I know I’ve been spending a lot of time in Italy lately, but the food is good so why not? Plus who can resist braided brioche with a dyed hard-boiled egg baked in the middle? My girls are going to go nuts and the breads will look amazing on the Easter table. I promise to […]

Comments from a few readers have spurred me to make a few changes to the raised doughnut recipe. I’ve always like them but they’re in overdrive now, boys and girls. Try them and see!

I was recently reminded that I neglected to comment on a couple of interesting articles from the Washington Post that appeared last month discussing the decline of dessert. Not the decline of sweets or pastries mind you, but the decline of dessert as a meal course. Dessert, so claims reporter Roberto Ferdman, is a happening that’s vanishing both in the restaurant and in the home. The chief culprit isn’t health or calorie concerns, but time.

Only 12 percent of dinners eaten at home in the United States ended with something sweet last year, the lowest reading in more than 30 years, according to data from market research firm NPD group. Just 10 years ago, in 2004, 15 percent of families indulged after the main course. And 28 years ago, in 1986, the number was nearly 25 percent.

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It’s become traditional to ask for project suggestions after my late winter fishing trip. With the exception of the candies (which I have yet to tackle since I’m not very good at confectionery) I completed most of last year’s project requests, and many more besides. What shall I plan for the this coming year? Please […]

That’s a tricky one. There are a couple of origin stories, one a myth and the other a probable myth. The first one goes like this: once upon a time in the early 1700’s, in the northern Italian town of Saronno, there lived a pair of newlyweds. These two loved to bake and make sweets, so when they heard that the Catholic Cardinal from the nearby city of Milan was preparing to visit, the wanted to make something special. They gathered the meager ingredients they had: almonds, sugar, egg whites and apricot kernels, and using a mysterious technique that remains a secret to this day, prepared a batch of small cookies in the Cardinal’s honor. Tasting them, the Cardinal was so delighted that he blessed their marriage — and their cookies — wishing them a long and prosperous marriage. Today of course that secret is owned by the D. Lazzaroni Company who makes the classic Amaretti di Saronno. No surprise that they are the people largely responsible for propagating this myth.

Some people call them cookies, these days it’s hip to refer to them as “macarons”, but really they’re little almond meringues that are flavored with almond. Macaroons is probably more like it. I first tasted them as a kid when the neighbors who lived behind our house would take me into Chicago’s inner suburbs to visit their Italian grandma. In classic Old World Grandma style she’d feed us no matter what the hour, and amply. We dined crowded around the table in her cramped little apartment kitchen, since the dining room table was covered with doilies and only used for special occasions.

She was fond of serving us amaretti as soon as we walked in the door as a sort of tide-me-over until the real food hit the table: an antipasto starter, then pasta which I’d usually gorge myself on, forgetting that a meat course was coming next. By the end of the meal I’d be so engorged I practically had to be craned out the window.

These little cookies sometimes appear on little plates in Italian restaurants along with a meal-closing cup of coffee. If you’ve been to those sorts of spots, or live around many people of Italian descent, you’ve probably seen amaretti before. They’re small, puffy and round with crackled tops. They’re the sort of things which, if they not fresh or well-made, you generally won’t notice. However if they are well made and fresh they stop you in your tracks. Whoa, what the heck are these things?

Reader Sarah had that experience recently with some amaretti she bought in an Italian bakery in Toronto. I’ll see what I can do to help re-create her experience here. So off we go…

Back from Florida and what an interesting trip. Here I am fishing beside what looks like an old set from the late 60’s Planet of the Apes movies, put up on stilts in the Gulf of Mexico. Evidently this was a single family house that was once on land, but beach erosion did a job on the real estate. These days it’s abandoned save for the odd band of pot smoking teenagers that apparently hole up there, but the fish like it. Or more specifically the pylons beneath it. Good fishing, you just can’t let the fish run too much after you hook one.