eating is living

Spaghetti Carbonara, the famous Italian pasta dish, has a somewhat murky origin (here’s a little discussion, as a well as a more traditional recipe), but one thing is certain: When it came to America, some of the versions ended up a bit heavy. Cream, I believe, is the culprit, and though some genuine Italian recipes [...]

Here’s another shrimp creole recipe, somewhat simpler than my earlier one. I’ve reduced the fat in the recipe by making a smaller roux, substituted fennel for the celery, increased the wine to 1 cup, and used a little less tomato. If you’re new to making a roux, be sure you take a look at the [...]

Well I’m going through a big fresh pasta phase now, it seems, so here’s another pasta recipe. If you still haven’t tried your hand at fresh pasta, this recipe is a great reason to get started. The flavors are fresh & bright & fishy & yummy and fresh pasta really makes it sing. I’ve always [...]

Well, recipes don’t get much simpler than this, but they don’t get much better tasting than this either. The essential pairing of tomato and pasta, a marriage made in that country that might as well be known as heaven, is one of the worlds simpler miracles. Fresh, silky pasta crafted from nothing but flour & [...]

[Another chicken recipe; sorry, I'm in Italy right now & relying on a post I did before I left.] Love lemons? Me too. Lemonade, lemon candy, lemon gelato, limoncello, and this tidy little weeknight dish, chicken piccata. You can hammer the breasts thinner if you like, but please don’t spare the lemon juice or use [...]

I had this dish for the first time in Bologna, and I was blown away by it. Tender, pillowy gnocchi bathed in a just-thick-enough salty, cheesy sauce, smacking of mold and age: Heaven. You don’t have to use Gorgonzola, but be sure that the blue cheese you choose is creamy, not crumbly. If you live [...]

All right, here’s my attempt at the famous ragu Bolognese, but one that doesn’t require a long, long simmer on the stove. It may not quite meet Mario Batali’s expectations for a ragu, but it’s pretty damn good. I recommend serving it tossed with fresh pasta, in the style that Batali recommends, which is with [...]

This may be the simplest “recipe” I’ve ever posted, but it’s also one of my new favorites. In the great Venn diagram in the sky, the intersection of Set A (people who love sauerkraut) with Set B (people who love beets) may make a pretty small subset, but for those solitary folk, this recipe is [...]

This dish, of Russian origin, has been adopted by chefs the world around, and with good reason. The combination of the tender beef and the creamy sour cream is a heavenly pairing, and if prepared carefully, a masterpiece of cow cuisine. My personal preference for Stroganoff involves making sure the strips of beef are still [...]

It’s getting colder here, and it will soon be time to bring in all the basil and make a lot of pesto. However, I found I still had a recipe’s worth of pesto in the freezer from last October (!), and when I thawed it out, it was still fantastic (though the verdure was a [...]

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