Mario's Italian Kitchen

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...

Food shopping is one of my favourite pastimes. Browsing the stalls of a local artisan food market, visiting traditional alimentari (groce...

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

As I make our way down along the long narrow, poorly illuminated corridor I can hear bottles clanking. I turn the corner and immediately I’m...