La Buona Tavola

It’s no surprise that vegetables are the bedrock of the Italian diet. For one thing, the climate is temperate and the growing seasons are blessedly long. For another, there is a relationship between the Italians and their vegetables that can …

Every now and then someone sends me a message that’s a real charmer. Here’s one I received about a recipe that appears in my first cookbook, Pasta Classica: The Art of Italian Pasta Cooking. Because the writer and so many other …

It’s summertime—gardens are bursting with tomatoes and zucchini and hot peppers! Over the last few years I have been setting up little garden beds wherever I can fit them in my Los Angeles home’s small yard, but last winter I …

My idea of supper in Venice is eating at a finely set table on-board a flat-bottom boat enjoying the calm, cool quiet of the lagoon after a day of sailing its secret estuaries and hopping its tiny islands with their …

Italian chef, Massimo Bottura and American actor, Rober De Niro, launched a joint venture that will to fight against food waste to the United States. Bottura launched the Ambrosiano Refectory project at the Milan Expo World Fair in 2015 with …

As summer’s heat bears down on folks from Italy to America, time is best spent under a striped beach umbrella at la spiaggia or under a shaded pergola with a chilled, frosty spritz in hand. One needs some fresh, simple …

The Romagnoli people have been eating piada or piadina flat bread for centuries. Indeed, it’s thought that the recipe might even date back to the Etruscans, ancient precursors to the Romans. Increasingly others are catching on to the piadina’s signature …

Bring on summer in all its beautiful glory! Life always feels so much more colorful during the summer months – sort of like the iconic scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy emerges from her sepia-hued Kansas landscape to …

As the heat of summer gives way to the cooler chill of fall, my garden harvest begins to slow.  The last of the tomatoes remain on the vine waiting for a last gasp of heat. The little eggplants struggle for …

While we were in Marche, Italy this spring, we had stuffed calamari prepared by my cousin’s wife, Maria, several times. These beautiful squid from the Adriatic were stuffed with a simple mixture of their own tentacles (chopped), breadcrumbs, parsley, salt-and-pepper …