Sunday Recipe: Swiss Chard and Potato Ravioli

Every Christmas and every Easter, I make ravioli from scratch, as my great-grandmother did. Gram was from the tiny village of Pietransieri, in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Her ravioli are stuffed with cheese (ricotta, parm, romano, egg and parsley.) I grew up eating those ravioli and only those ravioli. Cheese or Bust! [I tried, once or twice, ravs filled with meat and never liked them, but have had more success in recent years with meat filled ravioli, in Rome and in Buenos Aires.] And so, I grew up making Gram's ravioli with my grandmother and when she died a few years ago, the tradition passed directly to me.

Working in my own kitchen with all day (or several days) to prep, I decided to experiment. While I always make a batch of Gram's cheese filled ravioli (recipe here), in the last few years I have also made:  ravioli stuffed with pear and mascarpone cheese, ravioli stuffed with chicken livers and swiss chard, and ravioli stuffed with mushrooms (recipe here.) All were delicious, by the way.

This Christmas, I got La Cucina, the ultimate compendium of all the foods from that glorious geographical boot known as Italy. The recipes contained therein are for cooks who know their way around the kitchen. They don't give very specific instructions. Or maybe it only seems that way because some of the recipes in this 2,000 page collection are so basic and simple or maybe they're just guidelines, realizing that food varies not only from region to region but from kitchen to kitchen.

Thus armed with an idea more than instructions, I set to work to make ravioli filled with swiss chard and potatoes. They were such a smashing success this Christmas, I've decided to bring them back for an Easter encore.

Sunday Recipe: Grilled Veggies, a/k/a, Eat Like the Italians Eat

This is not a recipe, so much as a guide-post, a half-map, half-reflection on the bounty of summer. One of my favorite things to make for dinner in the summer is a mash up of grilled veggies, with grilled bread and some cheese. If you get the chance to travel in Italy, most restaurants have a sort of 'bar' of grilled veggies -- eggplants, roasted peppers, zucchini, etc. -- all available as side dishes. But this time of year, with farmer's markets booming in Western Pa., I like to serve the grilled veggies as the main course.

There are lots and lots of options for grilled vegetables and I've tried to grill everything but a cauliflower (although, now that I mention that ...) That said, certain veggies just scream to be grilled.  Exhibit A:  zucchini. And Exhibit B:  eggplant.

Maybe it's something about the squash family of vegetables, but I never eat eggplant unless it is grilled. Eggplants can get a little mushy and/or slimey, but toss them over a flame and they turn into silky, smokey goodness. The same is true for the humble zucchini and it's cousin, the yellow squash. I believe they are at their absolute best when cooked on a grill, nary a sautee pan in sight.

Gone Fishing

Gone fishing. Or at least to eat some fish.

Back in a few.