Category Archives: Primi/First Courses

Fresh fava beans, also known as broad beans, are in season in May and June. They are delicious raw, dipped in sea salt, or cooked.

 Panzanella, the classic Tuscan tomato and bread salad that sometimes seems to easy and improbable to be as wonderful as it is.

 There are many origin legends about the famous Roman dish Spaghetti alla Carbonara.

Italian Pasta Sauce cooking class video by Giuliano Hazan. It includes the recipes for Linguine with a Pink Shrimp Sauce, Penne with Sausage and Ricotta, and an Orange, Cucumber, and Red Radish Salad.

We wanted to share one of our favorite comfort food recipes with you, Ragù alla Bolognese.

Fortunately, though not the same as fresh, dried porcini mushrooms can deliver a rich porcini flavor. One of our favorite ways to use them is in a risotto. It is important to use very good quality dried porcini so we always used to pack some in our luggage when we returned from Italy. Just recently, we have started importing one of the best brands available in Italy, which, together with an extraordinary Carnaroli rice we also import from Italy, make an incomparable risotto.

In our house, filled pasta is a dish to look forward to and, often made for celebrations. It isn’t as difficult as one might believe, but it takes time and patience and is well worth the effort. Soft pillows of pasta coated in a delicious tomato sauce, is the ultimate showing of love from a partner. Nothing can compare to eating food that is created with love and care from one’s companion.

The recipe we’ve chosen is Pasta alla Busara, from Marcella Cucina. It exemplifies Marcella’s unaffected style: wonderfully pure, simple flavors, which are easy to put together creating something magnificently delicious.

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.

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.