Risotto is a notoriously tricky dish. In its simplest form, risotto is rice and generously salted water that cook together in a pot until the rice has absorbed most of the water and seeped some of its starches.
Of course, there are 1,001 variations on this basic theme: risotto can be red or white, plain and creamy or cheesy and gooey, vegan or carnivore…
Italian food is one of the most popular cuisines around. From al-dente pasta and airy, leopard-spotted pizza to hearty Osso Buco and savory Florentine steak, it’s kind of hard not to love it.
And I don’t know about you lot, but I’m always on the hunt for new Italian foods to stock my pantry with.
I love trying out different types of pasta shapes, preserved vegetables in oil, and regional condiments. But it’s also good to have a few essentials in your kitchen that are easy to cook up a quick meal whenever you get the cravings.
What is it that sets the pie from your favorite pizzeria so much apart from the one you’d typically make at home?
In my humble opinion as a self-proclaimed pizza connoisseur, which you should always take with a grain or two of salt (Maldon sea salt, ideally), the difference boils down to two things: the crust and the toppings.
Do you ever wonder if that more expensive pasta is worth the money? If you haven’t given it a try yet, you may be surprised to find out that it actually can be!
This Tuscan bread and tomato soup—known throughout Italy as pappa al pomodoro—is a poor man’s dish that doesn’t require any in-season ingredients and can be enjoyed at any time of the year.
Pizza Marinara, also known as pizza alla marinara, is a traditional Neapolitan-style pizza.
In its simplest form, this pizza is prepared with chunky San Marzano tomato sauce, Mediterranean sea salt flakes, extra virgin olive oil, and freshly-cracked black pepper.
When you’re craving homemade pizza but don’t want to make dough from scratch, you can save yourself the mess of mixing and kneading by buying frozen pizza dough from the store.
Should you let it rise before baking?
The labels on most frozen doughs are surprisingly vague about this. I guess most brands haven’t thought about what happens after you’ve taken their products off the freezer shelves.
Do you need to cook pasta on high heat?
It’s a question a friend of mine, who recently got into cooking, asked. And, truth be told, I hadn’t given it that much thought.
Since she’s probably not the only one asking, I thought to do my usual research into the science of cooking pasta—and write this post.
So, for all of you out there who may be wondering whether or not to set the heat on your stove to high when cooking pasta, here’s everything you need to know (and nothing you don’t).
One of the things I love about home cooking is that, in your own kitchen, you get to set the rules. As long as you know what you’re doing, you can take the occasional shortcut here and there—and your meals will still come out tasting great.
When it comes to pizza, that occasional shortcut for me is store-bought pizza dough. Yes, I mean the same kind you typically bring back home from the grocery store’s frozen dough section.
Talking to my friends and exchanging emails or comments with my readers on the topic, I’ve seen that one question frequently comes up.
