Inspiration from Italy
From antipasti di mare to luscious pastas and exquisite dolci. Plus: a great Venice address (with more to come), in case you're headed to the Biennale.
Buon venerdì, refreshed cook!
We finally made it back to Italy, a trip I’d been trying to organize for several years but that kept losing out to France.
It was well worth the wait. We began in Bologna, rented a car, headed east to the Adriatic, spent a couple of wonderful days at the seaside in Le Marche, drove down to Abruzzo for a heavenly week of visiting ancient mountain villages and the Trabocchi Coast, then drove back up through Umbria and Tuscany to Bologna, where we gave back the rental car, and hopped on a train (going the wrong way, first!) to Venice for three glorious days. Not enough time in any of the places for sure, but I do love a road trip, and this was probably my favorite ever.
So much to share with you! I’m a bit daunted, and I don’t want to squish too much in one post. Therefore I thought I’d hit a few highlights and give you some excellent addresses in Venice plus a recipe or two. For future posts, I’ll be developing recipes for dishes I swooned over on the trip, and diving deeper into some of the culture. Forgive me if I remain enthralled with Italian flavors for a bit; I will try to mix it up with other topics!
First, a couple newsy things.
• The IACP announced the winners of its annual awards last week (while this newsletter was on hiatus). Giant congrats to all the winners! Cooks Without Borders the website was a finalist (for the second time), but did not win; kudos to Rachel Jackson for her win with EAT or TOSS (such a cool site!). Shoutouts too to my friends
, who won a prestigious Trailblazer Award; , whose wonderful Evergreen Vietnamese won the award for Food Photography and Styling (a posthumous honor for the talented late photographer Aubrey Pick), and to , who assistant-styled the book. Congratulations to , who won the IACP Julia Child First Book Award for Made in Taiwan, which I wrote about last year.• I’m incredibly honored to be featured on my friend
’s fantastic podcast The Maitre d’ Diaries. Thank you, Erica, for having me on — I’m looking forward to listening to more episodes!• I’ve been having a blast writing a guest newsletter for Eataly Dallas. You can sign up for it (for free) here; the cooking level is more basic than what you get here, as it’s aimed toward a less cooking-nerdy readership, but you may find it interesting, and yes, there are often recipes. Here are past posts:
🍤 Ciao from Venezia!
🫘 Two Trends Walk into a Bowl
🌱 A Fresh Take on Caponata
🍇 Beautiful Wines from Donnafugata
🫒 The Aperitivo Way of Life
🍨 Thrill of the Chill: Throw a Gelato Sundae Party
🪴 Summer of Pesto
🍅 How Fresh, Hand-Made Mozzarella Changed My Life
