briciole

cauliflower Cavour / cavolfiore alla Cavour

jump to Recipe [versione in italiano] a pretty dish to bring to the table While searching for a traditional Italian dish using cauliflower, I found a recipe from Piemonte, whose name references the first prime minister of Italy, Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour (count of Cavour, usually referred to simply as Cavour1). In reading the details, I was intrigued by the combination of cauliflower, cheese, egg (uovo) and anchovies (acciughe) and decided to try it. beauties on display Cauliflower Cavour has an interesting flavor, the cheese, egg and anchovies all providing a note, without anyone being overwhelming), is fairly easy to... Read more →

red beet, carrot, apple and egg salad / insalata di barbabietole rosse, carote, mela e uovo sodo

jump to Recipe Colorful salad: the view from above (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our current Cook the Books Club selection is the spy novel Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews1. I chose this book for our Club in early June 2021. I had no idea that by the time I started reading it, it would feel like current events. It was hard to believe the book was published in 20132. While I am an avid reader of mystery novels, this was my first experience reading a spy novel. I was attracted to it because each chapter ends with a short... Read more →

Persian herb and greens frittata / frittata persiana di verdure ed erbe

green to celebrate spring (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our Cook the Books Club selection this time brings us to Ireland (Irlanda), yet the flavors are those of Iran (whose cuisine we savored also in a recent edition1). The novel Pomegranate Soup, by Marsha Mehran2 (zuppa di melograno), follows the adventures of the three Aminpour sisters, who escape from political turmoil in their native country to the UK and ultimately settle in the small Irish town of Ballinacroagh, where they open a small café serving dishes from their home country. The novel's cast includes the sisters' landlady, the town's priest,... Read more →

popiah: fresh spring rolls with jicama / involtini primavera con patata messicana

composite flavor and texture I read Crazy Rich Asians1 by Kevin Kwan, the current selection of the Cook the Books club, in just a few days. It is a modern version of a Victorian novel set mostly in Asia, particularly the island state of Singapore. When Rachel and Nick, the protagonists, arrive in Singapore, they are greeted by Nick's bet friend, Colin, and his fiancée, Araminta. Together, they go to eat at one of Singapore's hawker centers. I have never been to Singapore, but I learned about hawker centers and the characteristics of Singaporean food thanks to the paper Lucey Bowen... Read more →

mushroom and egg salad / insalata di funghi e uova

a pretty bowl of mushroom and egg salad I simply loved Anya von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food & Longing1, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club. The story is interesting: von Bremzen describes her and her family's life in the context of the political changes in Russia, the Soviet Union, then Russia again. Her style of writing is engaging — with the right balance of humor and seriousness. The food she describes is intriguing: even when we don't feel like we want to taste it, the emotional context comes alive in her... Read more →

eggs nested in leafy green vegetables / uova in nidi di verdura

simple, rustic and richly good Restarting where I left off. In a recent post I shared the recipe for Cranberry Beans with Rhubarb1. Here I will talk about the leafy greens you saw in that post's photos. a deeply flavored dish, though maybe not photogenic (tablecloth by La FABBRICA del LINO) The current Cook the Books selection, The Secret Book of Frida Kahlo by F. G. Haghenbeck, made me think a lot about what we need/want to know about an artist's life. In this case it is actually two artists: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. My encounter with the work of... Read more →

celery omelette / omelette con sedano

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] celery omelette topped with some mashed avocado (tablecloth by La FABBRICA del LINO) Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson called out at me from a table at a library book sale and just like the country in which is it set, Norway, it grabbed me immediately. The sky, the woods, the water, everything is expansive in Norway, majestic, yet quiet. Petterson's prose is like that. Life's familiar themes—friendship, love, loss, betrayal, coming of age, aging—play a role in the story of Trond Sander, the 67-year-old protagonist. I imagined to be sitting in... Read more →

arganak: Armenian chicken soup with meatballs / zuppa armena con polpette

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] soup with surprise (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) The 25th country of our World Culinary ABC1 is Armenia and the book I just finished reading is Still Writing by Dani Shapiro.2 The two events are connected because the book made me want to cook a special soup for the author and the list of traditional Armenian soups made me choose arganak: "chicken soup with small meatballs, garnished before serving with beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and parsley"3 (tuorli, succo di limone e prezzemolo). Sounds appealing, doesn't it? The title of the... Read more →

shakshouka

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] making shakshouka The 20th country of our World Culinary ABC1 is Tunisia (Tunisia). In researching Tunisian dishes, I found out that shakshouka (or shakshuka)2, a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, peppers and onions (pomodori, peperoni e cipolle), which I thought was Israeli, is believed to have a Tunisian origin. Variations of shakshouka are found throughout Northern Africa and around the Mediterranean.3 Shakshouka is a relatively quick to prepare and it makes a great lunch or dinner. There are a myriad recipes for it. What you see below is... Read more →

mote pillo: ecuadorian hominy egg scramble / uova strapazzate con mais gigante

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] mote pillo, version with golden corn (Italian linen from La FABBRICA del LINO) The seventeenth country of our World Culinary ABC1 is Ecuador. To celebrate this stop, I chose to make my version of mote pillo (or motepillo), an egg scramble with cooked corn.2 As explained in this excerpt of the chapter on Ecuador in the book Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia, This is not the sweet corn with which North Americans are familiar but instead choclo, a huge-grained, chewy, and very flavorsome variety that is used extensively in soups and... Read more →