Memorie di Angelina

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: is there anything more primally satisfying than fried dough? If there is, I haven’t come across it yet. The Neapolitans have come up with all sorts of tidbits made from fried dough, of which we’ve already seen two examples, zeppole and calzoncini, where the dough acts as […]

A little thing called a ‘derecho’ rolled through town last Friday and left us all without electricity (for three days) or Internet (for six days) so if you missed last weekend’s post, now you know why! Life is, more or less, back to normal now and, thankfully, property damage was relatively minor, so we’re back […]

When I was living in Rome, there was a great little roadside restaurant close by called “Il Cantuccio”. They made a number of dishes well, but one of our standbys was sautè di cozze, literally “mussel sauté”. They are, in fact, an Italian version of that near universal dish: steamed mussels. I like the conviviality […]

Pasta and ricotta make for a perfect impromptu meal or weekend dinner. The mellow flavor combination of tomato, ricotta and a bit of parmesan cheese is vaguely reminiscent of southern-style lasagna. But, like many simple pasta dishes, it’ll be done in less than 30 minutes—the time it takes to bring the water to the boil […]

I don’t know about you, but when temperatures rise into triple-digits (on the Fahrenheit scale) as they have lately in much of the Northern Hemisphere, even my enthusiasm for cooking begins to lag. That, and our impeding house move, has meant that any cooking that I do indulge in these days is as quick as […]

 The scalloppina (in the plural, scalloppine) and its manifold variations may be the most common secondo in Italian cooking. To me, it is typical of that Italian knack for using a bland main ingredient as a foil for a flavorful sauce. Pasta is the example we all know and love, but in this case una […]

   Here’s a really quick note on a combination that may surprise you but was simply meant to be: pineapple and the Italian anise liquor called sambuca. Sprinkle a few drops of sambuca over freshly sliced pineapple, just enough to exalt the flavor of the fruit without drawing attention to itself, and you’ll be in […]