Erica De Mane

The San Gennaro festival procession in Naples. Recipe: Roasted Chickpeas with Garlic and Rosemary I think we have to face a fact: The San Gennaro feast in Little Italy is a crashing bore. When Johnny Boy proclaimed in Mean Streets, ”I hate this feast with a passion,” I could feel his pain. I’m sure at [...]

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Murray’s cheese cave, built into the sidewalk on Bleecker Street. Recipe: Frisée Salad with Capra Sarda Cheese, Fennel, and Green Olives About once a month I walk over to Murray’s cheese shop on Bleecker Street to check out any new Italian cheeses they may have gotten in. When they first moved across to the other [...]

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Gorgeous eggplants at the Hanover Farms 24-hour vegetable stand, in Mount Tremper, New York. Recipe: Eggplant Gratin with Ragusano Cheese and Filetti di Pomodoro Are you scared of eggplants? A lot of my friends are. Fear of the unknown can be mesmerizing. If you didn’t grow up in an Italian or Middle Eastern household, you [...]

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Recipe: Fried Zucchini Blossoms Filled with Mozzarella, Marjoram, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes This still from Fellini’s Amarcord reminds me of the end of summer, or what the end of summer should ideally feel like, a peaceful, breezy transition to a cooler place. My end-of-summer transition usually takes place in the kitchen, not on the Adriatic coast, [...]

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Keeping it fresh. Recipe: Summer Tomato Sauce with Thyme and Marjoram Your goal here is to cook up a sauce of summer tomatoes that fully captures their incredible fresh taste. Believe it or not, it’s easy (chef’s always say that—doesn’t it infuriate you?). In this case it’s actually true, but first you should know a [...]

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Recipe: Tomato and Cantaloupe Salad with Purslane At summer’s end I find myself a bit frantic, trying to buy and cook as much produce as possible, often combining lots of things in one dish, just to get to taste them all once more. Occasionally I create an incongruous mess, but most often things come out [...]

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Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas celebrate the completion of Medea. Recipe: Fragolimone I can tell a lot about my general sense of well-being by the way I react to the end of summer. If I look at it as offering a new start, then everything is relatively good. But if I view it with [...]

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Recipe: Chilled Peach Soup with Basil and Peperoncino Pesto Once, when I was in high school, a friend’s mother invited a bunch of kids over for her son’s birthday, and instead of the usual summer barbecue/food fight/pothead afternoon, it turned out to be a formal sit-down luncheon. We were very uncomfortable. She was Austrian, and [...]

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A view of the Spanish Steps in Rome from Keats’s day room. Recipe: Spaghetti with Anchovies, Summer Tomatoes, and Walnuts When John Keats lay fading away on his day bed in the end throes of tuberculosis, wanly staring out at the Spanish steps, his doctor decided on a diet of one anchovy a day—instead of [...]

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My pomodoro crudo, with Pantelleria capers and rosemary. Recipe: Crisp Catfish and Pomodoro Crudo with Sicilian Capers and Rosemary Capers have an astonishing affinity for tomatoes. But not any tomatoes, and not any old capers. I’ve got to have warm, juicy, New York–vicinity tomatoes right now, and for my capers my mind travels far, to [...]

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