Scoplit pesto

One of the joys of cooking (of living!) in Italy is the variety of products you can find in the market. Supermarkets tend to be small (navigating them at peak time a challenge) and the selection limited but the quality is always very high. You could basically buy anything with your eyes closed and not be dissapointed (or ruin your appetite or your health if repeated). I am thinking specifically of the farmer’s markets in the public squares and the incredible variety of vegetables and especially herbs you might find.

November 15, 2024

Mushrooms with blue cheese

I am not sure where I got this from. I do remember my aunt, the writer Alicia Plante, back in Buenos Aires, mentioning a recipe of baked fish with blue cheese that I prepared a few times. In the US I adapted it using big mushrooms instead of fish. But maybe I got the idea somewhere else. 1 Get some big round mushrooms, for example, shitake mushrooms. I read that one should never wash the mushrooms with water as they get ruined somehow but gently remove any impurities with a soft brush.

November 2, 2024

Pasta verde

After a fair number of iterations this is the result of my cooking pasta with greens. At home we just call it Pasta Verde. This version is with Swiss chard but a real nice combination is dandelion leaves (tarassaco in Italian) and Swiss chard (bieta). You can see how the various steps follow those for cooking a risotto. 1 Start preparing about an hour in advance a thick broth to use to cook the pasta.

October 19, 2024

Potatoes and Swiss chard

Many years ago after an invited seminar talk at ISTA in Vienna we went with my host Tamas Hausel and some of his group for dinner to a Croatian restaurant. I had fish I think and a side dish of potatoes and chard, which I really loved. I have been trying to reproduce it from memory ever since. I found out later (while on vacation in Lussinpicolo) that it is actually a standard traditional dish in Croacia known as blitva (which simply means chard).