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…

an Italian reading list

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Sometimes I think about my final year history teacher, and how nice it would be to bump into him in a random piazza somewhere in Italy. Russel Staiff was one of those stand out teachers who take their students far beyond the standard textbook.…

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…

a rome list for hunters and gatherers

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I've been asked quite often recently about whether a Roman version of a charity shop actually exists.  The answer is no, kind of, in a way, yes. Charity shops are my idea of the perfect equation.  Old things are handed on, making room in…

Itineraries. Ceramics and the South: a pilgrimage to Grottaglie

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The sun climbs as we leave the soft olive hillsides of the Valle D'Itria, where we are staying, for the red plains of the alto-Salento, and the road cuts through carpets of primitivo vines as it reaches out toward the almost irresistible waters…

itineraries. around the vinyards of alto -Lazio

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The Greeks that settled in southern Italy during the period between the 8th and the 6th century BC called the fertile land with its happy climate Oenotria; land of the trained vines.  They most probably brought with them cuttings to plant,…

itineraries. treasure hunting in the Tuscia

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La Tuscia is the ancient land of the Etruscans that stretches between southern Tuscany, northern Lazio and Umbria; a volcanic landscape of rolling hillsides, vines, olives and towns crumbling from their cliff-top perches.  The Etruscans were…

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…

low tech Italian classics to stuff into your suitcase

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Made in Italy is renowned for shoes and bags, fast cars, alta moda and serious furniture design.  Hiding behind the big names and famous brands are the artisans; leatherworkers, furniture designers, glassblowers, mosaicists, shoemakers; craftsmen…

the paper table cloth guide to dining in Rome

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A writer I do not know personally, but whose writing I very much like for its directness, recently wrote of a Roman trattoria; why can't we have more of this unpretentious shit in Sydney?  She hit the nail on the proverbial head because Roman…