We’ve written extensively on wild Italian mushrooms in the past, including recipes as the featured ingredient, how to hunt for wild mushrooms, and even how to pickle and preserve mushrooms so they can be enjoyed year round. However, we’ve never given our readers a general overview of mushrooms and specifically how Italians view and consume mushrooms. In Italy, foraging for […]

There are many elegant, yet simple, recipes that every home cook should master; for example, frittata, pasta with olive oil, garlic, and parsley, tomato salad, etc.  Sauteed mushrooms is another home cook essential that is easy to master after a few attempts and will make consistent appearances on your dinner table. Our sauteed mushrooms utilize any mushroom variety but we […]

Preparing and eating mushrooms can be either and an easy or difficult affair.  My Italian born parents, for example, are fans of wild mushrooms and go to great lengths to forage for exotic species and then pickle and preserve the delicacies.  On the other hand, I enjoy garden variety Shiitake mushrooms sauteed with garlic and extra virgin olive oil and plenty […]

Growing up in a southern Italian household in the United States, polenta wasn’t standard dinner or lunch fare; in fact, corn hardly made an appearance at our kitchen table.   Fast forward about 20 years and we can’t wait for the Fall season to come around so we can prepare a bit pot of steamy polenta flavored with wild mushrooms […]

Strozzapreti pasta is translated as “priest choker” and is an elongated form of cavatelli.  The legend has it that the priests of  Emilia-Romagna and the surrounding regions enjoyed the long pasta so much that they choked while eating it.  I can certainly understand eating strozzapreti quickly as it is, indeed, a delicious pasta. Strozzapreti is a fairly straight-forward pasta shape to make at […]

There are hundreds of variations on the popular dish Chicken Cacciatore (Pollo alla Cacciatora) translated as in the style of the hunter, including using various meats such as rabbit, pheasant, partridge, and capretto (baby goat).  Most versions of the dish include herbs, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and a braising liquid such as white or red wine (and/or water).  It’s my guess that most […]

  (photo: the highly prized white truffle – courtesy of Alma Gourmet) Truffle Primer  One of my favorite aspects of visiting Italy in the Summer and Fall months is the abundance of festivals scattered throughout the country.  In Calabria alone, for example, the summer months include food festivals focused on bread, salt cod, wild boar, eggplant, red chiles, potato, etc. […]

(photo: simply pork cutlet with cremini mushrooms, white wine, butter, and rosemary) Cutlets, or costolette in Italian, can be found in many food traditions around the planet, including French, Indian, Japanese, and, of course, Italian cuisines.  Cutlets can be made with veal/beef, chicken, pork, and even mutton.  Cutlets are usually prepared with a thin cut of meat and generally fried […]

(photo: a small 55 ml bottle of white truffle infused extra virgin oil from Florence) Prior to my first experience with Calugi’s white truffle infused extra virgin olive oil I must admit I was skeptical of all infused olive oils.  After all, mother nature has already infused the very best extra virgin olive oils with terrific notes of bitterness, sweetness, acidity, etc. so it was beyond me why additives were […]

(photo: Calugi tagliolini, about 1/2 pound) Tagliolini is another variety of tagliatelle that is long and cylindrical in shape.  Tagliolini are generally thinner in shape and more delicate than tagliatelle.   Recently, I was fortunate enough to try Calugi’s dry tagliolini from Cambiano Castelfiorentino situated between Livorno and Firenze in northwestern Italy.  Calugi makes their tagliolini with eggs and flour but adds […]