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A Cooking Class with Domenica Marchetti

At the end of last month, my fellow food blogging friend and cookbook author, Domenica Marchetti came to Houston to teach a cooking class at the Italian Cultural and Community Center where I volunteer. Ever since starting as a volunteer cooking instructor at the ICCC last year, I have enjoyed working with Erika, the center’s programs and events director, to brainstorm ideas for new cooking classes. Last month, I suggested reaching out to Domenica to see if she would be willing to come teach a class at the ICCC, and to our delight, she accepted our invitation! If you follow […]

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Olive all’Ascolana

olive all'ascolana

Welcome to the July edition of Cucina Conversations! Our group recently decided to publish quarterly instead of monthly due to our busy schedules, but the quality and creativity of our posts will stay the same, and we have some exciting topics for upcoming editions. This month, our topic is “stuffed”, a cooking preparation Italians are especially adept at, and includes a wide range of foods: stuffed pastas such as tortellini, ravioli, and agnolotti; seasonal vegetables hollowed out and filled with a savory meat mixture; involtini, cutlets of beef, pork, or veal rolled around a filling of prosciutto and cheese; and pastries such as krapfen, airy doughnuts […]

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Crostoli

crostoli

Buon martedì grasso! Welcome to the February edition of Cucina Conversations. Our posts are early this month since we are reprising the fun topic of carnevale which in Italy began on February 3rd and ends today, “Fat Tuesday”. For the past two weeks, the shiny bakery cases of pasticcerie (pastry shops) and forni (bakeries) across Italy have been filled with overflowing trays traditional carnevale sweets: castagnole di ricotta (ricotta fritters), frìtole veneziane (Venetian sweet fritters), bomboloni (doughnuts), fritelle di mele (apple fritters), and my personal favorites, crostoli (fried pastry ribbons). Crostoli have a special place in my heart and culinary memory because both my maternal nonna Liliana and paternal nonna Ada used to make these […]

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Struffoli

struffoli

Welcome to the December edition of Cucina Conversations! For our last post of the year, my fellow Cucina Conversations friends and I are reprising last year’s topic and sharing ricette di natale–Christmas recipes. The holiday season has been a flurry of activity for me since last month and I’ve neglected my small corner of the Internet (yet again), but I wasn’t about to end the year without sharing one more traditional Italian recipe with you! My contribution to this month’s theme is show-stopping struffoli. Struffoli originated in Napoli, the capital of the region of Campania, and dates back to the time […]

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Pesto Abruzzese

Pesto Abruzzese

Welcome to the October installment of Cucina Conversations! This month, we are talking about one of my favorite topics: preserving. I am still very much a canning and preserving newbie and have not yet ventured far into the endeavor, but the little I’ve done had me hooked from the start. The very first canning recipe I made was this beautiful and delicious Tropea onion jam from Domeinca Marchetti’s most recent cookbook, Preserving Italy. I returned straight back to Domenica’s lovely cookbook to make my contribution for this month’s recipe, pesto abruzzese. Preserving gets the spotlight mostly during the spring and summer months, […]

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