RECIPES BY RACHEL
TUSCAN PUMPKIN SOUP - ZUPPA DI ZUCCA GIALLA
Autumn brings vibrant colors and mellow flavors to Italy’s markets and, in Tuscany especially, soups to the table. At the markets of Tuscany, the region that boasts more soups than pasta in its repertoire of first courses, cabbages, carrots, onions and silver-beet are ready to be mixed...
TUSCAN SCHIACCIATA WITH ROSEMARY + SMOKED GUANCIALE
Although spring has sprung and flowers are blossoming on all the herbs in my garden, the nights are still cool enough for comfort food, though not the heavy ragus of winter. As I always have some home-prepared guanciale affumicato (smoked pigs’ cheeks) in my fridge, now that the...
TUSCAN MACCHERONI WITH RABBIT + FENNEL
Italian cuisine has an abundance of primi piatti, first courses, which are usually a starch, but in Tuscany, unlike elsewhere in Italy, more of the primi piatti are based on legumes and bread—such as zuppa di ceci, ribollita and pappa al pomodoro—and fewer on pasta. Yet...
GNUDI
Well known for being tricky, rife with double meanings and open to various interpretations, the Italian language never ceases to surprise and delight me. What do Michelangelo’s 20 seated nudes, ...
NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED
Every week I buy some pigs’ heads to cure the cheeks to make guanciale, and I have been sad at discarding so many good bits of the head. Then I started thinking: most of my Italian friends get a pig every year, and the day becomes a family affair...
STONE SOUP
In the past, people’s diets followed the seasons: eating fresh when nature offered an abundance of harvest and preserving as much as possible for use in the colder months, when plant activity slowed to a minimum. Autumn was a time for harvest and for making conserves to last for the entire winter...
CRESPELLE ALL FIORENTINA
When it comes to food and drink, the world has a lot to thank Tuscany for. Tuscan cuisine dates back to the time of the Etruscans, the ancient civilization once living in areas of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio a number of centuries before the Romans arrived...
PRECIOUS POTATOES
The humble potato is often referred to as a tartufo bianco, a white truffle, both because of its looks and for its vital role in keeping people alive during World War II. But the potato-filled pillows of pasta that are tortelli di patate mugellani are close to divine...
FRESH FROM THE VINE
I love this time of the year: the autumnal colours intensify as the evenings begin their shorter fall into dusk. The shades become stronger just before nightfall, and we see more of that amazingly intense hue of the sky, il cielo azzurro, that powerful blue the...
CONTACT RACHEL
Phone: 021 722 128
Email: sales@prodigal-daughter.com
9a Cologne Street
Martinborough 5711
South Wairarapa
New Zealand
