Gourmet Italian

photo credit: JOE M500 I had this Italian Easy 5-layer Dip at a party a few years ago and now I serve it at my own dinner parties.  Everyone loves it.  What’s not to love about cheese and pesto, right?  It doesn’t get much more Italian than that.  Plus it has roasted red bell peppers, [...]

photo credit: HiMalta I found this gourmet Italian frittata recipe years ago in the now sadly defunct Gourmet magazaine.  People go nuts over this recipe and it is really easy to make. A frittata is kind of like an open face Italian omelet.  It is bulkier and sturdier than the delicate French omelet, and is [...]

We can most likely thank the Genoans for Pesto.  This quick Italian green mixture will brighten up any dish.  The name actually derives from the Latin word “pesta” – meaning to crush or pound.  Of course, the key ingredient in Pesto is basil.  Basil thrived throughout the region near Genoa, so it was widely used.  [...]

Everyone has heard of Italy’s incomparable Gorgonzola cheese being used in cooking gourmet dinners.  This is primarily made with cow’s milk and it is a wondrous creamy, piquant cheese that originated around 879 in a little town outside of Milan named … You guessed it!  Gorgonzola!  Today Gorgonzola is a suburb of Milan. Although the [...]

Authentic Italian food just wouldn’t be the same without tomatoes, right?  Did you know that it was not until the Spaniards brought the tomato to Italy from the New World in the 16th century that Italy even knew what a tomato was?  If it wasn’t for the Spaniards, we might never have had the marvelous [...]

Many Italian easy dishes are made using eggplant.  Eggplant used to be called mela insana or “mad apple” because people thought it caused insanity!  This probably came about because eggplant and tomato are both in the nightshade family. Eggplants come in a wide variety of colors, shapes and sizes. I love the smallish lavender variety [...]

Thousands of years ago, the curing of pork became an art in the glorious region of Tuscany and today it is used in all sorts of gourmet Italian food.   To this day, pork remains the favorite meat to cure for traditional Italian salumi – cured meat. Imagine sitting in a trattoria with your friends. [...]