This plum ketchup is lightly spiced and sweet and sour. It is a versatile sauce that works well with roasts, cheeses, salads, burgers, and chips. Transforming and preserving is something I enjoy. I guess it is the little girl who grew up in a home with a peasant grandmother skilled in making sweet and savory preserves who…
Fruits
Over the centuries, men and women who have chosen to live in monasteries have created a cuisine that reflects the simplicity and composure of their lives. The recipes from the monastic tradition celebrate much of what we have lost these days as the seasonality of produce and natural processes. The cuisine of the convents
Monks and nuns…
The plum cake of the Bolognese Apennines is part of the culinary tradition of my land and is a dessert with an old fashioned flavor. On the border
I was born on the border between Emilia and Romagna.
Precisely in Imola, Romagna cuisine and culture in Emilia territory. Father's family, which came on the border between Romagna…
I was born and raised in a small Italian town surrounded by the countryside. Those who are born in a village know it. Life flows slowly. I consider myself lucky. Otherwise, I would not be here telling the story of a small-town milkshake. The Popeye's strawberry milkshake. The eighties and life in a small town
Today everything is…
Poached pears in alchermes, and cooked fruit in general, recall me the old-fashioned cuisine. When fruit, stored in boxes for the winter, was always present on the table.
Fresh and in season, or cooked. Today, I eat less fruit than I used to and, consequently, buy less.
And to think that until a few decades ago, when I…
Pickled vegetables, in this case, sweet and sour, are called Giardiniera in Italian. A very poetic name since it evokes the word garden. Giardiniera brings to mind the colors of the dish and the vegetables from the garden. It is an ancient method of preserving vegetables in season and eating them the next. I still remember when, at…
In Italy, the season of red and field mixed radicchio, with its glowing colors, begins with the arrival of autumn. I am just buying some ruby red radicchio when I see crimson plums.
Thinking about the sweetness of the fruit and the bitterness of the radicchio, I buy both. Salad, always in season
Depending on the time of…
I am a home cook who writes about food. And as with this lemon cookies recipe, I share flavors that have the simplicity and richness of the best food I have ever tasted. The home food. Writing about food. What food?
I have tasted the deliciously perfect food of some starred chefs and the satisfyingly ready-made food…
Have you ever tasted Isabella grape? Isabella grape: the origin
It is a cross between two grape varieties and was imported from the United States in the first half of the 19th century when the phylloxera epidemic, a disease that attacks vines, hit European vines hard. The Isabella grape, both for table and wine, is either red…
The blackberries, with their unmistakable honeycomb shape, are dark and promise to be sweet and juicy.
As I ask for a basket, I am already thinking about the blackberry salad I will prepare for dinner. A wander among the august market stalls
August is one of my favorite months to shop for fruit and vegetables at the…