Continuing to build on the list of cool weather foods I intended to make this winter, I finally decided to tackle lasagne verdi, made with fresh spinach pasta and Bolognese and bechamel sauces. For many years I’ve drooled over the recipe in my Food of Italy cookbook, but it was an article in an issue of La Cucina Italiana magazine that propelled me to figure out the perfect recipe for this dish.

If I had a recipe, why the quest, you ask? Well, funny thing about the recipe in the Food of cookbook. While you could obviously see that the pasta was a spinach pasta, there was no recipe for spinach pasta in the book! A slight oversight. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dinner, Gourmet, Italian, Sunday Suppers, Wine pairings by Courtney

Back when the weather started to turn cool, I made a list of the various cool-weather foods I couldn’t wait to make, my comfort foods for winter 2012-2013. I promised to post a few new recipes this season, and finally, I’ve gotten around to making a few of my favorites and documenting them. The first is this terribly simple chicken cacciatore served over a creamy, parmesan-cheese-laced polenta that screams comfort food.

Cacciatore is Italian for hunter, thus this is the hunter’s chicken. The preparation is simple, with just a few items that need chopping and sauteing before you let the chicken braise in a tomato-wine sauce. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dinner, Gluten free, Italian by Courtney

In the book Vegetables from an Italian Garden, this recipe is listed in English as Delicious Broccoli, and that is an apt description. Broccoli, dressed up with a splash of cream, dots of butter, and more than a glug of white wine. It’s the perfect decadent vegetable side for a Thanksgiving dinner or a steakhouse-style dinner. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dinner, Gluten free, Gourmet, Italian, Side Dish, Thanksgiving, Vegetarian by Courtney

Quite a few years ago, when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in France, I first heard of tarte tatin. And that’s all – I heard about it. Every time I tried to order it, I was told it had “expired”. The first time I was told this, I was very confused, but by the end of the trip I realized “expired” meant 86’d, or they’d run out.

Disappointment faded away, and I had long forgotten about the tarte tatin, until I had a bunch of gravenstein apples in my kitchen, just begging to be turned into a dessert. In trying to decide what to make, I stumbled upon the idea of a tarte tatin, as they seem to be having a bit of a renaissance here at the moment. The dessert couldn’t be simpler… except for flipping the darn thing. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dessert, French, Vegetarian by Courtney

At the age of 18, I moved away from Tennessee to the midwest, and I had more than my fair share of culture shocks. Most of these had to do with food. A ham biscuit at Hardee’s was made with deli ham, because no one north of Kentucky had ever heard of country ham. White Lily flour was only sold in Williams-Sonoma, and a small bag would cost you eight dollars. Barbecue was most often beef, most often ribs. And in the self-proclaimed barbecue capital of the world, being invited to a barbecue didn’t mean you were going to get smoked meat, but that you were simply grilling out some burgers and hotdogs. And soup beans… no one knew what these were. How was I to explain it? I had no other words for soup beans – they were soup beans, cooked and served with cornbread most usually. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dairy free, Dinner, French, Gluten free, Southern by Courtney