By now, you must be tired of hearing how easy it is to prepare Italian food at home and you’re probably ready to drown me in extra virgin olive oil (that actually wouldn’t be a bad way to go as long as I had some good bread with me).  However, I woke up this morning with a cold chill running […]

(photo: grilled chicken, fennel and feta salad, a few pieces of good bread and a bottle of Brooklyn Pilsner) We eat tons of fennel during the winter months and usually consume it in a salad or immediately after a meal (as a digestivo).  Recently, we put together a fennel salad comprising of a simple vinaigrette and lots of good feta cheese […]

One of the tricks to eating well, in my humble opinion, is to eat simple meals comprised of high quality ingredients. The high quality ingredients will allow you to “cheat” because they’re, A priori, spectacular food items to begin with and the simple meal part will ensure you (read me) won’t screw up the cooking process because simple means little manipulation or […]

Here’s a simple chicken dish that I learned from my childhood next door neighbor Amelia who was originally from Genoa, Italy.  My mother prepared this dish at least once a weak during the winter months (my sister and I would jump with joy when we saw this dish at the dinner table).  Amelia had her own rosemary bush in her […]

Chicken Cutlets, Homemade Breadcrumbs, and the Importance of Good Pollo I made my first chicken cutlet when I was 12 years old and it was a complete disaster.  From what I remember, I over seasoned the breadcrumbs, placed the breaded cutlets in below temperature oil, had very little of that magical “golden brown” color, and undercooked the chicken.  Fast forward […]

Butterflied Whole Chicken on the Grill One of the earliest food memories I have is of Nonna Vincenzina slaughtering a young chicken on Via Nazionale in Calabria.  Nonna simply walked into the chicken coup, grabbed one of my feathery friends, and snapped it’s fragile head (the bird ran around for a few minutes and thereafter dropped to the dirt floor). […]