It’s fava bean season, and I’ve just returned from picking a basketful of fat green pods from my lovingly tended terraced and trellised hilltop garden, with its fairy tale view overlooking that quaint medieval village…

and…CUT!

The truth is, I feel a little disingenuous writing about fava beans. I don’t have any growing in my suburban D.C. yard, which around here is known as the Garden of Neglect, and which at the moment contains one giant mound of mint and a surprisingly healthy bush of flat-leaf parsley that wintered over of its own accord.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 27 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beans, farmers' market, Italian cooking, spring, vegetables

It is time to come to grips with the fact that I will never run my household the way my mother ran hers. How do I know? Because when I was growing up, by this time Easter week my mom would have:

* Made and frozen her pizza rustica, a classic savory Easter torte, so that it would be ready to be reheated in the oven to serve as an antipasto on Easter Sunday
* Made and frozen her pastiera—a rustic ricotta torte made with wheat berries, and our traditional Easter dessert
* Baked two beautiful golden braids of sweet Easter bread, ready for slicing and toasting on Easter morning
* Baked and decorated her giant sugar cookie bunnies (shaped not from a store-bought cookie cutter, but from a simple wax paper pattern that she cut herself)
* Decided on and shopped for most of the ingredients on her Easter Sunday dinner menu
* Shopped for Easter basket goodies
* Bought her children new Easter outfits

By contrast, I have done none of those things. In fact, I haven’t even been around. I’ve been up in New York this last week at a conference for culinary professionals, cavorting with friends and colleagues, attending panels, workshops, and meetings, shaking hands, swapping cards, signing books, and eating out. As is often the case for me at such jam-packed events, I came away feeling highly inspired and motivated, and highly overwhelmed.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cheese, holidays, Italian baking

Giulia Scarpaleggia of Juls’ Kitchen

I had such a lovely time visiting with Frances Mayes, that I have decided to extend my virtual soggiorno in Tuscany for another week. Today I am dropping in on Giulia Scarpaleggia, author of Le Ricette di Mia Nonna (My Grandma’s Recipes) and of the Italian food blog Juls’ Kitchen.

Although I am a veteran food writer, I am a latecomer to the world of blogging (my own blog is less than 2 years old). When I finally waded in and started surfing, Juls’ Kitchen was one of the first blogs that bobbed to the surface and caught my eye—and my ear. Giulia’s blog is beautifully photographed, with composed shots of the country food that she cooks and soft images of the Tuscan landscape that surrounds her. But it’s her voice that really captures me, her exuberant tone that embraces the world, her romantic descriptions, in tumbling words, of life’s daily rituals, of moods that shift with the seasons.

Impressively, she posts in Italian and English.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cookbooks, Italian cooking, Italy, Tuscany

Virtually everyone who has traveled to Italy can describe a moment in which they were transported by food—whether a platter of plump, cheese-filled ravioli bathed in butter and sage; a silky, paper-thin slice of prosciutto draped over a warm puff of fried dough; a glossy cone of hand-dipped gelato.

For Frances Mayes, author of the best-selling memoir Under the Tuscan Sun, such a moment occurred one day as she watched a priest savor an orange that he had doused in olive oil and salt.

“I realized in one bite what I’d missed,” Mayes writes in her latest book, The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (Clarkson Potter), co-written with her husband, Edward. The book is filled with such moments of epiphany and appreciation for life at the Tuscan table.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eggs, Italian cooking, Italy, recipes, Tuscany, vegetables, vegetarian

Photo by Postmark Chef

UPDATE: The winner of the Postmark Chef recipe kit is…WENDY from Healthier Kitchen. Congratulations Wendy!

* * * * * *

I’ve never yearned to see my name in lights. Yet, I still remember the first byline I ever had as a newspaper reporter (it was atop a short article about the high pollen count in central New Jersey one long-ago spring). And I have to admit that it still gives me a thrill when I look on a bookstore shelf and see one of my books peering back at me.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 33 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dinner, holiday entertaining, Italian cooking

One of my all-time favorite children’s stories is “Blue Moose” by Daniel Pinkwater. Like many of Pinkwater’s stories it is an offbeat tale, populated with quirky characters, beautifully and evocatively written. In it, a large blue moose ambles into a restaurant in the snowy woods of Maine. The proprietor, unable to shoo the moose away, relents and invites him into the kitchen, feeding him bowls of clam chowder, fresh gingerbread, and steaming cups of coffee. The moose slurps his chowder appreciatively, inhaling its briny perfume and reveling in its creamy comfort. He is given a room and stays on as headwaiter, serving the restaurant’s loyal, if taciturn, customers and confounding the local game warden.

Every year right about now I reread this story and make a pot of chowder. I’m not quite sure what compels me to do this in late February, as opposed to, say, early December or mid-January. It is just one of those seasonal cravings that kicks in of its own accord and I merely submit to it.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 28 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Patience is not a virtue of mine. From the moment I injured my finger I have pestered my doctor, and now my hand therapist, about when I can start cooking (with two hands) again, and writing (with two hands) again* and playing tennis (I have a two-handed backhand) again. And so on.

While the answer is not as soon as I would like, the good news is that it is now only a matter of weeks before I can start employing my recuperating digit in small tasks. Even better: both my doctor and my hand therapist seem optimistic that I will eventually recover full use of it, provided I perform my prescribed exercises faithfully and don’t try to rush things. So, while I am not good at being patient, I have, in the interest of my finger, not to mention my career and longterm well-being and sanity (and that of my family), strived to be a good patient.

I thought it would be nice to celebrate this bit of happy news with a small homage to that gentle virtue—patience—in the form of this gentle, slow-baked farro pudding. You may well be familiar with farro, a grain that dates back to Roman times, but is enjoying immense popularity right now. Traditionally, it has been used in those hearty vegetable soups typical of Italy’s Garfagnana region, a rugged corner of northern Tuscany. But nowadays it is featured in all sorts of recipes, from grain salads to risotto-style dishes.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 24 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comfort food, dessert, Italian baking, Italian cooking

I have good news: It is possible to cook with one hand.

It took me awhile to figure this out. For a few days after my injury I moped around, thinking about all of the things I wouldn’t be able to cook for weeks and weeks, like this and this.

Then I bucked up. In fact, the other day I managed to cobble together this rustic chickpea and mushroom soup. I CAREFULLY crushed the garlic cloves by putting them, one at a time, under the flat side of a knife blade and CAREFULLY pressing down with my palm (obviously using my good hand to press and being VERY CAREFUL—even so, as I describe it here it sounds rather reckless, doesn’t it?). I used pre-sliced mushroom caps, and a one-pound container of baby kale leaves I found at the supermarket (no slicing or chopping required). I limited the use of my left hand to occasional support duties as the right hand worked.

I’m happy to say that this soup was as good as any two-handed soup I’ve made. Plus, I didn’t have to do the dishes. My doctor, however, was not thrilled with with my initiative and reminded me that my left hand should be kept elevated at all times and not used to enable the right in any way. In other words, I got a little too ambitious too soon. So, back I go into hibernation for a little while longer. A presto…

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Italian cooking, soup, vegetarian

You may be familiar with that famous poem titled “Cut” by Sylvia Plath, the one that begins

What a thrill —
My thumb instead of an
onion.

Well, my dears, that was me a few days ago, except it was my index finger instead of my thumb. And winter squash puree instead of an onion. And an immersion blender rather than a knife.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 47 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dessert, Italian baking

The other day I went to toss a package of rolls into the freezer, and, lo and behold, when I opened the freezer door I found a gift. The best kind of gift. A container of homemade broth.

With the holiday craze and a looming book deadline for which I’ve been testing recipes fast and furiously, I had forgotten all about it. This somehow made it an even better gift. And when, right around the time I made my discovery, snow flurries started to fill the air, well then, there was only one thing to do.

Stop testing (if only for a moment, dear publisher) and start making soup.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comfort food, Italian cooking, soup, The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy