When I decided to add this blog to ItalianChef.com, I thought it would be a good forum for occasionally writing about other types of food. The main focus will always be Italian cuisine, but I do branch out and would like to share my experiences with cooking in general. My wife, Sandy, is Portuguese and since we have been together…
I recently blogged about my experiences with the no knead bread recipes from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. This prompted several requests for the recipe from readers. Zoe Francois has kindly given me permission to reprint the master recipe from the book: The Master Recipe:…
Last week my cousin Sal asked me to recommend a good Italian cookbook that he could give as a birthday gift to a friend. My first reaction was to choose from the books I have featured on this site. There are some excellent ones like The Silver Spoon and Italian Family Dining. But, as I thought about it…
A few years back I was doing a lot of bread baking. I worked my way through a good portion of The Italian Baker by Carol Field and the Italian bread recipes from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. I made a mean Pane Pugliese. As much as I enjoyed the…
I took another shot at Charcuterie, this time branching out from the basic cure. Once again I ordered an 8.5 lb pork belly from Niman Ranch and split it into 2 slabs of bacon. With one half I made a sweet maple cured bacon and the other half, savory. Maple sugar and syrup are added…
When I was ordering the pork belly from Niman Ranch for my first attempt at home cured bacon, I had room to add more items to my order without increasing my shipping charges. So to maximize the shipping costs I ordered some guanciale, which is kind of like pancetta or bacon, but it is cured…
After a year of leafing through the excellent book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn , and vowing to make sausages, bacon, etc. “one of these days”, I decided it finally was time for action. Fresh bacon seemed like a good starting point, the recipe didn’t look too difficult. Make the cure, rub it…
This is a relatively easy version of a Southern Italian Style lasagna with ricotta cheese and mozzarella. You can make it even easier by using no-boil lasagna sheets and skipping the cooking the pasta step. Some people might turn their nose up at the idea of using the no-boil pasta, but not all shortcuts are…
