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Ceci with Shrimp, Summer Tomatoes, Saffron, Fennel, and Orange; Spaghetti with the Same Flavors Minus the Shrimp; plus a Restaurant Recommendation, Fiaschetteria ‘Pistoia,’ on Christopher Street, and a Film Recommendation, Pasolini’s ‘Medea’

August 6, 2026 by Erica

Tomatoes on the Plate, by Olena Levchii.

Recipes below: Ceci with Shrimp, Summer Tomatoes, Saffron, Fennel, and Orange; Spaghetti with Summer Tomatoes, Saffron, Fennel, and Orange

Living in New York, where most of the year it’s cold, I can barely believe we’re even capable of growing decent tomatoes, but here they are again, luscious and dripping. I’ve even managed to grow some myself, not gorgeous big ones but cherries, grapes, and this year a mini variety called Galapagos, about the size of a hazelnut. Lots of them coming in. Maybe they’ll even ripen before the first frost.

Every August I make lots of pomodoro crudo, an uncooked tomato sauce that I use for pasta, on top of fish, in panzanella, for bruschetta, tossed into a chicken salad. It’s just chopped tomatoes, my best olive oil, salt, and summer garlic, and sometimes I add olives or capers, occasionally anchovies or scrapings of bottarga. I always include lots of herbs, basil obviously but sometimes marjoram and parsley instead, or tarragon or mint. I make it so often I sometimes forget I can actually cook with the beautiful things. So here are two recipes for cooked summer tomatoes. When I say cooked, I don’t mean stewed. I’m talking about a quick flash in a hot pan just to warm them through and release their sweet juices.

I chose bouillabaisse-inspired flavors for both of these recipes: saffron, fennel, orange. They felt summery, plus I had wild fennel in my garden that was going to seed, so I wanted to use it anyway.

Fiaschetteria “Pistoia.”

There are a number of trendy Italian restaurants in my West Village neighborhood of the kind that take months to get a reservation at, or you can never get one, or you need to stand on line starting at 3 p.m. Don Angie and its down-the-block sister place San Sabino come to mind. They are in the updated Italian-American style, with mezcal-braised chicken cacciatore and pinwheel lasagna, which I find slightly annoying but what do I know, the places are a huge hit. And then there’s a more in-your-face version of this type of place called Arthur & Sons, with red-checked table clothes, more of a Little Italy look. It’s always crowded with people eating big plates of chicken parm or humongous meatballs. Arthur & Sons used to have a place next door called Italian American Social Club, paying some type of tribute to the old mob clubs on Sullivan Street and in other parts of the Village, like a minstrel show of Italiano-Americano. Thankfully that stupid place recently closed.

When I want Italian in my neighborhood I go to places that are non-Tiktok and have really good food. There are several fine ones to choose from, and one I find myself returning to often is Fiaschetteria Pistoia, at 114 Christoper Street. Its glassed-in sliver of kitchen is generally speaking Tuscan. They make all their pasta fresh there. The menu is mainly pasta and antipasti, with usually one secondo an evening.

Fiaschetteria is Tuscan dialect for a place to taste and buy wine. The wine bottles come in an open wooden box with a handle, so the waiters can carry them all to your table, usually six choices each evening. I’ve tasted quite a few over many visits, recently a Sardinian Vermentino and a fine Chianti. They’ve all gone well with the mostly pasta menu. And I’ve sampled almost all of the pasta dishes, too.

The ones with long-braised meat sauces have always been excellent, using tagliatelle or pappardelle. I’ve had duck ragù, beef ragù, and a wild boar sauce that’s a special from time to time. Those things are where the place excels. You can also get cacio e pepe with pici or homemade spaghetti with bottarga. The only dish I wasn’t crazy about was a tagliatelle with baby octopus, a special one night. There wasn’t anything wrong with it; its style just wasn’t for me. It tasted too much of tomato paste, with a very concentrated, cooked-down flavor and consistency. I prefer a brighter, looser sauce with seafood.

The antipasti are good too. I particularly like the zucchini sformata, a flan that includes Parmigiano. The chicken liver paté is done in traditional Tuscan style, smooth with not much intrusion of other flavors such as anchovies or capers.

They offer one secondo a night, or at least that’s the way it’s always been when I’ve gone. I haven’t tried many of them, since I always want pasta, but I did recently order the veal scallopini in white wine lemon sauce, and it was tender and good.

I love the place, but here’s a heads-up about what could be a problem for you: The restaurant is really small, with really small tables, and has only one bathroom, which often has a line. I’m okay with that, but just so you know.

On the set of Medea.

I recently saw the new Odyssey movie by Christopher Nolan and didn’t care for it, finding it an overblown action cartoon, all in shades of brown and gray. It got me thinking I wanted to see Pasolini’s Medea again, so I watched it. It was made in 1969 and stars Maria Callas. I’ve seen many films of her opera performances and often found her face strained in a comical way, even for opera, but her worried eyes and tight mouth are heartbreaking and true here. She lets you get into the head of Medea, the outsider, the witchy barbarian occupying an uncomfortable, to say the least, place in her civilization. When you watch her get her revenge, you feel how devastating it is for everyone, including herself.

Unlike the new Odyssey,  Pasolini gives you violence in a beautiful and, more important, purposeful way, which must have been hard to pull off, especially with human sacrifice involved.  And the colors in this film are gorgeous, orange, sea blue, deep red, vibrant green, especially the clothing and the coppery clanking bling Maria wears, as in the photo above. There’s not much dialogue, but there’s lots of music, which seems to be a mix of non-Western folk sounds and tribal chants from not sure where. I just learned that Elsa Morante, the Italian novelist and poet, helped put that music together.

Pasolini’s Medea is the way to do Greek mythology. Check it out.

Ceci with Shrimp, Summer Tomatoes, Saffron, Fennel, and Orange

Extra-virgin olive oil
1½ pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined (save the shells)
Salt
Black pepper
A big splash of rosé wine
A big pinch of saffron, ground and lightly dried
1 large summer onion, chopped
1 fresh summer garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 medium, round summer tomatoes, peeled, cut into small dice, and lightly drained
A drizzle of honey
1 teaspoon freshly ground fennel seed
The grated zest from 1 large orange
2 cups cooked ceci beans, with a little of their cooking broth
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped

Drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil into a small saucepan set over medium heat. Add the shrimp shells and some salt and black pepper, and sauté the shells until they turn pink. Add the rosé wine, and let it bubble a few seconds. Add 1½ cups of water, and simmer for about 8 minutes. Strain the shrimp broth into a small bowl, and add the ground saffron, stirring it in (you should have about a cup of broth).

Get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add two tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onion, and sauté it for a minute or so. Add the garlic and a little salt and black pepper, and sauté about a minute longer to release the garlic’s fragrance. Add the tomatoes, the honey, the fennel seed, and the orange zest, and let it cook for 3 minutes. Add the shrimp broth and the ceci beans, and simmer for another 3 or 4 minutes, just to blend all the flavors and let the liquid cook down a bit. Add the shrimp, and simmer until it’s just tender, no longer than a minute or so. Check for seasoning, and add a drizzle of fresh olive oil. Add the basil. Serve hot or warm.

Spaghetti with Summer Tomatoes, Saffron, Fennel, and Orange

Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves summer garlic, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon freshly ground fennel seed
1 pound spaghetti
A splash of sweet vermouth
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried, ground, and dissolved in a few tablespoons of hot water
4 medium-size, round summer tomatoes, peeled, chopped, and lightly drained
The grated zest from 1 large orange
Black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
A handful of basil, lightly chopped, plus some whole ripped leaves for garnish

Put up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add salt.

While the water is coming to a boil, get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the garlic, and the fennel seed, and let it all warm through until it’s fragrant but the garlic hasn’t colored.  

Add the spaghetti to the pot of water.

Add the vermouth to the sauté pan, and let it bubble a few seconds. Add the saffron water, the tomatoes, the orange zest, and some salt and black pepper, and cook at a lively bubble for about 5 minutes. Add the butter and the basil, and stir them in.

When the spaghetti is al dente, drain it, saving about a half cup of the cooking liquid, and pour the spaghetti into a shallow serving bowl. Add the tomato sauce. Toss, adding a little cooking water if you need it to loosen the sauce. Check for seasoning. Garnish with the torn basil leaves.

I like this dish without cheese, but a little grated Parmigiano Reggiano won’t be bad at all if you like.

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A Summer Herb Soufflé, plus a Visit to Wild Sorrel Cookbooks, on East 13th Street

July 20, 2026 by Erica

Broken Egg, by Noah Verrier.

Recipe below: Summer Herb Soufflé

One of the nicest things you can do for yourself is learn to make a soufflé. Here’s how you do it: Make a bechamel, add egg yolks to it, add your flavoring (cheese and herbs, for example, like I did here), fold in beaten egg whites, and stick it in the oven.

I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but that is basically all you do. It’s not fancy, no matter what you’ve been conditioned to believe. The eggs and the oven do the work. Your brain supplies the anxiety. Try to let that drift away.

An herbcentric soufflé is a lovely thing in high summer, with so many aromas at your disposal. For this go-round I chose a mix of Thai basil, mint, parsley, and chives. You can do a stronger flavor mix by adding marjoram, oregano, or summer savory, or even rosemary, if you chop the needles finely. You can also, if you prefer, highlight a single herb. Fennel alone makes a beautiful soufflé.

I’d love if you’d give a soufflé a try and let me know how it worked out for you. And send photos.

Wild Sorrel Cookbooks

I walked into Wild Sorrel Cookbooks for the first time recently, and I bought a book, Vegetables the Italian Way, a new one by Giulia Scarpaleggia. I loved La Cucina Povera, her previous one, so I figured this had to have some good things in it. Troy Chatterton, the shop’s owner, was immediately interested in my choice and told me he and his partner had just cooked from it, making a type of zucchini carbonara with mint, and the recipe had come out beautifully. The guy is into cookbooks.

As you all already know, I buy a lot of cookbooks. I have hundreds of them lining the walls of my small West Village apartment.  Wild Sorrel has been open only three months, but already it feels warm and lived in, and its owner obviously shares my passions, reading cookbooks, finding the best markets, and, above all, cooking. This is a shop for the dedicated home cook but also for cookbook writers like me, who are always curious about what other cooks are thinking about. 

Wild Sorrel is a small shop with warm touches—Troy’s personal collection of what looks to me all American pottery, and the Appalachian whisk brooms you can see in my photo, for instance. The place is sweetly designed but not cutesified. And I’ve learned that he and his two friends Max and Kaori, who are furniture builders, constructed the shop themselves, the shelves, the benches, the floors (how anyone can figure out how to lay a floor is beyond me). I thought the benches were a gracious addition. Who doesn’t want to sit down and read a little in a cookbook shop? 

And he’s put together a thoughtful collection of books that include all the new stuff, plus a wall of classics and best sellers—Larousse Gastronomique, Apicius, Marcella Hazan, Fuschia Dunlop, and my hero, Paula Wolfert, among them, a good selection of food writing, both past and present, and also a vegetable and herb gardening section, which I’ll be looking into more carefully on my next visit so I can feed my obsession with herb growing. 

I knew Troy looked familiar the minute I walked in. Turns out he worked at Three Lives, a beautifully put together independent bookstore that’s been in my West Village neighborhood since 1978 (I worked at Barnes & Noble, back in the day, with the three women who opened Three Lives). Troy Chatterton was there for 14 years, and I saw him there a lot. He thought he’d be there even longer until he decided he’d really like a place of his own, one that focused his passions.

Stop in a take a look. You’ll be glad you did.

Wild Sorrel Cookbooks is at 332 East 13th Street, between First and Second Avenues.

Summer Herb Soufflé

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk
Salt
Black pepper
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
A big pinch of sugar
3 ounces soft, fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
½ cup grated grana Padano cheese
1½ cups mixed chopped herbs—I used Thai basil, mint, parsley, and chives
4 eggs, separated, plus 2 egg whites

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Butter a soufflé mold with 1 tablespoon of butter (I used an 8-inch wide, 3-inch-deep mold; if you have one that is wider and shallower, just cut the cooking time down a bit).

Get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add the rest of the butter. When it’s melted, add the flour, whisking it in.  Let it warm through for about a minute or so. Add the milk, a little salt, black pepper, the nutmeg, and the sugar. Turn the heat down a bit, and whisk to blend everything. Let it simmer, whisking a few times, until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, and add the goat cheese, the grand Padano, all the herbs, all the egg yolks, and a pinch more salt, stirring well to blend.

In a large bowl, beat all the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold half of the whites into the soufflé mixture. Then add the remaining whites, gently folding them in. Try not to overmix. A little streaky is okay.

Spoon the soufflé mix into the mold. Bake for 5 minutes, then lower the heat to 375 degrees, and bake until puffy and lightly golden, with only a little wobbliness at the center, about 20 minutes more. Serve right away.

I served my soufflé with an arugula and summer tomato salad and a few glasses of Sardinian Vermentino.  Beauty.

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Women with Fish, the Story Continues. By Valeria Pazosf.

July 9, 2026 by Erica

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Bucatini with Swordfish, Saffron, and Wild Fennel, plus Fennel and Celery Salad with Bottarga

July 8, 2026 by Erica

West Coast Wild Fennel, by Michelle Morin.

Recipes below: Bucatini with Swordfish, Saffron, and Wild Fennel; Fennel and Celery Salad with Bottarga

Wild fennel is the most liberated herb in my garden, and generous too. It grows fast, by mid-June. I’ll notice its feathering fronds swaying freely in a little breeze. And that’s only part of its appeal. By early August, umbrella-like clusters form, bringing me flowers to gather pollen from, and later green seeds. Fronds, stalks, pollen, and seeds all provide me with subtle variations on the plant’s theme.

I grow wild fennel every year. It’s technically an annual in New York, but it drops seeds easily, and if we’ve had a mild winter I often find it shooting up in the spring in odd places. This year it shot up so aggressively I actually had to pull some out or it would have taken over.

There is one special use for wild fennel in Southern Italian cooking, and it is in something I truly love, pasta con le sarde, the classic pasta dish from Palermo. There are impediments to recreating this pasta in New York. Wild fennel grows on the side of the road in Sicily and in parts of California, so for many people the herb is free. In New York, you’ve got to grow your own, as I do, or find a farmer’s market that’s carrying it, which I am glad to see is happening more and more. Also I can almost never find sardines fresh enough to do the dish justice. Oily fish goes off fast, and sardines that come from Portugal simply have been dead too long. People always ask me, can you make this pasta with canned sardines? I’ve tried it several times, but the taste is different, stronger, oilier. In short, I don’t like it. But what I can do is make the dish with all the Arab-Sicilian components of con le sarde—raisins, pine nuts, saffron, wild fennel, white wine, toasted breadcrumbs—but substituting another popular Sicilian fish for the sardines. Here I went with swordfish. The taste is obviously not the same, not as wild in feel, a bit more suave. But I love this version almost as much as the original. I hope you’ll give it a try.

And speaking of suave, I’m also offering you another good thing to do with fennel, using domestic bulb fennel mixed with celery to make a gentle salad. Since I didn’t want it to be too gentle, I topped it off with shavings of bottarga, giving it a fishy, salty kick. You can use Sicilian tuna roe bottarga or, my preference, the Sardinian grey mullet variety, which is less fishy and has a nice bitter edge.

Bucatini with Swordfish, Saffron, and Wild Fennel

For the breadcrumbs:

1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil
1½ cups homemade breadcrumbs, ground but not finely
A pinch of salt
A big pinch of sugar
Pimenton di Espellette, to taste

For the rest:

1 pound swordfish about 1½ inches thick, skinned and then cut into approximately ½-inch cubes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
A big pinch of sugar
Pimenton di Espelette to taste
1 large summer onion, cut into small dice, including the tender green stem
1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
1 pound bucatini pasta
3 anchovy fillets, chopped (I used Fishwife brand)
A palmful of toasted pine nuts
1 cup chopped wild fennel fronds
1 pound swordfish, cut about 1½ inches thick, skinned, and then cut into approximately ½-inch cubes.
½ cup yellow raisins soaked in ¼ cup white wine
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried, ground, and then dissolved in ¼ cup hot water

To make the breadcrumbs, get out a small sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add the olive oil, and let it warm through. Add the breadcrumbs, salt, sugar, and Espelette, and sauté until it’s all lightly golden and crispy, about 3 minutes. Pour it into a small serving bowl.

Put the swordfish cubes in a bowl. Drizzle them with a little olive oil, and sprinkle on a little salt, a big pinch of sugar, and a little Espelette, and give them a toss.

Set up a pot of pasta cooking water, add salt, and bring it to a boil.

While the water is coming to a boil, get out a large sauté pan, turn the heat under it to medium, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onion, a little salt, and the ground fennel seed, and sauté for a minute, just to soften the onion.

Drop the bucatini in the water.

Add the anchovy, the pine nuts, and half of the fennel fronds to the sauté pan. Add the swordfish, and sauté it quickly, about a minute, leaving it a little pink in the center. Add the raisins in wine and the saffron water, mixing everything around. Turn off the heat.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain it, saving some of the cooking water. Pour the bucatini into a nice-looking serving bowl. Drizzle it with about a tablespoon of olive oil, and give it a toss. Add the swordfish sauce, and toss gently, adding a little cooking water to loosen the sauce. Check for seasoning, adding more salt and more Espelette if you like. Garnish with the rest of the fennel fronds. Top each serving with a generous sprinkling of breadcrumbs.

Fennel and Celery Salad with Bottarga

2 good-size fennel bulbs, thinly sliced, plus their fronds, chopped (if you have wild fennel, use that in place of the fronds, as it will have more flavor)
5 tender celery stalks, thinly sliced,  plus the leaves from the whole head
The green part of 2 scallions, thinly sliced
The grated zest of 1 small lemon, plus 1 teaspoon of its juice
2 tablespoons of your best extra-virgin olive oil (I used Quinta Luna from Umbria, which I got from Gustiamo.com, who I also bought my bottarga from)
A pinch of salt
Black pepper
About ¼ of a tongue of bottarga

Put the sliced fennel and celery in a pretty salad bowl. Add the scallion, half of the fennel fronds, and half of the celery leaves. In a small bowl, mix together the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt (just a pinch, as the bottarga is salty).

Peel the wax off the section of bottarga you plan to use. Toss the salad with the vinaigrette. Cut the bottarga—for this salad I used a sharp vegetable peeler to get very thin strips—and scatter it over the top. Garnish with the rest of the fennel fronds and parsley leaves.

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Orecchiette with Zucchini, Capocollo, Summer Savory, and Young Garlic, plus Insalata di Riso with Yellow Zucchini, Moroccan Olives, Anchovies, and Thai Basil

June 26, 2026 by Erica

Detail from Zucchini, by Liudmyla Kabakova.

Recipes below: Orecchiette with Zucchini, Capocollo, Summer Savory, and Young Garlic; Insulate di Risotto with Yellow Zucchini, Moroccan Olives, Anchovies, and Thai Basil.

When I spot the first little zucchini at the market, I know we’re on our way. Summer in New York—I thought it would never come. With these first-of-the-season vegetables in hand, I always think about my father. He kept a classic Italian man’s garden in our backyard, small but densely packed. My mother never gardened. No mother did back then. It was his big rectangle. He owned it, although I too, being a budding cook, was back there many early evenings, him with his glowing Marlboro and vodka martini, me with my uneducated enthusiasm. Nice memory. And now I often find myself just thinking how ugly our country has become since Trump took over. My father would have been horrified to know this moronic, lying thug of championship wrestling fame had become our president. Death can have its perks. I waited for the first of my dad’s zucchini, grabbing them before they got huge and only good for stuffing. The things grow crazy fast. So exciting to see them pop out. It’s interesting how much attention I paid to them, considering, if I admit it to myself, they actually taste like almost nothing.

Despite their delicate taste, I love them unadorned, maybe sautéed with a little summer bulb onion and a sprinkling of Parmigiano. But sometimes I want to add strong flavors, pancetta, capers, the capocolla and summer savory I’ve used in my first recipe, or the anchovies and olives I added to the rice salad. A little brine, a little salt, a hint of pork fat. Uplifting.

Scroll down for the recipes.

Summer savory in my garden.
Thai basil in my garden.
My orecchiette with zucchini, capocollo, summer savory, and young garlic.

Orecchiette with Zucchini, Capocollo, Summer Savory, and Young Garlic

If you’re looking for a new way to use summer savory, I suggest trying it with capocollo. Its strong flavor blends beautifully with the deep hot fat of the pork. I used a sweet capocollo here because I didn’t want to overwhelm the gentle taste of the zucchini with too much heat.

I served this with a lightly chilled Beaujolais Villages.

Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
8 thin slices sweet capocollo, cut into matchsticks
1 pound orecchiette (I used Setaro brand)
12 small, thin zucchini, cut into not-too-thin half moons (my zucchini were about 3 inches long; if you can only get bigger ones, you’ll need fewer)
1 shallot, cut into small dice
Black pepper
2 young summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced (if you can’t find this, just leave it out)
The grated zest from 1 lemon
A splash of white wine
¾ cup light chicken broth
8 sprigs summer savory, lightly chopped
A few large sprigs of flat leave parsley, the leaves lightly chopped
A chunk of primo sale cheese for grating

Bring a pot of pasta water to a boil. Add salt.

While the water’s heating, get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a drizzle of olive oil and the capocollo, and let the capocollo heat through and get a little crisp. Remove the capocollo with a strainer spoon, and set it aside on a plate, leaving the fat in the pan.

Drop the orecchiette into the water.

Add the zucchini and the shallot, season with salt and black pepper, and sauté until the zucchini starts to go brown and crispy at the edges, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and the lemon zest, and stir it in, letting the garlic open up in the heat for a few seconds. Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a bit. Add the chicken broth and the savory, and let the sauce simmer to blend all the flavors, about 3 minutes.

When the orecchiette is al dente, drain it, leaving a little water clinging to it, and pour it into a large serving bowl. Drizzle it with fresh olive oil, and give it a toss.

Add the zucchini sauce, the parsley, and about 2 tablespoons of grated primo sale. Toss. Check for seasoning. Serve hot, bringing the rest of the primo sale to the table. 

My insalata di riso with yellow zucchini, Moroccan olives, anchovies, and Thai basil.

Insalata di Riso with Yellow Zucchini, Moroccan Olives, Anchovies, and Thai basil

Here I’ve hit the gorgeous deep yellow zucchini with all sorts of strong flavors. It works, I find, because the rice balances it all out.

I thought the dish’s strong, salty flavors went well with a Negroamaro rosato from Puglia.

5 or 6 yellow summer zucchini, the smaller the better, cut into small dice
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
A big pinch of allspice, about ¼ teaspoon
1 small summer onion, cut into small dice
2 young summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced (if you can’t find this, just leave it out)
A splash of sweet vermouth
2 cups cooked long- or medium-grain rice (not risotto rice, which would be too sticky), at room temperature (leftover cooked rice is ideal)
A handful of lightly toasted pine nuts
A handful of Moroccan olives (the wrinkled black ones), pitted
4 oil-packed anchovies, minced (I used Fishwife brand)
1 teaspoon sherry wine vinegar
Aleppo pepper to taste
A handful of Thai basil leaves, lightly chopped, plus a few good-looking sprigs for garnish

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Place the diced zucchini on a sheet pan. Drizzle it with olive oil, and season it with salt, black pepper, and the allspice. Roast until golden and just tender, about 6 or 7 minutes. In the last minute or so of cooking, scatter on the onion and garlic. Take the pan from the oven, and splash on a little sweet vermouth, just to loosen all the good cooking bits.

Place the rice in a nice-looking, wide serving bowl. Season it with a little salt. Scrape the zucchini, with any pan juices, into the bowl. Add the pine nuts and olives, and toss gently.

In a small bowl, whisk together the minced anchovies, sherry vinegar, and 3 tablespoons of olive oil, seasoning the mix with a little salt (or possibly no salt, depending on your anchovies). Pour it over the rice. Sprinkle on some Aleppo, add the Thai basil, and toss well. Taste for seasoning, adding a bit more salt or olive oil if needed. Garnish with the Thai basil sprigs. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Shrimp Salad with Ceci, Thyme, and Chives

May 31, 2026 by Erica

An octopus does battle with a lobster and an eel, in Pompeii.

Recipe below: Shrimp Salad with Ceci, Thyme, and Chives

One of my favorite categories of Italian food is cold seafood salads, insalate di mare, the kind you find on antipasto tables in Southern Italy, made with calamari, shrimp, octopus, clams, mussels, and sometimes scallops. They always seem glamorous, even a little magical, glistening with olive oil and studded with bits of fresh herbs and possibly a scattering of good capers or olives, smelling of the sea. I can never resist them when they appear before me looking beautiful. If you want to drink a lot of good Southern Italian white wine, such as a Fiano di Avellino, Greco di Tufo, Falanghina, Carricante, or Vermentino, seafood salad is what you want to have with it.

You don’t see these salads around  New York much anymore, and when you do they’re often at Little Italy types of places where the seafood is rubbery and loaded with rancid garlic and subpar olive oil. This makes me so sad. Prepared with thought and care, these salads are exquisite. All you have to do is have your culinary brain turned to “pay attention” mode. First, and most important, choose ultrafresh seafood. Second, make sure you don’t overcook it. Third, add seasonings that make sense. For instance, bad garlic or too much garlic won’t ever make sense, and neither will low-rent olive oil or crappy olives. Other than that, you can really play around.

Sicilian Fish Market, by Isabella Sunday.

This time I decided to focus on herbs. Thyme and chives are two perennials that come up early in my garden. Chives seemed like a good idea because stronger oniony things such as shallot or red onion can get too strong when they sit in olive oil for a while. This is important since these salads are usually made ahead and chilled. I chose thyme over the Italian oregano I also have coming up because I wanted a gentler overall feel.

My family always served an insalata di frutti di mare, a mixed seafood salad, on Christmas eve, usually spooned over friselle, the hard black pepper and lard biscuits popular in Puglia and Campania (not to be confused with the hard, flat, split bagel-shaped things that also go by that name, although those are also used for this purpose). The olive oil, lemon, and seafood juices mingle and soak into the hard bread, softening it, combining for a lovely texture and flavor. Friselle are not easy to find anymore (although Di Palo’s in Little Italy often carries them), so I served this with bruschetta rubbed with garlic and olive oil.

Pescheria Pizzi Pizzi, in Naples. Who is that man in the photo on the wall, I wonder.

You can leave the chickpeas out if you like, but I needed a way to stretch a few pounds of shrimp for an unexpected last minute crowd. If you decide to leave out the ceci, you might want to add calamari. Choose ones on the small side, cut them into rings, and poach them the same way you do the shrimp (but separately). They’ll probably take about a minute less.

Shrimp Salad with Ceci, Thyme, and Chives

For the poached shrimp:

4 fresh bay leaves
Sea salt
A few thyme sprigs
A drizzle of rice wine vinegar
A big splash of dry vermouth
Sugar
2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined (I left their tails on, but that’s up to you)

Plus:

2 cups cooked chickpeas
3 tender inner celery stalks, cut into small dice, including the leaves, lightly chopped
6 long chives, chopped (if they have flowers, you can include those too)
8 long thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
A handful of Italian parsley leaves, lightly chopped
¼ cup Sicilian salt-packed capers, soaked in several changes of water and then rinsed
Sea salt
Black pepper
2 teaspoons of white miso, dissolved in 2 tablespoons of hot water
Extra-virgin olive oil (I used Benza Taggiasca oil from Liguria, a brand I love; I get it from Gustiamo)
The juice and zest from 1 large lemon

To poach the shrimp, set up a large pot of water (about as much as you’d want for a pound of pasta), add the bay leaves, salt, thyme sprigs, rice wine vinegar, vermouth, and a little sugar. Bring it to a boil, and let it bubble for about 3 minutes to meld all the flavors. Add the shrimp. The temperature will immediately go down. Let the heat come back up. When you see little bubbles on the surface, not a hard boil, turn off the flame, and let the shrimp cook gently in the waning heat for about 2 minutes. That should be enough to make it perfectly tender. Drain the shrimp into a colander, and then spread it out on paper towels to cool slightly. Refrigerate to cool further.

To assemble the salad, get out a large, wide, pretty serving bowl. Add the shrimp and the chickpeas.  Add the celery, chives, thyme, parsley, and capers.  Season with salt and black pepper. Combine the miso, about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the lemon juice and zest, and mix well. Pour that over the salad, and toss gently with your hands.

Chill for about an hour. Now taste for seasoning, adding more salt, black pepper, olive oil, or lemon if needed.

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Braised Chicken with Morels and Marsala, plus How to Make Japanese Turnips with Butter and Thyme

May 20, 2026 by Erica

Morel Mushroom Painting, by Devan Horton.

Recipe below: Braised Chicken with Morels and Marsala; also, in the text, how to make Japanese Turnips with Butter and Thyme

I haven’t yet found any morels growing in the ground here in Dutchess County, New York, but they’re selling them at Citarella for a shockingly high price. Here’s the good news, though: Since morels are hollow and therefore deceptively light, they never add up to the exorbitant expense their by-the-pound price would suggest. This is really worth remembering.  

Buying morels this year reminded me of something my old cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli said to me when I was working with her on my first book. She said never mention anything about price when you’re writing about food. That’s not your job. It’s demeaning to the reader. Peculiar thing to say, I thought, since I always figured it should be part of my job to talk about how much ingredients could cost, if it seemed relevant, like now, for instance. I’m not sure what her thinking was, maybe wanting to appeal to the highest common denominator of cookbook readers in some snobby way. She brought this up several times and was pissed I hadn’t listened to her the first time. Maria was frequently pissed by a lot of things and not always fun to work with. Many of her reprimands, as a result, kind of blew by me. That was a while ago, and now I’m free and on my own and able to pass on any type of cooking wisdom to you. So remember, morels are never as expensive as they seem.

Chicken with morels is a classic dish I try to make at least once every spring. This version, with dry Marsala, I thought came out particularly well, so I’m passing it along. I also recently took the same morel sauce I used here for the chicken and tossed it with fettuccine, adding fresh peas (you could add favas instead, or asparagus tips). You might want to give that a try too.

And if you’re in the mood for another good spring cooking experience, do yourself a favor and get your hands on a bunch of Japanese turnips. They’re in season now. The things are really delicious, and they have no bitterness. In fact they’re sweet. I got mine from Migliorelli Farm at the Union Square Market, but many farm stands have them this time of year. What I did to prepare them was to peel them, cut the big ones in half and leave the little ones whole, sauté them in butter, adding a splash of dry vermouth and some salt and black pepper, and then cover the pan until they were tender, which took about 8 minutes. Then I added fresh thyme. I served them along side my morel chicken. It was a very good combination.

Braised Chicken with Morels and Marsala

4 whole chicken legs, separated into thighs and drumsticks
Salt
Black pepper
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 shallots, cut into small dice
15 morel mushrooms, cut in half lengthwise if large, otherwise left whole
2 fresh bay leaves
6 sprigs thyme, the leaves lightly chopped
½ cup dry Marsala
1 cup homemade chicken broth
½ cup crème fraîche
A few drops of champagne vinegar

Season the chicken with salt, black pepper, and a little nutmeg.

Get out a large sauté pan fitted with a lid, and set it over medium-high heat. Add the butter and a drizzle of olive oil. When it’s hot, add the chicken, and brown the pieces on both sides. Take the chicken from the pan, and stick it on a plate or something that will catch the juices.

If you’ve got a lot of fat in the pan, pour some of it off, but leave a few tablespoons for flavor. Turn the heat to medium, and add the shallots to the pan, sautéing them for a minute. Add the morels, the bay leaves, and the thyme, and cook until everything is aromatic and starting to soften.

Return the chicken to the pan, along with any juices it may have given off. Add the Marsala, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add the chicken broth, and let everything come to a boil. Turn the heat to low, partially cover the pan, and cook until the chicken is just tender, about 25 minutes.

Take the chicken from the pan again. Add the crème fraîche to the pan, stirring it in over medium heat until it reduces slightly and forms a good sauce, adding a few drops of champagne vinegar, if needed, to bring up acidity. Return the chicken to the pan, and spoon the sauce over it. Serve hot. I served it with orzo, but rice (wild maybe) would be nice, or just some good bread.

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Pasta with Wild New York Greens: Chiocciole with Guanciale, Ramps, and Peas, plus a Recipe for Homemade Stinging Nettle Pappardelle, and Ways to Sauce It

April 29, 2026 by Erica

Spring Green House, by Daniel Zimmerman.

Recipes below: Chiocciole with Guanciale, Ramps, and Peas; Stinging Nettle Pappardelle

Digging in the dirt, pulling stuff up, and sticking it in my mouth is a childhood activity that came back to me when I bought my house in the woods nine years ago. I recalled some of the odd outdoor things I used to eat when I was a kid on Long Island. I’d shovel dirt into a bucket in my backyard to make mud pies that were often studded with my father’s cigarette butts. There were occasionally worms in there too, which didn’t seem to bother me. I’d add some chopped onion grass and dandelion leaves, water, a little flour or corn starch, set the plate over a Sterno, and let it cook. When it set into a hard round disk, I’d eat bits of it and use the rest as a kind of brick that piled up in the backyard, eventually making enough to form a low wall. I’m not sure what the purpose of it all was, but I must have developed a strong immune system, since I always tasted each one. I still have no problem eating something that’s fallen on the floor, such as a piece of pork chop, or anything, really. I was eating the lamb’s-quarters that grow in the tree beds on 13th Street until someone reminded me that dogs pee on them (and likely not only dogs). I guess I have that “what doesn’t kill you’’ mentality.

My backyard upstate is full of edible stuff right now, dandelions, garlic mustard, stinging nettles, ramps, chickweed (makes a surprisingly good pesto), wild garlic, fiddleheads, violets both deep and light purple, cleavers. People are finding morels by the bucketload this year, but not me. No one divulges their secret spots.

Stinging nettles in my yard.

Of all the edible spring stuff I find up here I like stinging nettles the best, partly because of the challenge of avoiding pain in collecting them but also because they have an excellent taste, like a grassier, more peppery spinach. They make  good soup, risotto, gnocchi, gnudi, pesto, and all shapes of homemade pasta. I like ramps a lot, too. They taste surprisingly strong, a mix of young leeks and garlic, to my palate.

Here’s a nice fast pasta dish you can make if you manage to find (or if you buy) a bunch of ramps. I used snail-shaped chiocciole pasta here. This one is made by Monograno Felicetti, using Kamut Khorasan wheat, an ancient variety. I had never seen the brand before, and I found its texture delicate and its taste quite wheaty. They just started carrying it at Citarella. A good addition. Any other shell-like pasta such as lumaconi or conchiglie or even rigatoni would be a good substitute.

Ramps, not my photo.

I’m also offering you my recipe for stinging nettle pappardelle, along with some ideas for how to sauce it. It’s pretty straightforward to make, as long as you are sure to blanch the nettles first to get rid of their sting.

Happy spring cooking to you.

Chiocciole with Guanciale, Ramps, and Peas

Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup medium-diced guanciale
10 ramps (a few more if they’re very skinny), the white part cut into rounds, the green tops cut in half
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
1 pound chiocciole pasta
A big splash of dry vermouth
¾ cup chicken broth
2 cups freshly shucked peas
Coarsely ground black pepper
A few drops of rice wine vinegar
Pecorino Toscano cheese for grating

Set up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add salt.

In the meantime, get out a large sauté pan, set it over medium heat, and drizzle in a little olive oil. Add the guanciale, and sauté it slowly until it’s crisp.  Leave in all its fat, and add the white part of the ramps and the nutmeg. Sauté for a minute or so.

Drop the chiocciole into the water.

Add the vermouth to the pan, letting it bubble away. Add the chicken broth and the peas, and simmer until the peas are tender, about 3 minutes or so. Add salt and some black pepper. Turn off the heat, and add the ramp greens, letting them wilt into the sauce. Add a few drops of rice wine vinegar for a little kick of acidity.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it, saving about ½ cup of its cooking water, and put it in a large serving bowl. Drizzle on some olive oil, and give it a quick toss. Add the guanciale-and-pea sauce, and toss again, adding pasta cooking water if needed to loosen it up. Taste for seasoning.

Serve with grated pecorino Toscano.

Stinging Nettle Pappardelle

Here is how I collect nettles and turn them into a smooth green pasta. If you’ve ever made a spinach pasta or an herb pasta, it’s pretty much the same.

I’ve made nettle pasta in various shapes. I think it’s always best with a simple sauce, with just a few ingredients that cling to it without overloading it and hiding its subtle flavor. Some sauces I’ve thought worked well were a walnut condimento; sliced ramps sautéed in really good olive oil (or you can use young leeks instead, or spring garlic); and a mix of crème fraîche, spring peas, and Parmigiano. Try substituting asparagus tips for the peas, if you like. And you might want to add prosciutto. I’ve also liked a simple sauce of butter, lemon zest, and Parmigiano. You can add fava beans. And mascarpone with grana Padano I find to be a more flavorful version of Alfredo. I’ve also served this pasta with a stinging nettle pesto. Here’s a short video on how to make that. The taste was good, but the dish was very green. If green on green appeals to you, it might be for you.

A good-size bunch of stinging nettles, perhaps ten long stems
3 large eggs
2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
½ cup semolina flour, plus more for rolling
Salt

While wearing gloves or just being careful, cut off nettle stalks above their thick, tough bottom parts. Put them in a pot of boiling water, and blanch them for 1 minute. Lift them from the water into a colander, and run cold water over them to bring up their green color. You’ll see that when they cook, their stingers completely disappear. Squeeze out as much water as you can. (You’ll also notice that they feel strangely dry, almost as if they had been waterproofed.) 

Remove any big stem from the leaves, leaving only the leaves and the most tender tiny stems. You’ll want about ¾ cup of blanched nettles. You can use any extra to include in your pasta sauce, if you like, or in an omelet or a soup.

Put the nettles in a food processor, and give them a few good pulses. Add the eggs, and process until you have a fairly unified looking purée (it’ll be a bit streaky, but that’s its nature, and it’s really nice). Add the flour, both types, and a little salt, and pulse until you have a shaggy ball. If the ball seems too wet for pasta dough, add a little more flour, and pulse it to blend. If it’s too dry, add a drizzle of water, pulsing that in.

Sprinkle a bit of flour on a work surface, and dump the pasta ball out on it. Knead the dough until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. Cover it with plastic, and let it rest about a half an hour, so it can relax.

Dust two sheet pans with flour.

Cut the pasta into quarters, covering the pieces you’re not immediately working on with plastic wrap.

Roll out each dough piece with a hand-cranked pasta machine until you reach the second to last setting, adding more semolina or regular flour as you go to prevent sticking (the pasta shouldn’t be super thin). You want to end up with sheets all about 10 inches long. Lay them out on a well-floured surface for about ½ hour so they lose some tackiness. That will make them easier to cut.

Loosely roll up each piece into a cylinder, and cut it into ½-inch rings, making quick cuts. Unroll the rings, and place them on the sheet pans, making sure they’re all well-coated with flour so you don’t have a problem with sticking. Now they’re ready to boil.

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Women with Fish, The Story Continues.

April 22, 2026 by Erica

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Lemon Sole with My Chermoula, plus Caramel Oranges with Cardamom

April 10, 2026 by Erica

The Bay of Tangier, by Henri Matisse, 1912.

Recipes below: Lemon Sole with My Chermoula; Caramel Oranges with Carda

I’ve been fascinated with food and cooking for a long time, but not from the very beginning. Before food, I loved rocks and seashells. I accumulated large collections and entered them into my elementary school science fair each year. My father made glass cases for it all, and I’d organize it with one of those label punching machines that were popular in the sixties and  seventies (my mother worked in retail and she labelled drawers of merchandise with the gadgets: berets, leather gloves, sheer tights, thin belts, wide belts). All the rocks I found were from around New York, where I grew up; the shells I collected over the years during visits to my grandparents’ winter house in Hollywood, Florida. 

Then when I was around 14 I dropped rocks and shells altogether and turned my attention to Southern Italian cooking, the food of my ancestral homeland. The fascination has remained to this day.  However when I was about 20 I developed a culinary side gig. The cooking of Morocco became another preoccupation, never as powerful as the Italian one but still consuming.

I’ve been to Morocco only once so far, but I have a lot of Moroccan cookbooks, and they’ve taken me on a journey through tagines, couscous, Marrakesh street food, and unfamiliar spices and spice mixes. Being a lover of most things seafood, I’ve been attracted to a Moroccan preparation called chermoula, a paste of fresh herbs and spices that’s mainly smeared on fish before cooking. Some cooks add hot chilies, others sharp spices like cumin or gentler spices such as cinnamon and saffron, but one constant is cilantro, in abundance. If you’ve been reading my posts for any time, you know that I abhor cilantro. Even the smell of it makes me gag. It’s extremely popular in Moroccan cooking, but I’ve worked my way around it by substituting parsley or mint or oregano, and sometimes a mix of all three. This chermoula preparation is usually so cilantro-heavy that I didn’t know how I could pull it off and still call it chermoula. So I never tried making it until now, when I finally decided not to worry and just say screw it, I’ll make it my way and call it my chermoula. So here’s what I came up with. Not traditional but, I think, really delicious. The recipe I’m offering you here is a simple treatment. All I’ve done is coat a nice piece of lemon sole bottom and top with my chermoula and stuck it under a broiler. Sole is so thin that the broiler works perfectly, cooking it to tenderness with a little browning at the edges in about 5 minutes. Other thin fillets that would work well this way would include gray sole, flounder, and fluke. But the paste will also be great on shrimp kebabs or tuna or swordfish (you might want to try a grill for those), or eggplant, or even on chicken thighs, which did great in a hot oven. I hope you’ll like my American-Italianized version of chermoula.

I’ve added a caramel orange dessert that I’ve been making for many years. This time I included cardamom instead of cinnamon and orange flower water, just because it seemed to be the thing to do. I wanted fruit, but there are no spring berries popping up yet in New York, and we’ve still got oranges. I thought this would be a good follow-up to the lemon sole, which I served with Israeli couscous seasoned with butter and a pinch of cinnamon.

Lemon Sole with My Chermoula

For the chermoula:

1 1-inch chunk fresh ginger, minced (about a tablespoon minced)
1 fresh garlic clove, minced
1 piece fresh red chili, minced (I used a peperoncino, about half of it, but choose your level of personal heat)
1 teaspoon ras el hanout
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried and ground in a mortar and pestle
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
6 large sprigs flat-leaf parsley, the leaves well chopped
5 thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
Salt
The grated zest from 1 lemon
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

For the fish:

2 skinless lemon sole fillets, about ½ pound each
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Lemon wedges for serving

Put all the ingredients for the chermoula into a bowl, and mix it all well. (I chopped everything by hand, figuring that the food processor would turn it to mush).

Get out a large sheet pan, and spread about ¼ of the chermoula onto the middle of it. Place the fish pieces over the chermoula, presentation side up. Spread the rest of the chermoula evenly over the top of the fillets (if you have extra chermoula, spread it on a warm pita). Drizzle the melted butter over the fillets, and give them an extra little sprinkle of salt.

Broil about 5 inches from the heat source, until just tender. Mine took about 5 minutes. Serve with lemon wedges.

Caramel Oranges with Cardamom

Use 1or 2 oranges per person. Since I served 2 people I used 4 oranges. Peel them and cut them into flat rounds. Lay the rounds out on a pretty platter, slightly overlapping. Sprinkle them with a little ground green cardamom ( I used about ½ teaspoon). Sprinkle on a tiny bit of salt.

Pour sugar into a saucepan (I used about ¾ cup, but adjust depending on how many oranges you’ve got). Add a drizzle of water. Cook over medium heat until the sugar turns a rich golden brown (you’ll really need to watch it, as once it starts to go golden it can turn from beautiful caramel to smoking black in an instant). Drizzle the caramel more or less evenly over the oranges. The caramel will harden, becoming candy-like. Let sit unrefrigerated for about about 2 hours. The caramel will soften as it mingles with the juice from the oranges, forming a nice caramel sauce. Garnish with mint or basil, if you like.

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