A staple at the table around here is “erbe.” Google Translate says erbe means “herb” in English. Google Translate is entitled to its opinion. The word erbe covers a wide spectrum of green stuff. (Plug “cut the grass” into Google Translate and you get “tagliare l’erbe.”)More
Tag Archives: food
Maltagliati, Ceci, Clams, and Porcini
This too we ate at Trattoria La Marianna in Rimini. It’s a soup made of maltagliati, clams, ceci beans, and porcini mushrooms. You can very easily use a variation on a theme on this soup (sans clams, for example, or hand-crunched tagliatelle in place of maltagliati) and be very happy.More
T-shirts, Cobblers, Invasive Species
Finishing lunch I turn to my wife and smile big. “Do I have fleas in my teeth?” It’s a potential danger up north, where fruit flies appear out of nowhere, dive into your wine glass, and drown. In the last ten minutes I’ve probably swallowed a couple of them “No.” “You didn’t look.” I smile,…More
Oxtail, Head-air, and a Swim
At dinner last night I had a piece of Lake Superior trout with oxtail on top of it. Five green beans and a fried polenta ball with roasted corn inside. Nifty. To my knowledge I’ve only had oxtail once, in Rome, when my daughter was having a semester abroad in college. She and I ate…More
The Pizza: Simple to Complex
For dinner one night we find our way to Casa del Sole. It’s a country house outside of Pesaro. We’re 15-20 miles inland, where the gentle hills rising to Urbino begin, far enough from the sea to know we’ll be eating meat. “We haven’t been to this place before,” my wife’s cousin says. “But my…More
Last Food–before we go
Over the next few weeks my wife and I will be traveling with friends from Italy. We’re doing a tour of the canyon country in the American Southwest. The night before she and her husband left Italy for the U.S., Adele posted this photo of her last pizza. “Whenever I take a trip,” she says,…More
Grab a Bunch of Gobbi–try them if you can find them
They should be soft. They will have a slightly bitter taste. Grab what? They look like celery stalks. Except much bigger. Except for the leaves that sprout along the edges. And really except for the spines along those same edges that make gobbi look more like a medieval weapon of war than a food.More
A Moderately Unthinkable Proposal–you do what with ribs??
It’s the pot’s fault. The Italians call it a tegame di coccio or a pentola di terracotta. What cooks in it–a stew, a sauce, a roast– is, well, bliss. During the long cook, fragrance permeates your house. Of rabbit ala cacciatore. Of polpettone. Of lamb shoulder. You smell the meat, but also there is the unmistakable fragrance of…More
Brown Rice, Chopped Tomato, Arugula
When gluttony meets restraint, there’s always brown rice. We are on the threshold of tomato time in Michigan. It’s hard to be patient. At the local farmers market they will have both red and gold cherry tomatoes (what the Italians call pendolini) and Early Girls and Big Boys bursting with flavor. You take the Girls…More
A Sweet and Tangy Spaghetti–a dish that’s always great
How to make a fast dish of pasta that’s always great? A number of years ago I taught a cooking class I called “ten sauces, ten pastas, ten wines.” The animating idea was to become a good match-maker. Some sauces need a particular form of pasta. Meat sauces, for example, instead of spaghetti or linguini…More