Jun 30
“Can you cook me some pasta tomorrow evening? I really feel like pasta. It’s been a while since I have eaten it”: my Italian husband said.
Having been living in Italy for more than 10 years, and specially having been married to an Italian, I discover that pasta is for Italians what rice and beans are for Hondurans. We gotta have it – if not daily – almost every day of the week.
There are some recipes that scream “Summer”, such as the one I am about to present. However, I will not take credit for it since I got my inspiration from an appetizer I ate about a year ago (yes I happen to remember what I ate last year!!) at Duke’s Restaurant in Rome (www.dukes.it). Unfortunately, this year that appetizer is not on the menu anymore!! Therefore, I decided to make my own version of it.
I love Rome’s geographic position: right in the center of the Italian Peninsula. Drive 170 miles south and you arrive on the Amalfi Coast. Drive 100 miles north and you are in Maremma, a wonderful area in the southernmost part of Tuscany.
When Summer arrives, my husband asks me to cook spaghetti con la crema di peperoni arrostiti – spaghetti with roasted pepper sauce, one of his favorites dishes. Even though it is a simple pasta recipe, results vary depending on the quality of ingredients one chooses.
It is getting hot in Rome!!!!!!!! As temperatures rise, I do not feel like drinking cappuccinos anymore. In Roman cafés, baristas are beginning to offer caffè freddo (cold coffee), which is just plain cold espresso with sugar. Since I like black coffee hot, I am not really fond of this kind of drink. I prefer iced coffee with milk – a.k.a frappuccino – which I find much more refreshing during hot summer days.
Is there a definitive recipe for a traditional dish? Is it ok to claim that there is only one way to cook some classics? When it comes to Eggplant Parmesan in Italy, it is a tough call. There are three Italian Regions bragging rights to the real Parmigiana di Melanzane: Campania, Emilia Romagna, and Sicily.
Last Friday evening my husband insisted in taking me to a new restaurant he was raving about lately. He usually goes there for business lunch, so every time he came back home after work, he described me all the succulent dishes he ate. Honestly, being the foodie person I am, I was curious and had high expectations about this place.
While living in Honduras, I often traveled by car from my hometown city San Pedro Sula to the capital city Tegucigalpa. Since the trip was exhausting, we used to stop for breakfast in Siguatepeque, a city along the highway about halfway between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.
Have you ever gone back to basics in the kitchen to see if you can still cook a traditional, simple recipe? In our global and multicultural society, we are so into cooking new recipes to experiment on exotic food pairings (mango with tuna steak or potatoes, capers and coffee ), or just trying to impress our friends with recipes from Michelin-starred chefs. This is fine (and so much fun!!), as long as we do not forget that simple recipes with few, high quality ingredients, often means more.
Where in Rome can you eat delicious panini and pastries, get a frothy cappuccino or an aromatic espresso, and at the same time taste freshly prepared meal-size salads, mouth-watering pasta, and scrumptious meat entrees?
Tales of Ambrosia 