Category: Italian Food

Italian Tossed Salad – Mom’s Way

italian-tossed-saladMy Mother made the best mixed tossed salad and so did my Mother-in-Law. In fact, all the Moms in my family made the same salad. Forget the bottled salad dressings, the mixing bowl and whisk, and the measuring of ingredients! They all would make their salads with a wonderful mixture of salad greens plus top quality extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar and toss in additional vegetables or meats to complete the dish.

Italian Baked Stuffed Shells

stuffed-shells-recipeBaked jumbo stuffed shells are a great alternative to serving baked lasagna. You can determine how many servings you will need for your dinner party and not have the worry of baking a huge casserole and having to serve leftovers for days.

With this recipe you can make as many as you want and you can even freeze the unbaked stuffed shells individually for use at a later date and again determine how many you want to bake.

Pasta e Fagioli – Pasta and Beans Recipe

pasta-and-beans-recipeIt is amazing to see how many versions of Pasta e Fagioli are printed in cookbooks or on the Internet. I searched many recipes for this delicious Italian traditional dish, but could not find one that was similar to the recipe my Mother made and taught me.

Pasta e Fagioli is Italian for pasta and beans. It can be considered a soup or a stew. It all depends on how much liquid you use. My recipe is more like a stew or as Rachel Ray has coined the expression “stoup”. It’s meatless, quick, hearty, and inexpensive to prepare. How many of you remember Dean Martin singing Amore and the famous lyrics “when the stars make you drool just like pasta fazool”? I guarantee this dish will make you drool! Enjoy.

Italian Christmas Recipes

italian-christmas-recipesChristmas memories and traditions during the holiday have always meant a lot to me. My family had instilled in me many traditions for Christmas. Naturally, our Italian Catholic heritage plays a big part in these traditions.

We would decorate our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve after all the children were asleep, which meant the tree went up and was decorated very late, practically into the wee small hours of the morning. When the children would awake on Christmas morn they would view with bewilderment a beautiful lighted and decorated evergreen with gift wrapped presents under the tree. Gee, how come they never wondered how Santa had time to do that?

Italian Turkey Stuffing Recipe

italian-turkey-stuffing-recipeThanksgiving is right around the corner and do you find yourself going through magazines and television food shows searching for new and different recipes to make for Thanksgiving dinner? Each year I find myself doing just that but in the end I still find myself cooking our traditional favorites.

One recipe which my Mom made every year, and my sister followed the tradition, is her Italian sausage and bread stuffing. Mom always cooked from scratch and I knew my sister made this stuffing every Thanksgiving so when I asked her for the recipe she was happy to pass it on, but her first statement was “I can give you the ingredients and the procedure but the amounts I leave up to you”.