Rachael Ray

My friend’s mom, Liz, is one of the best home cooks I know.  She is Sicilian-American like I am, and she makes everything from scratch-even her own ricotta and pasta.  It’s really impressive to spend a day with her in her kitchen to see what she winds up producing, which is usually unscripted and always delicious. For Christmas Eve this year, she decided to make a dish I’ll call Linguine with Shrimp and Rabe.  She cooked all three ingredients separately, and in typical style of someone over 40, she overcooked the rabe so when the dish came together, it was nice and mushy and delicious, almost like a soup.  I decided to make it and cook the rabe a little less, [...]...

Zeppole is a dessert that is traditionally made for New Year’s Eve, but it is so delicious, you can make it any time of the year!  It is a favorite of Southern Italians and you often find it on the holiday menu, but the trick is to deliver them into people’s hands while they are fresh out of the frying pan.  You can’t go to an Italian Festival, like the San Gennaro in New York City’s Little Italy, without finding several booths with these kinds of signs: Since Zeppole are deep fried, they will often make other fried food favorites like calzones at the same booth.  You may have to wait in line to get one of these sweet and doughy [...]...

My family is from Southern Italy so braising is not a technique I grew up with, but rather I stumbled upon it accidentally when I was making brasciole once.  After I browned the meat, I stuck the whole pot in the oven at a low heat and let it cook because I went to sleep!  In the morning I had the most delicious thick ragu that I could ever imagine possible, but the meat itself was dry as a bone-the best parts of it came out into the sauce.  What I realized later was that I actually braised the brasciole, only I let it go way too long in the oven! This inspired me to try a dish more typical of [...]...

Ahhh, the Fra Diavolo dishes…literally translated from Italian to English to mean “from the devil” and when translated from Italian to the language of food, means extra spicy hot!  You can find all sorts of dishes cooked in this style-see Rach’s Seafood Stoup Fra Diavolo which is not quite thin enough to be a soup and not quite thick enough to be a stew and oh so delicioso! Rach’s Seafood Stoup Fra Diavolo Ingredients 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) 1 pound sea scallops, trimmed and patted dry Salt and freshly ground black pepper 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped 6 anchovy fillets 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (1/3 palmful) 1/2 cup dry sherry, white wine or dry vermouth (eyeball it) 2 cups tomato sauce 1 cup seafood stock or [...]...

One of the greatest inventions of Southern Italy is the rice ball, or as we Italians call it “arancia,” which literally is translated to mean “orange.”  The balls are the shape and size of a real orange and have the golden color to almost match one. The dish is real peasant food in that you could actually use leftover rice or risotto or you can start from scratch, but either way it’s a very filling dish made with simple and inexpensive ingredients.  It’s rare you see this dish on a restaurant menu, but one place in Brooklyn, NY that does it right is a little spot in Red Hook called Ferdinando’s, and that’s their ball pictured up top. They serve it [...]...

Risotto is a dish that is fairly easy to make correctly, if you know how.  You have to understand why you take the steps a recipe tells you to take and once you get it, you can improvise and wing it a little, but there are some key things you need to know when tackling this delicious dish. Risotto is a kind of Italian rice, you can usually find Arborio or Canaroli in your grocery store and either one will work.  You can’t use regular long grain rice as it does not release enough starch, which is a key component of this masterful dish and is what makes it so rich and creamy. You typically start a risotto by sauteeing finely chopped [...]...

What exactly is Polenta you ask? If you are Sicilian, like me, you never had it growing up, but now it is hard to avoid. It is a food commonly prepared in northern Italy and with the invention of the instant kind, it has become one of the easiest comfort foods you can make in a jiffy. Polenta is ground cornmeal but was originally comprised of ground chestnut or farro, and dates back to the days of the Roman empire.  It has at times been considered peasant food (think of Oliver eating porridge in a bowl) because it is so inexpensive and yields a great volume of mushy, stick-to-your-ribs deliciousness, but modern chefs have found a way to glamorize it.  Slow [...]...

One of my favorite restaurants in NYC is Bar Stuzzichini.  Here Chef Paul Di Bari shares his frittata recipe with us.  Watch the video and if you are in NYC, stop by and tell them rachaelray.com sent ya! Bar Stuzzichini - Fritatta Recipe from Wayne Arthur on Vimeo. ...

On a recent trip to Sicily, I noticed many restaurants had pickled eggplant that was cut into thin strips, shaped like French fries. However, this isn’t how I grew up with the dish at all. My father and grandmother, and come to think of it, aunts and neighbors, used to make it like this: Take a sterilized mason jar and fill it 1/3 way with EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil), 4 cloves of sliced garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. Meanwhile, peel two large eggplants and slice them 1/4 thick (not too thin or they will break apart). Take a colandar and line it with a layer of eggplant. Sprinkle salt on the layer and then add another [...]...