Food, Travel, and Cooking!
Barbara Fairchild, former editor of Bon Appetit Magazine, wrote an editorial about summer eating and an appetizer she enjoyed when she was at Ristorante Da Delfina, in Tuscany “her favorite place on the planet.” When I read that comment I thought wow, us too! I sent her an email telling her so and said that […]
Eggplant was something new to us until a few years ago. Sad to say we’ve missed out on a number of years of deliciousness! I love the ways countries around the Mediterranean cook them. I’m been bent on getting to learn more about different preparations. While staying in Greve in Chianti a few years ago, […]
This is one of the most popular of the Roman pasta dishes. The Romans and me! I had it for lunch one day at Ristorante Maccheroni in Rome where they used rigatoni. My preference is spaghetti. Romans also like to use bucatini for their La Matriciana. You decide! The crucial element is the guanciale (cured […]
Here’s something to make with all those cherry tomatoes in the garden! This slightly spicy tomato sauce hails from Capri and it’s terrific. I found some fresh artichokesat the Farmer’s Market this week, so I decided to make stuffed artichokes for the first course, followed by the bucatini. Wow! Nice glass of wine too! This […]
No doubt about it, my husband and I have Italian souls and I think that it was always lurking there just waiting to burst forth! The beginning of our first return visit to Italy took us to just outside Lucca, arriving in Pisa from Rome in a small, propeller airplane! Oh my God, I am […]
It’s embarrassing to say that I have, for the past few years, coveted my neighbour’s fig trees. Every time I head towards east Vancouver, there they all are! Not far from where we live, is an apartment building that has quite a large one in the front yard. Almost every time I walk by, I […]
As a Christmas gift to us, I purchased a copy of Douglas Gayeton’s book “slow life in a tuscan town.” The book is a photographic narrative and is not only beautiful but interesting, especially if you have travelled in Tuscany. It is centered around the time he lived in the town of Pistoia, north-east of […]
You’ll find that Tuscan home cooks and chefs make an aromatic salt such as this one. It’s terrific on pork, chicken for starters. But experimentation is half the fun… You can reduce the recipe by half but it does store well in an airtight container in the fridge or you might want to share some […]
This recipe for pesto uses roasted hazelnuts, a nice change. Local hazelnuts are always available at Farmer’s Markets in the Lower Mainland. But you could use toasted slivered almonds, or Mediterranean pine nuts (they are pricey) or pistachio nuts. I can’t recommend using Asian pine nuts due to their weird, unpleasant aftertaste. The addition of […]