'E mo' si balla belle mie', I say to the last three remaining bottles of tomato sauce in the back recesses of the storage shelves, 'It's time to dance, my beauties'. I crack the seal on one of them and the castle kitchen fills with the tangy, saline blood-smell of
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Try it sometime. Next time folks ask what you do for a living, tell them that you run a cooking school in Italy. They'll be instantly at ease and more than pleasantly surprised, eager to talk about recipes, their favourite restaurants and wines that they've had recently. Complete strangers will
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Next time you hear one of his solos, sit and really listen. I mean really listen. I'm not the first to say this, but the solos of Louis Armstrong are famously appreciated for being reduced to their absolute essence. There is no flab, nothing that can be trimmed away without leaving
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This is the first part in a series of posts dedicated to fish and fish cookery, and especially how it's done here in the Salento, the thin slice of gorgeous land dangling out into the middle of the seas that make up the Mediterranean. Like you, I had always tended to fall back on a handful of recipes, virtually neglecting the rest of the monger's case. This summer, all of that is going to change.
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No pasta in all of Italy is harder to make. As a teacher, I push them back later into the week, introducing the easier shapes first. This cuts down on the frustration that usually accompanies learning how to make le orecchiette, nearly always dictating a rich, Rococo-like stream of blasphemy, free-styling profanity featuring donkeys and broomsticks, followed by the tearing of one's own hair and garments.
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I'm going to get hate mail on this one. Drive bys with rotten fruit. Perhaps Molotov's through my front windows. If I had children, larger kids would pull their braids and push them down into the gravel. Folks would kick my puppy, if I had one. Cartoonists and late night television hosts are going to use me as the butt of their jokes. My friends' wives will stop accepting my handmade pastries, their top lips peeling off their teeth in barely-hidden disgust. Local officials are going to 'register' me. Nope, this one is going to get messy. But I'm going to post this anyway, no matter the mob that forms at my front door, their soily pitchforks shaken in rage. Here is my recipe for Taieddhra, a dish so entrenched in the cooking of the Salento, that folks not only disagree on how you make it, we can't even decide what to call it.
Read MoreIt’s a brothy, rib-sticker of dish, more like a hearty stew than your average pasta soup.
Read MoreI’m told that I have something of an obsessive personality, although I really prefer the adjective, ‘enthusiastic’. Take summer dishes: This year I’m only really eating three dishes, and all three of them nearly everyday. The only one that is not part of my normal summer repertoire is this new, lightened
Read MoreCome late summer in these parts, you still see older folks gathering in small groups out in the countryside. Someone will have an old radio on, set to some station where all the music was recorded back when full, lush symphonies were all the rage. An old stew pot will be bubbling
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