A look at local food discoveries, whether it’s a particular dish or an ingredient, often with one or more recipes.
There’s this “rule” out there that I’m sure you’ve heard. No cheese with fish, or no cheese with seafood. Somehow, it’s out in the ether that it’s never done in “traditional cuisines”, which in the minds of those speaking is probably centered around the northern Mediterranean – Spanish, French, Italian, Greek. I know Italian restaurants… Read More Cheese It! The Fish!
If you’ve had Puttanesca sauce, you’ve heard the commonly thrown around interpretation that it’s a sauce “in the style of a prostitute”. No one ever explains exactly what that means, nor why this sauce that blends together a handful of intensely flavored ingredients would be the forte of a woman of the night. Various stabs… Read More The Siren Call of a Sauce
It’s been a bit over a month since our last Casa SaltShaker dinner. Henry’s away in Peru (coming back this week), so I just sort of suspended them. But, we had a couple of requests for a dinner even without having posted the date, so I decided to open one night and just play both… Read More 2022 Menu #23
It’s time for the last of our famed four Roman pastas. This time around, it’s all’amatriciana, i.e., in the style the Amatricians. Amatrice, where this pasta supposedly originated as a peasant dish is about 100 miles northeast of Rome. The dish, like the others we’ve been exploring, is based on that original gricia, with cured pork… Read More When the Tomatoes Came…
If you’ve been following along with this simple pasta series, you knew that this one was coming. In fact, given the response to these posts, I’d say this is the most anticipated one of all. It’s certainly one of the best known Italian pastas outside of Italy, and easily the best known of the classic… Read More The Egg Effect
I keep thinking that maybe this approach to pastas staying at a very simple level is going to get boring for readers. And, I’m sure that it is for some. But based on messages and emails, apparently it’s resonating, mostly with a “oh, that’s how to get that to work” or “oh, that’s why the… Read More Noodling with Garlic and Oil
It’s a pasta dish that’s probably as contentious as putting pineapple on pizza. It’s a guilty pleasure for even the naysayers, who probably eat it with a large napkin draped over their head to hide their faces from God as they indulge in crunching ortolans. It’s an “Italian pasta” that, for the most part, you… Read More Is Alfredo “Real”?
Making my way slowly through this last season’s episodes of Searching for Italy. I have to say, I’m finding it less interesting than the first season. It feels a little bit like Tucci lost interest in really talking to the people who he was meeting – we’re getting less about them and more about him. Celebrity… Read More Tucci #5