I clutch a bottle of homemade tomato puree and travel through time.
Memories flow like the hands of a clock gone mad until the mechanism uncovers the right one. I remember summers in the countryside and the giant cauldrons where bottles of tomato passata cooked. Not everyone knows that Emilia-Romagna is a northern Italian region where preparing…
Sauces and Pâté
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…
I remember. I am a handful of years old. I'm sitting comfortably in the kitchen chair.
Grandma is cooking while I play. Of that remote and happy time, I cherish many memories and all of them good ones. The heritage of the years spent in the kitchen with her and all the other azdore of the home is one…
Food is joy, it is ritual, it is convivial, it is a necessity, and it is seasonal.
In Italy, it is also regional, often even local. Not forgetting to know the history of many Italian recipes, you have to look beyond the current administrative boundaries. And then, of course, you cannot ignore the family heritage. Every Italian…
So many memories emerge from the pot of hen ragù. I thank my grandmother Sara for all the beautiful days of my childhood and for having taken me since I was a child to the countryside where she grew up. Free to discover the garden, backyard, and chicken coop.
Back in the day, I couldn't know it, but…
Say terrine, and you think about a rustic but elegant table, a timeless country house, and a crackling fireplace. But, you know, you don't necessarily need to live in the countryside. If you love good food, you will find new inspiration in this preparation. There was a time when I often made terrines. They were…
I tried Pellegrino Artusi's tomato sauce and found it to be such a concentration of flavors that it looked like a bottle of passata from the previous year. Books to read, recipes to try
I have an incredible backlog of recipes to try, some for the first time.
And the same goes for the books I buy…
This recipe has been in my family's repertoire for generations.
It is an onion sauce that I have always appreciated, and I have a clear memory of preparing it. And it has a secret. The secret of Sara's onion sauce.
Grandma and I are in the kitchen.
When it's time, she makes a nod, and I open the…
Prosciutto crudo (ham) ragù a la Bolognese , also popular in Romagna, is a homemade recipe that has been part of my culinary baggage for as long as I can remember. It is not an express sauce or a sauce you can cook in about twenty minutes. It is an authentically traditional ragù from the…
The word ragù refers to a sauce, usually of minced meat mixed with vegetables, stewed at a low temperature for many hours. The recipe has French origins and began to circulate during the Renaissance as an accompaniment to other dishes. But it has been in Italy that the French ragôut went from being almost a side dish…