briciole

torciglione

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] it's sweet — once you go past its fierce look Every region of Italy has specific Holiday food traditions. Torciglione is a sweet treat from Umbria, the region in central Italy where I was born and grew up. As my parents were originally from another region, making torciglione was not part of my family traditions. I started making it some years ago and I am presenting it again here (the earlier post is here). As a child, I was intrigued by its snakelike shape and loved its crunchy texture and intense almond... Read more →

intervista a Marisa Churchill / interview with Marisa Churchill

oatmeal-raisin cookies from Sweet & Skinny Prepare a cup of tea or coffee, grab a cookie (besides oatmeal and raisins, the cookies in the photo have pieces of chocolate and of walnuts), make yourself comfortable, and read on. On March 24, I attended the Women's PowerStrategy Conference in Marin County, CA. What I have to tell about that day won't fit into one post, so I'll start by talking about meeting Marisa Churchill, pastry chef and author of the dessert cookbook Sweet & Skinny, 100 recipes for enjoying life's sweeter side without tipping the scales. Readers of this blog know that... Read more →

cuori di barbabietola rossa ricoperti di cioccolato / chocolate-covered red beet hearts

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] chocolate-covered red beet hearts In recent months, I have talked about chocolate-covered pecans and pistachios, so you may think that I am in a chocolate-covering spree, but what I am describing here actually predates my experiments with nuts. A couple of years ago, one morning, I woke up with the idea of dipping pieces of roasted red beets into melted chocolate. I dismissed such flight of fancy, but it would not go away, so I followed it and charmed many people with the result. This year, on Valentine's Day (giorno di San... Read more →

regalo di Natale e crostata delle Feste / Christmas gift and a Holiday tart

Che cosa ti ha portato Babbo Natale? (what did Santa bring you?) is the question often asked this time of the year. In the past, I had expressed the wish to have a magic wand. This year, Santa brought me one: Babbo Natale mi ha portato una bacchetta magica. Here it is, resting next to some of the cards (biglietti) I received as part of the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild Holiday card exchange (this photo album shows them all). They are all beautiful and they make up this year Holiday decor at our house. On Christmas Eve (vigilia di Natale)... Read more →

noci pecan ricoperte di cioccolato / chocolate-covered pecans

For the current edition of Cook the Books, we are reading Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, an autobiography with recipes at the end of each chapter. One of the recipe pages is titled Bread and Chocolate and it starts thus: This is a simple trick familiar to every French child. There’s something surprisingly right about chocolate and bread together, all that dark, rich sweetness against the chewy, salty crumb. It’s one of my favorite snacks. I am Italian and grew up eating bread and chocolate (pane e cioccolato) as a snack. My home town,... Read more →

un weekend di cioccolato / a weekend of chocolate

This past weekend was all about chocolate, since I participated in two events, both having chocolate as theme. On Saturday, I took a short class called "Build your own chocolate bar" at Coco-luxe Confections. The certificate for the class was my very first purchase on Groupon, back in January. What attracted me to the class was the chance to play with chocolate — and play I certainly did. After the introduction, each participant was given a tray with six molds. Each working table had a selection of ingredients to be used to enrich the bars: from nuts to crumbled fortune cookies,... Read more →

conserva di frutta / fruit preserves

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] Last year I wrote a post on marmellata, where I described how I was making jam, or, to be more precise, fruit spread. This past June, I purchased a book called Preserving the Taste by Edon Waycott. I also took a conserve making class from June Taylor. As a result, recently I have been following a different process to preserve fruit. I am still exploring different options and nothing is settled, but I can tell you a few things I have been experimenting with. First of all, I am still not using... Read more →

cioccolato / chocolate

In a post I wrote last year, I revealed that I eat a small piece of extra dark chocolate (un pezzetto di cioccolato) every day as part of my breakfast. I should add that I eat at least another small piece later on in the day as well. My piece of chocolate comes from a chocolate bar (in Italian: tavoletta di cioccolato). (The expression fair trade chocolate in Italian is cioccolato del commercio equo e solidale.) Chocolate has been part of my diet for as long as I remember. Being born in Perugia, a city with a renowned chocolate factory, Perugina,... Read more →

marmellata / jam

The Italian word marmellata and the English marmalade derive from the Portuguese marmelada, quince jam (from marmelo, quince, which in Italian is mela cotogna). Marmellata is generic, i.e., it is used for preserves made with all types of fruit. My mother used to make marmellata di ciliegie (cherry jam) and marmellata di pesche (peach jam) for which I provided labor: cherry pitting in the first case, peach peeling in the second. Both tasks were preferable to bean shelling (recently mentioned), because I could occasionally divert pieces of fruit to my mouth. One day, I asked my mother to make a batch... Read more →

la Befana

I should start by wishing all of you Buon Anno (Happy New Year), since this is my first post in 2008. We had two intense weeks between December 23 and January 6. We spent Christmas in the Bay Area, then we visited my father-in-law and his wife, and finally we spent a week scuba diving with friends. We did not stay up until midnight on December 31, but we celebrated Capodanno (New Year's Day) in a nice way, immersed in nature and in the company of good friends. I was planning to talk about la Befana which is celebrated on January... Read more →