This recipe is from Tuscany. Polpettone, aka meatloaf, is one of the dishes I remember my mother preparing as a child. She in turn, had been taught to make it by my real nonna, who I never met since she died before I was born. My mother’s polpettone was delicious, roasted in the oven with […]
Polpettone alla Madera: Tuscan meatloaf (recipe) Read More »
One of the things that surprises most English-speaking tourists, when coming to Italy for the first time, is that in restaurants main dishes don’t come with vegetables. That’s not to say that Italians don’t eat vegetables with main dishes, but you have to order them separately. You find them on the menu in a
Finocchio gratinato: oven roasted fennel with parmigiano (recipe) Read More »
This post was inspired by my fellow blogger Vanessa who has a site I enjoy very much called Food in Books. It deals with the two things I love more than anything else: eating and reading. Vanessa scours the world’s literature looking for references to food and then she develops a recipe based on
Pasta ‘ncasciata: Montalbano’s favourite Read More »
This recipe is from Puglia. To fully understand Italian cuisine, it’s important to note the major difference between it and, for example, French cuisine. French cuisine is the cuisine of the chef. Home cooks spend a lot of time trying to live up to the creations and recipes coming out of the important restaurants
Melanzane ripiene della nonna Checchina: Puglian stuffed eggplants Read More »
This recipe is from Veneto. As promised in the last post, here is a recipe for azime dolci, the Venetian jewish cookies I tried in the ghetto at the weekend. Pane azzimo, is the Italian for unleavened bread and these are called azime because they too are unleavened. And like pane azzimo, they are traditionally
Azime dolci: Venetian passover cookies (recipe) Read More »
The 15th and 16th centuries saw a shameful period of what would now be called ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Europe. In 1492, all jews were expelled from Spain and soon other southern European states followed suit. Similar expulsions from England and France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had concentrated Europe’s jewish communities in Spain, Portugal, the
Dolci ebraici veneziani: Venetian jewish pastries Read More »
