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 | 22 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 | 10 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 | 46 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

Buon Anno a tutti! Happy New Year.

As I sit here writing and thinking about the year ahead, I am (literally) surrounded by the past. During the Christmas break, my husband and I decided to start a long-overdue project to clean and reorganize our basement. So far, we have said farewell to five huge bins of baby clothes (minus a few choice items we couldn’t bear to part with); two broken easels; our daughter’s Littlest Pet Shop collection; and our son’s Rokenbok set (but not the Thomas trains or Hess trucks).

At the moment, half my kitchen floor is occupied by stacks of Gourmet magazines, removed from the various boxes in which they had been randomly stashed and finally put into chronological order. They date back to 1990, when I first became a subscriber, and continue right up to November 2009, the magazine’s final issue.

My intent, when I lugged them all up from the basement, was to organize and re-box them, and donate them to charity (I was told that food magazines are popular). Instead, I flipped one open and found myself reading what turned out to be Laurie Colwin’s last Home Cooking column before she died. After that, I picked up another issue (I didn’t note the date), and here was Craig Claiborne writing hilariously about his first—and presumably last—fox hunt in Virginia (unable to control his horse, he found himself, absurdly, ahead of the fox). I am not making this up. Gourmet, I decided, is staying.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2012. | Permalink | 33 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: baking, dessert, holidays, Italian baking

Fabulous photo by France Ruffenach for Chronicle Books

Fried dough pellets glued together with honey to form a ring. That, in essence, is la cicerchiata, a traditional dessert from Italy’s Abruzzo region. There is nothing subtle or sophisticated about it.

And yet, it is impossible to resist.

Here is what will happen if you set if you set a cicerchiata out on your dining room table after a big holiday meal:

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2011. | Permalink | 27 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Abruzzo, baking, Christmas, cookbooks, Italy, The Glorious Pasta of Italy

For most of my life—right up until last week—I despised panforte, the celebrated Christmas fruit-and-nut confection from Siena.

Every year at about this time, a flat, sort-of circular pleated package containing a dense hockey puck of a—what? Was it a cake? a torte? candy?—would appear on our buffet, purchased by my mother. She would unwrap it, lay it lovingly on a plate, and take in its medieval spicy, nutty, fruity scent. Then, using a large, sharp knife—and all her might—she would hack out a thin, sticky wedge and offer it around.

No thanks, said my sister and me, turning our heads in aversion and making gagging gestures. We hated, and I mean hated, candied fruit, especially candied citron, which as far as we could tell comprised at least 60 percent of panforte, the rest consisting of big pieces of nuts and chunks of dried fruit. Why, we reasoned, would we ever waste precious Christmas calories on that stuff when we could be stuffing our faces with gingerbread, sparkly sugar cookies, or buttery crescents?

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christmas, holidays, Italian baking, Tuscany

Photo by Maren Caruso, from Williams-Sonoma Rustic Italian (2011, Weldon-Owen)

I do not have a sweet tooth. Nine times out of ten I will choose a second helping of pasta over dessert.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2011. | Permalink | 27 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: baking, chocolate, Christmas, Italian cooking

That beautiful specimen you see in the photo is a head of Savoy cabbage.

Italian cooks do wonderful things with this cabbage, which they refer to as cavolo verza. (The name Savoy refers to the historical region in northern Italy in which the cabbage thrives, and also to the House of Savoy, which ruled newly unified Italy from 1861 to the end of World War II). The cabbage’s large, ruffled outer leaves, loosely attached at the base of the head, are deep blue-green and tender. The crunchy inner leaves, pale and creamy, are wrapped tightly together. Typically, cavolo verza is harvested after the first frost, which sweetens it and enhances its nutty cabbage flavor.

Savoy cabbage is featured in regional soup recipes across Italy, including ribollita, the popular Tuscan soup of bread, cabbage, tomatoes, and beans. Farther north, in Val d’Aosta, it is a winter staple, paired, appropriately, with fontina, the region’s most famous cheese, in rich soups, risotti, and gratins. Braised sweet-and-sour cabbage is a favorite of my Abruzzese mother (it has been served as an accompaniment to our Christmas Eve seafood dinner for as long as I can remember).

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comfort food, dinner, Italian cooking, Italy, pasta, vegetables

I inherited my passion for cooking from my mom. But my dad is the one who got me hooked on cookbooks.

For a few years in the 1990s, my dad gave me a cookbook every Christmas. I do not know what precipitated this tradition (my mom was always the holiday shopper in the house). And it was a short-lived one, ending after four or five years, as mysteriously as it had begun. It had a lasting effect, though, whether intended or not. For material me, it is not really Christmas unless there is a cookbook under the tree.

The books my dad gave me shared a common theme—they were all New York City restaurant cookbooks. Among them were Alfred Portale’s Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook, The Mezzaluna Cookbook, and The Union Square Cafe Cookbook.

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© Domenica for Domenica Cooks, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cookbooks, entertaining, holiday entertaining, holidays, Thanksgiving