A look at local food discoveries, whether it’s a particular dish or an ingredient, often with one or more recipes.
“Back in the day”, i.e., early on in this blog, which has now gone on for nearly two decades, I used to do a daily, or at least every couple of day, writeup of what I’d been up to. Mostly food and wine, but a lot of other stuff – after all Buenos Aires was new… Read More Sennight Glance #1
If you’re from the silent or boomer generations, there’s a good chance you grew up with the dread, yet somehow nostalgic, “tuna noodle casserole”. You know, that one mom threw together in exasperation just to get something on the table. While a recipe for something approaching it, Noodles and Tuna Fish en Casserole, first appeared… Read More Tuna Noodle Not-Casserole
Getting ready to head out on the annual vacation – or what used to be the annual vacation, something we somewhat fell out of doing during that viral kerfuffle. Destinations to appear, magically, on these pages. But let’s wrap up the April and May dinners at Casa SaltShaker. And maybe I’ll squeeze in a Bite… Read More April Showers May Flours
Yes, I finally broke down and bought myself a corzetti stamp. I did swear to you I wasn’t going to for a pasta that I don’t generally make. But is that a self-fulfilling dictum, after all, without a corzetti stamp, I can’t make them, so I don’t. But regardless, I didn’t throw away a ton of money,… Read More Stamp Out Pasta!
We’re still in Africa, but have moved cross-continent to the northeast, and the country of Eritrea. There was no such country when I was growing up. Eritrea was a confederated region of Ethiopia that was undergoing a movement for independence, but that didn’t come to fruition until 1991. Located on the Red Sea, it’s a small… Read More The Bread & Soup Project #56 – Eritrea
This time around, a two-month Casa SaltShaker wrap-up. February was a little short because of my time away in Montevideo, plus one weekend we were busy and didn’t host a dinner. Here’s my pick of dishes from February and March, both from personal favorites and those that I got particularly positive feedback on. Let’s start… Read More Summer’s End at the Dinner Table
Those of you who’ve been with me awhile may well remember my explorations of the four famed pastas of Rome, and their family tree connections. A quick reference back – gricia, cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana. In form the base is cheese and pepper, cacio e pepe. Add guanciale and you have gricia (albeit historically, it started here,… Read More The Breadcrumbs of Sicily
We start with the cheese, the taleggio, a washed rind cow’s milk cheese from Lombardia, the province around Milan and Bergamo. Named for the Val Taleggio, or Taleggio Valley, this is one of the region’s most popular and best known cheeses. A personal favorite, and it makes for a great fonduta, a creamy cheese sauce, as in today’s… Read More A Tale of Taleggio