Potato gnocchi are actually quite easy to make, although I don’t think we have them often enough in our house.   We were recently asked to teach how to make them at our Cooking with Giuliano at Home  class.  Making gnocchi at first seems challenging, but as one gets the hang of it, they can be expertly made by anyone interested in cooking.  Our students were at first a bit leery, but then had fun shaping them – and later when eating them, figuring who made which one! Everyone was surprised by how light and delicate properly made gnocchi turn out, and all were planning to make them again soon.

Many people are so intimidated by gnocchi that they never try making them.  Our students learned that gnocchi are not heavy dumplings, rather they are buoyant bits of dough that float to the surface of boiling water.  What causes them to be too gluey, tough, or heavy is either the wrong potato or too much flour. The secret to making good gnocchi is in using the right potato, which should neither be too waxy nor too starchy.  We find that Yukon Gold potatoes work best.  It is also important to stop adding flour as soon as the potato dough is smooth and only slightly sticky.

The word gnocchi in Italian, is thought to be derived from the word nocca, meaning knuckle.  Indeed, the tines of the fork that is used to create them, do give a knuckle like look. Potato gnocchi are mostly found in northern Italy, but the word gnocchi can mean any kind of dumpling and there are many variations throughout Italy. Not all gnocchi in Italy are made with potatoes, which are a rather recent addition to Italy’s food repertoire.  The classic Roman gnocchi are made with semolina. Some are made with just flour and water, such as the ones our students in our Cooking with Giuliano in Italy  course get to taste at a fabulous restaurant on the banks of the Po River. One of our favorite places to go in the mountains of the Veneto has a “father gnocchi” festival at Christmas instead of a Father Christmas.  Like many recipes, the origins are lost to history. However, it is thought that gnocchi originated somewhere in the Middle East and a type of gnocchi was eaten by the ancient Romans.   Because they are simple to make, inexpensive, and filling, as Italians migrated, so did the gnocchi recipes.  In Argentina, the 29^th of each month is called Dia de Noquis (Gnocchi Day), when a coin is put under the plate of each person to encourage prosperity.  The 29^th was chosen because the next day is usually pay day and many laborers had run out of money by then.

Gnocchi made at home are undisputedly the best, and once people realize how easy they are to make, there is no reason to purchase the industrial kind. There are many pasta sauces that can be used with gnocchi.  Rich and creamy Gorgonzola is a classic one.  Marcella’s famous butter and tomato sauce goes very well, although we recommend pureeing the tomato sauce through the coarse disk of a food mill as gnocchi are best with smooth sauces.  A simple butter and sage sauce is also lovely, and one of our favorites is with Genovese basil pesto.  Whichever way you choose, enjoy in prosperity. Buon appettito!

Some people have a knack for finding clothes, books, shoes, or toys over the Internet.  In my family, my father-in-law has a gift for finding fabulous foods.  Sometimes my in-laws, Victor and Marcella Hazan, get a hankering for the flavors and tastes that can only be found in Europe.  Recently they wanted a really good prosciutto and, Victor, in true form found that he could order an entire Jamon Iberico online.  When it arrived, he conceded that it was much to big for him and Marcella alone, so they graciously shared with us.

Prosciutto is the Italian word for ham.  Prosciutto crudo, means uncooked ham and refers to an air cured, salted leg of pig. Its flavor is almost sweet, and when sliced and served properly, it is a succulent sensation in the mouth.  The flavor varies according to the curing process and region of origin.  San Daniele prosciutto is from Friuli and is distinctive because of the darker meat and the hoof that is left on the leg.  However, the most famous prosciutto of Italy is Prosciutto di Parma.  Mostly made in the town of Langhirano, outside of Parma, the making of these prosciutti is a craft handed down from generation to generation.

First the legs must be trimmed to perfection and washed.  Then someone puts just the right amount of sea salt on them.  Too much and the leg becomes salty, to little and it won’t cure.  In olden times such prosciutti could only be made in the winter, but now, thanks to refrigeration, they can be made all year long.  After salting, the legs are hung to dry for three days in a temperature controlled room. They are then taken to aging rooms with tall narrow screened windows that can be opened or closed depending on the outside temperature.  In springtime, it was traditional to see some of these prosciutti wheeled out on drying racks so they could catch the sweet air.  Now, in the times of regulation, the prosciutti, especially the ones exported to the US, must only dry inside the factory.

Testing to see if the proscuitti have aged properly is done with a small horse bone that looks like a long needle.  The prosciutto is tested at about 9 months, but will normally age for two years.

Prosciutto can be served as an antipasto, alone or with long breadsticks called grissini.  It also adds marvelous flavor to a pasta sauce and other dishes.  Giuliano and I immediately cut some slices for sandwiches for lunch that day.  Made with toasted bread and just a touch of butter, they were sandwiches fit for kings.

Similar cured hams can be found in Croatia, Serbia and also in the U.S., known as country ham.  Spain is also famous for cured ham where one of the most famous is the Jamon Iberico.

Jamon Iberico is made from the black Iberian pig and comes from the south of Spain.  The pigs are allowed to roam free in the oak forests and feed on bellota, acorns.  There are different grades of these hams, which have to do with both the diet and for how long the meat is cured.  The finest is called jamon iberico de bellota.  It is very difficult to find and very expensive.  The meat is very dark and there isn’t that much fat.  More commonly found is Jamon Serrano, made from the white pig. Also delicious but not as expensive.  One can also find Jamon produced in Portugal.

The best prosciutti are sliced by hand.  The difference in taste from a just cut prosciutto and something that was cut a day ago is marked.  Prosciutto dries out and the flavors are best when eaten immediately.  To slice it, Giuliano reverently takes the piece out of its vacuumed sealed bag and carefully slices it neither too thin nor too thick using a very sharp knife.  It looks like he is either at prayer or doing an operation, but the end result is fabulous.

Sometimes you just want to celebrate!   A birthday, Fourth of July, or just marking time.  What better way to celebrate than with a velvety chocolate layer cake?  Even better, have your kids make it for you!  In our house it is very much a time of celebration.  I have just finished my last and 12^th infusion of chemo, we have had long time friends over, and our eldest, 13 year old Gabriella, decided she wanted to bake.  She felt like making a chocolate layer cake and we readily encouraged her.  We perused our cookbook library and found the book Chocolate, by our friend Lisa Yockelson.  Gabriella immediately pounced on a recipe for a velvety chocolate layer cake with chocolate fudge frosting.  We served it when our friends, photographer Tom Bagley and award winning cookbook author Gail Greco, came for dinner.  Everyone thought it was smooth and delicious.

This is a perfect layer cake for both a novice as well as seasoned baking veteran.  The satiny texture is sublime and the cake turns out rich and wonderful. Gabriella made a few small ingredient changes, to use what we already had on hand. She used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour and a combination of heavy cream and milk instead of light cream. I’m proud to say that Gabriella made this all by herself.  She even cleaned up.  OK… we had to clean up after her clean up, but we were rather impressed.  You will also be pleased.  This is a great family recipe, easy to make and a lot of fun for the kids.  They can measure to their hearts content and the outcome is a luscious delight.

One doesn’t get to see this kind of cake in Italy. Other than gelato or mousse, I don’t often see chocolate flavored desserts.  However, in our family, chocolate is always a favorite so we’ve decided to adopt this cake and make everyone happy.

The Sunday Styles section of the New York Times usually lands on the floor before I read it, but a few Sunday’s ago I was intrigued by an article headed Table Talk: The New Family Dinner. I will read anything that has the words Family Dinner in its title. I was encouraged to find that family dinners still exist, but I was dismayed by the author’s description of the conversations that took place at her family’s table and at the tables of friends and others whom she interviewed. Her father used dinnertime to brief his wife on the ins and outs of his day in the office. In another family, the father would engage his sons in oral math puzzles. In yet another, the father led his children in debates about economic policy and civil rights issues. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago describes the debates on issues of the day that he and his brothers had at table as gladiatorial. And there are many other examples that you may want to read about in the article I have posted.

Not one instance was cited when the conversation was about food. At our family table, whether it was that of my parents or the one that my husband and I have shared for fifty-seven years, food may not have been the only topic of conversation, but it was a substantial and even passionate one. How can you sit down to dinner and express no interest in the dishes set before you, in their taste, their preparation, in how they compare with what you may have had a day or a year before? I have been to lunch sitting near businessmen who will munch their way through every morsel of the meal they have ordered without offering a single comment on it. In Italy, they would be talking of practically nothing else. When people go to the cinema, or the theater, or a concert, they come out at the end discussing what they have seen or heard. Is dinner any less an experience worth commenting on?

In 1993 Giuliano published his first book, THE CLASSIC PASTA COOKBOOK.  It instantly became a bestseller.  It was translated into 12 languages and sold over 500,000 copies.  After a while, the publisher, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cease publication.  Now used copies of the book can be found online, sometimes selling for as much as $90.

Fast-forward a few years to the internet, iPads, e-books and new technology.

We are at a transitional cusp. Bookstores, once comforting places with overstuffed chairs, seem to be an endangered species.  Local bookstores are often empty, Borders is gone, and Barnes & Noble has become a Nook store more than a bookstore.  Even in our own hometown, our local Barnes & Noble orders only one book of Giuliano’s at a time.  When it sells they get another; however, they go for days without any of his books in the store.  What is an author to do?

We’ve been lucky that our cooking school in Italy has attracted some very technically savvy people who have fallen in love with Giuliano’s work.  One of our alumni, Bob Huntley, has become so passionate about cooking that he created a company, CulinApp that is dedicated to marrying cooking and technology.  They have already changed the way iPad cooking apps work and created a stunning app with Giuliano.  Check out the free download to learn more.

Now Giuliano is working with Bob on a new project —  creating a completely different kind of e-book. For many, an e-book is a scanned picture of a page of a real book that they can get on their tablet or iPad.  However, the enhanced version of an e-book has the potential to come alive.  Videos can be embedded next to the text.  Crisp, beautiful photography can guide visual learners on a step-by-step basis.  And there is still the text, so that the reader can understand the story behind the recipe and follow it in its clearest form.  Giuliano feels this technology is perfect for a CLASSIC PASTA e-COOKBOOK.

Giuliano is updating the recipes from his original success and taking all new photos and videos. Like an artist, Giuliano muses about his work, edits, restructures, and creates again.  It takes time and money to get this right.

For centuries patrons have commissioned artwork.  Often it was portraits to hang on the walls of stately homes.  Sometimes it was sonnets, regaling the tales of courage. Much of the art that we see in museums was commissioned for a church, the patron’s portrait painted into the audience of a scene from the life of Christ.  In the modern age, governments have taken over the roll of patron but in recent years there have been great cutbacks, in addition, not all art forms get funded.  However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy, and some very enterprising folks have figured out a system to help worthy projects get the money they need.

Enter Kickstarter.com.  Described as a “crowd funding” website for creative projects, Kickstarter helps people fund worthy endeavors ranging from innovative tech, film, music, to food projects and books.  It is not an investment with a monetary return; rather the return is knowing that you helped create something amazing.  To fund Giuliano’s new enhanced e-book, we have turned to kickstarter.  We are asking you, our community, to assist us and become our patrons.  There are various levels of funding opportunities.  For as little as $15 dollars, you get credit as a project backer on the website & book and you get an advance copy of the finished ibook before it is available to the public.  If you feel very generous, fund $500, and go to Houston,  you can join Giuliano for an exclusive day of shooting for the book, cook with Giuliano and join the team for dinner.  There are many levels in between, all with wonderful thank you gifts.  Check out the website and video to learn more.

We are excited that in the first three days of being launched, our project is already funded 34%.  We are looking forward to making Giuliano’s new CLASSIC PASTA COOKBOOK a community project and hope you will join in venturing into a new world that combines authentic Italian cooking with cutting edge, user friendly technology.

Thank you!

Lael & Giuliano

Nestled high in the Ligurian hills near Rapallo lies one of our favorite restaurants in all of Italy.  It is called U Giancu and is a marvelous place to take your family for a gathering.  Outside the restaurant is a playground with plenty of garden space for the kids to romp, but it is the inside that is eye opening.  Everywhere one looks on the walls are cartoons from famous artists.  Dik Browne of Hagar the Horrible fame, Mort Walker, M. Bonfatti, Gary Trudeau, Franco Valussi, Moebius, Bob Gustafson, and Don Rosa are all represented well.  The gallery is a must see if you have any interest in the genre.  However, it isn’t for the sights that our family went to the restaurant three times in 10 days, it was for the food.

The food at U Giancu is beautifully made Ligurian delicacies.  Seasonal delights that change according to the whims of owner and chef, Fausto Oneto.  Light pasta with fabulous pesto, Stuffed anchovies, salt cod, wild mushroom pie, and terrific desserts are all often represented.  Each time we went, there were different items and all were delicious.  So often has Mr. Oneto been asked for the recipes that he has created his own cookbooks, replete with comics, so that the recipes can be shared with the world.

Foremost in the cookbooks are his recipes for desserts; I decided to try the Apple Tart.  The ever-modest Mr. Oneto calls it:  The Apple Tart that nobody can resist eating at least 2 slices.  He then goes on to tell the story of his grandmother Elena who gave him the recipe but also always managed to eat at least three or more slices of this extraordinary tart.

I, of course, had to try this special apple tart for myself.  The cookbook, Il Grembiule a Fumetti (The Cartoon Apron) is in three languages, Italian, English and German.  However, for the American audience the English is a bit difficult.  It is hard to figure out the measurements of a pinch of salt and a drop of milk.  I’ve reworked the recipe into something more familiar to us.  And I must say it is definitely worth trying.  I brought the finished product to my book club, a group of very fit and lovely women. Lunch consisted of a potluck of whole wheat pasta salad, marinated tofu and all that was healthy.  I then brought out my tart; there were no leftover slices.

The tart crust rises while it cooks and the apples become embedded in it.  The sweetness of the crust goes well with the tartness of the apples. I used Fuji apples, but anything crisp will do.  I created a circular tart, layering the apples on top of each other, but I don’t think it is necessary.  The best part of the tart is to eat the apples embedded in the crust, so don’t put too many on top.  The key is to slice the apples very thinly; next time I might even use a mandolin.  I know there will be a next time because my book club has already requested that I serve it again.

Parmigiano Reggiano ageing

According to recent estimates over 30,000 forms of Parmigiano Reggiano were destroyed in the recent earthquake in Reggio Emilia.  In it’s honor, we present this post on the history of cheese with pictures of the birth of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Long ago a nomad set out on a journey; however, he didn’t want to be refreshed solely by water, rather, he decided to put into his leather saddle bags the sweet milk of one of the family’s sheep.  Of course, by the time he reached his destination the milk had curdled. Thus, cheese was discovered.  The origins of cheese are shrouded in the mists of time.  The nomad is thought to have lived around 8,000 BCE but the first written records of cheese are found in Egyptian tombs circa 5,000 BCE.  We know that when Homer ran into the Cyclops on his Odyssey, they were making cheese.  Every hamlet created its own varieties. The terroir and methods of each produced different flavors with some becoming highly prized.  Now, according to the Centre for Retail Research in England, cheese, especially more expensive cheeses such as Parmigiano Reggiano, have become the most stolen grocery item in the world.

Fine dining usually includes a cheese course when a cheese master rolls a cart to the table so diners can choose. Like a sommelier, this person might also suggest appropriate condiments to go with the cheese, such as honeys and fruit chutneys. In Italy, the cheese master is called a maestro assaggiatore, or “master taster” also known as “the nose”. Such a person is a highly respected professional, who has gone through extensive training.  He or she purchases cheese directly from the source and then ages it in their own facility.

Cheese Course

Cheese is actually not difficult to make.  The morning milk of a goat, sheep or cow is mixed and cooked with the previous afternoon’s offerings and then “curdled” by adding rennet, an enzyme. The kind of enzyme or bacteria used will give the cheese distinctive characteristics. Rennet is made from the cleaned dried abomasums of a young calf.  However, since ancient times, cheese makers have looked for other ways to coagulate the milk.   In the Iliad it was suggested that the Greeks used an extract of fig juice to coagulate the milk. In modern times, vegetable coagulants are quite common in industrial cheese factories.

After coagulation the curds must be cut.  The more cuts are made, the more liquid, or whey, will separate from the curds, and the drier the cheese will become. With artisanal cheeses such as Parmigiano-Reggiano the cheese maker, whose skill and knowledge has often been passed down for generations, examines the curd, making sure it is cut properly and checks the temperature as it cooks. The cheese is then taken to a salt bath and then to be aged.  This process may vary depending on the type of cheese being produced.  Some cheese is infused with lemon or other flavors; some would not be bathed before aging, while others would be covered with wax, straw, or even soot while they age.

Brine Bath

It is impossible to quantify exactly how many kinds of cheese there are in the world.  Once discovered, humankind went wild for cheese. Easily transportable, it became valued for its taste, shelf life, and protein content.  The elite vied to import their favorite flavors, and each variety developed a legend.  One of my favorites comes from the Northern region of Piedmont. A young cheese maker’s apprentice had fallen in love with a cowherdess and when he heard the bells of the cows, he could think of nothing but her.  Abandoning his post and his half finished cheese, he raced to be with his love.  The next morning he tried to cover up and finish the cheese in the regular fashion.  It did not go well and the cheese maker, a big burly man with hands as large as cheeses themselves, would have liked to throttle his apprentice.  However, because the apprentice was his sister’s son, he had to figure out another way for revenge. “You will eat your mistake!”  The boy did what he was told and discovered the flavor was magnificent.  And so Gorgonzola Dolce, a fabulous blue vein cheese, was born.

In most of the world cheese is made from raw milk that has not been pasteurized.  It is what gives different cheeses their distinctive character. Unfortunately, the FDA in its zeal to protect us, requires either pasteurization or a minimum aging period. Fresh cheese has not been aged long.  It has the most moisture content of any cheese and you can taste the milk it is made from but you will need to travel to their country of origin to taste them.

There are so many different kinds of cheese that it may be difficult to figure out which to try first and must be disheartening to know that one may not have the chance to try them all. Softer cheeses are younger. Fresh goat cheese, cottage cheese, Neufchatel, mascarpone, and farmer’s cheese all are examples.   Spun cheese, or pasta filata in Italian, is cheese that has been cooked and then kneaded, Mozzarella, Oaxaca or Provolone belong in the fresh cheese category.  They can be tangy but are mild in flavor and chewy.  Midlevel on the firmness scale is soft and semi-soft cheese.  Examples are:  Colby, Fontina, Havarti, Asadero, Port Salut, and Gouda.  Again, there are as many variations of flavor in this category as there are cheeses.  Most are somewhat mild but firm to the tooth.  A favorite cheese in this category is the soft “Bloomy” ripened cheese such as Camembert, Brie and Humboldt fog.  Their rinds are usually white and almost furry in texture, the cheese ripens from the outside in.  Depending on ripeness, the flavor can range from mild to pungent, these are often the cheeses that people serve as hors d’oeuvres at gatherings.

Ricotta is actually not a cheese at all. In Italian it means “re-cooked” and it is the whey that was left over from the cheese making process and re-cooked to form the creamy curds that create the very fragile but fabulous whey “cheese”.  Although ricotta is perhaps the most famous, Lor from Turkey, Urda from Romania, Brunost from Norway, Mizithra from Greece and Requeijao from Portugal are all terrific examples.

Tools of the Trade

Hard cheeses are older and have less moisture.  They are often aged for months to years before being eaten.  They can be dry, tangy and grainy, due to their crystalline texture. They are eaten last on any cheese plate.  Parmigiano Reggiano, often called the King of Cheese, falls into this category. After its brine bath, the cheese is taken to what some call the “cathedral” of cheese, a room full of wooden shelves from floor to ceiling full of wheels of cheese where it ages.  However, the cheese is not left completely alone during the aging process.  Someone, or now a robot, comes and wipes the sweat from the cheese and dusts it.  Also, during the aging process, the cheese maker or member of the cheese organization will take the cheese down from its rack and tap it on it’s outside to see if it has any air pockets.  If deemed worthy, the cheese will be branded and left to age longer. In the case of Parmigiano Reggiano, usually 12 more months.  In special cases a Parmigiano Reggiano can be aged up to 5 years until it becomes Stravecchio, or “very old” and is especially prized.  Other famous hard cheeses are aged Cheddar, which is marvelous up to 12 years, Switzerland’s Sbrinz, made from cow’s milk, a mountain cheese that must be aged a minimum of 16months, and one of the most popular of the Spanish cheeses, Mahon Sec, which is served both when mild & young but develops a piquant, nutty flavor when aged.  Of course the Dutch Gouda, often thought of bland and rubbery when young transforms when it ages and is a wonderful surprise at age 5-7.  Manchego, a Spanish sheep’s milk cheese has become especially popular and is often served with quince paste. Pecorino, is the classic Italian sheep cheese that, when aged, becomes intensely flavored.  Hard cheese isn’t just for grating; many feel that the crystalline crunchy bits of hard cheese are one of its most pleasurable characteristics.

Anyone up for Cheese?

Mass produced industrial cheese making began in the 1850’s and spread throughout the world. It was during this time that cheese consumption spread to sub-Africa and the orient.  By WWII, more people purchased processed cheese than artisanal. Of course, some continue to make their ancient perfect product.  In a village that requires a two-hour hike to the foothills of the Alps, lives Leone, an 80-year-old cheese maker and keeper of a dying art.  His cows feast on the fat sweet summer grasses of the mountain pastures, and, although he only makes one wheel a day, his cheese is known far and wide as the best expression of Monte Veronese. Leone despairs, as there is no one to follow in his art form.  However, others are creating artisanal cheeses and here in the US we are experiencing a renaissance of product, many of which can be sampled at our local cheese festival.

Picking the perfect cheese can be a difficult, but very pleasurable task. Whatever kind of cheese you might enjoy, eat it at room temperature so that it won’t be too hard and its flavor can envelop your palate. The best way to discover cheeses is to have your local maestro assaggiatore explain a few to you and then sit down and enjoy.

I had seen Giuliano’s extraordinary new pasta app in various stages of production, and I loved getting a taste of it on iTunes. The excerpt features a favorite pasta of mine, Spaghetti alla Norma, which is infrequently mentioned in food blogs. What Giuliano has is an exceptional gift for synthesizing and clearly defining the steps of a pasta recipe. No one does this better. In fact, his first book, The Classic Pasta Cookbook, was a world-wide success, translated into a score of languages. It’s a pity that it has become an expensive hard-to get connoisseur’s item. This new app of Giuliano gives the lucid kind of instructions that made that first book famous, and does it, thanks to the technology, so much more dramatically. It’s like having him cook alongside you.

If you are looking for an elegant method of serving small, young, spring zucchini go no further.  Fettuccine with Zucchini in a Saffron Cream Sauce is both flavorful and stylish and is sure to please. The delicate flavors of saffron and zucchini are perfectly suited to each other. The recipe, which is at the bottom of this post, can also be found on Giuliano Hazan’s brand new interactive iPad app.

Saffron, as you may know, is one of the world’s most expensive spices.  Originally cultivated in Iran, saffron was prized by the Romans and made its way throughout Italy.  Today, fields of the beautiful purple flower, a form of crocus, can be found growing in Abruzzo, Le Marche, and Sardinia.  Always look for threads of saffron rather than powdered, which can be adulterated and often has quality control issues. Long used as a part of traditional healing methods as well as the dyeing of cloths, saffron is widely used in cooking.  Its aroma is often considered sweet and grassy, and fortunately for everyone’s purse, a little goes a long way to create a beautiful and flavorful dish.

The secret of Fettuccine with Zucchini and Saffron is to cut the zucchini into sticks thin enough and cook them long enough to release their rich sweet flavor.  In the app, Giuliano shows in his video how and why this works so well.  The first page of the recipe lists both the ingredients and cookware. There is a Cookbook view, for those of us who want things traditional, and a step-by-step view with videos for each step where Giuliano walks us hand in hand through the recipe.  The videos are short but they pack a lot of information in Giuliano’s amiable and easy style that helps viewers make the dish successfully. The final view is a Gantt chart called CulinView that gives you an entire flow of the dish from start to finish

In a traditional cookbook format, there is only one view option available.  The recipe is static and the cook must imagine the dish.  Sometimes there are pictures of photo perfect dishes but not the ingredients about to be used.  A blog allows for more step-by-step photos.  However, it is still a linear method, we start at the beginning and read through until the end.  The beauty of the app is that if one chooses, one can start anywhere one likes.  In the Giuliano Hazan iPad app there is a SpinView that puts all of the videos, steps and ingredients together in a way that allows the viewer to click on anything one wishes. Throughout the app the reader can make notes to themselves and add items to a shopping list/cart. Giuliano’s perplexed face as I learned to navigate what seemed obvious to him is seared into my memory.  Fortunately, CulinApp took people like me into account, everything is easy to find and, although I must say I tried, there is no way to break the app.

We are thrilled that we can finally share the app with you.  Below please find the recipe for Fettuccine with Zucchini and Saffron sauce.  For the benefit of the videos, I encourage you to try the app. We would love to hear your feedback of what it was like making the recipe using the app.  Buon Appetito!

This is a #PastaLove post.

It was tremendously moving to see my son cooking on national television (THE TODAY SHOW VIDEO) a dish of my mother’s that has been part of my food memories forever. He did a pretty neat job of it too. That new book of his – Hazan Family Favorites – is filled with good food, no trendy stuff, simple recipes for terrifically satisfying flavors. If they had been anything less they wouldn’t have survived so many generations of home cooks.

While we don’t celebrate it in Italy, Happy Mother’s Day to all who do.

Don’t miss the start of halibut season, the finest fish in our oceans.

It’s already good, just be careful not overcook it. Made it today, rubbed with good salt, a mixture of lemon juice and mustard – not too much of the latter, homemade bread crumbs, and Ligurian olive oil oil, then wrapped tightly in heavy foil, and baked at 450° for 15 minutes.

Although for many cheesecake isn’t often associated with Italian cooking, it has been a staple since Roman times.  Cato the Elder, in 160 BCE includes two cheesecake recipes that were used for religious rituals.  The main difference between what we would consider typical New York American cheesecake and Italian cheesecake is that in Italy, cheesecake is made with ricotta rather than cream cheese.  It is also a bit lighter and dryer, more cakelike and less cloying. This recipe combines milk with the ricotta so that the effect is a wonderful creamy texture.  I also discovered that Italians do not add any fruit topping to their cheesecakes, though they sometimes add candied citron to the filling. Giuliano wasn’t pleased when I suggested adding strawberries to his ricotta cake recipe that I recently made to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. My father-in-law liked the cake so much he kept going back for more.  Later I saw him picking at the cake plate making sure that he had gotten every crumb.  I did serve strawberries with the cake, but none of the Italians ate them.  In truth, the cake didn’t need them. It was rich and creamy enough on its own.

Cheesecake is always a welcome dish at potlucks.  It is also perfect for a mother’s day buffet.  It has a homey quality that is great for family & friends get togethers.  Most recently we were invited to a birthday celebration of twins who are friends of our daughters.  It was a big gathering because they were also celebrating their Bat Mitzvah, and the mother was worried about running out of food as more people were saying they would attend than she had thought.  She reached out to friends, including us, and asked us to make “something”.  We knew this cheesecake would be celebratory as well as comforting to all.  I must admit, I thought that there would be enough leftovers from my mother-in-law’s birthday cake but much to my chagrin (though I was also quite flattered) my father-in-law had not left much to bring anywhere and I had to make a whole new cake.  This ricotta cheesecake is airy and smooth and doesn’t make one feel heavy.  At the party, it was the first dessert to go –next time I’ll have to make more.

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.  ~Tenneva Jordan

On this mother’s day, she can have her cake and eat it too. Remembering all the fabulous mother’s out there.  Thank you

The Times had an interesting story about what they do with fresh young peas at L’Oustau de Baumaniere, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Provence. In some ways, the recipe published in the Times closely parallels how I do peas, but it also diverges from it. Read it and judge for yourself which approach is likely to yield the more forthright and sweeter fresh peas taste.

As in an uncounted number of Italian dishes, the base of mine is onions, although in this instance, as I cook the onions in olive oil I sweat them, that is to say I sprinkle them with salt and partly cover the saucepan to draw out some of their sweet liquid. I use more romaine lettuce than the Oustau’s chef, who dumps it in the pan just before serving the peas. I shred it very fine, and put it in the pan together with the peas. The juices of the onions and the lettuce are usually sufficient to cook the peas, if they are very young and tender. If it becomes necessary, I add a little water to keep the cooking going. I have no need for broth. When I feel irrepressibly industrious, I also peel the pods, as the Oustau’s chef likes to do. But peeling the peas themselves? That is overkill and plain silly.
We do many terrific things with peas. The very tiny early ones are ideal prepared in the Florentine manner, in a skillet with olive oil and prosciutto diced fine. In my region, Romagna, we make a sauce of prosciutto and peas for tagliatelle. In the Veneto, larger peas known as “senatori” are used for the brothy risotto known as risi e bisi. The most sublime dish that uses fresh peas is vignarola, the Roman vegetable braise that also includes artichokes and fava beans. A similar combination of those ingredients is the Sicilian frittedda. They are all in one or another of my books.

My father-in-law, Victor perhaps had too much chicken as a child, because he will happily go the rest of his life without eating it.  It is the opposite for Marcella, who loves it, but out of deference to Victor, rarely makes it in her own home.  We recently had them over to celebrate her 88^th birthday, and chicken was what we served my famous mother-in-law, Marcella Hazan. Out of deference to Victor we made a primo of pasta, of which he happily consumed multiple portions.

The lunch kicks off a celebratory week.  Giuliano’s new book, HAZAN FAMILY FAVORITES has just been published and he will be a guest on THE TODAY SHOW, on May 3^rd.  He usually appears between 9:00 & 10:00 am.  Our daughters, to keep their father’s head on straight, call him the filler; however, he was bumped only once, and that was for Michelle Obama’s inaugural gown.  On the Today Show he will be making recipes from the new book, a baklava recipe and Mahshi (stuffed cabbage). A recipe handed down from Giuliano’s grandmother.  We are very proud of this book.  Thanks to his publisher, Stewart Tabori & Chang, it is beautifully done and is almost a coffee table book.  It is also eminently readable and useable.  These are the foods Giuliano remembers from childhood and the ones we eat now.  They are as varied as they are delicious. On Thursday May 10th, just in time for Mother’s Day, will be purchase on Amazon day.  So… if you are thinking of getting the book that way, we would greatly appreciate it if you would buy it then.  Thanks.

This grilled marinated Chicken Breast recipe is in the new book.  It is a casual dish that solves the problem of dried out chicken.  Marinating it with lemon starts the cooking process and actually reduces the time on the grill.  The breasts come out succulent and flavorful, wonderful for all of us in the rest of the family who enjoy chicken.  It is also gluten free and good for those who are trying to cut red meat from their diet.  It is a terrific dish for the upcoming barbecueing season!

Artichoke Risotto has become one of those dishes I dream about.  I adore artichokes and one of the benefits of going to UC Santa Cruz was living next to Castroville, artichoke capital of the world, and getting luscious globe artichokes during the spring and fall season.  As an undergrad, much to the chagrin of my roommate, I would boil the artichoke in a hot pot.  Often the artichoke was so big that it barely fit.  Little did I know at that time, that there were a myriad of other ways to prepare artichokes, and that by marrying my beloved, I would learn many delicious methods.

Photo taken by cooking school alumni students Dawn and Eric Wright, http://www.wrightangle.com/food/blog/

During our cooking school in Italy we take a tour of the wonderful open-air market in Padua.  We are always treated to the variety of kinds and sizes of the magical thistle and often get questioned about how to prepare them.  Artichokes are loved by Italians, although they never eat them just boiled with drawn butter as is the American tradition.  Thought to have originated in the Middle East, it is believed that the Arabs brought artichokes to Naples.  We know that artichokes were in that area in 700 and then moved up to Florence during the Renaissance, from there they became a luxury in Venice, birthplace of risotto, so it seems appropriate that we share a recipe for that quintessential Italian dish.  It took awhile for artichokes to move to France and the rest of Europe; however, they were planted in the English King Henry VIII’s garden in 1530 where they were thought to be an extravagance and an aphrodisiac.

Creating artichoke risotto can be a bit intimidating.  The artichokes need to be trimmed properly and at first the technique can be a bit daunting.  No worries, just a bit of practice is needed.  We like to use the small artichokes that in our stores come in packets.  They are more tender than the big globe artichokes and are easier to trim.

To trim an artichoke, you need to fold each leaf back and snap it where the tender part ends, then pull down to remove it.  Continue around the artichoke until you can see the lighter part coming halfway up the leaf.  Then cut across the remaining dark part of the leaves and discard the top half.  Also cut away the stem.  Rub any of the cut parts with lemon so the exposed flesh doesn’t oxidize and turn black.  Giuliano showed how to do this with a globe artichoke on one of his Today Show segments.  He was working with Al Rocker and when Giuliano said “rub your hands with lemon too so they won’t turn black” Al stated, “well… too late for me”.  Giuliano, in true form, pressed on.  I think I would have lost it there.  How would you have handled it? Watch the Today show segment here.

After cutting off the top, use a paring knife to trim the outside of the artichoke, removing all of the dark green parts.  Since the small artichokes are so tender it is fine to eat the fuzz in the center.  Cut the artichokes into ½- inch wedges and place them in a bowl of lemon water.  Yay!  The hard part is done.

Now you just need to cook the risotto.  This is when I suggest child labor is a must.  Stirring risotto is a great activity for children who are mature enough not to burn themselves on the hot stove.  We put ours on a stool in front of the stove and off they go.  It is a chore that they welcome, and much prefer to walking the dog or setting the table.  Although they need adult supervision, it gives the adult freedom to make the salad or another part of the dinner. Buon Appetito

Originally posted on facebook.

I was intrigued yesterday to read in The New York Times Sunday Magazine an interview with Sandra Lee. I hadn’t heard of her, but I learned that she is a TV cooking celebrity and the companion of Governor Andrew Cuomo. He would some day make a creditable candidate for President, but even if I were to live long enough to see it, I wouldn’t vote for him. Sandra Lee believes that people who place too much importance on fresh ingredients are snobs. I’d hate to think of the devastating effect her presence in the White House would have on American cooking.

We are very proud to announce that this video of Giuliano’s Chocolate Custard with an Italian twist won the coveted Telly Award.  The video was created by Caputo Creative for Safest Choice Pasteurized Eggs, a company for which Giuliano acts as spokesperson.

The recipe is a luscious chocolate dessert with Amaretti cookies that is a wonderful ending to the perfect Italian meal.  The recipe is a favorite with our family and we sometimes teach it at our cooking school in Italy.  It is a satisfying dessert that will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Safest Choice Pasteurized Eggs has been generous and agreed to host a giveaway on our site.  Please check it out, everyone who enters will receive a coupon for a free dozen eggs and we have a three tiered prize giveaway.  You could win a: Cuisinart Ice Cream maker & 3 coupons for free eggs, or a Silpat Non-Stick Baking Mat, & (1) One Safest Choice spatula  & 3 coupons for free eggs, or a White insulated grocery tote (w/ red circle P) filled with Safest Choice goodies; spatula, recipe cards. Everyone who enters the giveaway and writes “I give permission” in the comment field on that page, will receive a coupon to try one dozen Safest Choice Eggs for free.

To enter the giveaway click here: Giveaway

The only hard part in this recipe is waiting for it to cool.  If we aren’t careful, we often will see smudge marks on the top where our youngest daughter has “checked” to see if it was ready yet.   However, this is not just a children’s dessert, it is an elegant ending to an adult meal.  The semisweet chocolate and the amaretti cookies make for a dish that is for a sophisticated palate.  Although our youngest would correctly say that her palate has been educated enough to enjoy anything with dark chocolate.

Most would agree that PR is hard and that to get your brand known, a giveaway is often very useful.  This is a great giveaway where everyone will win.  Grand prize is a Cuisinart ice cream maker, first prize is a fantastic Silpat, second prize is an insulated grocery tote and everyone who enters can get a coupon to try Safest Choice eggs for free.  Why are we hosting such a great giveaway? Well… 2010 was an abysmal marketing year for eggs.  Salmonella and eggs were in the news constantly and people were wary about conventially produced eggs.  At about that time, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post comparing the flavor of eggs.  Although we found that a fresh egg plucked from the nest was amazing, we found that pretty much all the other convential eggs tasted the same.  An egg is a perfect flavor conveyor: it tastes exactly like what the chicken ate.  Whether cage free, brown, or conventional, if bought at the grocery store, they tend to all be very similar.  So… we thought, if we aren’t ready to raise chickens, why not try pasteurized eggs?  They taste very similar to conventional eggs, actually due to part of their process they taste fresher and are able to last longer; and although they are a bit more difficult to whip, adding cream of tartar is all that is needed and they obliviate the concern of salmonella contamination.  This is good for everyone, and especially good for people like me with cancer or immune deficiency difficulties.

Giuliano was so impressed with the Safest Choice brand of pasteurized eggs that he was willing to become a paid spokesperson for them.  He has recently done some commercials for them, one of which received the coveted Telly award, and in his travels he teaches recipes using their eggs.  They have been gracious enough to sponsor this giveaway on our blog. They are happy to send anyone who writes in the comment section, I give permission, a coupon so that you can try the safest choice brand of pasteurized eggs for free.  Once you’ve written in the comment section, I will send your e-mail to them and they will contact you for your address.  In addition, they are sponsoring this giveaway of amazing prizes.

GRAND PRIZE:  (1) One 2x Cuisinart ICE-30BC Pure Indulgence 2-Quart Automatic Frozen Yogurt, Sorbet, and Ice Cream maker & 3 coupons for free eggs

FIRST PRIZE:   (1) One Silpat Non-Stick Baking Mat, 11 5/8 x 16 1/2-inches, Half Sheet Size & (1) One Safest Choice spatula  & 3 coupons for free eggs

SECOND PRIZE: White insulated grocery tote (w/ red circle P) filled with Safest Choice goodies; spatula, recipe cards

All approved entrys will receive a coupon for a free one dozen Safest Choice Eggs.

Giveaway dates:  April 17- April 26.

Official rules and methods to enter:

To enter the giveaway, please scroll to the bottom of the page and write I GIVE PERMISSION in the comment section.

OFFICIAL RULES:

This is where we get to put in all of those lovely legal disclaimers.  Our intent with this give-a-way is pure enjoyment.   Safest Choice Pasturiezed Egg’s is responsible for the shipping and product and we assume no liability.  We aren’t lawyers and we think it is sad that we need to put in disclaimers; however, it is our intent to conform to all U.S. rules and to only offer the possibility of the product to people who will personally enjoy it.  Basically, if something “bad” happens, we are sorry but don’t hold us liable, we enjoyed the product and are trying to give you an opportunity to do so too!  If you are out to “get” us, please stop and think of what kind of world you are creating.

No purchase necessary to enter or win.  Entrants can enter twice but will only recieve one coupon or prize. Extra entries can be obtained once per social media outlet (tweeting (please put @educatedpalate in your tweets so we will know), facebooking, or “sharing”) with a trackback to this post are fine but one first must write “I give permission” on this post. Give-a-way is open only to those who are 18 years of age at time of entry and have a US address. Educated Palate and Hazan Enterprises assumes no responsibility for late or misdirected entries due to SPAM, technological, or e-mail filtering issues or for lost prizes. The use of any system, robot, agent, or software to automatically submit entries in connection with this Giveaway is prohibited.  Educated Palate’s decisions concerning all matters related to this sweepstakes are final. Anyone who writes I give permission and fits the criteria in the allotted amount of time wins. Hazan Enterprises employees and their immediate family members are not eligible to win.  Winner grants to Educated Palate and Safest Choice Eggs, the right to use his/her name and biographical information in advertising and promotion without compensation or permission.  Any tax, is the sole responsibility of the winner. By entering the giveaway through this website you are releasing Educated Palate, Safest Choice Eggs, and Hazan Enterprises from any liability arising out of participation in this Giveaway or the acceptance, use, or misuse of the prize. Void where prohibited by law.

Cooking on salt blocks is very fashionable.  You can purchase salt bricks from around the world, from the Himalayas to Hawaii.  They can be beautiful and cooking on them perfectly seasons whatever food product you wish to put on them.

Recently we received some salt blocks from Cervia, Italy.  Known as the “sweet salt of the popes” this salt is harvested from salt flats in existence since Etruscan times and at one time, one of the salt flats was reserved exclusively for the Papal table. I must admit to looking at my husband, Giuliano Hazan, a bit askance, what were we going to do with a big box of salt blocks?  He then got a gleam in his eye that always means something delicious is cooking.

Giuliano decided that for lunch we should have beef tenderloin on a salt brick.  He superheated the brick and brought it out to the top of our counter.  After only a few minutes we had the most delectable, mouth watering, perfectly seasoned meat.  He finished it with a drizzle of olive oil and pepper.  It smelled and looked so good that I did not even wait until he put it on the table before tasting it.  It was an easy masterpiece.

Cleaning the salt brick was easy.  We just let it cool and scraped the surface with a dinner knife.  I’m looking forward to more fun as we try scallops, eggs, and vegetables on it. I figure when the salt block wears down to an unusable level, I can always put it in the bath to sooth my aches.

The painter Jasper Johns, on whom the President has bestowed the Medal of Freedom, has described the process of painting as “you do something, then you do something to it, then you do something more.” There are many who think this could also be the way to cook. In a blog that I won’t otherwise identify, I have come across a chef’s variations on a monument of Bolognese cuisine, pork braised in milk.  Besides the pork and milk, the classic version of the dish has only three other ingredients, butter, salt, and pepper. The blogger started with those, but added olive oil, a dozen garlic cloves, lemon zest, sage leaves, thyme, bay leaves, and rosemary. One of his followers approved but proposed what he called a minor improvement, adding a couple of anchovy fillets, and whipping up the sauce after it is done.  Was there anything left untouched, I wonder, in these persons’  pantry?

This was an acute case of culinary vandalism, but it has a lot of company. It is but one instance of a widespread approach to cooking that is frequently described as “creative”. Those of us who have been drawn to characterizing cooking as an art – and I was once among the guilty  – are partly responsible for the crowds that gather under the misleading banner of creativity. It is time at long last to peel off the pretentious label of “art” and see cooking for what it is.

What Mr. Johns makes is art. He is engaged in a process that is continually in flux as the creative imperative carries it toward a not wholly prefigured destination. “The power of the mind in creation – as Shelley put it – arises from within … and the conscious portion of our natures are unprophetic of its approach or departure”.  Art, a product of creativity, is neither description nor illustration, which are the products of craft.  Just as cooking is the product of craft.

A cook may yield occasionally to a bent for improvisation, but she does so while taking notice of the discoveries made by the cooks who have preceded her. The procedures she follows must be prophetic of the truth she seeks. If she doesn’t know what to expect from the ingredients she is using and the steps she is taking, she shouldn’t be in a kitchen.

We should be spending our time as cooks in understanding, practicing, perfecting, and respecting a craft that is essential to our survival. We ought not to be distracted by trends, lured by fashion, obsessed by the pursuit of originality. These are not directly linked to the pleasure that well-crafted food brings.  Nor do we need to look to restaurant cooking as example by which we should model our own. The craft of cooking is not only practicable at home, it was born in the home.

Recently, one of Marcella’s facebook friends asked.

Marcella, can you answer the age-old question as to why Italians do not put cheese on pasta with fish? (or on any fish for that matter!)

Marcella answered:

When it comes to flavor, consensus over time is the foundation supporting traditional predilections. In those preparations where seafood is cooked or marinated in olive oil – linguine with clams, grilled whole fish – the texture and flavor of Parmesan cheese are incongruous. How do you explain incongruity? You either get it or you don’t. This not an absolute prohibition, however. In Venice, where we sometimes cook seafood in butter, a light dose of Parmesan cheese is acceptable. And even in some strongly flavored dishes based on olive oil, cheese may find a place, but only Romano, not Parmigiano.

Sometimes it is nice to change even the most traditional dishes, and that’s how these truffle cheese scrambled eggs were created. Although we adore our girls, there are times when it is nice just to be the two of us.  We were reminded of this again when both girls had sleepovers at friend’s homes.  We woke up late on a Sunday morning and didn’t have to rush anywhere.  We were able to enjoy each other’s company like the, still in love, married couple that we are.  I made these easy eggs with Sottocenere truffle cheese and Giuliano pronounced them delicious.

Recently, at one of our hands-on Italian cooking classes in our home in Sarasota Florida, we served some Sottocenere – Italian truffle cheese – during the break we take to taste interesting Italian cheeses and meats.  Sottocenere literally means “under cinders”.  I don’t know why, but Giuliano hates it when I call it “under soot”, he prefers “under ash”.  It is a soft cow’s milk cheese from the Veneto region and has a mild creamy flavor.  The rind is covered in grey ash that not only acts as a preservative but also adds subtle flavors. The magnificence of this cheese is in the black truffles that fleck it throughout.  Served at room temperature, the aroma is elegant and intoxicating.

We were lucky enough to have some of the cheese leftover after the class so I decided to use it to enrich our romantic Sunday morning eggs.  We like to use relatively few ingredients but the best possible.  I used dried oregano from Sicily.  The aroma was fabulous. I used Safest Choice pasteurized eggs.  As many of you know, I’ve been diagnosed with stage III colorectal cancer.  While having a Daliesque roller coaster experience of good days and bad, I have to be particularly careful of not getting sick so pasteurized eggs, which eliminate the fear of salmonella, are an easy choice for us. Giuliano is quite impressed with them and (full disclosure) is a spokesperson for Safest Choice.

A lifetime of associating fresh fava beans with Spring and with Easter lamb urged me to pass them by. The bin at Whole Foods was overflowing, they had just come in to the store, they were fresh, and in anticipation of the pleasure they could bring, I stopped and loaded my cart, perhaps ten pounds’ worth. What do two old people living alone do with ten pounds of fava beans?  All the largest ones I blanched and peeled them, ziplocked them, and every few days grabbed a fistful out of the fridge to snack on, serving them with shreds of pecorino or aged Manchego, a drizzle of olive oil and grating of black pepper, and once with freshly sliced bresaola; the medium ones I braised in olive oil in their flavorful skins together with guanciale; in another unseasonal miracle, fresh English peas and tiny artichokes came to the market, and a couple of cupfuls of the medium favas went into making frittedda, which along with vignarola, composed of  the same ingredients, may be a strong candidate for the most delicious thing one can eat; there were some blanched, peeled  favas left over and they went into a quick sauce for homemade tagliatelle, sautéed in butter with a hunk of prosciutto ground very fine and whipping cream. How could I turn my back on decades of sticking to the season? It was easy.

Sometimes one just needs to celebrate, and one of our favorite dishes to celebrate with is Tiramisù, one of Italy’s best known and loved desserts.  Luscious and silky, it is a wonderful dessert for many occasions and is quite easy and quick to prepare . Often thought of as the quintessential Italian dessert, it is actually rather young in the pantheon of Italian cooking, originating in Venice in the mid 20th century.

What makes the perfect recipe?  Almost everyone we’ve met in the Veneto has their own “perfect” variation for Tiramisu.  There is no such thing.  As we say about all of Giuliano’s recipes, please try it the way it was written at least once, and then feel free to tweak it and make it your own.  Giuliano created the recipe in the way he thought was best.  Our rendition is light and the flavors are not overpowering.  One can diffentiate the chocolate, rum and espresso, and there is no cloying aftertaste.  The only problem with this recipe is that in our family, we can eat much more of it than is appropriate.

Tiramisù literally means “pick me up” so it’s important to use richly flavored Italian coffee, which is easily made in a stovetop Moka.  One of the key ingredients in Tiramisù is mascarpone, and we add it, one third at a time, incorporating it into the mixture taking care not to over-whip it. Finally, whip the cream until it is firm and carefully fold it in.

Pour half the filling over the layer of ladyfingers then cover with another layer of coffee-soaked ladyfingers. Then pour in the remaining mascarpone filling then generously sprinkle unsweetened cocoa on top. The tiramisù now needs to set in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours, or overnight and it’s ready to serve. Buon appetito!

Watch Giuliano prepare tiramisù in the video below he made for Safest Choice pasteurized eggs.

Photo by Joseph de Leo

Some dishes are already perfect. One of them is that salad in summer in which you would find very good canned tuna, a raw onion sliced very thin, cooked beans, the whole seasoned with salt, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and coarsely ground black pepper. The only thing you need to pay attention to is the quality of the ingredients. The tuna must be packed in olive oil, probably either in Spain or Italy, and ideally, but not indispensably, it could be the belly portion, ventresca. The beans may be fresh shelled cannellini or cranberry beans, if your market has them, or else very good recently dried beans, soaked overnight, and cooked at a gentle simmer until tender – possibly two hours – in water, olive oil, salt, sage leaves, and several garlic cloves. Use them in the salad while still warm. The salt: from the sea; the vinegar: the straightforward acidification of true red wine; the oil: non-industrial genuine extra-virgin; the onion: not diced,  but sliced very thin, soaked in water an hour so, drained and dried in paper towels; the black peppercorns: tellicherry.

David Tanis, a chef writing the City Kitchen column for the NYT, has taken this immaculate dish and, as chefs are wont to do, has touched it up. Red and yellow bell peppers, red pepper flakes, a smashed garlic clove, basil, mint, or marjoram appear, gratuitously, in the salad. Most unfortunately of all, he replaces the good canned tuna with fresh albacore. Fresh tuna, a bland, almost neutral-tasting meat can’t compare with the irresistible flavor of good Mediterranean tuna packed in olive oil. People who think to improve a niçoise salad by using fresh instead of olive oil-packed tuna make the same mistake.

The City Kitchen is a column intended to showcase simple home cooking, one of the Times’s most commendable ideas. Why is a chef writing it?

Summertime brings the onset of sweet, succulent melons, and one of our family’s favorite recipes is this surprisingly fresh tasting Spaghetti with Melon pasta.  Pasta with melon might sound like an unlikely combination, but this dish is REALLY good.  While on our European extravaganza trip, we stopped off to visit our friends Mike Yourison and Dr. Suzy Steelman in Umbria.  They were kind enough to invite us to stay at their beautiful hilltop home, so the least we could do was to make dinner.  They graciously accepted and thought it would be nice to invite a few of their Italian friends.  We ended up having a wonderful evening with 15 people in attendance.

Giuliano thought it would be fun to make this dish and have the Italians guess what was in it.  Many thought of squash due to the color, a couple thought pineapple and we had one person who guessed strawberry.  After numerous tries, someone finally came up with the correct answer.

The origins of this dish are unknown.  Giuliano found it when he went to a restaurant in Venice that specialized in unusual dishes, none of which were seafood or risotto, the staples of Venetian cuisine.  Although the restaurant is no longer there he did remember this delicious dish of pasta with cantaloupe.  Marcella started making it at home and now Giuliano often makes it when we have friends over.  Once it is cooked, the melon is mostly unrecognizable and it’s great fun seeing if people can guess what the sauce’s “secret” ingredient is.  The freshness of the dish is soothing on a hot evening and takes full advantage of the bounty of summer.

Giuliano made this dish for a TV segment he did.  This Spaghetti with melon pasta on Daytime TV video shows you exactly how to make this lovely pasta.  As in Umbria, not a bit was left in the bowl.

When I was cooking only for my husband, and subsequently for him and my growing son, I had no doubt about what would taste good to us and what would be the simplest way for me to produce it. I embarked on a professional food career with the same conviction. I understood cooking to be a set of simple techniques applied with respect for the basic components of a meal freshly made from good, everyday ingredients. Cooking was the craft, I thought, practiced at home to bring good food and happiness to the family table. The classes I taught and cookbooks I wrote were intended as demonstrations of those principles. Cooking was from always, cooking was forever, I thought.

A time came, however, that I began to wonder whether cooking was something else. Was it entertainment for television, was it the arbitrary creation of attention-seeking and media-ennobled chefs, did it emerge from an expensive collection of science-fiction gadgetry, was it the product of a laboratory or of a kitchen, was it foaming cauliflower or spherical tomatoes, was it a two-and-a-half hour process for frying a skilletful of potatoes? Could it be that the subject of my teaching and writing was becoming an anachronism, headed for the waste bin of history?

It was almost a year and a half ago that I began to bring up the posts of a group calling itself Pomodori e Vino. There were nine of them, seven women, two men, scattered in the US from Alabama, Florida, Missouri, and California, to Alaska. Two lived in Canada. They had proposed to cook their way in rotation through all the recipes, more than 400, in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, a book some of whose contents I had set down 40 years ago.

Every day for sixty-two weeks my Pomodori, as I began to refer to them, cooked a dish from Essentials without skipping a day or a recipe. There were no failures, although they experienced different degrees of pleasure. If you are brought up in North America, you may have a cultural impediment to the free enjoyment of lamb kidneys. Every post provided a candid commentary on the production of the recipe of the day, on its provisioning, on the sometimes unfamiliar techniques and methods it required, on the stages of its preparation, and on the final result. Photographs lucidly accompanied the steps, from assemblage of ingredients to presentation at table.

If you have ever feared, as I have, that the practice of good, simple cooking was going out of style, go to the Pomodori e Vino blog, and retrace as many of its posts as you can make time for. No comparable collection of recipes has ever before been brought so fully to life, so respectfully executed, so minutely illustrated, and so usefully commented by such a collection of genuine cooks. As I followed my Pomodori each day that they cooked from a page of that tome of mine, I was comforted to find that cooking, as I had understood and practiced it, had endured and still mattered.

Spring has sprung and  one of our favorite dishes to make with all of the wonderful spring bounty that is to be had in the farmer’s markets is Spaghetti alla Norma. In Sarasota, Florida, where we live, there are 7 farmer’s markets where vendors of fruits and vegetables, fresh gulf fish, and even a traveling crepérie ply their wares and there are some fabulous foodie finds.  Many of those with stands have only recently become produce farmers.   Recently I met someone whose family had been sod farmers, I was amazed to learn that due to the downturn in the economy her family has turned to growing fabulous vegetables and flowers. They were able to use the Obama administration stimulus money to assist them in diversifying their crops and making their land create income.  Like many who go to the farmer’s markets, when we go it is part shopping expedition and part amusement park visit.  We almost always find unplanned gems that we must purchase, and then wonder what we will do with them when we get them home.

One of the dishes we’ve made with the bounty of vegetables we’ve bought at the farmer’s market is Pasta alla Norma.  This is a recipe we have taught in our home cooking class and is delicious.  This dish was named after Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, Norma.  It is a typical Sicilian pasta recipe, flavorful, fresh, and even vegetarian.  It is exceptional with fresh farmer’s market produce.

I love espresso, I hate espresso machines. In the first part of my life I made coffee over the stove with the Moka, the Italian 8-sided aluminum pot. I so loved it that when I wrote my first cookbook I had the artist do a drawing of it accompanied by my instructions for using it. About 30 years ago I switched to an electric espresso machine. I have had several. I have just given away my last one. It was ostensibly fully automatic, but it was as automatic and accommodating as this computer. Now I am back to the Moka, one less machine to argue with, lots more room on my counter, and terrific coffee in the morning!

Deborah Johnson Horn wrote to Marcella: Love my Mokas (or would that be Moki in Italian?) I have the 3 cup, 6 cup, and 12 cup sizes. For home brewing, there is nothing as good as that low-tech stovetop!

Marcella Hazan Moke, the plural of feminine “a”. When I used to travel, I always packed Bialetti’s electric Moka. How could I start the day without my Moka?

Must it be necessary, I wonder, to be born Italian to experience the sustenance that coffee from a moka brings? Studying at night for your finals with a cup of it in hand? Running up the stairs to put the pot on the stove to melt away the chill from a frosty winter day? Gulping searing swallows of it at daybreak when rushing to take the train that will take you to a job interview in the city? Sharing the last large cup of the day with your love feeling wholly unconcerned that it might deprive you of sleep? No single shot or two from an espresso machine could take its place. That Italians know what a good espresso from the bar tastes like cannot be disputed. They have all had it, probably once and possibly several times a day. Yet few Italian families own an electric espresso machine. They know they cannot duplicate the bar’s espresso. Not even the $1,000 contraption that a kind manufacturer had sent me could. And at the same time, they really prefer the taste and satisfaction to be had at home from a cupful of Moka-made coffee. Many may be surprised to learn that it’s not the least like dust dissolved in hot water. It can be delicious, if you learn how to use the Moka. It’s not pushbutton coffee, it requires judgment to do well.

During the spring Easter or Passover season, many of us are looking for those perfect dishes for a feast.  Side dish ideas are often left to last minute and thrown together.  This year, my family decided to make a sexy side dish with potatoes.  Now, potatoes may not sound very sexy, but when you add truffle salt, that’s pretty exciting.

Although not native to Italy, the potato has a long history in Italy.  Brought from the “new” world in 1585 it was first thought to be a strange and somewhat evil plant.  It took the food shortages of the 17^th and 18^th century for the potato to be used as food for human consumption, and then it was only eaten by the lower classes.  The Napoleonic wars devastated the farms of Europe, but the potato, grown underground, survived and began to be eaten by all.  In Italy it was found to be particularly useful in creating the famous “Gnocchi”, little potato dumplings, and soon was accepted by the upper classes.

In Florida, spring is potato season, and I recently visited a local potato farm.  The Jones Potato Farm plants over 2,000 acres with a variety of potatoes.   From the planting, it takes 120 days until harvest. I discovered that it isn’t the starch or waxiness that determines what a potato is best suited for, instead it is a matter of specific gravity.  Farmer Jones told me that the lower gravity potatoes are better for baking and making mashed potatoes, while the higher gravity ones are better for frying and potato chips. He described it as the “stick in your teeth” difference.

Each plant produces between 8 to 10 potatoes.  While there is still green on the plant, the skin of the potato is soft and scratches easily.  The potato farmer has to kill the top of the plant and wait a couple of weeks before harvest, to set the skin.  I was lucky enough to be allowed to pick some potatoes and found a ruby red cluster of goose eggs beneath.

That night, we ate the potatoes.  The skins were thinner than what we buy at the market, but we also noticed that these potatoes had flavor and texture that we haven’t been aware of before.  We prepared them simply, boiled with a drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil and a dash of truffle salt.  They were delicious and tender, I looked at Giuliano and said,“ It’s a pity that potatoes don’t get more respect”.  I know I will never take a potato for granted again.

We used truffle salt on our potatoes to enhance the flavor.  The girls liked it so much that they wanted them again the next evening.  Buonafide Foods was kind enough to let us taste their truffle salt and have offered to let you taste it too.  They are sponsoring our next giveaway.