Winter is chicory season. Chicories are the often-labeled bitter greens, which include radicchio, endive, puntarelle, and escarole. Bunches and heads of chicory are prolific throughout the season, difficult to miss with their with dramatic frilly, spiky, and cone-headed leaves. And while their bitterness can be off-putting to some, at winter’s peak, chicories are crisp, juicy,…
Wine Talk: Big Winners of 2020
The many setbacks of 2020 notwithstanding, there were numerous bright spots for the wine industry over the course of the year. As regular readers of this column know, I oversee four major international wine competitions. The insights I gain as I digest the competition results—from new trends and developments to the confirmation of long-held truths—give…
Feeding Your Family After the Holidays
If your kitchen looked anything like mine this holiday season, there was a constant stream of cookies and pies, rich sauces and fatty meats, chips, dips, cheeses, crackers, and candies—oh my! It was delightful and delicious, but we’ve had our fill. Now that the gifts have been unwrapped, the halls un-decked, and the goodies consumed,…
A Beginner’s Guide to Making Fresh Pasta
In my family, fresh pasta is for special occasions. Be it a holiday like Christmas or Easter, a family gathering, or a big dinner with friends, this is when we take out the wooden board, the rolling pin, and the pasta machine to make mounds upon mounds of golden, silky sheets of dough. Once you…
Fresh Pasta Dough
This is the basic recipe for fresh pasta that my grandma taught me years ago. There’s a golden ratio to follow that is extremely easy to remember: 1 egg and 100 grams of flour, half all-purpose and half semolina. Then scale up as needed. Makes enough for about 4 servings, depending on the recipe 100…
Tortelli Mugellani With Potato Filling
Tortelli mugellani are a type of filled pasta typical of Mugello, a mountainous area near Florence, bordering Emilia Romagna. They are one of the most representative recipes of the cuisine, which is Tuscan, based on poor ingredients, but influenced by the nearby region, Emilia Romagna. Women in Mugello know how to roll out the dough…
Lemon Tagliolini
As much as I love a robust meat or game sauce, a summer basil pesto, or a rich cheese sauce, when it comes to enjoying good, homemade fresh pasta, I prefer a more delicate sauce. This one is fresh and lemony, with just enough cheese to still make it a comfort food. It is bright…
Pompeii Is Famous for Its Ruins and Bodies, but What About Its Wine?
Pompeii is famed for plaster-cast bodies, ruins, frescoes, and the rare snapshot it provides of a rather typical ancient Roman city. But less famous is its evidence of viticulture. Wild grapevines probably existed across peninsular Italy since prehistory, but it is likely the Etruscans and colonizing Greeks promoted wine-making with domesticated grapes as early as…
Grandma’s Lasagne With Béchamel and Tuscan Ragù
There are countless variations of lasagne throughout Italy. What they all require is a layering of ingredients and flavors: Paper-thin sheets of fresh pasta are usually combined with ragù, bechamel, and cheeses—from mozzarella to scamorza, to a simple dusting of Parmigiano Reggiano. My grandma’s version calls for béchamel sauce, her Tuscan ragù, mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano,…
Comfort by the Spoonful
I had my first baby in the middle of fall, the same week the tree outside our front window burned bright orange and pumpkins appeared on every doorstep in my neighborhood. I brought my brand-new daughter home and spent those first weeks of motherhood bouncing and feeding a newborn while the leaves dropped outside my…
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