Browsing Tag

autumn

November 30, 2016

Cannellini All’Olio

Welcome to November’s Cucina Conversations post! This month, we are sharing recipes that feature olive oil as the star ingredient. November in Italy marks the start of la raccolta delle olive (the olive harvest). Olive trees were first cultivated in ancient Greece and have been providing civilization with the benefits of their oil for over four thousand years. The oil was used not only for nourishment, but for medicinal purposes and as a lighting source. In the 3rd century AD, olive oil became an important commodity of the Roman empire where it was traded throughout the Mediterranean. After the fall of the Roman […]

October 31, 2016

Apple Torta Sbrisolona

Welcome to the October installment of Cucina Conversations! This month, we are talking about the Catholic feast day of Ognissanti (All Saint’s Day), which is celebrated on November 1st. The origins of Ognissanti date back to May 609 AD, when Pope Boniface IV formally established the feast day by consecrating Rome’s Pantheon (formerly a pagan temple) into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the martyrs. He also established il giorno dei morti (All Soul’s Day) to follow the day after Ognissanti. It wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that the dates of both feast days were changed to November 1st and 2nd by Pope Gregory III, and Ognissanti became […]

September 30, 2016

Ciambelline al Vino

Benvenuti to Cucina Conversations! I’m thrilled to welcome you to this new feature on Flavia’s Flavors. A few months ago, I was invited by a new food blogging friend, Rosemarie of the blog Turin Mamma, to join her and several other food bloggers in forming a virtual roundtable with the goal of presenting our readers with a monthly post centered around a specific theme based on Italy’s seasonal, cultural, or religious calendars. We are a group of seven women from around the globe, passionate about the food of Italy, its origins and recipes. Cucina Conversations is a collaborative project which makes […]

January 27, 2016

Pasta e Fagioli

My paternal nonna Ada used to make the best pasta e fagioli. I grew up hearing it pronounced more frequently as pasta e fasoi, since the Venetian dialect is what nonna Ada and nonno “Gigi” spoke with each other and their friends in their tiny village of Lovadina di Spresiano, where most of my summers were spent as a child. Nonna Ada was an urban homesteader long before the term was invented. She tended an enormous garden that ran the perimeter of a huge back yard. She grew a dizzying amount of vegetables, her plants prolific and her yields abundant. I wish I could remember if she grew the beans that […]

November 19, 2015

Pumpkin Purée

We have arrived at this week’s last “basics” post. Today, I’m showing you how to make your own pumpkin purée. I know this is not an Italian recipe, and I’m breaking my all-Italian-recipes “rule”, but around Thanksgiving, I start making many of my favorite, traditional American recipes. Italians do eat many varieties of winter zucca (squash) which they use in velvety zuppe (soups) and fillings for ravioli, tortelli and other stuffed pasta, and I’ll be bringing those recipes to the blog as well. I’m making a pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving dessert table this year, and I wanted to make my filling with […]

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