Pasta with 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 or instapot allows…
Fall
Radicchio Ravioli with Chestnut Cream, Sizzled Pork Jowl and Fried Sage
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…
Pioppino mushroom soup with pancetta, spring peas, and green onions
So often what I make for lunch evolves right then and there with ingredients I have on hand and from the garden. Today was one of those days. It’s starting to feel just a tad on the chilly side, the sky is gray and rain for the next week is in the forecast so I’m…
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…
White beans, tomato and rosemary soup
White beans, tomato and rosemary soup is hearty and delicious, and lifts your spirits on gray days. What makes almost all Italian dishes so delicious are two simple things: first, fresh seasonal and good-quality ingredients. Second, the use of very few ingredients so that each ingredient has a chance to participate in the luscious flavor…
Oven Roasted Fresh Figs, Gorgonzola and Walnuts
It’s a chilly beginning of January and I just devoured bruschetta with scrumptious oven roasted figs, Gorgonzola and walnuts. It might strike you as odd that I have figs in January but my passion for figs drove me to devise a wonderful way to have figs year-round. In mid-summer, and then again in September, when…
Pappardelle with funghi porcini
Pappardelle with funghi porcini: they lend themselves well to a long, and wider, pasta shape like this. Fettuccine work well too, but also a shorter pasta like rigatoni, penne and my current favorite. Funghi porcini are best fresh but they also freeze well for future use. Pappardelle with funghi porcini (four people): Ingredients: Pasta, 400…
Roast Sunflower Seeds
Last year I decided to take a day trip in search of fields of sunflowers to capture some great photographs. Our timing was off and in the end we missed the season. We swore to each other that we wouldn’t miss the season this year so in June I started scoping out sunflowers. About…
Persimmon season & Persimmon Yogurt Gelato
Persimmons, known in Italy as kaki, cachi or loti, are a delicious fall fruit that can be found growing all over the Lazio region. Persimmons grow on a tree and have been cultivated in Italy since the mid 1800’s. The persimmon tree is perennial and is originally from China and then Japan. There are two types…