There are two components to tonight’s dinner, a Mediterranean salad and a French soup. There is some question as to whether vichyssoise is a French or American creation. Potato and leek soup served hot has been around in France since potatoes became popular in Europe. But was it the Americans who came up with the cold version? Who knows!

My Mediterranean salad consists of Romaine lettuce, cucumber chunks, our abundant orange cherry tomatoes, olives, feta, and oil and vinegar. In Italy you are never given a recitation of salad dressings to choose from. Plopped down on the table is a set of oil and vinegar and salt and pepper. Dress your own salad!

Mediterranean salad

Going through my vegetable drawer in the fridge I notice two leeks, two potatoes, and a half an onion. It is my inspiration for vichyssoise and I make the soup first thing this morning while…

Wow, did this come out well! In fact it is so good that our daughter ate it for breakfast this morning. Granted this is not exactly summer fare but it has been pleasant here for a few days so I thought I would make this on a cool day and then make vichyssoise for the hot days ahead. They share some of the same ingredients.

Although I do use 1/4 cup of cream in the soup, I think it would be almost as good with no cream at all. The pancetta gives it a nice undertone but next time I might just use olive oil and see how that works out. This is originally a Gabrielle Hamilton recipe but I have simplified it so much that it really bears little resemblance—for instance hers has real clams, guanciale, and 3 cups of heavy cream!

Marymom’s Light Clam Chowder

Marymom’s Light Clam…

An efficient method of utilizing nutritious radish greens in a salad:

Radish greens are as nutritious as the most commonly eaten taproot portion of the radish plant, radish greens are edible and have the same sharp peppery taste as the taproot; radish greens are said to have lots of health benefits, we tend to overlook this factor many times when we cook radish by discarding its greens – with this information its rather a disgrace not to include radish greens in a recipe; in this recipe, radish greens are included in a delicious and luscious salad to enrich the salad with volume and nutrients.

The Recipeof Delicious and Luscious Veg Salad with Radish Greens –

• Blend sliced pieces of a handful of radish leaves, slices of two medium spring onions, slices of a big tomato with 2…

This week’s Wild Idea Buffalo Recipe of the Week – Buffalo Salami Antipasto Pasta Salad. You’ll be using Wild Idea Buffalo Salami along with Fresh Mozzarella, Bell Peppers, Green Onions, Artichoke Hearts, and more. You can find this recipe and purchase the Wild Idea Buffalo Salami along with all the other Wild Idea Products at the Wild Idea Buffalo website. Enjoy and Make 2019 a Healthy One! https://wildideabuffalo.com/

Buffalo Antipasto Pasta Salad
A great summertime meal! Vegetables can be substituted according to what you have on hand or what you like.

Ingredients:
1 12 ounce pkg. Wild Idea Buffalo Salami, cut into pieces
1 cup, fresh mozzarella, shredded or cubed
1 each red, yellow and orange bell peppers, diced
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 can artichoke hearts, drained & chopped
1 cup pepperoncini, sliced
½ cup olives, sliced (prefer Kalamata)
¾ cup sundried tomatoes, julienned
½ lb. pasta, cooked…

Lasagna and pizza are probably the most famous Italian imports, but are usually not translated authentically.Just as there is no pepperoni on pizza in Italy, there is no ricotta cheese in lasagna either. Theentire city of Bologna would riot if you brought them a lasagna with ricotta in it.

They take their pastas extremelyseriously and abesciamella sauce is the only sauce that is in a lasagna. With this recipe, instead of making the famous Lasagna Bolognese, that is filled with a meat rag sauce,I made a mushroom besciamella that is every bit as rich and satisfying, but without the meat.

The mushrooms are hearty, and the rich sauce with the fresh pasta is comforting. I love to serve these to my guests in individual-sized lasagna pans,Mushroom Lasagnette means ?small lasagna?, butthe recipe is just as tasty served in a traditional pan.

Well, not really.  But you know what I mean, don’t you?  Mushrooms, ordinary button mushrooms, that are called “champignons” in Italian (which is of course a French word actually), aren’t exactly thriling now are they.  I can’t imagine people getting all excited about eating a plate of these mushrooms.  They seem to have gone out of fashion – I don’t even see them on Italian menus in family-run restaurants any more.  Sometimes as part of a pizza topping but that’s about it.  I wonder why, poor things.  They are quite tasty after all and surely, unless you hate mushrooms or are allergic to them, you don’t mind having them as a side dish, sautéed in olive oil and garlic and finely minced parsely.  But again, the operative word is “don’t mind” (which of course are two words but let’s not quibble here) as opposed to “hanker after” or “crave”.  Mmmmm.

I would rank this among the ‘epitome section’ of home-made dishes.  And by that, I mean that I would not expect to see it offered on any restaurant menu.  A quiet pride at their core made up of unsophisticated and bold statement-making flavour(s), the ‘barchette di melanzane’, i.e. “little aubergine boats”, are the kind of summer dish that only a Mamma would make for her family.  It does take patience, for one thing.  My own mamma never made these but my mother-in-law did.

We were visiting my husbands’ parents who spend their summers in a small town in the Marche, called Monterubbiano.  Very sadly, my mother-in-law is now incapable of cooking anything because she has Alzheimers and her version of reality has already gone beyond the slippery edge of mixed-up reasoning.  She still recognizes us and that is a boon and when she sees me preparing for a meal asks…

Sometimes I post a blog after a distance of three weeks: today I am posting three recipes all on the same day.   And they are all about aubergines/eggplant.  It must be that I am fired up by aubergines today?

If there is something that makes me almost weep with gastronomic pleasure, it’s a properly make parmigiana di melanzane, a layered aubergine and mozzarella bake in a tomato sauce with parmesan thrown in for good measure and a key ingredient that gives the recipe its name.  I wrote a blog about it last year:

https://frascaticookingthatsamore.wordpress.com/2018/08/31/patience-permitting-a-parmigiana-di-melanzane-most-fitting/

“Patience Permitting, A Parmigiana di Melanzane most Fitting” – the title says a lot, doesn’t it.  Yes, yes indeed.  This is a recipe that takes a LOT of time and patience and one that I most likely make only once or twice a year.

So … I thought that I might work out a ‘cheat’ version…

Fajitas are a way of life.

Growing up, I knew it was going to be a good end to the day if my mom was cooking up a batch of fajitas for dinner. A sizzling hot plate of chicken fajitas with crispy peppers, onions and mushrooms was always a great dinner to be had in our home. Wrapping up everything in a warm tortilla with a slathering of guacamole, sour cream and cheese—that’s perfection in my book.

I’ll order fajitas at my favorite Mexican food restaurants, but nothing ever really compares to how good my mom’s fajitas are. She uses a good, hearty helping of fajita seasoning (think chunky black pepper and extra-garlic) and stir fries the chicken and veggies like a veteran Mongolian grill chef.

Sometimes, though, you get burnt out on chicken. Not just for fajitas; but for any other meal as well. You start looking for a…

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The weekends are my bulk shooting days for food. I think of recipes that I must try and I shop, prep, cook and shoot them. In order to even get to that point of my day when I can do that, I know I have to repel everyone from the kitchen. The only way to do that is to feed them or have food ready for whenever I start hearing ” When will food be ready”, “I’m starving” or my personal favorite to hear “I’m the hungriest person in the universe”. Plus if nobody is up for breakfast I can call this brunch and be done with it. I never like my food shoots to feel rushed so I always like to throw something together ahead of time. My favorite thing to make in the mornings of my shoots are frittatas. A frittata is a crust less quiche that you…

Whoops! I scheduled this to post last week by accident – so here it is again! 🙂

Do you ever have those days where it’s time to figure out lunch and when you look in the refrigerator all you have are lots of little containers of leftovers? Well, that is how this pizza came about. My Hubby loved it so much that he requested it again. This time I decided to share it with all of you.

I love a good Gyro and when I found the gyro meat package at Sam’s Club I was all in! Wanting to make it a little lighter than the wrap, I opted for a salad instead. I also swapped out the tomatoes for roasted red peppers because it’s hard to get a good tomato this time of year and truth be told I’m kind of a tomato snob…Well, it was everything I could have wanted in a great Gyro without the bread… Delicious!

Lemongrass is usually associated with Thai food and it’s got a great flavor. For this dish I marinate the chicken in a lemongrass mixture and then lightly bread it in Panko crumbs – pop it in the oven and it’s done in a jiffy. The salad is prepped while the chicken cooks and the end result is a yummy Lemongrass Chicken Salad…

It may not look it but this is one of those chicken that when you take a bite, you close your eyes and say “Wow”.  Seriously good. Usually Romesco sauce is served over fish but I usually serve it with chicken thighs. This recipe has a few steps but the end results are so worth it! Enjoy!  

I know, I know…the photo is so bad! Well we were just beginning Fabulous Fare Sisters and the camera was new to me so please excuse the bad quality of the photo…but anyway, I first posted this delicious Chicken Romesco recipe in June of 2015…made it the other night and everyone just raved about it…so, here we’re revisting it today! Take a look…