Neapolitan New Year’s Eve

As 2021 drew to a close, I was happy to participate in a zoom class with Alfredo Cafasso Vitale (Instagram: @cookingwithalcavi, Email: cafasso@inwind.it), from Naples, preparing a Neapolitan New Year’s Eve menu. I have done a couple of classes with Alfredo after seeing him listed in Rick Steves’ Guides Marketplace. For this New Year’s Eve, we made a lovely Insalata di Rinforzo, a colorful salad with cauliflower, anchovies (stay with me…), olives, raisins, pine nuts, peppers, and pickled vegetables; and Pizza di Scarole, a stuffed pizza with escarole, capers, olives, pine nuts, and raisins.

Potato Gnocchi

Gnocchi, light soft little dumplings, is one of those things that can either be exceedingly good, or really bad (or at least unexceptional). I used to buy dried gnocchi from Trader Joe’s and thought they were pretty good…until I had some homemade gnocchi, and realized that what I’d been buying were much too heavy and dense. Good potato gnocchi will have just enough substance to have a little bite to them, but still be light and fluffy.

Butternut Squash & Caramelized Onion Ravioli

Pasta machine in hand, it was only a matter of time before I tried making ravioli. I’ve tried before, rolling the dough by hand, without much success. And the recipes you find online that say to use wonton wrappers … please, no.

Homemade Pasta

I suppose every serious cook, sooner or later, decides to make pasta from scratch. I tried it once or twice before with mixed results, mostly having issues with not being able to roll it out thin enough. And frankly when you can buy so much pretty good pasta in the supermarket, it didn’t seem worth it; convenience is a powerful thing.

“Popcorn” Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant Parmesan, parmigiana di melanzane or melanzane alla parmigiana in Italian, is one of my favorite southern Italian dishes. I take the measure of an Italian restaurant based on two dishes – eggplant parmesan, and spaghetti and meatballs. If you can’t make these two, why should I try anything else?

Rustic Pasta Pomodoro

Growing up, my concept of “spaghetti sauce” was the Croatian-style sauce my mom would make for my dad (based on his mother’s recipe, and almost always served over mostaccioli). (It has some spices in it that aren’t typical for an Italian sauce, so I’ll save that one for another blog.)

As much as I enjoy that sauce, nothing says “home” or a Slav party like my mom’s mostaccioli, I’ve gravitated towards more traditionally Italian sauces, marinara and bolognese, and the occasional pesto or carbonara. With the marinara recipe in particular – something I cook up occasionally in huge batches, and freeze in pint containers – I have a base for all sorts of wonderful recipes…different sauces, soup, pizza. I figured, I have this wired, this is the only tomato-based sauce I need.  Pomodoro?  Too simple, too boring.

And then we went to Italy (and Slovenia, and Austria) on a VBT bike trip.