Category Archives: News

News & announcements

Congratulations Elizabeth and Eijiro !!!

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We want to congratulate Elizabeth and Eijiro on their wedding! They were married earlier this year – on Valentine’s day – but waited for the more clement summer weather to throw a big party, just a few days ago. They are both food lovers – Elizabeth is one of our lead chefs, and has been at Rustico Cooking for 8 years, and Eijiro works at New York’s fabulous dessert bar Chikalicious, home of the Dough’Ssant – the incredible Donut-Croissant hybrid… To celebrate the occasion, my husband Dino composed and recorded a song for them entitled “Feels So Right”. To make it more fun, he strayed from his usual Rock style and wrote the song in late 1970’s disco style…”Feels So Right” may be the only disco song with references to gnocchi, pasta, pastry (and it also includes a few Japanese words thrown in for good measure!). We hope you enjoy it – you can hear it by clicking on the orange and white “play” button on the top left of the picture at the top of the post. Make sure to put your platform shoes and boogie all night! (Pictured left to right: Elizabeth, Dino, Micol, Eijiro)

If the file player above is not supported in your browser, you can access the direct link to the song here.

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The Best Pasta Sauces: Micol’s New Cookbook!

SNEAK PREVIEW OF MICOL’S BOOK! The recipe for Amatriciana Sauce from Micol’s new cookbook is now available online! Be sure to check it out by clicking the image below
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I’m very excited to announce that Ballantine Books (a division of Random House) just released my third cookbook, THE BEST PASTA SAUCES:  Favorite Regional Italian Recipes. I had a lot of fun researching and writing this book, and the process allowed me to discover some incredibly delicious specialties from every region of Italy. There is mouth-watering color photography throughout; the book is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach!

The Best Pasta Sauces

It was hard to decide which recipes to include; there are so many pasta treasures across Italy!! But in the end, I narrowed the selection down to the 80 recipes I felt best represented the diverse sauces of Italy’s regions. Some are classics, of course, like pesto, amatriciana, puttanesca, and ragu, but others are little-known outside Italy. In fact, there were some recipes that were eye-opening even for me (and I’ve eaten and cooked a lot of pasta over the years!!), like the Crushed Potato Sauce with Cracked Black Pepper and Olive Oil from the Marches (I never thought about boiling potatoes to create a clean vegetal puree with which to sauce pasta!), the Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce with Bread Crumbs from Apulia (I usually simmered tomato sauces on the stove for my pasta, never roasted them), and the Parmigiano Sauce with Fresh Nutmeg from Piedmont (what a difference the nutmeg makes!).

Not only did I love testing the recipes—who wouldn’t love eating a different delicious pasta every day?—I also really enjoyed working on the photography with my husband Dino; we styled the food together, and Dino took amazing photographs that make my mouth water every time I look at them (and I’ve looked at them a lot!).

The book also includes tips for cooking pasta perfectly and for saucing it with success every time; there are 5 basic recipes indispensable to any home cook; sidebars sprinkled throughout about our travels in Italy, essential Italian ingredients, and more; and wine pairings by RUSTICO COOKING’s Wine Director, Costas Mouzouras.

Hopefully the book will inspire you to try new sauces and to experiment with different ingredients and flavors… I look forward to hearing which recipes you try!

Available in bookstores, from Rustico Cooking, and from online sellers including: