For a whole generation of American drinkers, the word Lambrusco conjures a specific memory, a sweet, cheap, fizzy red wine that flooded the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the stuff of screw-top bottles and undemanding parties. It was, for a time, the best-selling imported wine in America, and it left behind an impression …
If you think Italian home cooking is a never-ending parade of simmering ragù and nonna-approved feasts, you’ve been watching too much internet Italy. Real Tuesday-night Italian cooking is mostly about getting fed with what’s already in the kitchen, in under an hour, without turning dinner into a second job. The most “Italian” thing about a …
Watch an Italian cook prepare garlic and you may notice a small extra step that American recipes almost never mention. Before chopping or crushing a clove, they slice it in half lengthwise, glance at the center, and flick out a slender sprout from the middle with the tip of a knife. That little green shoot …
Ask an Italian about carbonara and the conversation will, sooner or later, arrive at cream, and the Italian’s face will fall. Because the single most common thing that goes wrong with carbonara outside Italy, the thing that turns a sublime Roman dish into a heavy approximation of itself, is the addition of cream. Americans are …
In Impruneta, a terracotta town in the hills south of Florence, the beef arrives almost black. It has spent four hours in a pot with red wine and an amount of black pepper that looks like a typing error, and it went into that pot raw. No searing, no crust, no thermometer. Every American beef …
You do not need capsules or calorie math to stop the 7 p.m. raid of the fridge. You need a bitter drink, a small salty plate, and twenty quiet minutes the Italian way. It starts before dinner, not at the table. In Milan or Turin, friends meet at a bar, take something bitter and bubbly, …
In Rome in August, at the fry shops and the market stalls and the neighborhood trattorias, a small ritual repeats itself all day long. Someone orders fiori di zucca, the fried zucchini flowers, and a few minutes later receives a plate of golden, blistered, delicate fritters, each one hiding a molten secret inside, so hot …
Ask most Americans what goes into spaghetti carbonara and the answer comes back quickly and confidently, bacon, eggs, cream, maybe some garlic. Ask a Roman the same question and you may set off a small crisis, because almost every part of that answer is wrong. Real carbonara contains no bacon, no cream, and no garlic. …
Italy has long enchanted travelers with its famous cities Rome, Venice, Florence, and Milan are perennial bucket-list favorites. But beyond the well-trodden paths lie lesser-known gems that are just as breathtaking, often without the crowds, inflated prices, or tourist traps. From quiet coastal villages to mountain towns frozen in time, Italy offers a treasure trove …
To an American, laundry is a simple, fast, high-volume affair. You toss a big load into a large machine, run it hot, throw it in the dryer, and you are done in an hour or two, several times a week. To a European, that same routine can look careless, wasteful and a little baffling, because …
Spend time in an Italian home and you notice that certain small daily rituals are treated as simply non-negotiable, the baseline of being a clean and presentable person, and that many of them are things a typical American never thinks about at all. To an Italian woman these habits are not fussy or excessive but …
€29,000 is the number that gets Americans on a plane. €118,000 is the number you learn only after you’ve lived inside the house long enough for it to show you what it really is. The cheap-house story is always told like a heist. You “score” a bargain. You beat the system. You get Mediterranean life …