La Buona Tavola

Spaghetti alla Nerano, named after the beach town where it originated, could be the child your basic pasta and zucchini would have if it got married with a cacio e pepe. It’s a delightful combination, with zesty provolone cheese adding considerable …

One of my favorite pastimes in the kitchen is finding ways to make under-appreciated and undervalued ingredients shine. I love an underdog. Take celery for example. It shows up in any number of recipes, but almost always in a minor …

I knew I had become truly Italian once I had mastered shopping for food on a daily basis (every morning) as opposed to a large once-weekly supermarket shop. Food shopping Italian style means encompassing the fundamentals of an Italian diet, …

Agnolotti are Piemonte’s best comfort food: warm, filling, tasty, they are so quintessentially Piedmontese they are part of the region’s official list of traditional products (P.A.T.).  Reassuring in their ubiquitous presence on Piemonte’s festive table, they are today  declined in …

Who says that good food must be complicated to make, or  that it has to take loads of time to prepare? There is a lot to learn from the way our grandmothers used to cook: it may  have  been a …

Naples has her sfogliatella, the North plays with the Teutonic idea of krapfen, but Rome… Rome has the maritozzo.  You look at it and it’s perfect: golden and shiny, sliced in a half, its creamy filling perfectly levelled all at …

Second probably only to pizza when it comes to its “iconic” status, caprese salad, or insalata caprese if we want to say it in Italian, is one of the country’s favorite dishes. A staple in the summer, when the juiciest, …

San Daniele del Friuli is a beautiful, quaint small town in Italy’s northern region Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the province of Udine.  It is situated on the top of a hill, half-way between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea, near …

The late Anthony Bourdain notoriously said once that pasta cacio  e pepe “could be the greatest thing in the history of the world.” And how could you say he was wrong?  I still remember the first time I had a …

Italy is known worldwide for its bread: fragrant, tasty, a magnificent balance of crunchiness and softness, it is the perfect companion  to all dishes and the most essential ingredient of countless types of sandwiches.  We all know Italian bread comes …