You all know how the old rhyme goes…

“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well.”

Curious minds want to know though, what did Mrs. Peter do in there, anyway? Well…

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What do alfabeto, funghini, lumaconi and strozzapreti have in common?

New European fast cars? New European fashion models? New characters in a telenovela? Nope, keep guessing…

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When I cooked store-bought gluten-free pasta for the first time, it was an unfortunate situation.

I boiled the water, tossed in the spaghetti, briefly stirred it, then walked away. When I returned to drain it, I had missed the timer by a minute or so, and my brown rice noodles had turned into a mass of pasta pudding.

If you’re eating gluten free, you’ve probably had it before: the sticky, pasty mess that’s the result of many cooked brown rice pastas out on the market. The mush in the pot. The inability to tell where the noodles begin and the sauce ends. Even a good glass of wine can’t redeem this disaster.

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As summer rapidly approaches (where did April go?), chat around the coffee machine has begun to revolve around one simple question…

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The Easter ham.

It’s not a given, you know. Just because everyone else serves ham (or, for real traditionalists, lamb) on Easter, the Food Police won’t come knocking at your door if you dare to defy tradition and serve something else as the main dish.

Like lasagna, as my Italian in-laws often do.

Or roast turkey. After all, where is it writ that turkey can ONLY be served at Thanksgiving?

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If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you’ll know that 2 days ago I described the many reasons I love my test kitchen Zojirushi bread machine.

I mean, I feel like Ron Popeil, the Ronco guy:  “It slices, it dices, and so much more!”

Well, the Zo doesn’t slice-and-dice.

But “so much more”?

You betcha.

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Have you ever enjoyed gnocchi?

If not, get ready for a real treat.

These fat little twists of potato pasta are a kinder, gentler example of the genre. Rather than cooking up like regular pasta – al dente, with a slight “bite” – gnocchi are soft as a pillow. Their slightly indented undersides catch and hold your favorite sauce – marinara, pesto, or a simple mix of olive oil, parsley, and garlic. read the rest of this entry »

Like many people I knew, my experience with pierogi was limited to the boxes purchased in the frozen foods aisle at the supermarket. Once or twice a year we’d buy a box saying, “Let’s try something different tonight.” We’d boil them up and serve with a little butter on top.

And they’d be fine. Not bad, not amazing, just fine. Some brands were definitely better than others, but pierogi weren’t something I really thought about often.

And then…

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Uh-oh, here we go again. Venturing into prime “You don’t know what you’re doing” territory.

The land of “That isn’t the way my grandma did it so it’s wrong.”

Dare I go here yet again? After much ado (and plenty of a-don’t) about flourless chocolate cake; major differences of opinion regarding how many ingredients go into the perfect pie crust; and most recently, controversy surrounding the absolute authentic way to make Chicago-style deep-dish pizza (hint: there’s no cornmeal in the crust. There IS cornmeal in the crust), it’s with great hesitation that I dip my toe into Italian Wedding Soup – figuratively speaking, of course. read the rest of this entry »