Erica De Mane

I have a great recipe to put up, something I made for Christmas Eve, but I’ve been a little frazzled and can’t yet get it into writing. It involves a combination of cauliflower and shrimp. I realize that doesn’t sound too promising, but I tell you it was excellent. I got the idea from an [...]

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Sophia dressed as an orange salad. Merry Christmas to lovers of Southern Italian cooking. Orange, Fennel, Black Olive, and Mint Salad (Serves 4 or 5) 4 oranges, peeled and cut into thin rounds (include 2 blood oranges if you can find them) 2 small fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced ½ red onion, cut into [...]

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The couscous festival at San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily. Recipe: Sicilian Couscous with Shrimp and Almonds I’ve been to the seaside town of San Vito Lo Capo, in Sicily, but only off-season, when it was empty and raining. And not during the annual couscous festival, in September, which I’m dying to get to one of [...]

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This afternoon I was on the show The Main Course, hosted by Katy Keiffer and Patrick Martins on Heritage Radio Network, talking about Italian Christmas food customs. So was Gina DePalma, the pastry chef at Babbo restaurant. Click here if you’d like to hear it. Eels at the Testaccio market in Rome.

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Recipe:  Cinnamon Almond Biscotti For my last cooking class of the season, my sister Liti cooked up a big batch of fabulous, not particularly tooth-breaking almond and cinnamon biscotti, as an end-of-the-meal treat. They were a perfect dessert after a Christmas Eve–style meal of Sicilian fish couscous and an orange and fennel salad. Everyone loved [...]

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Barilla no-boil pasta sheets will lighten your load without compromising your cooking. Recipe: Lasagna with Orange Basil Tomato Sauce and Ricotta As queen of the Italian food snoots, I know it will come as a shock to many of you that I have even considered using ready-made no-boil pasta sheets for my lasagna, but I’m [...]

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Serving polenta, by Pietro Longhi, 1701-1785. Recipe: Polenta Lasagna with Cabbage and Fontina This slightly creepy painting sums up for me what I dislike about polenta. It’s a big lump of mush poured out onto, in this case, a tablecloth. Now don’t you find that somewhat disgusting? Polenta is mush, and mush is not my [...]

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Recipe: Rigatoni with Mushrooms, Anchovies, and Toasted Walnuts For me a huge bonus of cooking pasta in the winter is all the warming steam it produces in my little kitchen. I love putting up the big pot, letting it slowly come to a boil, throwing in salt when it does, and watching how the salt [...]

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Chestnuts roasting on an open fire in Italia. Recipe: Roasted Chestnuts The smells of Manhattan, some good, some disgusting, seem never to leave my head. No matter from how long ago, I don’t forget them. I miss the early morning blood stench of the meatpacking area when I walked to my job at Restaurant Florent. [...]

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Recipe: Pears Poached in Marsala with Cinnamon and Pistachios I don’t really like mushy foods, things like mashed potatoes, mashed yams, smooth purées mixed with butter, or even things like turnips that can be prepared partly lumpy, partly smooth (smashed, as Rachael Ray would call it). That is the main reason I don’t like Thanksgiving [...]

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