Patron saints. Every Italian town has one and a local public holiday for celebrating their heavenly protector to boot. Turin, my adopted city of over ten years, is no exception. Here, San Giovanni Battista or…
I must admit, I had a difficult time choosing which Italian Easter dish I wanted to write about for this edition of Cucina Conversations. Initially, I thought about preparing one of the ricotta-based specialties typical…
Beware of false friends. And no, I don’t mean the kind that are nice to your face but are mean behind your back. Though, you should probably watch out for those too. What I mean…
She’s sitting on her high chair, eager to join the grown-ups around her for dinner. It’s been a few weeks since I started introducing solids to her diet. I’ve opted to take a less consumerist,…
Growing up, Sunday dinner was almost always held at Nonna Sarina and Nonno Eugenio’s. And Sunday dinner almost always consisted of a roast veal or lamb, with some crisp potatoes and pumpkin to accompany the…
Summer has come to an end and so has much of the time we spent together during the days in that season. Instead, Monday to Friday, morning and afternoon, we make our way down tree-lined…
There they were, standing in a bucket with just enough water to keep their stems hydrated. My in-laws had just spent a month enjoying the bounties of nature only spring in Liguria can provide and…
In The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson wrote, “In the latter part of the 20th century, crème caramel occupied an excessively large amount of territory in European restaurant dessert menus. This was probably due…
Calabrian proverb: Those who marry are only happy for a day, but those who slaughter their pig are happy for an entire year. It was January 16, the eve of Saint Anthony Abbot’s Day. The family…