Ossobuco alla milanese
on Nov 21, 2009 in Lombardia meat Fall secondi piatti unici Winter primi piatti Perhaps the most emblematic dish of the cuisine of Lombardy, the northern Italian region of which Milan is the capital, ossobuco (or oss bus in Milanese dialect) is veal shank, cut into thick rounds of shank meat around a marrowbone. It is typically...

A Word of Thanks
on Nov 21, 2009Dear readers, Memorie di Angelina has reached another milestone: it now has over 750 followers and subscribers! Some of you follow the blog through Google Friends Connect, some through Facebook's Networked Blogs, some by email or a reader, some on Tw...

Fregula e salsiccia
on Nov 20, 2009 in meat primi piatti Sardegna pasta A friend recently gave me a gift of fregula, a typical Sardinian pasta. I had heard of fregula, but had never eaten it—nor did I know any recipes for preparing it, so I dove into my cookbooks and surfed the internet for more information, finding th...

Strozzapreti ai funghi
on Nov 14, 2009 in vegetable quick vegan Winter primi piatti vegetarian pasta There are all sorts of mushroom sauces, some of which have made their appearance on this blog: the mushroom and tomato sauce, for example, that goes so well with dried pasta, or the mushroom cream sauce for gnocchi or even ox tongue. None of these ar...

Fagiolini in umido
on Nov 10, 2009 in vegetable Campania bean vegan contorno Toscana secondi Nana vegetarian While Sundays dinners at Angelina's house were once-a-week, belly-busting, meaty affairs, she practically lived on vegetables during the week. This was long before vegetarianism went mainstream and she would not have thought of herself as a 'weekday...

Moules au curry
on Nov 8, 2009 in fish French secondi antipasti Belgian Here's a wonderfully rich but yet light supper dish—steamed mussels in a curry cream sauce—from Belgium, the world capital of mussel dishes. With a crusty baguette to sop up the delicious sauce, you have a one-way ticket to culinary nirvana. Begi...

Tagliatelle al tonno e panna
on Nov 7, 2009 in quick fish primi piatti pasta Here's a dish for iconoclasts: tagliatelle with tunafish simmered in butter, cream and parmesan cheese—a dish that violates one of the cardinal rules of Italian cooking: never mix fish and aged cheese. But this may be one of those exceptions that p...

Taglierini al sugo d'arrosto
on Nov 6, 2009 in Piemonte meat pasta Here's a neat idea for a really quick and savory pasta whenever you happen to roast  veal, chicken, beef or pork. Save the drippings and use them as a sauce for pasta—a sugo d'arrosto. It's that simple. If your roasting pan is flameproof, you...

Spaghetti alla puttanesca
on Nov 4, 2009 in Campania primi piatti pasta Spagetti alla puttanesca is another weeknight stand-by in our house. So quick and—for lack of a better word—lusty. You begin as if you were making an aglio, olio e peperoncino, lightly sautéing a few cloves of garlic, along with a peperoncino or...

Zuppa di scarola e fagioli
on Nov 3, 2009 in vegetable Campania bean vegan Nana primi piatti vegetarian soup Here's a quick and easy dish, typical of the Campania region of Italy, that is a cold weather weeknight staple at our house: escarole and bean soup. You begin, as always, with a soffritto by sweating a thinly sliced onion in olive oil until transluce...