If we can cook it, you can cook it!

Category: Italian American Food

Baked Ziti with (or without) Sausage

Baked Ziti with (or without) Sausage

A new take on Baked Ziti, an Italian Classic from Recipe Developer Extraordinaire Alison Roman If you’ve ever cooked a recipe from Alison Roman, you’ll be mightily impressed by the spin she puts on Classics.  And this dish is a classic.  Ziti al forno, which…

Tortellini Soup with Spinach, Onions, Carrots and Fennel and how it ended up on our table.

Tortellini Soup with Spinach, Onions, Carrots and Fennel and how it ended up on our table.

When you live in a food town like New York, you discover places all over the city that are worth a detour anytime you’re close to them.  A recent doctor’s visit put me within two long blocks of the Sullivan Street Bakery.  I am so…

15 Minute Skillet Pan Pizza

15 Minute Skillet Pan Pizza

I consider Pizza a perfect food.  In one slice, you combine dairy, vegetables, carbohydrates and protein.  And you pick it up with one hand to eat it—no utensils necessary. All right, I use a fork which is contrary to New York pizza etiquette but not…

Orecchiette with Buttermilk, Peas and Pistachios from Bon Appetit

Orecchiette with Buttermilk, Peas and Pistachios from Bon Appetit

When it comes to Buttermilk, I can come up with three recipes that require it: Waffles, Fried Chicken and Biscuits.  Buttermilk comes in quarts. The only recipe of the three that requires that much Buttermilk is perhaps the chicken marinade which is used to tenderize…

Parmesan and Pancetta Toasts

Parmesan and Pancetta Toasts

I love pasta in all its forms and I serve it at least once a week. Since I seem to be incapable of making two servings of sauce, inevitably we end up with a freezer full of single portions.  I do not always label these.…

Weeknight Spaghetti and Meatballs: Beef and Pork Meatballs in Tomato Fennel Sauce

Weeknight Spaghetti and Meatballs: Beef and Pork Meatballs in Tomato Fennel Sauce

Andrew’s sister Lauren and I have an ongoing contest to find people who comment on a recipe they’ve so radically altered it bears no resemblance to the original. Despite having tinkered with the ingredients, the quantities, the cooking time until the recipe is unrecognizable, you’d…

Honey Pine-Nut Tart from Gina De Palma’s “Dolce Italiano”

Honey Pine-Nut Tart from Gina De Palma’s “Dolce Italiano”

As often as not, Andrew volunteers to bring dessert whenever we’re asked out to dinner.  On this particular occasion, he asked our friends Bill and Peter if they had any requests.   Peter asked for ‘something nutty’.  I seemed to remember an amazing tart Andrew had…

Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala

When I served Chicken Marsala one recent weeknight, Andrew asked if I was working on Italian restaurant classics.  As part of its 150th issue, Saveur magazine had published a collection of 150 Classic Recipes which ran the gamut from Buffalo wings to Middle Eastern Kibbeh,…

Review of Parm Restaurant on the Upper West Side and a recipe for an Italian American Classic: Sausage and Peppers

Review of Parm Restaurant on the Upper West Side and a recipe for an Italian American Classic: Sausage and Peppers

The Original Parm at 248 Mulberry St. NYC         Italian cooking is such an ingrained part of the American diet that dishes like Pizza and Spaghetti and Meatballs are barely labelled Italian anymore.  They’re just good old American staples at this point. But as Lasagna and…