Easter for me are the church bells ringing in the morning sun and a new Spring coat, the Tuscan Easter schiacciata from San Gimignano and the dark chocolate, the fresh pasta and the spring vegetables, the lamb and the blessed eggs. Easter is the beginning of the good season and…
Il pacco da giù. Do you know what it is? It means literally a parcel from the South (of Italy, in this case). If you leave the South of Italy and move to the North to attend the University or for work, you would often receive from your family a…
Sitting at the wooden table in the living room, I still need a sweater when the night falls. Next to me there is a glass pretending to be a vase with a withered branch of mimosa that comes from my father-in-law's garden. I can't throw it away: despite having lost…
I go to the market with a straw bag that Tommaso gave me for my birthday last year: on the one hand, it matches my feelings when I shop at the market, as if I were the protagonist of a Joanne Harris novel set in Provence, on the other I…
Dad, I want to cook you something special for your birthday. What do you want? And his answer, always the same: something made au gratin. Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He is a handyman, who built our wood burning oven for pizza and bread just by watching videos on YouTube.…
These are sunny days that taste like early Spring, days of morning walks in the countryside before work. I feel the vibrations of the upcoming season, so I try to shake off the fatigue of a tiring winter, which I had completely underestimated. I channel this energy in the kitchen,…
How many meat sauces exist in Italy? In between the rich and self-indulgent Bolognese ragù, where the ground beef and the ground pork are cooked with white wine, milk and tomato paste, and the Neapolitan one, where tradition has it that there is no ground meat, but whole pieces of…
I like bulbs in a pot: they bloom slowly and, one morning, the smell of spring floods the kitchen. I adore dark chocolate, a crafted bar with salt crystals wrapped in a colourful paper. I like a book, because with that you give me an adventure and the chance to…