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Roasted Red Snapper with Tomatoes, Cumin, Moroccan Olives, and Italian Oregano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Glowing Snapper Lady, by Tracey Berglund.

Cooking a fish whole can be emotionally fraught. Not because it’s a difficult job. It’s not at all. But because you have to look into those swollen, glassy eyes and say, you’re dead and I’m still alive. You’d think I’d be used to that, cooking as long as I’ve cooked. But it’s always a new death staring back at me. However, it’s good to be reminded, when we want to eat fish or meat, that we or someone has to kill it. It’s a big ugly food chain out there. I’ll eat just about anything, and I’m glad about that. I’m also glad I didn’t grow up on a farm. That would have demolished my open-mindedness. I know that people say the closer your connection to food, the more respect you have for it. True up to a point, but unless I was literally starving to death, I could never personally kill a baby goat (I might be able to kill an old goat—not sure). I need to keep a certain distance to stay free. A coward’s way out. Although I know I can kill an oyster.

Now that we’ve discussed that, I’d like to tell you why you should cook a fish whole anyway. First off, the presentation is beautiful.  If you want to impress someone, this is a nice way to do it. But the most important reason is flavor. It will be the best tasting fish of your life. The skin and bones add moisture and body and a certain lovely stickiness that you miss out on when you cook fillets. It’s that gelatinous quality that lures me every time.

To roast a whole fish what you’ll want to do is stick it in the oven. I’m not being condescending here, but that’s really it.  From my experience, a 2½-to-3-pound whole fish, the size I used for this recipe, will take about 20 to 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Once you know that, the rest is style.

This time around I made a vibrant vinaigrette with lemon, good olive oil, and fennel seeds, and rubbed it all over the fish, inside and out, and then stuffed the inside with Italian oregano. That’s a favorite oregano of mine, not too harsh like the Greek variety. It’s actually a cross between Greek oregano and marjoram, so it’s more floral and less biting. It’s good for a mild fish like red snapper.

I also wanted to make a sauce with our peak-season New York tomatoes, cooking them quickly so not to drain any of their glory. Italian oregano came back as an element of the sauce. I also added those oily, wrinkled Moroccan olives, because I love them.

In the past, my problem with serving whole fish (aside from having to look it in the eyes), has been not how to cook it but how to fillet it when it’s done so my people don’t wind up with a mouthful of bones.  Here’s a good video that shows you how to do that. The spoon he uses is a great idea. Long ago I used to try to lift the fillets off with a spatula, but that scraped up a ton of bones along with the fish. The spoon lets you move gently, feeling as you go.

Roasted Red Snapper with Tomatoes, Cumin, Moroccan Olives, and Italian Oregano

1 approximately 2½-to-3-pound red snapper, cleaned and scaled, the head left on
The juice and zest from 2 lemons
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little more for serving
1 tablespoon freshly ground fennel seeds
Salt
Black pepper
6 or so long Italian oregano sprigs

For the sauce:

Extra-virgin olive oil
2 summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 fresh red chili, minced (and seeded if you like less heat)
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed
3 anchovy fillets, chopped
A splash of white wine
3 large red, round summer tomatoes, peeled, chopped, and lightly drained
Salt
A handful of oil-cured, wrinkled black Moroccan olives, pitted and halved
5 sprigs Italian oregano, the leaves lightly chopped

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Get out a sheet pan, and place the fish on it. Make three shallow slashes through the body of the fish on both sides (this will help it cook evenly and also work seasoning into the flesh). Mix the lemon juice and zest, olive oil, fennel seeds, salt, and black pepper together in a bowl. Pour it over the fish, working it into the inside and into the slashes. Make sure both sides of the fish are covered.

Stick the oregano sprigs inside the fish, and put the pan in the oven.

While the fish is cooking, make the sauce. Get out a sauté pan, and set it over medium-high heat. Drizzle in a little olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic, chili, cumin, and anchovies, and sauté until fragrant, about a minute or so. Add a splash of white wine, and let it bubble away. Add the tomatoes, seasoning with a little salt, and sauté about 3 or 4 minutes. Turn off the heat, and add the olives and the chopped oregano. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil.

Take a look at the fish after 20 minutes. Check  for doneness by sticking a thin knife into it along the backbone. If the flesh pulls away with just a little touch of pull, it’s done. And remember that it’ll cook further as it sits. Depending on the size and thickness of your fish, it may take a little longer.

When the fish is done, you can transfer it to a big platter, if you want to get fancy, but I just left it on the sheet pan with all the roasted herbs and juices spilling out. I thought it looked beautiful.

Fillet the fish (reviewing the video if necessary). Drizzle the fillets with fresh olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Top each serving with some of the sauce.

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Golden Zucchini Soup with Saffron, Basil Oil, and Pine Nuts, plus a Quick Video Visit to Montgomery Place Orchards

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 9, 2025| 4 Comments »

Zucchini Still Life, by L. Kabakova.

I bought deep yellow zucchini at Story Farms, in Catskill, New York, the other day. You can see in my photo that they have dark green tips near their stems. The things are gorgeous. Their yellow is thick, verging on orange. Of my Winsor & Newton watercolor tubes this would be their Cadmium Yellow.

Not only is this zucchini cultivar beautiful, it’s also a little sweeter than the green ones. Less green-leafy, more soil-earthy in taste. There are a bunch of varieties of yellow zucchini. The one I found at Story is called Golden Delight. Its color alone makes me grab some every summer. It’s a prompt. A call to action.

This time around, out came a soup. A cold soup. Topped with herbs, like everything I cook in the summer. Lately I love a simple herb oil garnish—just herbs, good olive oil, and a little salt, whizzed up to almost a purée. There’s nothing like it for herbal essence (remember that shampoo?). This time I used Genoa basil, set to bright green by quick blanching. I thought it looked wonderful against the yellow of the soup. You might instead go with spearmint if you prefer.

There’s no cream or butter in this soup, and that’s good when you serve it cold, letting the texture flow smooth and loose. The soup gets its depth of flavor from good olive oil, so use your best, both in the soup and in the herb oil. I chose Benza BuonOlio, made from 100% Ligurian Taggiasca olives. It’s rich and mellow with not much of a bite. Gustiamo.com carries it. It’s a new favorite of mine.

I hope everyone is doing some creative summer cooking. We’re deep into it now.

Golden Zucchini Soup with Saffron, Basil Oil, and Pine Nuts

Extra-virgin olive oil (4 tablespoons for the soup, plus ⅓ cup for the basil oil)
1 large summer onion, diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced
5 or 6 medium-size golden zucchini, chopped
1 large Yukon Gold potato, peeled and chopped
½ teaspoon fennel pollen or ground fennel seed
½ teaspoon turmeric
Salt
A splash of dry vermouth
1 quart light chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
A big pinch of saffron, crushed and dissolved in about ¼ cup hot water
A big pinch of ground green peppercorn
About 15 basil leaves
A few drops of rice wine vinegar
A palmful of pine nuts, lightly toasted

Get out a soup pot, and set it over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and let it warm. Add the onion and carrot, and sauté until both are fragrant and starting to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the zucchini and the potato, the fennel pollen or seed, and the turmeric, and season with a little salt. Sauté for another few minutes to open up all these flavors. Add the vermouth, and let it bubble away. Add the chicken or vegetable broth and enough water to cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil, and then cook at a steady bubble, uncovered, until the potato and zucchini are tender when poked, about 20 minutes. Add the saffron water, the green peppercorn, and 2 more tablespoons of olive oil.

While the soup is cooking, make the basil oil. Set up a small saucepan, and fill it halfway with water. Bring it to a boil, and add some salt. Drop in the basil leaves, and blanch for about 30 seconds. Drain them, and run cold water over them to set their color. Squeeze out as much water as you can, and put the basil in a food processor. Add ⅓ cup of olive oil and a big pinch of salt. Pulse a few times. You want a slightly chunky purée. Pour it into a small bowl.

Purée the soup in a food processor, and then chill it. When the soup is cold, check its consistency, adding a little cold water if it needs loosening. And check its seasoning, too, adding a few drops of rice wine vinegar for brightness if needed.

Top each serving with a spiral drizzle of basil oil and a scattering of pine nuts.

And here’s a little video from another of my favorite farm stands, Montgomery Place Orchards, in Red Hook, New York.

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Monkfish Tagine with Saffron, Almonds, and Mint

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2025| 5 Comments »

Fumée d’Ambre Gris, by John Singer Sargent, Morocco, 1880.

Does every moderately successful person have a mentor? I don’t know the answer to that. I’d call myself moderately successful. I could have had more opportunities, to write more books for one thing, if I wanted to be more well-known. But I didn’t want that. So here I am writing to you on this rainy day in Manhattan. What I’ve learned so far, I’ve learned pretty much on my own. And I know a hell of a lot about Italian cooking.

If I had to name a culinary mentor, it would be Paula Wolfert. You’d think it would be someone who cooked Italian, like Marcella Hazan for instance, but that didn’t happen (one of my problems with Hazan was that I got the feeling she didn’t have much respect for Southern Italian flavors). Wolfert’s book Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco came out in 1973. I didn’t discover her until 1979. I had already learned basic Southern Italian from mimicking the food my family cooked. I bought her book because it looked like an adventure. And it was. I quickly cooked my way through it. I couldn’t stop. And I liked her attitude, the fact that she went to Tangier initially to study poetry but found her teacher Paul Bowles such a drugged-out bore that she began visiting the local ladies to see what they were up to in the kitchen. And her culinary career was born.

Aside from Southern Italian cooking, the only cuisine I’ve absorbed in a deep way is Moroccan. The flavors immediately made sense to me, since Southern Italian cooking still carries hints of its Arab past. My only problem with traditional Moroccan cooking is its reliance on cilantro. I can’t even be in the same room with the stuff. I’ve gotten around it by subbing mint, basil, or parsley (and sometimes thyme or oregano), creating different dishes to be sure, but in the process coming up with ones that are truly my own. Here’s one of my Southern Italian–Moroccan hybrids.  

I hope everyone had a successful No Kings Day.

Monkfish Tagine with Saffron, Almonds, and Mint

2 pounds monkfish, cut on an angle into ½-inch-thick medallions
Salt
Piment d’Espelette
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 shallots, cut into small dice
½ teaspoon ras el hanout (here’s my recipe, if you’d like to try making your own, in a post that also includes my recipe for carrots roasted with ras el hanout, summer savory, and crème fraîche)
1 1-inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 summer garlic cloves, sliced
2 fresh bay leaves
6 thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
A big splash of dry vermouth
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried, ground to a powder, and opened up in about ½ cup of hot water
1 35-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, chopped, using some of the juice (if yours are packed in a thick purée, wash most of it off)
1 teaspoon honey
About ½ cup flour
A handful of fresh spearmint leaves, lightly chopped
A palmful of toasted almonds, lightly chopped

Pat the fish pieces dry. Season them with salt and some piment d’Espelette.

Get out a wide sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter. When hot, add the shallot, ras el hanout, and ginger, and let it soften for a couple of minutes to release its flavors. Add the garlic and a little salt, and sauté for another minute. Add the bay leaves and thyme, and let them warm through. Add the dry vermouth, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the saffron water, tomatoes, honey, and another good pinch of piment d’Espelette. Simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.

In another wide sauté pan, turn the flame to high, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter.

Put the flour on a plate, spread it out, and coat the monkfish slices on both sides with it, shaking off excess.

When the oil is hot, add the fish slices. Brown them quickly on both sides.

Turn the heat back on under the tomato saffron sauce, and add the fish to it, spooning the sauce over the top and cooking just until the fish is tender, about 3 or 4 minutes, depending on thickness. Check the seasoning.

Transfer to a serving platter. Scatter the mint and almonds over the top.

I served this with a buttery couscous seasoned with a pinch of cinnamon, but you could instead just buy some good bread to go with it. Or make rice.

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Risotto Milanese with Marrow, The Last Supper, and Cotoletto in Milano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 24, 2025| 4 Comments »

Recipe below: Risotto Milanese with Marrow

I recently went to Milano for the first time. I saw Leonardo’s Last Supper. It’s painted on the end wall of the former dining room of the Santa Maria della Grazie monastery. It took Leonardo four years to complete, which doesn’t seem like a long time for the size of the thing, but Sforza, the then duke of Milano, who paid for the work, was evidently constantly angry at him for procrastinating.

They let small groups in for 15 minutes at a time and then kick them out. But it was such an overwhelming yet slightly eerie feeling being in that big space that 15 minutes seemed like a long time. According to our guide, only about 20 percent of the painting is completely original. The outlines of the forms are original, but the colors and much detail has been worked over by various restorers over the years, most recently in 1999. The colors are still lighter than the original. It’s a dark meal now tinted in pastels.

Milano has never been a culinary draw for me so I was perplexed about what I could learn there to expand my knowledge of Italian food. Many of the restaurants I passed by felt New Yorky, with avocados, miso, smoked salmon. So I decided to go full-on retro and sample some of the standards—risotto Milanese, cotoletto. I’ve always loved a fried veal chop, and saffron, the main flavoring in their risotto, is a magic aroma for me.

We first decided on a checked tablecloth place called Burla Giò, which translates as something like “throw it down” in Milanese dialect. It was a lovely five-minute walk from our Airbnb. It opened in 1969, and the same family still runs it. From the clientele I could tell that it had over the years turned into a bit of a tourist trap, but not completely. Aside from the Australians and Germans, there were plenty of Italians, mostly older men, who I imagine had nostalgia for this kind of food.

I ordered the cotoletto, a giant, hammered-out veal cutlet, which was pretty good, could have been a touch moister. Mrs. Cavuoti, my next-door neighbor when I was growing up on Long Island, made it better. It came with a small lettuce and fennel salad, which I thought was a nice touch. My husband had guancia di manzo, braised veal cheek, that was tender and had a good smell. It came sitting in a slightly acidic brown sauce dotted with almonds. I tasted it. A good balanced flavor. I spotted a duck with apricot dish on another table that looked appealing. I have no idea if it was. Many tables ordered the osso buco with risotto Milanese, a piatto unico I wasn’t sure I was up to after seeing the huge portions being carried by, but I really wanted to taste the risotto, so we split an order of that as a first course. And it was very good. Thicker than I’d expected, but rich with saffron and parmigiano. Good rice.  Well prepared. A drizzle of balsamico finished it off, but the little pile of saffron threads on the top was an extravagant surprise. And this wasn’t an expensive restaurant. All around a fine experience.

For Easter I decided I’d go all out and served a risotto Milanese in the classic manner, with osso buco. It’s not often in an Italian kitchen that you’re served a starch such as pasta or rice alongside a big hunk of meat, but you’ve got that here. It was rich but so worth it. I could hardly believe my guests actually ate my pastiera after it.

I don’t think Burla Giò included it, but I added marrow to my version, which is a traditional variation. After cooking it this way for the first time, now I’m thinking the marrow completely belongs and will be hard for me to leave out in the future. See what you think. And try and find carnaroli rice. It really is the best for this dish.

Risotto Milanese with Marrow

About 7 cups homemade chicken broth (homemade is important, because you want the collagen to help hold the rice in a creamy suspension)
1 teaspoon saffron threads
1 beef marrow bone, split down the middle
A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
2 cups carnaroli rice
2 fresh bay leaves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
Sea salt
1 cup dry but fruity white wine (I used a flat prosecco, because I had it hanging around)
A big chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Black pepper
A drizzle of real balsamic vinegar, if you’d like to try finishing it with that

The first thing you want to do is pour your broth into a pot and get it hot over medium heat. Once it’s hot, turn the flame down low, and keep in warm. Stick a ladle in it.

Put the saffron threads into a small pan, and set it over a low heat for about 10 seconds. You just want to dry them out enough so you can grind them to a powder (otherwise, the moist strands won’t open up completely, and you’ll lose a lot of their flavor). Put the dry saffron in a mortar, and give it a grind. Add about ¼ cup of the hot broth to the saffron. It should bloom into a bright orange. ( I like keeping this little bit of saffron broth separate, instead of dissolving the saffron into the big broth pot; I then add the saffron halfway through the cooking, so it stays bright and aromatic).

You’ll now want to scrape the marrow out from both sides of the split bone with a small spoon or a dinner knife, and then chop it finely.

Get out a wide, high-sided pan. This will allow the broth to evaporate more quickly than a deep pot and make the stirring easier, even breezy. I used my 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad.

Add a big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a tablespoon of butter to the pan, and get it warm over medium heat. Add the marrow, and warm it through. As the marrow starts to melt, add the onion, and let it soften for a minute. Add the rice, the bay leaves, the nutmeg, and a little salt, and stir for a minute or so to coat the rice with the fats and flavorings. Pour in the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute or so. I love the aroma of the wine mixing with butter and onion wafting up in my face. That is for me part of what traditional risotto making is all about. You don’t get the full-on experience when you just stick the pan in the oven, a modern approach to preparing risotto.

Now you can start adding the broth. Start with a few ladles, and stir the rice around until you can see the bottom of the pan. Add more broth, and let the pan get almost dry again. You don’t have to go crazy stirring. I tend to stir more in the beginning and then ease up a little. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth and stir that in. The rice will turn a beautiful dark yellow.

I find that the entire risotto process takes about 16 to 17 minutes.  So after about another 6 or 7 minutes of stirring, the rice should be tender but still firm and its consistency creamy.

Turn off the heat, and add the rest of the butter, stirring it in. Add about ½ cup of grated Parmigiano and a few big grindings of fresh black pepper, and check for salt. Add a little more broth if the texture has gotten too thick. If you’ve run out of broth, just add a little warm water. I like my risotto Milanese loose but not runny. Ladle it into wide bowls. You can drizzle a thread of balsamic vinegar over each serving, but only if you’ve got the really good stuff. In any case,  serve it right away, with the rest of the Parmigiano brought to the table.

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Easter Is Almost Here, and Here Are Some Recipes for It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Easter is almost here. For me it’s a time to celebrate the rebirth of the earth, a beautiful holiday for a cook. But it all seems rushed this year. I haven’t yet planned. I didn’t invite anyone. I’m only now trying to put a menu together, but I’m not sure what I’ll be able to actually turn out, since last night I messed up the door of my oven in a frantic effort to get my cat Red out from behind it. The cat is out and fine, but the door is hanging by a thread. Hopefully I’ll be able to get someone in to fix it. If that’s not possible, I’ll have to figure out if I can cook a pastiera, my must-have Easter dessert, in the toaster oven. Maybe I can make a shallow one on a pie plate, although that seems diminished and a little depressing. A pastiera should be high and mighty, filled with ricotta and wheat berries and giving off that exotic scent of orange flower water. I’ll see what I can do.

If you have a working oven and would like to make a pastiera, here’s my recipe. I do make it a little differently every year, but this is, I think, I good guide.

And here are some other Easter dishes that I’ve made over the years and everyone really liked. I’m not yet sure what the rest of my menu will be this time around the globe, but somewhere in the mix will be eggs, ricotta, lamb, and asparagus, probably cooked on my stovetop.

Happy Easter cooking to everyone.

Easter Peas with Pancetta, Onion, Mint, and Warm Spices

Frittata di Pasqua with Ricotta, Soppressata, and Breadcrumbs

Warm Asparagus Salad with Dandelions and a Taggiasca Olive Vinaigrette

Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

Spezzatino of Lamb with Fennel, Carrots, and Peas

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Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta, plus Numero 28, a Great Long-Standing, Not Trendy Pizza Place on Carmine Street

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Flora, Goddess of Spring, a fresco from the Villa di Arianna, Stabia, which was destroyed during the Vesuvius eruption in the year 79 but this gorgeous work of art survived and is now in the Archeological Museum of Naples .

Recipe below: Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

I’m stepping into spring here with a dish that’s solid enough for a 42-degree, drizzly, windy, gray, almost April day but gentle enough to include two classic Southern Italian spring ingredients, lamb and ricotta. Our typical pre-Easter New York weather is utterly familiar and also completely frustrating on many levels. I’m chilled to the core and I don’t even feel like moving, which makes me even colder. My bundle of thick black tights is not yet shoved to the back of the drawer. But crocuses and daffodils and even dandelions are poking through the still mostly brown earth. And there’s this sweet spicy ragù simmering on my stove. Warmth can’t be far away.

Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ¼-inch-thick round of pancetta, cut into small dice
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
2 carrots, cut into small dice
2 inner celery stalks with their leaves, cut into small dice, the leaves lightly chopped
1 ½ pounds ground lamb
¾ teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
2 fresh bay leaves
Salt
1 cup dry white wine (I used an Orvieto, but anything that’s dry and not oaky will be fine)
1 cup chicken broth
1 28-ounce can whole Italian tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ teaspoon sherry wine vinegar
1 pound strozzapreti pasta
A big handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
A chunk of pecorino Toscano cheese
1 pound whole-milk ricotta, sheep’s milk if you can find it

Get out a big casserole-type pot fitted with a lid. Set it over medium heat, and drizzle in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the pancetta, and sauté until it’s crisp but not blackened and has given off much of its fat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery plus leaves, and let them sauté until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the lamb, cinnamon, allspice, Alleppo, bay leaves, and some salt. Stir everything around, and then let the meat brown lightly. That should take about 5 minutes.

Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes, stirring everything to blend. Bring it all to a boil, and then turn down the heat to low. Cover the pot, and simmer at a low bubble for about 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally. When that’s done the meat should be tender and all the flavors well developed.

Skim most of the fat from the ragù. Add the butter and the sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning. I found mine needed more salt and a little more Aleppo. The consistency of my ragù was just what I wanted, not too thick, not too loose. Add more broth or water if yours needs adjusting (or cook it uncovered for a bit to thicken it) .

Cook the strozzapreti al dente. Drain it, and pour it into a large, wide serving bowl. Add a big drizzle of olive oil, and give it a toss. Pour on the ragù, and add the basil, tossing well.

Top each serving with a big dollop of ricotta and a generous grating of the pecorino Toscano.

I served this with a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo red wine, which I thought was a pretty good match. After the pasta, I brought out a watercress and radish salad, just because I really wanted it to be spring. You could follow this menu with a pastiera and have a wonderful Easter dinner.

If you’d like to try making your own ricotta for this (or for numerous other good things, such as a pastiera), here’s my recipe. I use buttermilk instead of lemon for the curdling agents, as I find it turns out gentler, creamier curds.

Numero 28

People are always asking me what’s my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. It’s a difficult question for several reasons. I don’t go out to eat that much, and when I do I mostly want to taste stuff I don’t make at home, like Thai or Vietnamese food. Also, as far as Italian restaurants go, there are so many new ones all the time around here, it’s impossible for me to care about all of them. In the last five months, four Italian fish places have opened up within 10 blocks of my West Village apartment. Who needs all those Italian fish restaurants, and how long can they possibly last with such competition? Sometimes I think people who open restaurants are just gluttons for punishment. And now with those likely tariffs on European wines, what is even possible? As it is, the price of a glass of Chianti at a good place is averaging $18 to $20. Soon it might be more like $40. Who’s going to pay that?

The one Italian food I do go out for a lot, and I mean really a lot, is pizza, but I don’t have the desire to stand outside on a line for a hour, or sit up all night with my computer waiting for reservations to open up. I like good, solid, consistent, nontrendy places that make me feel comfortable and relatively happy. Numero 28 on Carmine Street is one of those places. I’ve been going there since it opened, in 2012. It’s a sweet little café with a wood burning oven, consistently high-quality ingredients, and right-on pizza every time I’ve eaten there, which has got to be, at this point, several hundred times. I would say their pizza is more Roman-style than Neapolitan. It’s not as wet in the middle as you’d get in Naples, but it’s wet enough so it’s never dry, even if you get one without tomato. I like ordering their long pizzas—18 inches is about right for two, but there’s also a 29-incher, which comes to the table on a really long board. I love those, since you can get, for instance, half anchovy, half prosciutto (they use really good prosciutto), which is often what I go for. I don’t get elaborate with toppings. I like a margarita with maybe one add-on, so I can still focus on the great, yeasty, gently salted, bubbly, slightly charred crust. However, I do love, and I understand this is not for everyone, a mix of anchovy and mushroom with extra basil.

 I think almost every time I’ve been at Numero 28 I’ve begun with an artichoke and Castelvetrano olive salad, which also contains arugula and pine nuts. It’s a lovely, well-balanced starter, dressed with good olive oil that you can really taste and not too much vinegar. I really don’t like it when Italian places load on the vinegar.

The only slightly annoying thing about Numero 28 is they only take cash, so you need to stop at a bank before you arrive.

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Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciovallo, plus an Early Spring Picnic on Gansevoort Street

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

Cauliflower and Pomegranate, by Auguste Renoir.

Recipe below: Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo

It’s March, and there’s nothing new yet. I’m talking specifically about local produce. It’s too early even for dandelions. Maybe I could cook daffodils. They’re up all over the place.  I’m thinking maybe stuff them with mozzarella and anchovy, twist the tops closed, dunk them in batter, and then give them a fast fry. Doesn’t that sound good?  Pretty, too. But I just Googled “Are daffodils edible for humans?” and discovered that they’re not. They contain lycorine, which causes vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. So no. We can’t deep-fry them. I should have known, since even deer won’t eat them, and deer eat almost anything. I guess I’ll have to wait for zucchini blossom time. It’s not far away.

Cauliflower 2, by Nico Heilijers.

So now I am holding a big, beautiful white cauliflower. My first thought is to just go with a gratin, fairly classic, with béchamel, a few scrapings of nutmeg, a bay leaf, and maybe Fontina and Parmigiano. Crumbs on top. One of my favorites. But then my head swivels over to the torta side, as it often does. You all probably know that I love my pizza di scarola, the double-crusted escarole-filled torta I always make for Christmas Eve. I love it at other times of the year as well, like right now, when chicories are still the best greens in the market, at least in New York.

I’ve patterned this new torta somewhat after pizza di scarola, including some traditional ingredients (capers, anchovies) while leaving out others (raisins) and throwing in new ones (thyme, pistachios, caciocavallo), and flavoring it inside and out with Marsala.

It tastes like Napoli, which makes me very happy.

Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo

  • Servings: 4 to 6 as an appetizer
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For the dough:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
½ to ¾ cup dry Marsala

For the filling:

1 medium cauliflower, any color, cut into small florets
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
2 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using much of the tender green part
A big pinch of ground allspice
A handful of unsalted, shelled pistachios
3 or 4 oil-packed anchovies, well-chopped (I used Ortiz brand)
A palmful of salt-packed Sicilian capers, soaked and rinsed (mine were large, so I chopped them a bit)
6 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
A piece of a fresh green chili, minced (I used a green Italian long hot, about half of it, with its seeds)
A splash of dry Marsala
6 large sprigs Italian parsley, the leaves lightly chopped
1 cup grated caciocavallo or scamorza cheese
1 egg yolk, for the egg wash
Sugar

To make the dough, put the flour in a medium-size bowl. Add the sugar and salt. Drizzle in the olive oil and ½ cup of Marsala, and start by mixing everything around with a wooden spoon. If it seems dry, add a little more Marsala. When it comes together into a shaggy ball, dump it out onto the countertop, and knead it briefly, just until you have a nice smooth ball. Wrap it in plastic, and let it sit for at least an hour, unrefrigerated, before you work with it. You can also refrigerate it overnight, but let it come back to room temperature before you start to roll it out.

To start the filling, set up a pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Blanch the cauliflower for about 2 minutes. Drain it in a colander, and then run cold water over it to stop the cooking. Let it drain.

Set up a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil.  Add the cauliflower and sprinkle in a little salt. Sauté about a minute longer. Add the scallions, allspice, pistachios, anchovies, capers, thyme, and green chili, giving everything a good mix and sautéing about another minute or so to blend all the flavors. Add a splash of dry Marsala, and let it bubble away. Take the pan from the heat, and let it cool. Then add the parsley and the caciocavallo, and stir them in. Taste for salt. You probably won’t need more with all the salt from the anchovies, capers, and cheese, but you never know.

Set the oven to 400 degrees.

For the egg wash, put the egg yolk in a small cup or bowl. Add a drizzle of olive oil, a drizzle of water, a little salt, and a little sugar, and give it all a good mix.

Brush a sheet pan with olive oil. Cut the dough in half.  Roll both pieces out to approximately 8- or 9-inch rounds. They don’t have to be perfect; they just have to fit on the sheet pan. This is a rustico kind of tart, so a little uneven is, in my opinion, good.

Place one of the dough rounds on the sheet pan. Top with the cauliflower mix, spreading it out more or less evenly but leaving an inch free around the rim. Cover it with the other dough round. Crimp the edges for a good seal. I usually just make little folds all around, pressing them down to make sure they can’t pop open during cooking.  Make three short knife slits in the top. Brush the top with the egg wash.

Slide the sheet pan with the torta onto the bottom rack of the oven. Bake until the top is nice and golden, about 20 minutes or so. Let it cool for about 5 minutes before slicing.

This tart makes a great antipasto for up to six people. It’s really nice with a glass of falanghina.

An Early Spring Picnic on Gansevoort Street

I like to pick up a mortadella and burrata panino at Sogno Toscano on Perry Street (or maybe instead wrap up a wedge of the cauliflower torta above) and then head west on Gansevoort Street, crossing the West Street highway, where I step right onto the Gansevoort Peninsula. There I find a weird little strip of beach, with actual sand, a few blue Adirondack chairs, and matching umbrellas. At the water’s edge are large rocks. The Hudson gently crashes again them, making a hypnotic water noise. You can’t swim at this man-made little beach, but it’s a good place to sit, eat a sandwich, hang out with the Canada geese, and listen to the rhythm of the tide.

The other side of the peninsula is a stretch of salt marsh planted with native grasses. Good for birding. Last spring I saw a young red-tailed hawk hunting for lunch, and really close up too, only a few feet away. I got a good look at its glassy yellow eyes. If you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to check it out.

Spring is just around the corner.

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Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 13, 2025| 5 Comments »

Italian Rice Field, by Angelo Morbelli, 1901.

Recipe below: Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

I like a risotto where you can barely see what’s in it, everything cut tiny, no big chunks. When you take a bite, you’re surprised by all the flavor in a dish that looked like nothing much. The complexity of risotto is hidden by its simple appearance. Finely chopped chicken livers, minced porcini, a fine dice of leeks, a melt of gorgonzola, ingredients like those can be hidden away in a bowl of white grains just ready to burst forth in your mouth. This risotto dichotomy reminds of the couple in the film The Big Night who get talked into ordering the seafood risotto and are completely perplexed when it comes to the table looking like nothing more than a plate of soupy white rice. I don’t remember the exact lines, but it went something like this: “I don’t see any seafood,” the woman says, scraping through the plate with her fork. “Where’s the seafood?” “It’s in there, the chef says. “It’s just cut really small.”  They don’t believe him, and to his horror they order a side of spaghetti. Risotto with a side of spaghetti. What a concept.

I love risotto. I love all the stirring. I’m not a fan of  the oven method where you put the thing together on top of the stove and then stick it in the oven with lots of broth until the rice is tender. It works, sort of, but I find you have to do more last-minute fiddling to get it creamy, meaning stirring it once it’s out of the oven, balancing the seasoning, and adding stuff. For me, that all gets accomplished over the 17 minutes or so of stovetop attention. I don’t stir constantly, but I stir a lot. It’s a beautiful process. I get to experience the aroma of the wine cooking out as the steam rises into my face, the changing smell and look of the thing with each addition, and the way the rice swells up and indicates to me that it’s almost time. I don’t want to miss all that. Maybe if I were working in a restaurant and had to make 50 risotti a night, but at home, why bother at all if you don’t want to get involved?

I prefer carnaroli rice to the other risotto rice varieties I can find here. This time around I used  Acquerello brand, from Piemonte, grown by the Rondolino family since 1935. Carnaroli is the only type of rice they’ve ever grown. I order it from Gustiamo. Its color is not chalk white, like most risotto rice, but more golden, and the aroma when cooking seems a bit deeper than other brands of carnaroli I’ve tried. There are reasons for this. The rice is actually aged, which serves to open it up, allowing for more liquid to flow though the grains. Also, they don’t strip it to stark white when they process it, so you get that pretty yellow hue. And they’ve figured out a way to reintegrate the germ back into the kernels, so you get rice that’s more whole and healthy. Nice to know.

Saffron Still Life, by Iris Richardson.

Fennel and saffron make a beautiful flavor combo that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever cooked, or even eaten, a bouillabaisse. It’s also used in the cooking of Sardinia, most beautifully in their sausage ragù served with malloreddus, a gnocchi-shaped pasta. I love that dish, and it was my inspiration for this risotto. I use a fair amount of saffron in my cooking. I’m drawn to its sweetly medicinal flavor, which to me is not at all floral in the usual sense , despite being made from the red-orange pistils of a type of crocus. It’s a unique flavor, hard to describe. Maybe like bitter honey, but that’s not quite right either.  Maybe bitter honey with a hint of barnyard?

In the past I’ve mostly bought Spanish saffron, usually from Kalustyan’s, an amazing spice shop on Lexington above 28th Street. If you’ve never been, visit! The aromas will blow your mind. This time around I bought saffron from Iran, which was beautifully flavored and moist. There’s also such a thing as American saffron. Last summer I met the people at Green Owl Farm, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., who grow saffron crocuses and harvest their own saffron from them. I didn’t know you could grow those flowers upstate, but I guess why not? Regular non-saffron crocuses are popping up all over my backyard as of this writing. Green Owl packs big pinches of saffron threads into little glass bottles. I haven’t yet bought from them, but I will. Theirs is a labor of love to be sure.

Risotto should get to the table pretty soon after it’s done just tender, but you don’t have to get crazy about it. If you need time to get people seated, you can let it sit for 5 to 8 minutes. It will thicken some, but then just add another ladle of broth and stir it in right before bringing it out. It’ll be fine.

Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

About 6 cups homemade chicken broth
½ teaspoon saffron threads, lightly dried and ground with a mortar and pestle (see note below)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups carnaroli rice
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
3 mild, fresh Italian sausages, the casings removed, the meat pulled into little bits with your fingers
1 large fennel bulb (choose a bulb with lots of fronds), cut into small dice, the fronds lightly chopped
½  teaspoon fennel pollen or freshly ground fennel seed (if you’re sausage is heavily seasoned with fennel, you’ll want to use about half as much)
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
Salt
About ½ cup dry white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
A big chunk of Parmigiano cheese

You’ll want to have ready a wide, shallow-sided pan. I’ve found that that’s best for keeping the evaporation constant and the stirring smooth and easy. I used an 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad pan.

Pour the chicken broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat to really low, and stick a ladle in the pan.

Put the ground saffron in a small cup or bowl, and add about ½ cup of the hot chicken broth, giving the saffron a stir to dissolve it. The broth will turn a beautiful bright orange. Set it aside.

Set your risotto pan on a burner right next to the chicken broth. Turn the heat to medium. Add half of the butter and a big drizzle of olive oil. Add the rice, the onion, the sausage, and the fennel, holding back the fronds, and stir everything around to sauté it well. Try to break the sausage up into little pieces. Season with the fennel pollen or seed, the nutmeg, and a little salt. When the rice and everything is well sautéed, about 3 minutes or so, add the wine, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.

Now start adding broth, a few ladles at a time, stirring fairly often (but not obsessively) until the pan goes almost dry. Keep adding more broth and letting the pan go almost dry repeatedly until the rice is just tender. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth. I like to add it at this point instead of at the beginning so it stays really fresh-tasting. Saffron has an ephemeral nature and can fade out if cooked too long.

After about 12 minutes or so, you’ll  notice the rice start to swell and the entire dish start to look creamy. I usually give it a taste after about 15 minutes to see where it’s at. In my experience the entire process takes about 16 or 17 minutes for tender but still firm kernels. 

When you’ve reached this point, add the rest of the butter, a good amount of black pepper, and a few big gratings of Parmigiano, and give it a good stir. Turn off the heat, and adjust the consistency by adding more broth if needed. I like my risotto loose but not soupy. Taste for salt, and ladle the risotto into bowl. Top with the chopped fennel fronds and an extra sprinkling of Parmigiano. Serve right away.

A note on saffron: Saffron should be slightly moist and have brilliant red orange color when you buy it. If the threads are maroon and brittle, it’s old. Yet for it to open up and release its essence, it needs to be dried enough to be ground (dropping moist saffron threads in hot liquid is a bit of a waste). What I do is take a small sauté pan and set it over medium heat. When it’s warm, I turn off the flame and add my saffron threads, letting them dry for about a minute, just long enough so they lose a bit of moisture. Then I can grind them to a powder in a mortar and pestle. Now when I add a hot liquid to the saffron, the flavor will open full-force. Not a thread will be wasted.

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Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Cheese and Grapes, by Jane Palmer.

Recipe below: Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

Winter has always made me want strong cheese. Even when I was a kid I’d eat a lot of provolone, which was always, and I mean always, in the cheese drawer in our refrigerator. I loved the way it peeled into layers, a characteristic that, as I learned later in life, made sense, since provolone is essentially a dried-out, salted version of mozzarella (which is a pasta filata, meaning a cheese that’s stretched and pulled). I never paid much attention to provolone on warm days, even though there it was in the cheese drawer, same as ever. In summer it just seemed like pure stink. In the middle of a New York winter, that stink called to me.

Blue Cheese and Grapes, by Bondareva Nataliia.

As I got older and was in charge of buying my own cheese, gorgonzola became my stinky cheese focus. I love the good strong one that is sometimes labeled mountain gorgonzola. Its texture, a mix of creamy and crunchy, really is alluring. And then there’s gorgonzola dolce, the milder, creamier version that’s so good smeared on a hard-crusted piece of bread. When I cooked at Le Madri restaurant many lifetimes ago, I’d reward myself for surviving another late night shift with a gorgonzola and pear sandwich stuffed into the restaurant’s lovely focaccia. That and whatever wine came back undrunk by the customers was a fine top off to the night. I picked up much of my Italian wine knowledge finishing off those often extremely expensive bottles.

So on a recent close-to-zero-degree day here in gray old New York City, I bought myself a thick slab of gorgonzola dolce simply because it was so cold and I knew the cheese would taste amazing. I ate half of it as is, hanging off my finger. With what was left I decided to make this tart.

Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

  • Servings: 6 as an antipasto offering
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I used a 9-inch straight-sided tart pan with a removable bottom. I use these pans when I want an informal look to my tart. You can also use a tart ring for a similar effect.

For the crust:

2 cups unbleached white flour, plus a little extra for rolling out the dough
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
The leaves from about 6 thyme sprigs
1¼ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into little pieces
⅓ cup dry white wine, well chilled
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

For the filling:

A bunch of green seedless grapes, stemmed (you’ll need around 25)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
1 large egg, plus 1 yolk
½ cup crème fraîche
A big pinch of nutmeg
The leaves from a few large thyme sprigs, lightly chopped
A drizzle of whole milk
About ⅓ pound gorgonzola dolce cheese
A handful of pine nuts

To make the crust, put the flour in a food processor. Add the salt, sugar, and thyme, and pulse a few times to blend. Add the butter, and pulse three or four times, to break it up a little bit. Drizzle in the wine and the vinegar, and pulse a few more times, just until you have a moist, crumbly mass. If it seems dry, add a tiny drizzle more wine or cold water. Turn it out onto your counter, and press it together into a ball. Flatten out the ball so you have a thick disk. Cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight if that works for you.

I found that with the juiciness of the grapes, I needed to blind-bake the crust, cooking it first without its filling. A drag, I know, and something I usually try to avoid, but unfortunately it was really needed. Not such a big deal really. You just have to remember to build up the sides to allow for shrinkage.

Roll out your dough onto a floured surface, and drape it into a buttered tart pan. Press it against the inside of the pan. Trim off the excess dough, leaving enough to build it up all around so it comes up a little over the rim. Prick the inside lightly all over with a fork. Stick the pan back in the refrigerator for at least another 45 minutes to firm up (you can let it go overnight, if need be).

Set the oven at 425 degrees. Lay a piece of parchment inside the tart shell and slightly hanging over its edges. Fill it with dried beans or pie weights (I used rice, which worked well). Bake for about 12 minutes. Remove the paper and weights, and bake for another 5 minutes or so, or until the edges are lightly colored. Let it cool.

Now you’re ready to prepare the filling and then bake the torta. Set your oven to 425 degrees. Lay the grapes out on a sheet pan. Drizzle them with olive oil, and season them with salt and black pepper, tossing them around a little to coat them well. Roast them until they just start to shrivel and give off some juice, about 12 minutes. Let them cool a bit.

In a bowl, mix the egg and egg yolk with the crème fraîche, seasoning it with salt, black pepper, the nutmeg, and the thyme. Whisk well. If it seems too thick, add a drizzle of whole milk. It should be thick but pourable.

Break the gorgonzola up into little pieces, dropping them in the tart shell. Scatter on the pine nuts, and finally arrange the roasted grapes on top. Drizzle on the crème fraîche mixture.

Turn the heat down to 400 degrees, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the center looks firm and the crust is browned.  Let cool for about 15 minutes before slicing.

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Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala, plus a 2008 Reading by Suze Rotolo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 11, 2025| 7 Comments »

Cabbage, by Akhilkrishna Jayant.

Recipe below: Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala

Cabbage. It’s not wildly inspiring. Scrolling through my blog recipes, and I’ve done a thousand of them, I find only two cabbage recipes, both for Italianized versions of cole slaw. I’m a little surprised by that. Cabbage is a good thing. I love all the other farty, gassy vegetables. Why have I been ignoring cabbage? I’ve immediately realized this was a huge waste on my part. Cabbage has potential for beauty. So I’ve gone out and bought myself a big savoy cabbage, sat it on my kitchen counter, and stared at it for a long time. My creative head didn’t churn with excitement, but I figured, well, there’s always soup.

I originally planned on a cannellini bean, cabbage, and sausage–type soup, an Italian winter classic that nobody in my family ever made, but I didn’t have cannellini beans. I did have a bag of Rancho Gordo flageolets, lovely light-green beans that hold their shape nicely after cooking. I decided to go with them, but they seemed inappropriate for an Italian soup, so off I went in an different culinary direction, coming up with something more like a deconstructed cassoulet. I know cassoulet doesn’t typically include cabbage, but the duck, fatty pork, and deep winter herbs I included still made the dish taste like cassoulet. It was declared a success by my sister, my husband, and my friend Jay. That made me happy.

Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala

For the beans:

1 1-pound bag flageolet beans (I used Rancho Gordo)
2 fresh bay leaves
1 tablespoon white miso
1 long branch of thyme
1 garlic clove
1 splash dry Marsala
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar

For the rest of the soup:

4 duck legs
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Salt
Black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ½-inch round slice of pancetta, cut into medium dice
2 carrots, cut into medium dice
1 celery stalk, with its leaves, chopped
1 onion, cut into small dice
2 fresh bay leaves
1 large sprig rosemary, its leaves chopped
A few large sprigs thyme, their leaves chopped
A sprinkling of ground nutmeg
About ½ cup of dry Marsala
1 quart homemade chicken broth
About 3 cups roughly chopped savoy cabbage
A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar
A chunk of grana Padano cheese, to shave over the top

The first thing you’ll want to do is cook the beans. What I did was put them in a big pot and add the bay leaves, miso, thyme, garlic clove, a big splash of the marsala, and a large drizzle of olive oil. I added cool water to cover by several inches, brought it to a boil, and then turned the heat down very low and simmered the beans, partially covered, until tender. Check occasionally to see if they need more water.  Mine took a little over an hour. Rancho Gordo beans are usually recently harvested, so they’re not as dry as, say, Goya. They cook quicker. In the final 15 minutes I added salt and a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Then I let the beans sit in their cooking liquid. You can cook the beans the day before you make this soup, if you like.

Now for the duck. Score the duck legs in a crisscross fashion, just going through the fat. Rub the duck with allspice, salt, and black pepper.

Get out a big soup pot, and drizzle in some olive oil. Turn the heat to medium. Add the duck legs, skin side down, and cook them slowly until they’re golden brown and much of the fat has left the skin, about 8 minutes or so. Give them a turn and cook the other side for another 5 minutes. Take the duck legs from the pot. Pour off all but a few tablespoons of the duck fat. Add the pancetta, and cook until crisp. Add the carrot, celery, onion, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, and nutmeg. Let them cook until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Return the duck to the pot. Add the Marsala, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add the chicken broth, and bring it to a boil. Then turn down the heat, cover the pot, and let it simmer for 2 hours. By this time the duck should be really tender.

Take the duck out of the pot. Spoon off excess fat from the surface and then add the beans, with their cooking liquid, and the cabbage. If the result seems too bulked up, add water, or more broth if you have it. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat, until the cabbage is tender, about 20 minutes.

Take the meat off the duck legs, and pull it into bite-size pieces, discarding the fatty skin. Add it to the pot, and give everything a good stir. If the soup looks too thick (I like a rather loose soup), add water or more broth.  Add a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning and adjust. You might want a little more rosemary or thyme or black pepper.

Shave a little grana Padano over the top of each serving, if you like.

By now probably many of you will have have seen A Complete Unknown, the biopic about Bob Dylan, and possibly like me you were angered by the depiction of Suze Rotolo, who was portrayed as a whining doormat. In reality she was the product of a nice Italian communist family from Greenwich Village and grew up to be a civil rights activist and a painter, and she was an early influence on Dylan’s worldview. She also didn’t look anything like the pixie-nosed blonde who played her in the movie.

I highly recommend a 2008 video of her reading from her then soon-to-be-released memoir A Freewheelin’ Time. It was recorded at the Calandra Institute, an organization in Manhattan dedicated to Italian American studies. I often attend programs there. It’s a good resource to know about. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnG-G99Fhnc. And here’s a link to their website: https://calandrainstitute.org

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