Baby milk-fed lamb or abbacchio is one of the wonders of Roman cooking, in particular in the spring. Lamb that young is not often found in markets in our neck of the woods, but the same techniques work well with mature lamb as well. So the other day I ‘invented’ Roman … Read More
Bignè di san Giuseppe (St. Joseph’s Day Cream Puffs)
Being a Catholic country, Italians celebrate Father’s Day on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph. The feast is associated with a number sweet and savory dishes, but none more so perhaps than the fancy, sweet version of zeppole usually called, appropriately enough, zeppole di san Giuseppe. Romans make their … Read More
Zuppa dei valdesi (Piedmontese Bread Soup)
A reader who I’ll call “Nancy T.” wrote me recently to tell me about a bread soup dish called zuppa that her Piedmontese grandmother used to make. The word is one of several in Italian that mean ‘soup’ (see our Glossary for details). A zuppa is rustic soup, typically the kind that … Read More
Chiacchiere (Fried “Ribbons”)
I wasn’t much on sweets even as a kid, but these little sugar-dusted ribbons of fried dough—variously known as chiacchiere, nastrini, stracci, cenci, frappe and a myriad of other names—were my one weakness in the sweets department. They are a traditional treat for Carnival, a time for over-indulgence, culinary and … Read More
Fagioli con le cotiche (Roman-Style Pork and Beans)
Tuscans are known for being the biggest bean-eaters in Italy, so much so that they are sometimes called mangiafagioli in Italian. But Romans are no slouches in the legume department, either. They love fava beans, of course, and they make a mean pasta e lenticchie, for example, even if the … Read More
