This recipe was given to my mother Gina many years ago by a neighbor. Florentines allegedly come from Florence Italy so one more reason to love Italy! They are buttery, nutty and sweet from the fruit. My mom always smears the backside of the cookie with melted chocolate. They are pretty and delicious - a great holiday combination.
Read More
If there is one recipe I know my children will remember me by it’s my Italian Tricolor Cookies - my husband Phil's favorite Italian dessert!
This cookie is really a mini cake. Its three layers of thin cake (tinted red, white and green) made with almond paste and slathered with apricot jam. The outside is enrobed in chocolate. You can find them in the case of any classic Italian pastry shop. For years, he would always buy a box from the bakery near our dorm and talk about how it’s the best cookie you could ever have. Even though he loved them, I never thought about attempting to make them at home. It seemed complicated.
Then, about 15 years ago, my mom was sitting in a hair salon thumbing through a Good Housekeeping and came across a recipe for tricolors. She ripped it out and gave it to me. The recipe is perfect. It makes the most delicious tricolor cookies you will ever have. They are even better than the pastry shop’s version. I have been making these cookies, every year since, for Christmas. I hope is that even when I’m old and grey, my children and grandchildren will ask me to whip up a batch of these cookies for the holidays.
Read More
A true Puerto Rican girl - my friend Iris loves spending time with her mamma Evelyn. She is very proud of her heritage and really enjoys eating the food of her youth. I was really touched when Iris and Evelyn showed up to my house to teach me how to make their most cherished dish, Pasteles.
Pasteles are very important in Puerto Rican culture. Served at the holidays with rice, beans and tostones, they are a labor of love. The exterior (masa) is made from unripe, green bananas. You have to grate each one on a box grater to get a fine pudding like consistency. The abuelas never complain, but it is labor intensive! The filling is a delicious blend of pork and traditional Puerto Rican spices and ingredients like pimentos and olives. The achiote oil gives it a beautiful red hue and fills the entire kitchen with a very Latin aroma.
Read More
This recipe comes to me from my lovely friend Claudia. She is a true Italian girl with both of her parent’s families hailing from the old country, northern Italy and Sicily. Even though Claudia always jokes she isn’t much of a cook, I tend to doubt it because she definitely has some incredible cooking genes. Her father was generous to share a few of his specialties and Claudia has saved many of the wonderful recipes her mother used to make.
Most of Claudia’s mom’s recipes come from her mother, Claudia’s grandmother Mary Zeppieri. Mary came to the US at the age of 25 from Veroli, Italy and raised five children in upstate New York. She was a dedicated wife and mother and always cooked homemade Italian food. Claudia has dear memories of walking to her Nonna’s house every Sunday after church for these wonderful cookies.
Read More
Wednesday we talked about latkes and what they mean to the Chanukah celebration. Today, I’m still frying for Chanukah but this time, it's Sufganiyot - try and say that three times fast! Sufganiyot is a deep fried jelly donut and made all over Israel to celebrate this time of year. Once again, it symbolizes the miracle of the burning oil and , boy, are they good.
Read More
For Christmas, there are a host of foods I make as an Italian and also as a Catholic that represent and honor our traditions of celebration. For Chanukah, Jewish people serve a number of dishes. One very popular side dish is potato latkes. My amazingly talented website designer, Jen was generous enough to offer up her mom JoAnn as a great resource. JoAnn was a caterer for many years on Long Island. A true entrepreneur, she started a baking business with her friend and grew a full scale catering company from her home kitchen. As JoAnn explained, Chanukah is a time to honor the oil that burned for eight days. So, traditionally, Jewish people will serve foods cooked in oil. Potato latkes are a small cake of potato and onion fried in oil and served with sour cream and apple sauce. Since I have never met a potato I didn’t like, I knew I was in for a treat.
Read More
This Friday’s recipe is very special and really encompasses why I started Heirloom Kitchen. A few years ago, my friend Gina made me these biscotti for Christmas. Hands down, these are the most delicious biscotti I have ever had. A delicious combination of anise and almond, they are light, crunchy, and simply perfect with a cup of coffee.
What really makes these biscotti so special however, is not merely how they taste, but where they come from. This recipe was created by Gina’s paternal Nonna, Olga Giovannoni and came here with her, all the way from South Africa.
Read More
A quiet, calm woman, I was taken by Soon Huh's warm presence and spirituality. You can taste it in the precise, delicious food she prepares. Each ingredient, individually cooked. Not deterred by the extra pans and time it takes, Soon wants to ensure each ingredient maintains, not only its color but also its taste. This dedication and respect of each component of her Bibimbap is most definitely why, it was one of the most delicious dishes of food I have ever had the pleasure of eating.
Read More
Let’s defrost some Sunday Sauce because today, we’re making eggplant armigiana. Eggplant Parm is another labor of love dish. It’s a number of steps, takes some time but is so, so good. This is another dish where Nonna would stand over the stove for hours making it for us; classic and timeless. I should also mention that eggplant parmigiana is one of my favorite things to eat. And, if you know me well, you know I make/eat a lot of different things. So, when I say I LOVE eggplant parmigiana, it means something...
Read More
Everyone loves ravioli. Delicious little pockets of pasta filled with creamy cheese and laced with sauce or butter are hard to resist. You can find them in the freezer section of any grocery store. What you may not know; is that with a little time and patience, you can make them from scratch.
Read More
This week, I decided to roll my Nonna recipe and Sweet Tooth Friday all into one sweet rugelach; I mean, blog post. This recipe is extra special to me because it was given to me by one of the best Nonnas I know, Harriet Marks-Nelson - my husband’s wonderful grandmother.
Read More
Last week, I shared a recipe for my mother’s Sunday Sauce. This week, I want to show you how the Sunday Sauce can be used to make another Italian favorite, Pasta alla Bolognese. This pasta sauce originated in Bologna, Italy way back in the 18th century. It consists of a tomato based sauce mixed with ground meat. Traditionally, it is served on top of tagliatelle or another long pasta like linguine.
Read More
Next stop, Hong Kong!
One of my closest friends from college, Eric moved here to the States from China, at the age of five with his parents and older sister. I reached out to him to see if his mother Daisy would be interested in participating. As a true fan of Americanized Chinese food, I was excited to try Daisy’s food. I was pleased to find her dishes were not only extremely easy to prepare; they were delicious. The food was unmistakably Chinese to me but just much more refined, simple and delicate than what I get at the local Chinese restaurants.
Read More
Italian tomato sauce is a labor of love. It’s also the cooking liquid for various meats that are served alongside a huge platter of pasta. A Nonna would begin making her sauce early on Sunday morning, while the rest of us were still deep in our REM sleep cycle. They did this because once the sauce had reached bubbly perfection; they could begin creating all the other delicious dishes that would cover the Sunday dinner table.
Read More
TGIF! The almighty weekend is coming and its time to make something sweet. Why? Because I said so.
This week, I decided to make some baked donuts. I know, it kind of sounds like an oxymoron because the main reason donuts taste so good is that crispy outside coupled with a fluffy inside achieved by a quick bath in a deep fryer. However, I wanted to see if the baked variety could stand up to its deep fried brother.
Read More