All the credit for these goes to my friend Ron. He’s famous throughout California’s central valley for his blue cheese burgers! I don’t have his recipe because even though I think I managed to pry it from him once, I never wrote it down. But I was craving a blue cheese burger today for lunch and since Ron and Ruby live in California and I’m still in Sicily, I had to come up with something myself! Continue reading →

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about one of my favorite online shops. No, I’m not talking about Zappos, I’m not talking about King Arthur Flour, and I’m not talking about Burt’s Bees. While it’s true that all of those businesses get their share of my money, my most recent online purchase was from The Spice House. Does it seem strange to shop for spices online? I kind of thought so too. But one visit to their site changed my mind and after my first package arrived in the mail over a year ago, I was completely hooked!

I was one of those people whose spice cabinet was packed with old bottles of spices that had been purchased for one recipe or another and then never touched again. Continue reading →

How it is that I’ve gone this long without tasting any of Nando’s Peri-Peri sauces, I will never know. But now that this wrong has been righted, I’m definitely a Nando’s convert. I like spicy foods and I like hot sauces but I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur. I always have a supply of a couple different Tabasco sauces on hand (I’ve also tried Texas Pete’s and Louisiana brands but I’ve always been a Tabasco girl), but my pantry hot sauce collection doesn’t usually get much bigger than that other than maybe some Cholula and a mild tomatillo-based green sauce. And of course, there’s the occasional Asian chili paste and I am now always fully stocked with Italian chili paste (crema di peperoncino). But really, considering the variety of hot sauces available in this world, my tiny collection doesn’t even scratch the surface. Continue reading →

Artichokes in Niscemi

I just got my first camcorder and had the opportunity to try it out in the town of Niscemi during the Feast of St. Joseph celebration or, La Festa di San Giuseppe, as it’s known here. I’ll have more photos and videos soon but I wanted to share a quick look at the grilled artichokes I got to eat for lunch!

Enjoy!

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I created this salad quite a while ago but haven’t posted it because I haven’t come up with an exact recipe. Each time I make the salad, I change the ingredients and amounts, trying to come up with the perfect combination. But it seems that it tastes just as good each time. So, I’m just going to give you a basic recipe and some general guidelines and you can either come up with your own “exact recipe” or you can keep changing it up like I’ve been doing.

I started experimenting with this salad because I was trying to replicate the mexican caesar salad from El Torito, a chain restaurant here on the west coast. I haven’t had it for years but I’ve never forgotten the cilantro dressing. Since I was in Italy when I started my experiment, I ended up using olive oil, pine nuts and parmigiano reggiano cheese. What I came up with is basically a thin cilantro pesto and it’s REALLY good on salad and meat! I think the only resemblance my recipe has to the El Torito salad is the main cilantro flavor and the tortilla strips. But it’s similar enough that I no longer crave the other one. Continue reading →