My grandmother Angelina never made it, as far as I can recall, but as a long-time resident of Rome I have a great fondness for la carbonara, one of the iconic dishes of Roman cooking. Together with bucatini all’amatriciana, you’ll find it on just about every menu in town. And … Read More
Bucatini all’amatriciana
It could be said that bucatini all’amatriciana and spaghetti alla carbonara are the ‘Romulus and Remus‘ of Roman cooking. No two dishes typify the local cuisine better than these two yet, like the two founding brothers of the Eternal City, neither actually comes from the city of Rome itself. L’amatriciana, … Read More
Spinaci alla romana (Roman-Style Spinach)
We all know that spinach is full of iron and other good stuff, but it has an undeserved reputation for being … blech. I’m not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the school cafeteria spinach I remember from my childhood, stewed within an inch … Read More
Fettuccine «Alfredo»: The Original Recipe
Fettuccine Alfredo has a unique place in the multifaceted world of Italian cookery. The dish is famous in America and hardly known in Italy, but it is actually Italian, not Italian-American, at least originally. It was invented by Roman restauranteur Alfredo di Lelio, who—the story goes—invented it to suit his pregnant … Read More
Pasta alla capricciosella (Pasta with Squid, Mushrooms and Peas)
My nostaglia for Rome often brings me to a website and Facebook page called Roma Sparita or, literally, “Disappeared Rome”. The site features a entrancing combination of old photographs and prints of a by-gone Rome along with amusing poems written in romanesco, Roman dialect, in the style of Trilussa. I recently … Read More
Polenta con salsicce e spuntature (Polenta with Sausage and Spareribs)
Rome is not especially known for its love of polenta, perhaps because its winters are relatively mild compared with those up in true polenta country skirting the southern rim of the Alps, but there is one polenta dish you are bound to find if you visit Rome in the cold … Read More
Broccoli strascinati (Dry Sautéed Broccoli)
One of things that most fascinates me about cooking is how a very slight change in technique, even using the same ingredients, will produce a very different end result. We’ve already explored on this blog the ripassare technique, perhaps the most common in central and southern Italian vegetable cookery, in … Read More
Roman Style Lamb Shanks
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
