
Pasta and Bean Soup - Pasta e Fagioli
Pasta and Bean Soup - Pasta e Fagioli I don't know why I never posted my mother-in-law's delicious recipe for pasta and bean soup – pasta e fagioli – but there you have it: it slipped through the cracks somehow.It was just when I made it the other day that I realized I had never...
Cameroni farro pasta with pioppini mushrooms, peperoncino and tomatoes
Cameroni Farro Pasta with Pioppini Mushrooms, Peperoncino and Tomatoes has amazing flavor and a great textured farro pasta. I can't seem to give up eating well in the interest of shedding a few pounds so I'm always on the search for ways I can have both. Every once in awhile I come up with a...
Homemade Blackberry Jam
The first year we made homemade blackberry jam Maurizio picked the berries and I did the cooking and canning. Blackberries have so many seeds which we find unpleasant in jams and tarts so I decided to remove them. It's a laborious, time consuming task and I cursed myself the whole way through making the jam...
Bread and Tomato Appetizer
Bread and Tomato is just about the easiest and most delicious of all appetizers. If truth be told we have it just about every night while we prepare dinner, and often at lunchtime too. The key to preparing a delicious Bread and Tomato appetizer is simple: high quality ingredients! It sounds obvious, doesn't it? Just...
Fennel, Orange & Olive Salad
There's nothing like the fresh crunchy flavor of fennel bulbs and they're a perfect ingredient in this fennel, sliced orange and olive salad. I put fennel in just about any kind of salad; use a to slice fennel paper thin for your salad. Fennel tends to turn brown so toss the fennel slices in...
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...
Sautéed Purple Cabbage with Fresh Coriander
Sautéed Purple Cabbage with Fresh Coriander What I love most about this dish is that it's downright beautiful. Pantone has established that purple, and all its tonalities, are the food color for 2018 and I concur wholeheartedly. There are so many wonderful purple foods from purple cabbage to beets to eggplant and each one is...
Roman Style Stuffed Artichokes
Roman Style Stuffed Artichokes are delicious served with a few slices of lemon and some calamint leaves. All winter long the market is full of globe, or Roman, artichokes. There are so many delicious ways to prepare them, but the best way is Roman style stuffed artichokes, or Carciofi alla Romana.I usually buy artichokes that...
Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Grated Parmesan Cheese and Toasted Walnuts
Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Grated Parmesan Cheese & Toasted Walnuts is a delightful winter salad and a great way to serve this winter vegetable! I hadn't thought of using brussels sprouts raw in a salad but it's one of the easiest and tastiest ways to use them. Brussels sprouts are an odd vegetable. Their...