Insalata di Polpo con le Patate Octopus and Potato Salad Thanks to millennia of overfishing, the Tyrrhenian Sea is rather impoverished. The most abundant species are small oily fish like anchovies and mackerel and cephalopods like squid and octopus. This octopus salad is inspired by Basilicata’s short coastline, where octopi are fished from the [...]
Are you in the market for an easy, delicious, and potentially creative new way to eat bread? Meet u’ pan’ cuott’ (Bernaldese dialect for pan cotto, “cooked bread”). It's a bread and cheese casserole from Bernalda, a town in Basilicata best known as the ancestral village of Francis Ford Coppola. This peasant dish features stale [...]
I have a few super exciting things to announce! First, Untitled South Italy Cookbook finally has a title: Food of the Italian South: Recipes for Classic, Disappearing, and Lost Dishes. The book also has a cover (focaccia!!!) and a publication date (March 12, 2019!!!). If it seems like a long time has passed since I [...]
Il Vecchio Castagno in Serrastretta, Calabria It's been a very, very long year for many, many reasons, among them a very demanding and ambitious tour to promote Tasting Rome. I really wore myself out on the road and, while I did have the time of my life, I feel like I have aged [...]
Back in March, Mamma Parla and I took a trip to Basilicata, one of our southern Italian ancestral homelands. We traced family roots, visited a deserted city, and checked out Francis Ford Coppola's newest resort. Check out my review of the place in this Sunday's NYT Travel section.
I have been pretty obsessed with Basilicata ever since my first visit there 5 years ago to update the Rough Guide to Italy. My dad and I spent a little over a week in Matera, the region’s main tourist attraction, and used the Sassi as a base to gorge on carbs research the eastern part [...]
