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Italy

This category contains 4 posts

Quail Stuffed Grape Leaves

Game birds are more difficult to find for a reasonable price than you’d like – makes you think about buying a shotgun – but I turned up some lovely frozen quail at my local market (The Roslindale Fish Market for those in the Boston area) and did them up with a sort of composite recipe [...]

Thanksgiving: Wherein a chicken rides a turkey to dinner and a pumpkin pie is filled with cheese

I have a very understanding family:
To make various mixtures with which to stuff every sort of commonly eaten animal, quadraped and fowl. Get four pounds of pork fat that is not rancid and with knives beat it finely together with two pounds of liver of a goat kid…adding in beaten mint, sweet marjoran, burnet [...]

Salt Cod is Usually Delicious

I’m a big salt cod proponent – it’s semi-cheap (once you factor in how you’re not paying for the water), much tastier than normal fish because the drying process concentrates the flavors, and it keeps forever. So, this recipe seemed like it would be a simple, pleasant success. It wasn’t a train wreck, [...]

Spit Roasting a Pheasant is Time Consuming

Bartolomeo Scappi is the second, after Maestro Martino di Como, of the great Italian Renaissance cooks (though it can be argued that Scappi was the first to make a break with medieval cookery dogma). He was the personal chef for two popes, and assembled his Opera to instruct his apprentices in their work. [...]