The Guardian | Italian food and drink
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Latest news and features from theguardian.com on Italian food and drink, the world's leading liberal voice.
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2d ago
The head chef of Melbourne’s Hope St Radio looks to her mixed Jewish heritage and Italian travels for meals filled with ‘immigrant grandma energy’
I haven’t had formal training as a chef; rather, my food background lies in my blended Jewish culture, my family’s food heritage and what I have learned on my travels and in past restaurants and kitchens, and continue to learn day to day with my team at Hope St Radio in Melbourne.
In my world, the food of home is everything. I was raised in a mixed Jewish family, with immigrant parents and grandparents always hovering about. My father and his family ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
5d ago
A little sweet, a little sour, rather sticky – and irresistible!
Two oranges have been sitting in the fruit bowl since 24 January. I can be precise thanks to the boastful photographs of marmalade I took on 25 January, having bought the fruit the day before. Only half the oranges became marmalade (which filled 10 jars and made every surface in the kitchen sticky), so to start with a dozen or so sat in the bowl. They are not bitter oranges, nor are they sweet, which is why they have been consumed so slowly, watching other fruit come, go and succumb to rot (something these last two seem immune to ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
1w ago
A light springtime meal using the freshest spears you can find (which, ideally, means picking them at midnight)
In favourable conditions (warm and sunny, but sheltered), asparagus can grow several inches a day. The Canadian Food Focus website claims a fantastic 15cm in 24 hours – which must also be noisy, if you have an ear close enough. Even if the reality is half that, it’s enough for me to consider spending a day in a field of it. I would need to lie down low – on an inflatable lilo, maybe – with a small cushion and a flask of coffee and whisky. I would need to have a penknife, too, so I co ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2w ago
When you’re hankering after something starchy and satisfying, this soupy spring rice delight will definitely please the tastebuds
I don’t know whether I prefer saying risi e bisi or eating this Venetian springtime speciality, which is traditionally made to celebrate the feast of St Mark, the city’s patron saint, on 25 April. That said, this deliciously soupy, starchy dish ticks a lot of boxes for me at this time of year, not least because even I can amuse myself in a terrible Italian accent for only so long.
Prep 15 min
Cook 1 hrServes 4 ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2w ago
Celebrate the freshness of a new season with ricotta gnocchi with raw pea pesto, fennel sausage penne and broccoli orecchiette
Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 25 min
Serves 4 ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2w ago
Soups and stews are what the rice-shaped pasta was made for, but it also works in salads and even some sweet dishes
What’s the best way to cook orzo?“Orzo reminds me of being a child,” says Jacob Kenedy, chef/owner of Bocca di Lupo in London. “It’s very comforting, and you can eat it with a spoon.” It is perhaps first worth noting that in Italy the word orzo literally means “‘barley”, and the pasta we know as orzo more often goes by the name rosmarino (due to its likeness to a rosemary needle) or risoni (big rice). Here, we’re talking the pasta, which Kenedy uses as a substitute for both barle ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2w ago
A spring soup-stew known as scafata and typical of Lazio, featuring chard, potatoes, artichokes and new-season broad beans
Broad beans are back – long, green fingers with the odd black nail. And so are the warning signs, for those who suffer favism (a rare but acute haemolytic syndrome), as well as for those, such as my neighbour, who think that fave are an abomination. For fans, the first young beans are good raw, with pecorino or cheddar. In Lazio and central Italy, scafa is dialect for a broad bean pod, and scafare the verb for removing the beans from their pods; therefore, scafata is a dis ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
2w ago
Spaghetti House has had us on toast for 70 years – but will its new venture be a high street favourite?
A Braccetto, 242 Earls Court Road, London SW5 9AA (a-braccetto.com). Antipasti £7.95, mains £14.95-£26.50, desserts £7.35, wines from £35 a bottle
There are sights in London that are so familiar they now go largely unremarked, despite how deserving of comment they are: the sleek, well-fed mice which skitter between the tracks in tube stations; the over-lit shops stocked with bags of American confectionary, which seem never to attract a customer (but have now attracted the attentions of the R ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
3w ago
The Dover restaurant in Mayfair does its New York Italian roots proud with a mean drinks list: we present its martini, the eastside, a bicicletta, the godfather and a New York sour
A selection of our favourite Italian- and Italian-American-inspired cocktails. Many of our cocktails at the Dover are strained into frozen glasses. Put the glass(es) in the freezer for 30 minutes before serving, removing them just a minute or so before pouring your drink(s ..read more
The Guardian | Italian food and drink
3w ago
Walnuts get a starring role in this pasta dish with a (sort of) bread sauce
The walnut is a nut I regularly enjoy, but until now I’d never used it in a meal as a hero ingredient. Then I read about Ligurian salsa di noci and it caught my attention because it sounded like a garlicky, walnutty bread sauce. Now, I really love bread sauce, and ever since I made Delia’s circa 1999, I’ve been wondering how I could eat more of it with my main meals. Without wanting to offend the Italians, or the Brits, this is not bread sauce: it is silkier and nuttier, and it is beautiful mixed with twisted trofie pa ..read more