I must admit.. I have a thing for eggplants! I love the color, the look,the feel and the flavor of eggplants! Called Melanzana in Italian from the latin Mela insana, a “not healthy” vegetable and was considered to be poisonous, but so were tomatoes and potatoes! I love them grilled,roasted,fried… and even with chocolate! Yes there…
Granita di Caffe
Summer in Italy wouldn’t be summer without Granita! Besides fruit flavors,such as watermelon, as I mentioned before, or lemon, made with lemons from Sicily or the Amalfi coast, coffee granita is one of my favorites. I am very lucky as I can get it here in Florence at my Sicilian gelateria Carabe owned by Antonio…
Summer Playtime!
I have been emailing with David about carmel corn. I loved Fiddle Faddle and Screaming Yellow Zonkers and this winter was making some to put in my selection of goodies I give to my vendors at the Central Market. He wrote the funniest adventure about the 7 times he made the recipe to get it…
Tonno di Coniglio.. Rabbit, tuna style
Last week I had a whole family for class, the children walking around on their own as we were waiting for our vegetables, they came back from the nearby butcher’s booth with this dramatic statement, ” Daddy, I didn’t know that they ate poodles!” It isn’t just kids that are confused with the shape of…
Tuscan Treasures- Roberta
When I first started teaching classes for Syracuse University here in Florence in 1988, one of my first teachers at the San Lorenzo market was Roberta. She had the largest fruit stand upstairs with her oldest son. Roberta would always give me huge bags of ripe fruit for 5,000 lira to make huge bowls of…
Linguine di Capitan Travaglia
Yesterday we went to visit our friends Stefano and Gianna who have a hot air balloon company in Chianti. They recently moved near to us, on a farm and have a fabulous litte orto, home garden, with three kinds of tomatoes, watermelon, cabbage and of course an herb garden, basil, sage, rosemary and parsley. Gianna’s…
Pomodori Ripieni- Stuffed Tomatoes
Having a couple of days off… I cook! My husband loves these stuffed tomatoes. They are perfect for summer. His Aunt Vivetta had a restaurant in Cecina, near the sea,in Tuscany, where he spent his summers and she always prepared trays of stuffed vegetables, some with meat and bechamel, some with rice and others with…
Sunday lunch lasagna
A sudden rainfall this morning cooled us off enough that I was inspired to make a Sunday Lasagna, Tuscan Style. No Ricotta, no mozzarella, this light lasagna bakes up more like a delicate souffle, melting in your mouth! Lasagna al Forno is the baked lasagna where as lasagna can also be a smaller noodle as…