Educated Palate: Lael & Giuliano Hazan’s Blog

Language and cooking – home cooking that is – are vehicles for consciousness, the thing that makes us human

One of our favorite methods is to make a pasta sauce with radicchio. When it is cooked, radicchio provides a rich deep flavor to a pasta sauce, and loses some of its bitter flavor.

The world has many magnificent markets, of which I have seen a good number, but it has none like Rialto. Its stalls are lined up behind an embankment along a curve of the Grand Canal, displaying their contents in the open air.

Giuliano makes spaghetti with melon on Daytime

Photo by Dana Gallagher

“How about making a risotto when I come in fall?” I suggested to my Today show producer.  “How about making two?” she replied.  Why not?  After all, if I’m lucky, I’ll have 4 whole minutes to do them in. Once, I was supposed to do two quick pastas and the time for the segment got cut down to 2 minutes and 15 seconds.  I still was able to get through both dishes and they liked it so much that they now always ask me to do two things.  Since it was fall, I decided to make a porcini mushroom risotto, so I could show how to use dried porcini mushrooms, and a butternut squash risotto that would be perfect for Halloween.  Al Roker was my host, and I love doing the show with him because he always has so much fun.  This time, I was explaining to him how in Italy we would make this risotto with a pumpkin called zucca barucca.  Well, Al just loved the sound of it and couldn’t stop repeating it, as you’ll see when you watch the following clip.

Risotto is one of the world’s best comfort foods and many people think it is very time consuming.  However, I often make a risotto when I don’t have much time to get dinner ready.  

The following day, Giuliano decided to top veal scaloppini with shavings of the black truffle. Lael was a bit apprehensive, not sure that the meat would carry the truffle flavor. She quickly changed her mind with the first bite. The delicate flavor of the scaloppini highlighted the earthy qualities of the black truffle. The thin overlapping truffle shavings on top of the succulent still warm meat exuded an aroma that brought all to the table immediately.

We enjoyed our kiwi dessert with friends during one of the last of the swim parties of the season. The adults were thrilled to “actually taste the fruit” and the older kids were delighted at its revitalizing flavor. A few people went back for extra bowels, next time; we will know to make more.

In the Veneto, where the texture of the thick and creamy soup is achieved by mixing in some mashed potato, it is traditionally made with borlotti beans (also known as cranberry beans) and bits of egg pasta.

The children fed the donkey, played archery, and biked around the neighborhood without need for supervision. I don’t think I saw a Nintendo or electronic gadget from either the kids or parents for the whole weekend. It was a perfect, relaxing, getaway.