festive baking: la Crostata Stellata

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I developed this recipe for what I am calling a Crostata Stellata, for a Ci Piace Cucinare Christmas menu. It all started after our summer trip to Abruzzo, when I started researching traditional sweets for a Lunch in Abruzzo story.…

rustic Italian baking: with shortcrust pastry

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Originally I had lumped all my Torte Rustiche collection together in one post, but I have since broken them down according to pastry type. For brisée pastry click here: For olive oil pastry click here: For puff (and rough puff) click here. Shortcrust…

ancient grains: farro with roasted pumpkin

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Plump, nutty, almost sweet, the most ancient of all grains is grown in Umbria, Abruzzo and in the Garfagnano area of Tuscany.  There are three types of Farro; farro piccolo; rarely used,  farro media; the most common form, best bought as…

how to peel an artichoke and other stories

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Quick, it's artichoke season, hurry to the market.  There are bulbous deep purple Romanescos, paler green but equally plump globes, and pretty tulip shaped violette. There are baskets, piles, and crates.  Truckloads parked on street corners…

ancient grains for every season

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Farro is one of those ingredients that magic a meal out of a few vegetables.  It is wonderful in summer; with punchy tomatoes and fresh herbs or alongside the nicoise family of tuna, capers and olives, but also great in winter with pumpkins…

anglo-australian classics: meat pies

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When you go to a football game in the southern part of Australia, where we follow Australian Rules Football, a home grown style of footy first played in Melbourne in the 1800's, the standard stadium food is a meat pie, with sauce, otherwise…

anglo-australian classics: scones with jam and cream

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For better or for worse, Australia occupies a sort of novelty position in the eyes of many Italians.  Newspapers run spots about killer sharks and koalas on the loose, and us auw-stra-yalini get lots of questions like how long does the flight…

rustic Italian baking: focaccia

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Roughly three years ago Rachel Roddy, Carla Tomasi and I sat in Carla's kitchen with mugs of tea, looking out onto Carla's blooming kitchen garden and chatting about how Market to Table would become our chance to cook together with curious travelers…

crostata, crostata

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There is often a huddle of people waiting outside the nondescript bakery on a corner of the Jewish ghetto, the one so small there is only room for 3.5 customers at a time, the rest obliged to wait outside gazing into the windows filled with…

pecorino, cured pork and Solidarity: l’amatriciana

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In Italy fair trade products; most often coffee, sugars and chocolate, are marked by the words Equo e Solidale.  Equo meaning equal and fair, with solidale translating as solidarity; together with, in union.  Solidarity is a word that gets…

ten years: la carbonara

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The Italy that I love, that I inhabit, that I feel content to be bringing my children up in, is what I call everyman's Italy.  It is above all an accessible Italy, where the best things in life are free (or at least cheap); a world made up…

rustic Italian baking: with olive oil pastry

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Finally have an olive oil pastry recipe to call my own.  Well, not my own, I found it in a recipe book produced by Allegra Pomilio and her friends from ristorante La Bilancia in Pescara.  You can buy and download their neat recipe book here,…