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Cooking at Home
Lemony Spring Asparagus Soup
Asparagus are everywhere. Wild, cultivated, in the market and in grocery stores; there is no escaping asparagus at this time of year.Let bygones by bygones, and let’s get on with the soup recipe! This is a soup you can have as long as you have fresh asparagus.
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Not Mac & Cheese, It’s Rav & Cheese
Rav & Cheese If mac & cheese is macaroni and cheese, then I guess we had rav & cheese for lunch: ravioli and cheese baked in the oven.
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And the Beet Goes On!
What do you do when a whole row of beets in the orto need to be eaten now? You yank those babies and throw a party!
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Kung-Fu-Zen-Grasshopper Cooking or How I Learned to Banish the Recipe
t’s time to banish the recipe as GPS and tune in to the Kung-Fu-Zen-Grasshopper (c)
technique of cooking. It is time for us to cook in the ways of our ancestors, by using our senses. It is also time to cook in the modern way, which is so, like, totally, about self-indulgent self-pleasuring by making exactly what you want.
Cannelloni Crudo
Get your mind out of the gutter. Crudo means raw.
And no, the cannelloni wasn’t raw, the sauce was. Actually the fresh tomato sauce was almost raw or “quasi crudo” as they would say in Italy.
The story goes like this: it’s summer, no one wants to spend extra time in the kitchen, and we have tomatoes coming out of our ears.
And thus, I’ve learned inspiration and abundance make excellent cohorts.
Cooking Simply: The Italian Way! Goodie Basket Giveaway
Click here for the post with all the details for our Goodie Giveaway.
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Pickled Everything!
What do you do when your garden is onions all needed to be picked at once, the peppers are crazy…
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Summer Delight: Cold Poached Shrimp
The gods have flipped the summer switch ON in Italy. The first day of summer came in right on schedule with full on summer heat.
It’s already hot enough that I want a cold lunch and cold shrimp seems like the perfect way to go.
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Tomato Swan Song with Breadcrumbs
This is my end-of-the-season swan song to the tomatoes in our orto. As the vines wither at the bottom, there are yellow blossoms still sprouting at the top, and green fruit just hanging on in the middle. We spent the cold, wet spring together, you endured hail and high winds, while we worried and tried to protect you. You blossomed in the July heat and produced massive amounts of fruit in August. And now, you are closing down for the winter.
I’ve had a LOT of time to think about tomatoes, and I realized I was not paying attention. Tomatoes love bread, and bread loves them back. They were meant to be together.
THE Perfect Lunch
It’s one dish you shouldn’t mess with. No foams, no vacuum sealed marination with lovage shoots. It’s not improved by a precision presentation, because then it looks like you are aiming for distraction, instead of palate satisfaction. It’s simple and it should remain simple.
Yes, it’s time for my annual ode to prosciutto and melon.
Eating Alberto Il Magnifico: from beak to tail.
Screen shot 2011-11-06 at 5.12.16 PM
Alberto Il Magnifico was a capon, raised with loving care and surrounded by our growing appetites.
In case you are wondering, a capon is a castrated rooster. According to Wiki, the Romans ‘invented‘ capons as a way to get around grain rationing for chickens. Those crafty Romans would snip the little testicles off their roosters, feed them grain and they would grow to be twice the size of a chicken. And here is your word for the day: caponization. Yup, that means snipping off of the balls. Now, use it in a sentence and report back.
Kitchen Confidence at an all time high!
The results of our Kitchen Confidence survey are in! There are some surprising food and cooking trends: 23% of you use your microwave as a butter melting device, and no one buys bottled salad dressing. Oh, really now…. ?
Here are the delicious details:
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