farmers’ market

Strawberry Festival

May 12, 2013

Every year on the first weekend in June, my dad would take my sister and me to the Strawberry Festival. This was in the ’70s, in the wilds of central New Jersey. Well, technically it was suburban New Jersey, just up the hill from our house and down the road from the Dairy Queen. But [...]

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2012: The Year in Glorious Vegetables

December 31, 2012

I took a lot of pictures of vegetables in 2012. This is partly because I was working on The Glorious Vegetables of Italy, which will be published in the fall, so I was paying extra attention to my subject. But mostly it’s because vegetables are beautiful and deserve to be photographed. (BTW I am no [...]

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Waiting for Fall’s Gold Rush

October 17, 2012

Honeycrisp may be the apple of the moment, but the apple of my eye is the GoldRush, a late-maturing variety that isn’t ready to pick until the end of October. Bright yellow, lightly speckled, with a deep rose—almost russet—blush, GoldRush is one gorgeous apple. Its ivory-colored flesh is firm and dense—so dense that when I [...]

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Hello, Tomato Season…

August 23, 2012

Right now, across the country, farmers’ market stalls are teeming with tomatoes. Fat, lopsided heirlooms, green-striped zebras, shiny round cherries, and plump Romas among them. When it’s tomato season I eat them every day. Every day. I make tomato salad, with or without mozzarella. I put them on pizza and poke them into focaccia. I [...]

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Strawberry Granita: The Sweet Taste of Summer

May 28, 2012

There was a small gelateria around the corner from my aunts’ apartment in Rome. It was nothing fancy, no gilt mirrors or polished marble bar top. If it had a name, I never knew it. It was not the kind of place that would have made any Best Gelaterias in Rome list. The chairs were [...]

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Laundry Is Forever, Fava Beans Are For Now

April 16, 2012

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 [...]

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Zuppa di Zucca Gialla {Winter Squash Soup}

November 13, 2011

Photo by Maren Caruso from Williams-Sonoma Rustic Italian (Weldon Owen) I resisted including a recipe for winter squash soup in The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. It seemed to me that there were already more than enough to go around, and one of my aims for the book was to shine a light on lesser [...]

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The Family Dish: Slow and Saucy Romano Beans

October 24, 2011

Green beans like to hang around, and I like that they like to hang around. Long after the corn and tomatoes and eggplant have departed from farmers market stalls, the piles of green beans remain, along with their cousins, flat-pod romano beans. In summer, I barely cook green beans, steaming them just until they are [...]

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‘Made In Italy’ Marmellata di Pomodori

September 9, 2011

AUGUST 24, 2012 UPDATE: I just made this again last night, and I see that I had an incorrect yield in the original recipe. Five pounds of plum tomatoes yields about 4 1/2 to 5 ( 1/2 pint) jars; 10 (4 oz) jars; or 5 (.15 ml Italian jars) of marmalade. I’ve updated the recipe [...]

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The Family Dish: Watermelon and Tomato Salad

August 22, 2011

Did you ever mix milk and orange juice together when you were a kid? Gross, right? And yet, if you’ve ever enjoyed a Creamsicle on a hot summer day, you know that those two ingredients can be great together. Some food combinations are like that—completely counterintuitive. Take tomatoes and watermelon. The first time someone brought [...]

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