HAPPY NEW YEAR! After the excesses of the festivities, I love to go back to the simple, nourishing meals that are my favourite since I was a child. Like pasta e fagioli, pasta with beans, something my grandma Isa from Veneto – where they call it pasta e fasoi – used to make. It’s a tasty and comforting soup-like dish…
A quick salad for tomato lovers. No quantities, just use what you have. Made with fresh string beans, ripe tomatoes, the few small potatoes I harvested in my mini garden and fiery shallots marinated in lemon juice to remove a bit of their spiciness. The dressing is a mix of – lots of – parsley, some basil, garlic, lemon juice…
Several of my favourite pasta dishes come from Rome (gricia, amatriciana and carbonara), but my favourite of them all is cacio e pepe. Literally: cheese and pepper. So simple and yet so difficult to make! I had to try several times before I could actually prepare it the proper way, without the cheese getting all lumpy and sticky on my plate, but…
This is a very simple yet extremely satisfying pasta dish, ready in max. 15 minutes. I like to make it with spaghettoni (the thicker spaghetti) but you can of course make it with any other long pasta. The anchovy is a great taste enhancer which makes the dish loved also by those who don’t usually appreciate fish. This happens because…
This is definitely my favourite pasta of all. Easy and quick to make and yet very tasty, for me it’s THE Summer pasta, often eaten cold as a salad. It’s called crudaiola from crudo (raw in Italian) because all the ingredients used for the sauce are raw. Technically the cheese is not raw but you get what I mean: this…
If you’ve never eaten cime di rapa (broccoli rabe and rapini for our American friends) you might find them difficult to enjoy the first time you try them. They’re quite bitter and they perfectly embody the “acquired taste” concept. In general, Italians tend to love bitter flavours: think of artichokes, wild herbs like dandelion greens and chicory – yes, we…
This little recipe is quick, easy and very, very satisfying. I’ve used the wonderful, dark organic spaghettoni (thick spaghetti) by Bio Alberti made with Senatore Cappelli, an old type of wheat which after the 60’s was almost forgotten and has – luckily – seen a fierce come-back in the Southern regions of Italy. It was originally “created” by Italian genetist…