Mario's Italian Kitchen

 It’s been some time since I last posted. The series of earthquakes that has rocked Emilia Romagna since May has thrown my schedule to t...

‘Don’t get out of the car’, Roberto warned, ‘toot the horn, I’ll come and get you’. ‘Sure, I got it’ I replied, hurriedly scribbling d...

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that there are more variations on zuppa di pesce (fish soup) in Italy than there are fish in t...

Sophia Loren once said that “everything you see, I owe to spaghetti”. It’s a maxim that could well apply to a nation. Virtually every pe...

Spaghetti cacio e pepe The origins of this classic dish are disputed. It is popularly considered of Roman origin but both the Sicili...

As a child I used to believe that spaghetti grew on trees and that Marco Polo brought it to Italy from China . As we drove through the ...

Today’s shopping basket is filled with porcini mushrooms. Admittedly, it’s not mushroom season yet but since dried porcini means that we...

An editor in the UK once advised me that English readers were not particularly fond of gnocchi and that I should consider carefully befo...

On Easter Monday – known as Pasquetta , or ‘little Easter’ – the tradition in Italy is to go on a picnic. When the weather permits, the lon...

Spring has arrived. All the signs are here. The market stalls are filled with spring vegetables, the trees are budding and the sun is beamin...

The combination of pasta and potatoes is too often overlooked. A dish rich in carbohydrates and starch, the combination doesn’t fit into the...

A couple of days back, in an online conversation with one of my favourite blogger’s (AKA Jane Random: http://akajanerandom.blogspot.com/ ), ...

Italians love talking about food. It’s a national preoccupation. If they’re not talking about football or politics, more likely than not the...