Butternut squash is one of my favorite fall/winter ingredients. When the season comes, I especially look forward to having two dishes: Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Butter and Sage and this Butternut Squash Risotto. Over the years I have experimented with different timings and methods of incorporating the squash into the risotto, and I found I…
In 2005 Sandy and I took a two week trip to Italy. We started in Venice and worked our way down through Tuscany, Rome and The Amalfi Coast to Sicily. We were married less than two years at the time and didn’t have children yet, so it was the perfect time in our lives for…
In Italy, Porchetta is a deboned pig, stuffed and rolled, and there are many versions depending on the region. I wanted to make Porchetta, but was not quite up to deboning and stuffing a pig, so I decided to do what you might consider “Porchetta Lite”. After doing some searching through recipe books and on…
This typically Roman pasta dish was traditionally made with guanciale, but since that ingredient used to be very hard to find outside of Italy, and the Lazio region in particular, pancetta has became a common substitute. This is changing and guanciale can now be found at certain specialty food stores here in America. While you…
I feel like I have been beating the simplicity theme into the ground the past few weeks, but the fact of the matter is, this is how I cook in the summer. There are so many great seasonal ingredients that I look forward to all year, and I want to put them front and center…
In Italian the word scottadito means burned fingers. This dish is named scottadito because the lamb chops are so delicious that you can’t resist eating them sizzling hot, straight from the grill and burning your fingers. Recommended for This Recipe: Note: This post contains affiliate links. More Recipes
Bresaola is a cured and air dried beef that is the specialty of Valtellina in the Lombardy region in northern Italy. You should be able to find it in a good Italian deli or specialty store. I remember whenever my Dad had some in the restaurant, I used to love slicing it up paper thin,…
This salad is simplicity at its best: tomatoes, mozzarella, olive oil and basil. It is very important that all of the ingredients be the best quality you can find. Tomatoes and basil fresh from your own garden or the local farmer’s market, your finest extra-virgin olive oil, and fresh mozzarella from a source you trust….
On June 8, Paul Torre, The Italian Chef who was the inspiration for this website and, more importantly, my father, passed away after a two year struggle with multiple diseases. I knew I wanted to write about this here because he was such a big part of this site, but it took me some time…
This week I had a strong craving for Affogato, a simple but delicious Italian dessert that is made by pouring a shot of hot espresso over a scoop of vanilla gelato. Naturally, to make this I needed vanilla gelato. So, this was as good a time as ever to break out my ice cream machine,…
