Cooking octopus seems difficult, right? After all, you typically find this delicious delicacy in fancy restaurants at an extravagant price or in gourmet food & wine magazines. Want to know a secret? It’s as easy as cooking pasta. You just plop the octopus in boiling water, let it cool, then slice it up. That’s it. You can serve it alone with a drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and chopped parsley or add sweet Tropea onions to give a touch of color and a burst of flavor.
You can also easily roast octopus in a cast iron pan or poach then bbq your octopus to give it a charred taste. In Italy, octopus is found in various recipes like CONTINUE READING
On a side note, for all you Italian language learners out there, my title should really be “bruschette” because you change the “a” to an “e” to make it plural, yet I never know if it’s better to use the real word or the Americanized term so people get what I am talking about. Bruschetta=1,bruschette=more than one. Final note, the real way to pronounce bruschetta is like this: “brew—sket—ta”. Here’s a trick to remembering this pronunciation: “you are drinking a brew, when out jumps a skeleton from the closet who yells ta-da!” brew-sket-ta. Random, I know, but these little tricks help with remembering languages at the beginning, at least for me. 🙂
Back to those lovely little tomatoes I was telling you about. Italians are experts at growing and conserving tomatoes for the entire year. Some of the most popular ways to conserve tomatoes are CONTINUE READING
For all you ladies out there, let me ask you a question. Have you ever bought a beautiful dress and a pair of heels that you absolutely love but have only worn once or twice? Maybe you splurged on the items or found them on sale, maybe you bought them for a wedding or a special date. Regardless of how much you love them, they sit at the back of your closet collecting dust while slowly making their way to becoming vintage. It’s a waste that can be avoided. You just need reasons to dress.That tagline is also the blog name of my newly acquainted fashion blogger friend Angie Nardiello (in the black dress) who suggested that we get dolled up and enjoy an aperitivo (aperitif) together.
Photo Credit: A Reason To Dress
Angie is a Canadian expat who I met through our lovely mutual American friend Adrienne (pink dress). Within the first five minutes of meeting her, she suggested putting together this summer cocktail style evening. Adrienne was to host at her beautiful house, Angie was to coordinate our outfits and I was to prepare the menu.
Photo Credit: A Reason To Dress
Here are some tips to executing a beautiful summer aperitivo:
When I ask a foreigner to talk to me about Italian food, the person almost always tells me about oversized bowls of pasta, wood fire pizzas and the incredible flavor of the fresh ingredients. Without a doubt, Italy has a grand cuisine based on tradition, but not only. You can also find extreme innovation and creativity in the alta cucina, or gourmet cuisine.
It’s difficult to eat poorly in Italy, and therefore during my first years of living in Emilia-Romagna I was never that enthused to spend a lot of money for small portion sized gourmet dishes. In Italy, the fact is that you can eat extremely well spending only a small amount of money.
Working as a food blogger, I eat constantly for my job. I create my own recipes, I try traditional dishes and I’ve even had the opportunity to taste gourmet plates. I finally understand why people READ MORE
-Now adding to this list of favorites is pureed persimmons with Acacia honey and walnuts-
I have a love hate relationship with persimmons: I love the flavor, but I hate the texture. It’s soft, squishy and the occasional “slurp” slips out when you eat a persimmon with a spoon. I despise that noise; for me it’s worse than nails on a chalkboard. How to get around this problem? READ MORE
Simplicity lies in gathering with gratitude the scents and flavors that the ingredient gives us in its natural form. I think about this phrase when I develop my recipes. I try to create simple dishes that allows you to savor the single ingredients in their purity, letting their flavors guide your memory to the past and to their place of origin.
Sometimes I forget that I live in Italy, a country with such incredible origins. How much history is in every grain of dirt as I walk across the lawn towards the vegetable garden? How many words were spoken throughout the centuries under the archways where I walk to get a café macchiato with my girlfriends?
In Italy, everything has a history…especially food. Throughout these seven years that I have lived here, I have learned just how much good food is rooted in the minds of Italians, as daily nourishment and as a cure for illness. For instance, often times the first baby food for Italian children has grated Parmigiano Reggiano mixed into it. And, here in the region of Emilia where I live, when someone is sick they eat “risotto in bianco”, or “white rice” with Parmigiano Reggiano and extra virgin olive oil.
You can also easily roast octopus in a cast iron pan or poach then bbq your octopus to give it a charred taste. In Italy, octopus is found in various recipes like CONTINUE READING
