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, [...]

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. [...]