Mustazzoli, mustazzoli, or mostaccioli are cookies, not to be confused with mostaccioli pasta. These cookies are traditionally served at Christmas time throughout southern Italy. The cookie has Arabic origins and dates to ancient Roman times where mustaceum cakes were made using grape must. The first step in winemaking is pressing the …
Capers are flower buds that are either pickled in a brine solution or preserved in sea salt. If you’ve never had capers, they have a distinctive flavor that is highly prized in southern Italian cuisine. Capers that hail from the island of Pantelleria, part of the region of Sicily, are …
Consuming greens or green leafy vegetables is undisputedly beneficial to your health. Italians love greens (verdura), especially bitter greens like escarole (scarola), chicory, and curly endive. I ate greens frequently as a child. My parents extolled the virtue of eating greens, claiming that they purified the blood and were good …
Neither my husband nor I like turkey. I think it was standard protocol, back in the day, that a turkey had to be cooked for hours until it was bone dry. Nearly everyone I know cooked it this way. A couple of decades later, and we now know that turkey …
Last month I went to the farmer’s market and purchased several large pumpkins to decorate the front of our house with for the holiday season. Pumpkins, you may know, are edible and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. After Halloween and or Thanksgiving most pumpkins usually end up …
Puttana, or buttana in Sicilian, means a slut or whore. The name of this pasta dish, “alla Puttanesca,” translates as pasta in the style of a whore. Although this dish was not originally called Pasta alla Puttanesca in Sicily, it is now universally recognized by this name. The exact origin …
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