A Sicilian Meal for Montalbano

One of my favorite detective novelists is Andrea Camilleri. His incorruptible police inspector, Salvo Montalbano, is a fully realized and totally satisfying hero, not the least of whose charms is a devotion to food. In every story we find him passionately consuming classic dishes of his Sicilian homeland. Reading the books makes your mouth water. [...]

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Ramps in Walnut Vinaigrette with Orange Zest

It’s ramp season again. I particularly wanted to do something with ramps this spring, after having cooked them for the first and only time in my life at the very end of last year’s season. That initial foray turned out quite well, so I went back to the cookbook I used for it, Elizabeth Schneider’s Vegetables [...]

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Shrimp Cocktail, Spanish Style

Serendipity sent me a pleasant new dish this week. I was looking up a recipe in Penelope Casas’s The Foods and Wines of Spain, my go-to cookbook for Spanish dishes, when a turning page caught my eye with an interesting approach to the shrimp cocktail. Shrimp are always a treat, and I’m usually happy to [...]

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Pizza Rustica

Pizza rustica: It isn’t a pizza, as we normally think of one, and – to my mind, at least – it isn’t particularly rustic. But it’s certainly good. A torte is what I’d call this pastry shell baked around a mixture of cured meats and soft cheeses. It can be made with many combinations of [...]

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Braised Beef with Tuscan Herbs

The title above is a “genteel” translation of Carne in Galera, a name that actually means Jailhouse Meat. The joky name is typical of Dario Cecchini, the celebrity butcher-restaurateur of Panzano in Tuscany. Dario is as famous for his antic disposition as for his meat cookery. . I encountered the man and his cooking at [...]

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