zucchini

Pizza by the square, just like in Rome

Pizza by the square, just like in Rome

Posted on by Pat and David
The tavola calda at Panetteria Romana e Spaccio di Paste includes delicious pizzas topped with fresh vegetables. When we admit to people that we are food and travel writers, their eyes tend to get wide as they imagine that we sit down to multi-course gourmet meals every day on the road. But the truth is that we really like to find some local comestible that makes a handy light lunch or supper. In Rome, that's often a square of pan pizza (pizza al taglio) from one of the bakeries. We've read that more than 5,000 establishments in Rome offer pizza al taglio. Romans eat those slices for lunch and all through the afternoon as a pick-me-up snack. The crust for Roman pizza more resembles focaccia...Read More
‘Serafina’ capitalizes on tender summer harvests

‘Serafina’ capitalizes on tender summer harvests

Posted on 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
Town by town Italian cooking with Stanley Tucci

Town by town Italian cooking with Stanley Tucci

Posted on 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
Finding a Greek solution to the zucchini problem

Finding a Greek solution to the zucchini problem

Posted on by Pat and David
Every gardener knows the zucchini problem. When you ordered seeds in January, you were dreaming of ratatouille—maybe even of zucchini bread with sunflower seeds that turn inexplicably green. Then the reality hits about this time of summer. Zucchini sounds like a great idea. So does keeping rabbits—until you're suddenly overrun with rabbits. Or squash. Pre-pandemic, you could invite friends over, get them well lubricated, and send them home with a bag of zukes. Or bunnies. Such solutions don't work in the COVID era. The Greeks take a more pragmatic attitude toward zucchini proliferation. During the season, they throw zukes into everything. One of the tastier light dishes is a bake that falls somewhere between a frittata and an unfussy souffle. There are zillions of different...Read More