Erica De Mane

Even though all the flavors in this dish are classically Sicilian, I got the idea for its basic braise of tuna and artichokes from Richard Olney’s cookbook Provence the Beautiful. I added mint pesto because I’ve loved tuna with mint ever since I discovered the pairing in Palermo, but the dish is good without it, [...]

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Young green garlic, made up of immature shoots that haven’t yet even formed cloves, appears in the New York greenmarkets around May. It looks like thick scallions and has a sweet, mild garlicky taste, with no bitterness. It can be chopped just like scallions and cooked or added raw to salad or sauces. (Serves 4) [...]

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This dish should be voluptuous; to make it so, keep the eggs soft and runny so the yolks can mingle with the saltiness of the olives and the rich olive oil. Choose thick, juicy asparagus, and peel the stem ends so they’re tender all the way up.Olivata is Italian-style olive paste, very much like France’s [...]

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Whole wheat berries are used in Southern Italian cooking to make all sort of salads and for cuccia, a mix of wheat berries, ricotta, and a sweetener such as sugar or cocoa. I love serving wheat berries warm, tossed with seasonal vegetables almost the way you might compose a pasta dish. Make sure to buy [...]

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This is a reworking of a pasta dish I had for lunch in Trapani, on Sicily’s western coast. It used dried favas that had been cooked down to a rough purée, and the taste was good, but the color was a sort of mossy gray green. By using fresh favas I get a brilliant green [...]

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Little chokeless artichokes and tiny new potatoes are best for this dish, which is an Easter classic in many parts of Southern Italy, celebrating spring and the renewal of the earth. You can double the recipe if you want to serve a larger group.A word about trimming baby artichokes: Since these small vegetables have not [...]

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For me Easter means, among other things, the real beginning of spring. I have memories of my sister and me putting on matching sleeveless pink-and-turquoise mini dresses and white straw hats and standing against the front door, our bare legs shivering in the 35-degree suburban New York weather, while my father took pictures with a [...]

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Recipes: Roman-Style Tripe with Mint, Potatoes, and Cacio di Roma Cheese Oxtail Stew with Red Vermouth and Orange Short Ribs with Chianti and Celery Gremolata In February and March, when the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan offers shoofly pie, beeswax candles, balls of wool, and potatoes, I take my inspiration not from seasonal produce but [...]

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Recipes: Pork Chops with Gently Vinegared Peppers Veal and Yellow Peppers Veal and peppers and pork chops with vinegar peppers were two extremely popular dishes among Italian-Americans during the sixties and seventies, when I was a kid. They have their origins in the cooking of Campania and Calabria, in the South, but variations on them [...]

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Recipe: Whole Baked Fish with a Mellow Marinade You know that feeling, when you’ve cooked a dish, tasted it, and found it good but not great? There’s something flat about it, or there’s a sharp note that isn’t working, or maybe there’s an unintegrated taste that throws the flavor out of balance. In short, it [...]

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