Dear readers, This week we’re taking time out from our usual recipe posts to mark a major milestone, the tenth “blogiversary” of Memorie di Angelina. It’s hard to believe that ten years has gone by since I published my first “welcome!” post, promising that the site would soon be filled … Read More
The Digestivo: A Beginner’s Guide to Italian After Dinner Drinks
This blog is mostly dedicated to food, but food and drink are inextricably linked. So, from time to time, we consider the wines and other beverages that typically accompany an Italian meal. We’ve taken a look at the apertivo, the before-dinner drinks intended to whet the appetite before dinner. Today let’s … Read More
Homemade Giardiniera
There are many ways in Italian cookery to put up food, relics of the days before refrigeration and freezing and commercial processing. There is straight up canning, of course. I can remember Angelina’s yearly day-long ritual of putting up summer tomatoes for the winter. The mason jars nearly filled one … Read More
Jeanne Caròla Francesconi: La Cucina Napoletana
As I’ve written many times, Jeanne Caròla Francesconi (b. 1903, d. 1995) is my muse for Neapolitan cookery—apart from my grandmother Angelina, of course. And I’m certainly not alone. Often called the doyenne of Neapolitan cuisine, her classic 1965 work, La Cucina Napoletana, is the most iconic cookbook on the subject, perhaps second … Read More
Homemade Passata di pomodoro: Step by step
Passata di pomodoro (or passata for short) is the multi-purpose tomato purée that every aspiring Italian cook should learn how to make. Fortunately, it’s really quick and easy, but you do need one special piece of equipment: a food mill. The method is simplicity itself. You take ripe tomatoes, simmer them just long … Read More
How to Trim and Slice a Bell Pepper
If you’re like me, you probably slice peppers in half lengthwise through the core, and proceed to trim out the seed core from each half (which inevitably send seeds flying around) and then slice up the flesh, trimming off the bitter pith attached to the ridges along the way. Well, if you’re … Read More
The Art of the Aperitivo
Memorie di Angelina is a food blog, of course, but in Italian culinary tradition you cannot separate food from drink. While Italians are not heavy drinkers as a rule, it is also true that, traditionally speaking at least, a meal is not a meal without a glass or two of … Read More
Homemade Potato Gnocchi
Potato gnocchi are one of the easier types of ‘pasta’ to make at home and are most definitely worth the effort. The mini-hockey pucks that are sold commercially are, to put it bluntly, hardly worth eating—especially after you’ve tried the real thing. The best homemade potato gnocchi are as light and … Read More