Archives

The Zen of Artichokes

October 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I love autumn. If it’s not the leaves and all the color, then I find poignancy in the drying and dying weeds littering the ground. They embody survival to me. One plant I particularly love is a thistle-like plant, filled with tiny seeds attached to billowy white parachutes. The least puff of wind forces the seeds out of their pods and they float in the wind, just like paratroopers, over the landscape, falling where they may, taking root at times […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Artichokes, California, France, Italy, Meditations, Normandy, Photography, Thistles, Writing, Zen

The Pull of Italy: An Explanation of, or at Least a Discourse on, an Obsession

April 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Just what is it about Italy? The sheer, sheer beauty? Or … The turbulent history The grottoed mushroom-rank earth The Latin-infused language The ancientness The glimmering light The icy green water of northern lakes The needle-like cypress trees The deep phosphorescent colors of art The blue of the sea The dark wood floors and terra cotta tiles The flowers and the grape vines and the olive trees The spirituality mingling with ancient beliefs And food and cooking reflect all of […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy • Tags: Bill Buford, Cookbooks, Enchanted April, Heat, Italian Cooking, Italy, Virginia Woolf

Idylls of Cuisine, #60

April 25, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Pasta, Photography • Tags: Beef, Food Photography, Italian Cooking, Italy, Meatballs

Pandolce: From Liguria with Love, Thanks to Laura Schenone

December 22, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Laura Schenone, author of the soulful The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken and the scholarly (and prize-winning) A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, traveled back to Liguria for Christmas in 2007. From that trip came her perpetual Christmas gift to all of us, Pandolce. In an article in the December 2008 issue of SAVEUR Magazine, she teaches us how to make our own Pandolce in the old way, just in time for Christmas and the holiday season. Although the […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Christmas, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Techniques • Tags: Christmas, Italian Cooking, Italy, Laura Schenone, Pan Dolce

No Thanks to Marco Polo: An Encyclopedia of Italy’s Pasta Shapes

November 6, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Marco Polo returned to Italy from his Chinese travels in 1296. The myth, legend, what have you, credits him with introducing pasta into Italy’s culinary repertoire. But Marco Polo did NOT bring pasta to Italy. And 73-year-old Italian author Oretta Zanini de Vita wants you to know that, immediately, upfront and center. Zanini de Vita says, Dried pasta, the kind made with durum wheat, is found in Italy from about A.D. 800. It was in fact the Muslim occupiers of […]

Categories: Archaeology, Book Reviews, China, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Pasta, Reference • Tags: Archaeology, China, Encyclopedia of Pasta, Italian Cooking, Italy, Marco Polo, Oretta Zanini de Vita, Pasta

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Honey Cakes

October 27, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Some interesting comments from 1845 about All Souls’ Day, by Charles Knight in Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (!), Volume 14, p. 441: To do a Tarentella as it ought to be done requires room, and although the palaces of the nobility and gentry be large (in ninety cases out of a hundred far too large for their shrunken fortunes), the lodgings of the poor and humble, especially in Naples [Italy] and in the […]

Categories: Halloween, Italian Cooking, Italy • Tags: All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead, Halloween, Italy

Idylls of Cuisine #26

August 16, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Italian Cooking, Italy, Pasta, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Italian Cuisine, Italy, Pasta Carbonara

Elizabeth Romer’s Chronicle of Tuscan Agriculture

August 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Contemplating the impact of Food Network’s publishing juggernaut on the current food scene in America, I find myself turning backwards, to some of the “earlier” writers on food in Italy. Many of these people, like Elizabeth Romer in The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley (1985), wrote of day-to-day practices, of times not generally recorded by local people. Romer, wife of archaeologist John Romer and a prolific co-writer with him on Egyptian and other ancient cultures, wrote […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cookbooks, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods • Tags: Agriculture, Cooks, Elizabeth Romer, Italian Cooking, Italy, Tacuina sanitatis, Tuscany

The Hermetic Lady in the Palazzo: Marlena de Blasi

August 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cookbook author and memoirist Marlena de Blasi does not seek the limelight, preferring instead to write her books in the shadows. The shadows, that is, of the great stone monuments of Italy, first San Marco in Venice and now a sixteenth-century palazzo in Orvieto in Umbria. De Blasi’s body of work includes A Taste of Southern Italy: Delicious Recipes and a Dash of Culture (2006, originally published as Regional Foods of Southern Italy, 1999), Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Italian Cooking, Italy • Tags: Cooks, Italian Cooking, Italy, Marlena de Blasi

Idylls of Cuisine #16

June 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Archaeology, Italian Cooking, Italy • Tags: Archaeology, Cooking, Italy, Pompeii

What Mummies Tell Us about Food

May 1, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As we all know, or suspect anyway, mummies provide an amazing treasure trove of information about life (and death) in the past. Talk about primary sources, so beloved of historians! As A. A. Gill wrote in an article about the Palermo mummies in the February 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine: An enormous amount can be gleaned from dead bodies about the day-to-day lives of the past-diet, illnesses, and life expectancy. Knowing more about diseases like syphilis, malaria, cholera, and […]

Categories: Archaeology, Italy, Mummies • Tags: Diseases, Italy, Mummies, Palermo, Sicily

Idylls of Cuisine #7

March 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Italian Cooking, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Italian Cooking, Italy

Cooking in Italy

March 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Instead of forking out thousands of lire for a cooking class in Italy, take a look at these videos. Buon appetito! Cooking Sicilian with Mamma Agata Amalfi Coast with Mamma Agata (Looks like somebody got into the wine a bit early on) Lezione di cucina dl ristorante La Finestra a Padova (Italian Cooking Class at La Finestra)

Categories: Italian Cooking, Italy, Photography, Restaurants, Video • Tags: Food, Italian Cuisine, Italy, La Finestra, Video

Idylls of Cuisine #5

March 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Italian Cooking, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Italian Cooking, Italy

The Garden of Bartolomeo Vanzetti

March 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sometimes I close my eyes and just remember, remember being in ___ [name of place] and then it was just (pause) sit at the table, and I got a lot of brothers and sisters, you know. My dad’s there and I just sit at the table and it’s like, eat and laugh and talk and drink and enjoy with my family . . . There’s very few feelings like that in the world and a person can experience that through […]

Categories: Gardens, Italy • Tags: Anarchy, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Food, Gardens, Italy, Nelson Mandela, Nicola Sacco, Prison Food

Italy in Provence

February 26, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Memories of Provençal food continuously whisper to me. And reflection forces me to draw the logical conclusion that the food of Piemonte, Liguria, and Provence share the same grandparents. Or even the same parents. Countless, interminable wars guaranteed both the emigration and immigration of people (and food) over the centuries. Walking cookbooks, I call those people. Like lovers’ lips touching lightly, Provence borders Liguria and Piemonte and drew (and still draws) denizens of light and lavender and life. Van Gogh, […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Italian Cooking • Tags: Boeuf Daube à la Provençale, Cooking, Food, France, Italy, Provence

Prosecco Mi Amore

December 27, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like Rodney Dangerfield, makers of Prosecco want more respect. If you respect Prosecco, take a little journey over to “Italian Makers of Prosecco Seek Recognition,” in the December 26, 2008 issue of The New York Times. So what seems to be the problem? Because prosecco is the name of a grape, like chardonnay or cabernet, anyone can use the name. Like cheeses, sausages, and breads, wines like Prosecco epitomize the blessings of locally produced food products. Journalist Amy Cortese says, […]

Categories: Italian Cooking, Wine • Tags: Italian Cooking, Italy, Prosecco, Wine

Italian Cooking in Paradise: A16 is A-1

September 29, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As a cookbook junkie — close to 200 of my 3500 cookbooks concern Italian cooking — I drool when books like Nate Appleman’s A16: Food + Wine show up. The cover alone is worth the $35.00 admission price, for the photo makes my soul cry out for the simplicity it represents. Not because anything’s sad about it. No, the spirit of the place and the food and the history and the beauty, all those things that make us human curls […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Restaurants • Tags: Butternut squash, Cooking, Food, Italian Cooking, Italy, Nate Appleman, Soup

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life