I’ve always equated good cooking with being prepared, just like a fine carpenter has the necessary tools to build a bookcase or a deck on hand at all times, a home cook should always have a well stocked pantry to prepare meals.  The following is a list of items that I always keep in my Italian Pantry, in addition to […]

Lazy, weekend, lunches are one of the small pleasure in life and I define a lazy lunch as a simple plate of food (with little to no manipulation), fresh, crunchy, bread, and a bottle of exquisite wine (psychologically, get an exquisite bottle of wine for under $20, there are fabulous wine deals out there if you stay away from California, […]

Hello everyone!  Just a simple post today with some items from our New Jersey garden: (photos: close up of a red, mission, fig)   (photo: red, mission, fig cut in half)   (photo: the red fig)   (photo: cucumber) (photo: eggplant) (photo: basil)

This week’s Scordo Pasta Challenge was special to me, you see the Scordo family canned tomatoes this past weekend and the penne lisce we consumed included the first tomato sauce made from 2010 tomatoes! “Penne Lisce”, or smooth penne, is essentially the standard penne you can find in any supermarket and on most menus at restaurants.  The second, standard, penne […]

(photo: The Canonica Verde Umbrian Spice Blend including rosemary, sea salt, garlic, and red pepper flakes) Click here for my other olive oil reviews! As you’ve probably noticed, Olive Oil and Pasta are at the heart of Italian cuisine (both above and below the mezzogiorno, the geopolitical dividing line of Italy).  Specifically, my love for both products started in Nonna Scordo’s […]

August is prime season for canning tomatoes and this year’s Jersey plum tomatoes are outstanding!  The Scordo family purchased about five bushels of locally grown plum tomatoes and canned only passato (passato is essentially pureed tomato, in the past we canned a combination of passato and whole tomatoes).  As the site e-rcps.com points out: Tomatoes are usually preserved in three […]

One of the first things I learned to make from scratch was salad dressing.  Our family, of course, always made a simple red wine, olive oil, salt/pepper salad dressing, but the proportions and blending of the simple ingredients remained a mystery to me for a very long period of time.  In fact, it wasn’t until I moved away to attend […]

The year was 1997 and I was a college junior applying for a prestigious fellowship for first generation college students.  The fellowship provided funds and a mentor to guide and prepare students for graduate work in the humanities and sciences.  The fellowship had strict academic and social-economic requirements.  On the socio-economic side, students were expected to be first generation college […]

  (photo: prior to breaking the pasta into smaller pieces, notice the length!) I love impromptu meals; that is to say, one of the biggest thrills I experience in the kitchen is when one dish I have in mind turns into something completely different or helps inform a second dish.  For example, when starring at a few chicken legs in my refrigerator this evening […]

Eggplant Parmigiana or Roasted Eggplant with Tomato Sauce and Grated Parmigiano Reggiano The PBS star Mary Ann Esposito recently caused a little bit of controversy over at the Huffington Post when she published a recipe entitled, “The Real Eggplant Parmigiano.”  Amongst the comments on the post, some readers accused Mary Ann of pushing an Italian-American version of Eggplant Parmigiano and using an […]