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A16’s short ribs alla genovese x2Yesterday

if you read ceF, then you know that i prefer italian cooking over all others. it’s my automatic go to. it’s what feels right to me - kind of like the color black, a burmese cat, the nyc vibe and the smell of cary’s neck. these are things that work for me on a regular basis. the things that make me, me.

ok, those things - and black and white cookies.

but the italian food phenomenon is a relatively common shared love, unlike perhaps, cary’s neck - both of these working in my favor. because whereas you best stay away from my man, the craft of italian cooking (and any cooking) can be shared and enjoyed through great dinners at home and in restaurants, reading books, traveling…

well, and then there are the bloggers.

and we all have our favorites. the ones that makes us laugh, the cooks we wish we were, the farmer and forager, the beautiful photographer, the great writer… and a few that perhaps have just the right blend of whatever it is that makes you, you.

i’ve grown pretty fond of so many food blogs, but there’s a few out there in particular that seem to feel the whole italian thing in the way that i do. and there’s one woman in particular…

babbo’s pumpkin cakeNovember 17

as you very well know, right now we are in full pumpkin swing. pumpkin everything is everywhere. let’s face it - once a year we all go pumpkin crazy and really, it’s a good thing. all the baked goods - from pies to muffins to cheesecakes and breads, pumpkin concoctions stuffed into various shaped pastas and sauced with sage brown butter, and even ‘pumpkin as edible vessel’, filled with dried fruits and spiced rice. if it’s autumn, we’re eating pumpkins, winter squash and sweet potatoes. which is a more than welcome sight after seemingly endless quantities of the zucchini and yellow squash we’ve had to contend with all late summer…

so while flipping through the babbo cookbook, looking for cookie ideas for the upcoming december class, i spotted this cake and bega

sweet potato with king oyster mushrooms, guanciale and a poached eggNovember 14

i realize the name of this dish probably sounds a bit random and that the picture is not helping. but let me explain…

this past week there have been 2 cooking classes held in my home with 16 students in total. the topic was handmade pasta and well, it really was a lot of fun. we made 3 dishes - a sweet potato tortellini, batali’s fettuccine capricciose and the roman classic, amatraciana with an extruded bucatini.

next month we’re holding a bruschetta and biscotti class. we’ll make a few wonderful bruschettas, we’ll drink some chianti and we’ll bake and bake, everyone going home with a big bunch of cookies for the holidays. be there.

anyway, we had leftovers of the tortellini filling, so last night i invited a friend over with no real thoughts on what i might make for dinner, but somewhere between washing my face and putting on my fuzzy lined merrell’s, it came to me in a flash… i had somehow once again channeled my inner ‘gabrielle hamilton’ and came up with this dish.

split pea soup with flankenNovember 12

i’m one of those people who don’t have a great deal of attachment to my childhood food memories. i mean, being from nyc i grew up around seriously great food but my mom was not a gourmet cook. she saw feeding us each night as her familial duty and she did a solidly good job - but nothing extraordinary was happening in our kitchen on yellowstone blvd. i have a dim recollection, which just the mere thought of now causes me to cringe, of flounder rolled with a can of campbell’s condensed alphabet soup mixed with sour cream. and perhaps on a much higher note, my brother’s favorite was veal parmigiana and we always had that for dinner whenever he came home from college - and i’ve got to say that my mom did a pretty damn fine rendition of that. but nothing else really stands out. just that we had a varied and well rounded menu and no one ever went hungry. 

but my grandma julia, now she was a real ballabusta. and her kitchen was huge - at least 600 square feet and well, i spent a lot of time in that kitchen on long island. tons of weekends and sleep overs and then there were all the jewish holidays. my brother once told me that the philosophy of our relatives pretty much boiled down to "we’re jews, you didn’t kill us, let’s eat".

and eat we all did, the likes of

the way to cook: chicken provençaleNovember 6

like most of you who come here, i cook often. cooking is a joy in my life and i’m probably at my most centered and peaceful when i’m in my kitchen. but just the other night when faced with an upcoming gathering at my house, i got a bit anxiety ridden.  and you might wonder why… i mean i am a seasoned pro at feeding people and these were some of my closest friends.

well, here was the list of the dietary restrictions… no pork. no lamb or beef. nothing spicy, no eggplant, bell peppers or cauliflower. no squash, mushrooms or green olives. no sugar, eggs, dairy, wheat or gluten of any kind. and no yeast. which is in seemingly everything.

dear readers, i am not kidding here… and we were only 8 people.

so i decided we would have chicken. it felt safe. but still, this culinary task was a bit too daunting for the likes of me and i could come up with nothing. so i did what many a cook has done for three generations - i turned to julia child. and as you might expect, she had just the perfect dish for us. a sauté!

one of my favorite cookbooks of all time is ‘the way to cook’