Browsing Tag

vegetarian

Spring Orzo Salad

April 30, 2018
spring orzo salad

Welcome to the April edition of Cucina Conversations! To welcome the arrival of spring, the longer days, and the warmer temperatures (finally!), we are featuring insalate (salads) as our topic. For the past couple of weeks, many of my friends and favorite food bloggers in Italy have been posting photos and stories on Instagram of their trips to the mercati (markets), where every stall is overflowing with an abundance of spring vegetables: fave, asparagus, radishes, agretti, peas, and the first zucchine. Shopping at my grocery store is decidedly less charming than shopping in one of Italy’s open air markets, but here, state-side too, spring […]

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Spinach Herb Pesto

March 22, 2018
spinach herb pesto

Happy spring everyone! It’s been a flurry of activity here at Casa Scalzitti for the past few weeks. After finally recovering from the miserable virus we caught in Italy, Peter and I sprung into action and tackled our household “To Do” list. The first day of spring may have been a couple of days ago, but here in Houston, we’ve been enjoying beautiful spring weather since the beginning of March and it’s been glorious (North-Easters, please don’t hate me!). The start of spring this year is especially exciting for us because we finally had our front and back yard re-landscaped. […]

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Artichoke Croquettes

January 31, 2018
artichoke croquettes

Benvenuti to the first Cucina Conversations post of the new year! This month, our topic is bread, specifically what Italians call pane raffermo (stale bread). To an inexperienced cook, the phrase “stale bread” can have negative connotations as it brings to mind hard-as-a-rock, inedible bread that is past its soft, crusty, chewy prime. But in the Italian kitchen, pane raffermo becomes a valuable ingredient that was born of the cucina povera (“cooking of the poor”), where no ingredient was wasted and less-desirable parts of animals and vegetables were creatively cooked into recipes that continue to thrive in homes and trattorie across the peninsula. Bread […]

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Vegetable Plumcake

November 14, 2017
vegetable plumcake

I’m in love with the word plumcake. I came across it only in the last couple of years as I started to discover and read more Italian food blogs. It looks like it should be two words, but separating them would mean a cake made with plums which is delicious no doubt, but another thing entirely. In Italy, a plumcake (which Italians pronounce “ploom-cake”) typically refers to a sweet cake made in a loaf pan–what many of us refer to as a quick bread. But there is no rule that says a plumcake can’t be savory. They may not be as ubiquitous […]

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Pesto Abruzzese

October 31, 2017
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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