Sicilian Girl

Tweet Pasta alla Carbonara is a simple dish of pasta, bacon, cheese, cream and raw eggs. The original Roman version is quite rich and adding the eggs to achieve a creamy sauce with out them curdling is rather tricky. I came up with an easy, full proof method for adding the egg, so no worries [...]

Tweet This pasta dish is a classic for New Orleanians of Sicilian descent. It is the ritual meal (a cena di San Giuseppe) that is traditionally served on March 19th for Saint Joseph’s Day (San Giuseppe). This version is adapted slightly from John Besh’s recipe in his cookbook, My New Orleans.     Ingredients: 1/4 [...]

Tweet So, you have an eggplant, half a box of spaghetti, a pound of ground beef and need to make something that will feed six hearty appetites. This eggplant and spaghetti pie will do the trick and is just the thing to get the conversation started. Your family and dinner guests will smile at this [...]

Tweet It seems to me that no sooner have the last of the trick-or-treaters gone home to sort out their bounty and I have polished off any remaining Halloween candy, that the holiday season is standing (rudely) at the front door. Whether you are in a state of quiet calm or crazy chaos when you [...]

Tweet The combination of pasta and eggplant is exclusively associated with southern Italy and principally Sicily, a combination I have been using for years. I love eggplant and I love pasta so this is a normal pairing that makes perfect sense to me. There are numerous versions of pasta alla norma, which I just assumed [...]

Tweet This sauce is a lighter version of the American fettuccine Alfredo, I say “American”  because if you ask for this dish in a restaurant in Italy, they will look at you as if to say, “Who is this Alfredo?” Now, if you were to order pasta al burro or pasta bianco, the “real”  Alfredo, [...]

Tweet Caramelized onions, crimini mushrooms and mostaccioli pasta, all smothered in a rich Marsala cream sauce is a recipe for satisfying comfort food. I usually prepare this when I have leftover steak or chicken. It’s an easy meal to fix, even easier to eat and with the addition of the protein, a one dish meal. [...]

Tweet Rustico, rustic in Italian, is a country type of dish. Rigatoni Rustico has all the flavors of a lasagna but not all the work. You’ll need to saute the onions and Italian sausage and cook the pasta, but assembling the ingredients only takes a few minutes. Put it all together, refrigerate (even overnight) for [...]

Tweet Many of the meals that I prepare, particularly those I’ve created, are actually born out of a previous meal. This is not creative genius on my part, rather a result of growing up in a household that could not afford to waste food. Bread that had become stale, had a new lease on life [...]

Tweet “Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Italy from China. During the days of the Roman Empire, wheat was imported into Italy from Egypt and the northwestern African coast (then called the province of Africa), by the later days of the empire, Sicily had become the granary of the Mediterranean world. Wheat cultivation transformed [...]