Italian cooking

Homemade Pizza

April 25, 2013

I’ve always been a little disappointed in homemade pizza. Let’s face it, unless you have your own wood-fired oven, which I most certainly don’t, it’s hard to make anything approaching a real Neapolitan-style pie, with that charred, chewy-crisp crust, perfectly puffed around the perimeter and thin (but never gooey) in the middle. I sometimes make [...]

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Dreaming of Summer and a Tuscan Tour

March 6, 2013

Spring isn’t yet sprung ~ in fact, snow, wind and ice are happening my corner of the world. But I don’t care. I’m looking ahead to summer. I am throwing open the virtual glass doors and stepping out on the veranda, into the sun. A few weeks ago I got a surprise in the mail, [...]

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American Food Roots and Le Virtu’

February 12, 2013

Some of you already know this, but for those who don’t, I’m happy to share with you a new website I co-founded with three other food journalists: American Food Roots. Our mission is to tell America’s food stories, celebrate the many diverse cultures that have contributed—and continue to contribute—to the American food scene, and to [...]

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Winter’s Bones

February 6, 2013

(Pardon the excessive typography on the pics in this post. As if I didn’t have enough distractions, I uploaded an iPhone app called Over, which allows you to play around with text and fonts. I couldn’t resist.) * * * * * The stockpots and soup tureens in my house have been getting a workout [...]

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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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Dicembre Dolce: Panna Cotta alle Spezie

December 12, 2012

Raise your hand if… * yours is always the last house on the cul de sac to put up holiday lights. * you have yet to buy ~ let alone decorate ~ a tree. * the only batch of Christmas cookies you baked is long gone and you have yet to bake more. * haven’t [...]

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A Love Child at the Thanksgiving Table

November 18, 2012

I recently posted this Instagram photo of something new (to me) called Kaleidoscope sprouts. I discovered that lots of others had never heard of them either. My friend Colleen commented, “My two favorite veggies had a love child?” That is exactly what happened. Kaleidoscope sprouts, also known as flower sprouts, are a clever cross between [...]

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Nose-to-Tail Fennel

October 8, 2012

Fennel is a generous vegetable. It graces the table in spring and early summer, where it keeps company with asparagus and baby onions, and then again in fall, when it cozies up to eggplant and peppers, then apples and winter squash. In supermarkets I often see bulbs of fennel tightly wrapped in plastic, their stalks [...]

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Q&A With Olio2go’s Luanne Savino O’Loughlin ~ and a Book Signing in Fairfax

September 18, 2012

I’m pretty sure I have more olive oil than blood running through my veins. I cook with it and consume it every day; in fact, it is in the biscotto on which I am munching at this very moment. And yet I find the whole subject of olive oil confusing, not to mention disheartening these [...]

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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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