Italian

Spaghetti and Meatballs

March 3, 2009 by Charles 1 Comment

In August 2002 (back in the early days of blogging), Julie Powell began an interesting project on her blog. Frustrated with her job, her marriage, and her living arrangements in one of the “outer boroughs,” she vowed to master the art of french cooking. That is, Powell decided to make every one of the 536 recipes contained in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year’s time. The project’s simplicity, balanced with its sheer scope, soon captured the interests of her fellow bloggers and several media outlets (and eventually earned her a book and movie deal).

On a much smaller scale, the Barefoot Bloggers make it their goal to blog roughly twenty-four of Ina Garten’s recipes every year – or two every month, which…

Grilled Garlic Bread

February 12, 2009 by Charles 9 Comments

If you were thinking about making my seven-layer spinach lasagna from the other day, grilled garlic bread would make the perfect appetizer….

Seven-Layer Spinach Lasagna

February 9, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

Choosing a recipe is a lot like playing the Kevin Bacon game.

The Kevin Bacon game, or Six-Degrees of Kevin Bacon, centers around the small-world principle, or the idea that any two people are linked by a finite number of connections. With Kevin Bacon, the goal is to link him to any other actor using no more than six intermediary actors. For instance, Elvis and Kevin Bacon are separated by only one intermediary – Edward Asner, who appeared with Elvis in Change of Habit, and with Bacon in JFK. At last count, over one million actors can be linked to Bacon in fewer than six steps.

The principle can be applied to any number of disciplines or phenomena – from linking baseball players in various decades, to demonstrating the thought process in choosing a recipe….

Bruschetta

November 12, 2008 by Charles Leave a Comment

Bruschetta (broo-SKET-uh), as you might suspect, is an Italian dish. It does not refer to the topping, however, but to the grilled bread. The word itself owes its origins to the 13th Century word “brusare,” which referred to the act of passing a flame over the keel of a boat to aid in waterproofing. A few centuries later, the word evolved to the Latin word “bruscare,” and came to mean to toast.

All of which is to say that bruschetta …

Lemon Italian Ice

October 18, 2008 by Charles Leave a Comment

This recipe is quite possibly my all-time favorite. Any time I have friends over for dinner, I make sure this figures into dessert plans. Often times, no dinner is necessary — I just tell guests who happen to be over that they’ve got to try this! And now that they’ve tried my lemon ice, I make sure to always have a pint stockpiled in the freezer – just in case I have an unannounced guest.

The real secret here is to freeze …