Maybe it’s the fact that its summer and we’re all craving tomatoes, or maybe it’s that biking 10 miles a day without collapsing requires some serious carbo-loading, or maybe its just the result of acquiring 2 new Italian cookbooks within a few weeks of one another, but as of late we seem to be spending an awful lot of time in pasta-territory. Be it drunken pasta, or old favorites, tonight was no exception. Having tried Jamie Oliver’s baked pasta, last…
Some ailments can only be treated by copious amounts of theraputic food. Used car shopping is one of them. So is putting fenders on bikes. We did both this weekend and exhausted, sore and exasperated, found ourselves in need of some major food therapy. For my money, there’s nothing more theraputic than tomato-based pasta sauces. Plop the whole lot in a baking dish with alternating layers of basil, freshly grated parmesean and gorgeous, salty fresh mozzarella and chuck it in…
This is why I haven’t been writing much lately: My bike of 15+ years finally bit it a couple weeks ago, and what I had hoped to be a *recovery week* after a conference and a visit in T.O. was instead a week spent madly chasing anything with wheels. As luck would have it, this was also the week that the weather finally turned nice–and *everyone* was looking for bikes. After some fairly intense Craigslist-ing, I finally found a bike…
As promised, the dish that taught me to cook: Chez Piggy Pasta This dish came originally from Chez Piggy (hence the name), an upscale restaurant in Kingston, Ontario. The pasta itself is very low key though, and has evolved over time to be considerably different from the original recipe. It was the first thing I ever cooked and it remains one of my favorite go-to dishes of all time. Ingredients: 1/4 c Balsamic vinegar1/4 c Red wine vinegar1/3 c Extra…
We north Americans, as a culture, approach Italian cuisine all wrong. We eat it in the ritziest restaurants we can find, decorated ornately with white table cloths and multiple forks per place-setting and we match the food we order to the decor: fettucini Alfredo with an insanely rich sauce, ravioli each filled individually with the latest fad vegetable, etc. etc. And if that weren’t enough, we add a romantic connotation to the whole experience, just to add a little more…