My mother taught me all that I know about cooking and food, and she learned in the kitchen of her parents and grandparents in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Jeannette is a grimy, industrial suburb of Pittsburgh that once boasted the largest glass factories in the world. Immigrants actually left New York City for Westmoreland County, where they could find work at the Jeannette Glass Company. Early in the twentieth century, following fateful meanderings around the globe, my family ended up there. They had dug up their tomato gardens in Calambria, Italy, and transplanted them in the hills of Jeannette.
By the time I was old enough to understand this, most of these Italian relatives were either dead or living far away. I know their names and had seen their black-and-white faces in old photographs, but those didn't mean anything to me. Campania was as about as remote as Jeannette must have seemed to the generations before mine. But as it turned out, we had a lot in common. We shared my mother, my grandmother, and food. I didn't know it, but I was more Italian than I was southerner.
When I first moved to Memphis at the age of nine, I found the practice of eating barbecue ribs with baked beans and cole slaw to be the depths of bad taste. We didn't eat such things. We liked zucchini, fried eggplant, gnocchi (pronounced nuh-yawk-ee), chicken parmesean, Italian spinach, pizza, Syrian pizza, and calzone. For Easter we had pizza chiena and homemade manicotti (Mom still makes her own crepes). Christmas Eve dinner was angel hair pasta with anchovies, fried fish, pizelles, and cheese fondue.
We didn't just eat Italian food, though. There were as many Poles as Italians in Pittsburgh, and much of my favorite food is Polish. We still eat kielbasa, bratwurst, perogies, sauerkraut, cabbage and dumplings, and "Polish hand grenades," cabbage leaves stuffed with ground beef and onions and sometimes covered in a citrusy glaze.
The cheese fondue may be a hanger-on from trendy 1970s cuisine, but the rest is a part of a precious family history that informs not only what I choose to buy at the grocery store, but who I am on a more important level. I didn't realize this when I was young, of course. It didn't matter to me then. Eggplant tasted good; okra was gross.
It matters more than ever now. My wife and I had our first child in 2008. We named him Rocco, a nod to the Italian heritage that grows more distant with each generation. When he was old enough for solid food, my mother instinctively made him a meal that I hadn't seen in twenty-five years—a cupful of pastine tossed in butter and a little parmesean cheese. He loved it.
I made these after spotting the recipe in Food and Wine magazine last week. They became an instant classic in our house. I know we will make these again and again because they are so easy and, as Gail would say, so tasty.
It's finally here! We rolled up to the first Memphis Farmers Market of the season at 7:20 a.m. yesterday, and to say it didn't disappoint would be a wild understatement. The vendors looked so happy to be back, and the crisp morning was the perfect backdrop. Strawberries from Jones Orchard were a major find, as were Van Cheeseman's pea tendrils...not to mention the hydroponic tomatoes from Micmak Farms and nasturtium flowers from the wonderful family at Dodson Farms. 
Tuesday evening April 20th at 6:30pm Bari is having its first-ever vegetarian wine dinner. Chef Jason Severs will be preparing 5 vegetarian courses that will be paired with 5 wines from Delta Wholesale. The cost of the dinner is $50. This is exactly the type of thing I love to support, so I will be there. I hope to see you there, too.
Reservations can be made at:
or by calling 901-722-2244.
The Menu:
First: Fresh spring vegetable salad, with roasted garlic honey marinated grilled tempeh, currents, portabella mushroom crisp
Who uses poppy seeds anymore? We do! They have a faint floral-sesame flavor, and they offer 
Poppy Seed Dressing (for two salads)
For this amazing pizza I made everything (and I mean everything) from scratch. The cheese was made using THIS simple recipe. The sauce is simply peeled and seeded roma tomatoes that have been tossed in olive oil and roasted in a 400 degree oven. The crust is my own recipe for beer-spiked pizza dough. Finish it with fresh basil leaves and a drizzle of olive oil. 
I needed to practice my brunoise skills since they were getting kinda rusty.
Here is a fast way to spruce up pasta night. Grab a few whole marinated artichokes from the olive bar and split them lengthwise with a sharp knife. (I think the large ones with the stem attached are prettier.) I found these at The Fresh Market. Throw them cut-side-down into a hot cast-iron grill pan. Allow them to cook for about 3-4 minutes per side or until they are nicely marked and heated through. Place them atop any simple pasta recipe with some chopped parsley and shaved parmesan. There you have it! In three minutes, you've gone from plain ol' spaghetti to pasta with grilled artichoke hearts.
This sandwich is so simple to make, but the flavor is very complex. The idea was born from a salad I like to make to go along with paella or empanadas. You are just a few ingredients away from a hearty, vegan lunch.
I've been wanting to make a white lasagna for a while now, and I've seen delicata squash crop up as a new ingredient, so, this weekend, on a long, interminably boring afternoon when TCV was away on a shoot, I thought, here we go! Here is Martha's recipe, which I used as a starting point. 
Our high-minded little selves are catching up on our Proust this week. (Okay, okay, so we're starting with just an excerpt.) This is due to the recent acquisition of our first-ever madeleine pan, a nonstick one, with a good starter recipe on the packaging. 
The can of lychees hid in the back of our crowded cupboard for an inordinately long time. I thought about them; I had a vague idea to add them to champagne one day when something celebratory was called for, but it just never happened. 
Yes, we realize that it is absolutely freezing cold outside. Yes, it's a fact that it's only mid-February, and regrettably, spring still seems imaginary at this point. And, horror of all horrors, we've resorted to using fleece door pillows to block all icy drafts from outside. (Even our dog finds that unacceptable -- she has secretly torn apart two out of three of them.) 
To Start
