It was about 4 years ago when I took Paris seriously for the first time. Before then, I had always devoted myself to the French capital with some consistency, but with a complete lack of planning. I would experience a short weekend away like a visit to a Funfair: losing myself in the admiration of the many shades of the City, but with a rather passive attitude. I would be pleasantly surprised if I accidentally came across something I had read about and that had aroused my interest, but I never thought about making it a destination in the first place. Continue Reading…
The routine of the obsessive search of perfection in the baking world can become exhausting.
When the time available to dedicate yourself to a recipe is also limited, the tolerance of failure is pretty much non-existent. But that’s all the time you’re allowed to read, understand what to do and get it done. There are no excuses, there are no justifications: if you can’t make it within that time, you’ve failed, tomorrow you’re back at work. Continue Reading…
It’s been about three months since I made my entrance into the fantastic world of the Web, and every day I receive some small, or occasionally big, satisfaction. I have often read and heard “the segment is saturated”, “there are more bloggers than recipes”, “it is difficult to make a name for oneself” and so on … but I always felt a certain insensitivity towards these topics.
I do this because I like it and I enjoy it; sometimes on my own, sometimes with close friends. I do not aspire to teach, there are plenty of excellent chefs who do that! I invest time and money looking for Goodness and Beauty: I read, pick, try, experiment, learn and share; I get to know people with the same passion and all this is very satisfying…. Is it a tribute to banalities or a premise for a recipe? Continue Reading…
Here we go, my personal countdown for Christmas big celebrations has begun. I’ve been rambling about spices since last spring in my posts on meringues and tarts. Now I can freely and candidly declare out loud my passion for this sweet and innocent world, for these cookies prepared more or less like you would make minestrone soup: boiling all ingredients in a saucepan. A dark and thick paste, deliciously steaming and spicy: the essence of magic. Once its fragrances begin to reach your nostrils, it’s over: you run downstairs and begin to take out the boxes with the lights, the decorations, the wreaths with berries and pine needles, the gnomes with the bells on their neck and the porcelain reindeers. Oh, excuse me? It never happened to you? Continue Reading…
Zuccotto always appeared old to me. Old from the moment it was born. Of course such a name is not a great start towards the celebrity status. Thinking about it, it probably had a few moment of glory in the 80s. It dominated the cover of “The Book of Cakes” by Lisa Biondi, which my mother used to keep back then in her personal section of the living room library.
Sometimes, while I was looking for the Sacher recipe, I would throw a glimpse – half disgusted, half indifferent – to this specialty of Florentine origins. I used to feel so sad: a round and compressed something, with yellow-orange tones, of obscure content. It sounds like the description of a Multicentrum tablet. Continue Reading…