Italian Cooking

“Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods…” Julius Cesar 2, 1  Shakespeare had a thing for Italian regional cuisine, with many of his most popular dishes having a distinctly Italic flavor. Brutus’ “Skewered Parmesan and Bologna” is one of those, a re-working of the noted international food writer Plutarch’s “Parallel Recipes”. This version,… Read more: The Ides of March – Brutus’ Skewered Parmesan and Bologna with Aged Balsamic Vinegar

A thousand different names, a million different variations, all derived from ancient times, likely as soon as people learned to mix flour and liquid into a dough, roll it out, fry it, and sweeten it. Certainly a version was already well known in ancient Rome: frictilia. Apicius mentions them as a cheap and delicious street food passed out to people celebrating Saturnalia.

Contain an incredibly large, dense mass in your kitchen. Hide it behind a door that says ‘loo’ or ‘bathroom’. Invite a dumb undergrad over, (any faculty will do though economics would be preferable,) telling him or her you want them to take part in a revolutionary experiment. When he gets to your house, have him sit down and then slowly explain to him about black holes. (Don’t worry if you make a mistake or two. He’s dumb, so he’ll never know the difference.) Pour him plenty of beer as you do. When he asks to use the loo, show him to the door behind which you’ve hidden the black hole – but remember to give him the pasta dough before he steps inside.

the history of pasta

Before opening his now world-renowned restaurant The Mab, Mercutio worked alongside Romeo and Juliet in Verona. He and Romeo were best friends, so much so that Mercutio decided to work for a short spell at The Globe not long after the young couple emigrated from Italy. There, his brilliant juxtapositions of textures and flavors were quickly noticed, prompting local chef and food critic Dryden to note that Shakespeare’s kitchen “show’d the best of its skill in Mercutio.” However, unable to compromise his inventive nature into The Globe’s more structured kitchen, William was forced to dismiss him.

…it’s a great plate for cool October days, rich and comforting while refined at the same time, and if you haven’t tried them at home before, they will seem… like discovering someone new.

it’s a great dish, well worth making this time of year – for peasants and nobility alike. A simple, inexpensive meal outside with a very big wow factor surprise once in the plate:

Since no lunch is free, well, unless you’re senior management, where breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, coffee, drinks, brunches, Christmas gifts, transportation, art collections, housing, computers, cell-phones, subscription services, healthcare and pretty much everything else IS free – try a simple dish great for the 99 percent of us on a trickle-down budget. The day after you’ve made a spaghetti and made too much to finish, don’t just take it out of the fridge and plop in the microwave. Instead, place the cold spaghetti on a big enough cutting board and chop into three or four to shorten the noodles.

4 of the top 10 things that guys, even more so heterosexual, don’t do naturally of their own free will are: 1) their nails; 2) shopping; 3) ironing… and; 4) dirty dishes, the later only it there isn’t any more space left in or around the kitchen sink. You know, those leaning tower constructs of stained, somewhat brownish plates, glasses and silverware that seem to defy gravity as they glisten under the lighting, testaments to the open and heat meals of days gone by?

Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116   Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116“And scorne not Garlicke like to some, that think / It onely makes men winke, and drinke, and stink.” Joannes De Mediolano, The Englishman’s Doctor, 1608   Garlic Pasta has become a motto for the recent revival of simple, good, healthy traditional cuisine. The recipe states right… Read more: Wednesday Will – Garlic Pasta Sonnet 116

Spread a thin layer of the fresh cheese over top. Now, spoon over the sauce – and it’s ready to go.

‘…the tomato, star of earth, recurrent and fertile…’ Pablo Neruda

‘In his recipe, however, Shakespeare does at least change the liquor Belleforest used as well as adding the “Wha’s up!” exchange, taken from the noted add campaign by Bud-of-Weiser, in the opening scene, a second sea scallop dish later in the recipe and of course the ghost of Julia Child.’

But one important smell, for me, that you can find here as well as in hotter, more southern blue places: fig tree. I was surprised to find out: in my hick-ignorance I thought they’d be a rarity. Instead they’re all over – as they should be. One of the easiest, hardiest trees to plant and grow.

I montanari spesso non sono molto frivoli, diciamo. Ma quasi sempre sono di un onesta’ ormai rarissimo. Non t’inculano, e non si vendono. Come possono. Fanno parte di una montagna così immensa e solida. E usano parole le più pratiche possibile.

Though Shakespeare often, ah, borrowed the basis for his recipes every so often he came up with something completely different. His immensely popular Midsummer Spaghetti is one of those original dishes. It’s been rumored that he got the idea after attending a wedding in Greece at which peculiar homegrown ouzo was served, but Shakespeare’s always been mute on the point.

“That was really, really close,” you adroitly say after you’ve escaped by running through a mysterious antique ruin that just happened to have a store of the special butter made from the milk of cows fed exclusively on a rare flower that grows only on one particular European hillside that you were looking for. Eureka!

t’s nearly always a balance, almost a dance – an equilibrium, a playing, contrast and synchrony, surprise and familiarity. Cooking that is, organizing a plate, adjusting for salt and sweet, umami and creamy, crunch and mushy and heat and bite and…

James Joyce’ Portrait of a Pasta with Ragout “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” Ulysses For more literary recipes from Pasta Noir: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083GVVG89/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

  ….long sigh. Tough times, lots of people around Italy and elsewhere don’t have much cash, ‘no tengo dinero’, not in small part because a very few people have so much…. they don’t really know what to do with. Except waste it buying symbolic stuff absurdly priced from other rich people, you know, another 15… Read more: Small Price, Big Flavor: Penne with scampi without the scampi