pasta Archives - Hungry Travelers

pasta

‘Italian Coastal’ conjures tasty memories of land and sea

Posted on April 16, 2024April 16, 2024 by Pat and David

Every so often a cookbook comes our way that plucks the heartstrings of memory. Having eated most of the way down the Tyrrhenian coast from Tuscany to Sicily, recipe after recipe reminds us of some sunny day at a long table in the open air. The book's subtitle says it well ‶Recipes and stories from where the land meets the sea.″ This isn't author Amber Guinness's first rodeo. Her initial book, A House Party in Tuscany, featured stories and recipes from the family's Arniano Painting School, a residential program that features, among other attractions, Amber's cooking. Born in London and educated in England, Guinness had the great fortune of growing up in Arniano in Tuscany. She has broadened her horizons, gleaning tastes and traditions from...Read More

Wisconsin triumphed in American Cheese Society awards

Posted on August 15, 2022August 15, 2022 by Pat and David

As one of America's big dairy states, Wisconsin takes special pride in its cheeses. Even the fans of the Green Bay Packers NFL football team call themselves ‶cheeseheads.″ They wear ridiculous hats that look a bit like a Swiss cheese, complete with plenty of holes in their heads. The cheese industry's promotional arm brags that the state makes ‶more flavors, varieties, and styles of cheese than anywhere else in the world.″ We do wish that Wisconsin cheese companies wouldn't appropriate cheese names that obviously belong to other places in the world. Wisconsin parmesan, for example, is a fine grating and flaking cheese in its own right. If it were called something else, it wouldn't invite comparison to Parmigiano-Reggiano, to which it displays only a distant...Read More

‘Serafina’ capitalizes on tender summer harvests

Posted on July 16, 2022July 8, 2022 by Pat and David

How this cookbook would have made the late Tony May smile! The champion of Italian food in America always insisted that Italian cuisine had been emphasizing fresh ingredients centuries before the farm-to-table fad. The Italian penchant for combining a few terrific fresh ingredients to make a dish underlies Serafina: Modern Italian Cuisine for Everyday Home Cooking by Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato, text by Lavinia Branca Snyder (Rizzoli, New York, 2022, $39.95). Of course, a good origin story never hurts. Assaf and Granato were lost at sea in a small sailboat. They comforted each other by vowing that if they survived, they'd open a restaurant serving the best pizza and pasta in the world. And so they did, launching Serafina in New York in 1995....Read More

Putting ‘comfort’ to the test with the last of the harvest

Posted on September 22, 2021September 22, 2021 by Pat and David

The authors of One-Hour Comfort (2021, $29.99), one of a slew of new cookbooks from the Boston culinary juggernaut that is America's Test Kitchen (www.americastestkitchen.com), admit that “comfort food” can be highly personal and idiosyncratic. Some people think of pasta, others of fried chicken, and others of a grilled cheese sandwich. Maybe it's what your parents made when you were sick at home from school. But, as the authors point out, almost everyone can agree that comfort food is “uncomplicated, homey, and totally satisfying.” That can mean anything from ham grits and redeye gravy at breakfast to a big bowl of congee topped with stir-fried pork bits. The “meaty” section has Italian sausage with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and polenta—as well as chicken satay with spicy...Read More

Journey to Sicily with pasta alla Norma

Posted on April 17, 2021April 17, 2021 by Pat and David

Somehow it seemed fitting that Stanley Tucci's quick survey of Italian cooking on CNN concluded in Sicily, a rugged land with overlays of Greek, Arab, and even Norman traditions. Because so many sons and daughters of the island emigrated to the U.S., Sicilian cooking became the departure point for many Italian-American dishes. Admittedly, American Italians show a penchant for piling on the cheese. Order eggplant parm in the U.S., and the hearty dish will probably have more ricotta and mozzarella than eggplant. Yet the original Sicilian cuisine is the model of a healthy Mediterranean diet. It emphasizes fresh vegetables—Sicily supplies the rest of Italy with winter produce—and goes light on the animal protein. Yes, many dishes are fried, but they're fried in extra virgin olive...Read More

Tortellini and Ferrari, Modena’s gifts to the world

Posted on March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 by Pat and David

Episode 3 of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN was ostensibly devoted to the food of Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna. But our restless Italian gourmand does wander a bit from the hometown of mortadella (the more sophisticated ancestor of American ‶baloney″) to visit Parma (amazing prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano) and even Modena. We'd contend that Modena has given the world two of the most beautiful things to come out of Italy: the sleek red racing machines of Enzo Ferrari's automotive company, and the navel-shaped filled pasta called tortellini. (It's also the home of the greatest balsamic vinegar in the world, but that's another story.) Bologna may be the premier university city but Modena has a powerful and ancient university of its own. It also...Read More

Tucci’s Roman pasta experience was a déjà vu

Posted on February 28, 2021February 28, 2021 by Pat and David

Watching Stanley Tucci sample the classic pastas of Rome was a déjà vu experience for us—especially when he showed up at a restaurant on Piazza della Rotondo to launch the episode. We had a similar experience just a few years ago, also in front of the Pantheon at Ristorante di Rienzo. It's now Bistrot al Pantheon di Rienzo (Salita de’ Crescenzi 3, 06-687-7404, www.bistrotalpantheon.it) and in one incarnation or another dates back to 1952. Thanks to an introduction by an Italian chef friend, the daughter of the founder invited us to come back at dinner time so the chef could show us how to prepare some classic Roman pasta dishes. When we returned around 6 p.m., chef Alessandro Sillani and his assistant Tsatsu Nicholas Awuku...Read More

Town by town Italian cooking with Stanley Tucci

Posted on February 20, 2021February 20, 2021 by Pat and David

Like a lot of Americans, we're watching Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN. It airs on Sunday nights, though we confess to watching it on a weekend afternoon, thanks to the magic of a DVR. Now that football season is over, it's our excuse to slack off for part of the day with the excuse that we're working, right? (This blog post is supposed to make us feel less guilty.) Tucci's schtick in the series is that food tells the story of place, and that each place is unique. We wrote something to that effect ourselves some years ago in the PBS series companion book, The Meaning of Food. Episode 1 was devoted to Naples (pizza), Ischia (rabbit in tomato sauce), and the Amalfi...Read More

World on a Plate: Caino’s coffee-dusted cacio e pepe

Posted on November 6, 2020November 5, 2020 by Pat and David

Sometimes culinary genius reveals itself in a brilliant gesture rather than in profound technical flourishes. This tangle of pasta demonstrates the genius of restraint. It also embodies the taste and imagination of Valeria Piccini. Piccini simply calls the dish spaghettone cacio, pepe, e caffè. She frequently offers it as a pasta course at her family restaurant. Il Ristorante Caino (Via Canonica, 3, Montemerano; +39 0564 692 817; dacaino.it) is hidden away in a tiny medieval mountain village in Tuscany's Maremma. But Piccini's cooking draws admirers from all over Italy to the 13th century hamlet where sheep and goats may outnumber the 400 human inhabitants. Da Caino earned its first Michelin star in 1991, and has held two since 1999. The dining public and Michelin's inspectors...Read More

Pastitsio ends our Greek sojourn with comfort fare

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Our nearly four-month exploration of Greek cuisine has netted us some dishes that we expect to stay in the rotation for years to come. Most rely on the goodness of fresh local produce, so we thought the arrival of autumn was an auspicious time to conclude our research. Frost is on the way, and outdoor grilling gets harder and harder as the temperature drops and darkness falls earlier and earlier. We decided that the best cool-weather Greek dish for us to perfect would not be any of the many variations of Greek lamb stews, but instead the dish sometimes called ‶Greek lasagna.″ A baked casserole, pastitsio contains layers of tubular noodles, a meat sauce, and a cheese-laden béchamel. While the tomatoes in the meat sauce...Read More