My Home Food That’s Amore- Hounded by the Whore – Pasta alla Puttanesca
- The Trick of Chicken and the Brick
- A Cautionary Tale of Seafood Gnocchi with Clams and Mussels
- The Makeover with Uriah Heep Ingredients: Egg Pasta with Courgettes and Tomatoes
- A dinner with Friends from the Salento (Puglia)
- False Economy and Wild Asparagus
- Little Easter – Pasquetta
- Mid-week Supper: Veal Piccata, Pan-Fried Kale and Potatoes, and Cauliflower Cheese
- Velvety Asparagus soup – Vellutata di Aparagi
- The Aspirin of Foods — Pasta with Sausage and Artichoke
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Soup Series – Salad Soup
What can be nicer or more welcomed than a nourishing hot soup when the weather is really cold? Repeat: cold. So highly-held in my family’s culinary tradition was the conviction that soup is incomparably good for one, that we had … Continue reading
Posted in Primi (first courses - usually a pasta or risotto), Uncategorized
Tagged saffron, salad, soup, turmeric
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How to imbue a Winter salad with a sultriness that’s all about Summer
Salads spell summer and sultriness. Disappointingly, too many people tend to limit the potential of a salad solely to the health aspect of its ingredients. I get bored with the ‘health’ hype after a while … meaning, please bear with … Continue reading
Posted in Contorni and/or side dishes, Herbs and plants, Uncategorized
Tagged beetroot, olive oil, salad, walnuts
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Matriciana – Variation number 4
My son came over for a few days during his university’s reading week recently … and a matriciana is what he wanted when I asked him what he would like for lunch the day he was going back. As with … Continue reading
Matriciana – Variation number 3: in memory of Zia Mena
December 2011 This was the month that Aunt Mena died. She was 87 and she was my mother-in-law’s stepsister and what one would call ‘a character’, a spirited woman, much given to outspokenness when she wasn’t playing coy. She was … Continue reading
Matriciana – Variation number 2 with lardo
Matriciana is a very inclusive and friendly kind pasta sauce and can be made in hefty quantities to cater for a large crowd at the dinner table. As it was, my Matriciana variation no. 2 was for a lunch for … Continue reading
Matriciana – Variation number 1
I made this matriciana in July of last year. Grated pecorino cheese, plum tomatoes, guanciale, glass of white wine. Short pasta in the background (no bucatini or spaghetti). I cut the guanciale into stocky strips and cooked them on a … Continue reading
Getting to grips with the Matriciana
There has been quite a lot of hype in recent years (websites, newspaper articles, blogs and facebook debates abound) over the making of a quintessentially Roman pasta sauce called “alla Amatriciana” or “alla Matriciana”. Having done some research on … Continue reading
The Elegance of a Plain Risotto
What do the words ‘summer holiday’ evoke in the average, relatively grown-up person? For me, they kindle up existential magic. Throughout all my summer holidays at boarding school in England, life donned a special cloak of ‘alive-liness’. Even boring periods … Continue reading
Trippa alla romana via a Chinese restaurant in London
Trippa is Italian for tripe. Tripe was something I did not normally eat — in fact, it always used to surprise me the way friends or relatives got all excited at the prospect of eating tripe. The very thought made … Continue reading
Gnocchi on the rocks
In April last year, I wrote two posts on gnocchi … the first appropriately entitled “The trouble with gnocchi”. I have no problem confessing that I only made gnocchi once the whole of last year. I did eat gnocchi more … Continue reading
