cooking in Florence Archives - Curious Appetite

Cucina lockdown: Gnocchi con salsa di zucchine

March 29, 2020 / Cucina Lockdown (Recipes in the time of COVID-19), Cucina Lockdown (Recipes in the time of COVID-19) / 0 comment

wanna make this? more like gnocchetti (smaller gnocchi) but hey home cooking is forgiving unlike the Italian food police! scroll for the recipe!

Ciao readers, what a time to be blogging. Without stating the obvious, like how unbelievable reality feels right now and somehow we’re adapting to this new normal, I’ll get right to it.

The world is cooking more. But I miss restaurants so much, I miss cocktails and while I could make them at home, something feels so out of place (for me) making a negroni at home vs sitting at the bar pondering their gin, bitter and vermouth collection with a friend after a massive feast out. There is of course takeout, but honestly as someone whose income has been hammered to smithereens, take-out is not exactly a luxury many people can afford right now even if I’d so very much like to. So, instead of usually writing about restaurants I’ll be posting more recipes like this one for gnocchi in a zucchini and almond sauce. Continue Reading →

{recipe!} Italian Buckwheat fruit & nut breakfast bowl

January 25, 2018 / Breakfast/Brunch, Florence, Italy, Recipes / 1 Comment

One day I was working out and it hit me- I want to share more healthy recipes on my blog. You may have read my overzealous last post on staying healthy as a food writer, but what if I wrote more about healthy foods, too? Continue Reading →

Big hunk of la tagliata in Florence

April 17, 2013 / Cooking, Italy, Main Courses (secondi), Recipes, Vegan / 1 Comment

In my last post, I ranted for about 12 hours about getting a hold of some Italian meat for a tagliata (sliced Florentine steak) experiment. I wanted to see if you could make grilled steak at home without a grill since at the time, I only had this ceramic pan. My new best friend who is a chef told me if could be done and told me how- as long as I could find a good piece of meat.

Well this is the piece of meat I found. Chianina.

My frog oven mitten was an admitted casualty in this process. 1st the cow…now the frogs…

Then about 3 minutes on each side this hunk of love made my house smoke

Then I turned the flame off and threw on the pan cover for about 2 minutes to let the juices set in, not dry out. The point that my chef friend told me was to let the meat rest before slicing into it to. I also remember my new best friend saying to throw on the lid or coperchio (which I thought was called copricoperchio)

Last step was the sprinkle on some “grosso” sea salt (chunky flakes). According to BFF, the heat makes the salt scioglie (melt) into the carne flesh.

Final dish: sliced tagliata on some peppery arugula with sliced parmigiano and drizzed with fresh olive oil, aged balsamic and cracked fresh pepper.

Result: Delicious. Wine pairing: Rosso di Montalcino (fancy for Sangiovese. Wine speak for red wine from Tuscany). You could taste the countryside in this flesh. It was a rollercoaster of flavor. Texture: not tough but not melt in your mouth. Realization: I should have bought the meat in advance and let the muscle fibers relax for a couple of days. FISH is what you want to use up the same day, not steak. And I should have cooked it for less time. Still tasty though. A good reminder of why eating Tuscan ranged meat is way better that the corn fed confined American crap meat. I swear I could taste the Chianti the Chianina was reared on. (Chianina do not actually fed on wine grapes, that is just my food fantasy).

For the curious appetite in everyone…

Curious Appetite