A look at local food discoveries, whether it’s a particular dish or an ingredient, often with one or more recipes.
Let’s start with the admission of guilt. This traditional pasta dish from the province of Matera (and surrounds) in Basilicata, southern Italy, is “supposed” to be made with troccoli. Not with spaghetti alla chitarra. But I’m using the latter, because it’s as close as I’m going to get given circumstances. Now, it’s not that there’s a huge… Read More Cod-ifying Our Pasta
It was a quiet January, Casa SaltShaker-wise. As previously mentioned, Henry’s away in Peru for his annual family visit, plus I spent a week in São Paulo, so we only offered up three dinners all month. Singled out, one dish per meal, for your virtual gustatory pleasure. This one has been in the works for… Read More Meandering through January
Blecs After that, it seems like there’s no more to say. It just, at least in English, has a sort of finality to it. But, it’s the Slovenian name for a pasta from the Istrian penninsula, overlapping into far northeastern Italy, meaning “patches”. The Italian name for the same pasta, Biecchi, means “bent” (also “sinister”),… Read More Patchy with No Chance of Meatballs
There, that title should attract some new folk to my site…. It’s time, yes, for this week’s pasta! I told you I had one in reserve, since I’m now looking out over the Cerqueria Cesar neighborhood of São Paulo on a few day break to eat my way through some of the spots on either the… Read More White Supremacy, Baked
It’s been a couple of weeks since I delved into a new pasta step-by-step for you. The holidays were busy for us at the restaurant and personally, so not a lot of time for playing around in the kitchen. Back into it now, and I actually have this and another one lined up. Today, we… Read More Happy as a Cl… Mussel
Continuing with my new dish of the meal approach to the Casa SaltShaker dinners and lunches. We had a few extra in December, with some private parties, as well as we added in Saturday nights for Christmas and New Year’s Eves. Carré de Cerdo – Not the prettiest presentation nor photo, but damn it was… Read More Dishing December
I promised you variations on penne all’arrabiata, and I’m here to fulfill on at least one of those. Easily the most well-known of them is penne alla vodka. Now, this is not some ancient tradition in Italian cooking. I mentioned that there are three main spin-offs of the arrabiata dish, all’infuriata, alla vodka, and alla moscovita, and that they didn’t… Read More A Polish Guy Walks in to…
I was talking to a friend about this series of pasta posts, and he noted that I’ve mostly focused on the area around Rome and Naples, wondering just how many pastas there are from those regions. And of course, if we’re talking about well-known pastas, internationally in particular, it’s a limited field, and there are… Read More The Angry Quills