Simply Sicily

I am so in love with Sicily- and the Sicilians. It is an island full of passion for life. I am constantly charged with energy. Volcanic soil? Sea Air?

Perhaps the fabulous food?

I have made some fabulous friends that are also passionate about food and share their "Secrets" with me, which I think share with you!

Sicily feeds my soul.

Food, wine, architecture, ruins, sea, sky, craziness, energy, beauty.

Each trip I take, I discover more and more, making new friends along the way and creating new dreams.

This Fall I will come back during the olive harvest, probably for two weeks of classes and touring.
Dates have not been finalized, but after October 12.


If you would like to be on the mailing list for the trips, please write to me
divinacucina at gmail.com

Photography and Food in Chianti- Sept 29- October 5th, 2013

Join Nancy Bundt and I in a fabulous week exploring Tuscany.

We will combine photography lessons from Nancy with my food and wine connections, touring small towns, visiting artisans and lovely small villages and market day in Florence.

Learning to shoot travel and food on location, 4 separate classes and hands on help during the week.

Join us!

Prize-winning photographer Nancy Bundt

Cooking teacher and Culinary Curator- Judy Witts Francini

I can't think of anything more fun.

Fall, Food and Wine and Photography.

For beginners as well as professionals.

Click here for the PDF file on trip.

IACP Culinary Workshop- Bitters with Bitterman

At the IACP convention in San Francisco this year, I attended one of the pre-conference workshops on Build You Own Bitters, with Mark Bitterman of The Meadow, a shop in Portland, Oregon and also in New York City.

I adore the alchemy of cooking and living in Europe have become passionate about making my own liquores and bitters, amari in Italian. Europe has a huge history of using plants and herbs as flavorings and also for their digestive powers.

We met in Noel Barnhurst's fabulous photography studio for our workshop.

Mark came prepared with a huge selection of essences and tinture for us to blend our own bitters, over 20 different aromatic roots, barks, spices, fruits and herbs.

Each one of the bottles for the tinctures for making the bitters had a small apothecary jar of the original ingredient for us to see and smell. The name and description of each essence was on the table in front of the jar. 


Mark gave us all small bottles with droppers and had us create our own blends, based on our palates. 

Starting with the milder essences, to build up and then add very little of the more bitter of the ingredients which were at the other end of the long table.

Mad Scientists at work

 There were: Tea, Coffee and Chocolate

 Flowers like Hibiscus and Rose

 Aromatics: Fennel Seed, Juniper Berries, Cinnamon, Cloves, Ginger

 Orange zest

Gentian helps with feeling blue--- MUST have that!

 Some interesting plants, Quassia, Devil's Club, Sassafras

Wormwood is one of the ingredients in making Absinthe.

 Mark has two different ways to use the bitters for us to try. One an Old Fashioned, bourbon, sugar and bitters and the French 75. We used prosecco, vodka instead of gin, sugar and then our own "bitters".

By the end of class, we were all in Bitter's Bliss.

To create your own tinctures as a base for creating your own bitters, you infuse the ingredients in whole grain alcohol. The drops are used in tiny quantities and then diluted with distilled water. The tinctures become even more diluted when added to the cocktail itself.

There are many online shops to access some of these harder to find barks, herbs, blossoms and spices.

In researching when I got home, there are even kits available to make your own bitters at home. Sort of a  starter kit.

One of my favorite things to make are fortified wines, common in France and Italy for an aperitivo.
Here is an interesting link for you to start making your own.


I hope you can begin to blend your own.

Mark's presentation was inspiring and creative. Now I think my kitchen will begin to look more and more like a pharmacy!

Note: my own blend at class was spicy with cinnamon, clove, orange zest, hibiscus and the bitter element was quinine bark, woodworm and gentian. I played around adjusting until I was happy with the balance.

Simply Divina- Salsa Verde

Often after I return back home to Italy from a teaching tour, I crave some of the simple flavors which are part of the pantry here in Tuscany.

One of the sauces I adore is Salsa Verde. In Italy, it is a sauce served with boiled beef meals or on the lampredotto sandwiches served all over Florence from the street carts.

Today is a holiday, remembering the liberation of Italy during the second World War. My husband went down to Florence to participate in a march honoring the partisans that saved Florence. I stayed home to catch up on work.

All I needed was a simple lunch and since the fridge was empty, stores are closed today, I went into the garden and looked there first.

The main ingredient of Salsa Verde is Italian flat-leafed parsley.

When I go to the weekly farmer's market, I am always offered free parsley and other staples for any recipe, like a carrot, celery stalk, rosemary and sage. I always turn it down, as I have herbs galore in the garden and finally planted my own parsley.

The parsley, capers, garlic are all chopped really fine. I use my mezza-luna knife.

Then I added in the anchovies and minced those as well.

To create the sauce, add extra-virgin olive oil, a splash of red wine vinegar.

Classic recipes also can have pinenuts or a slice of country-style bread soaked in vinegar and crumbled into the sauce ( to look like chopped pinenuts).

Other friends add minced onions and or eggs into the sauce.

My friend Gianni at the Casa del Vino serves wedges of hard boiled eggs with salsa verde and balsamic vinegar for a snack at the wine bar.

Often I like to make a warm potato salad and dress with the salsa verde, much like they use pesto in liguria with a potato string bean salad.


Today I served the warm hard boiled eggs and hot potato slices drizzled with salsa verde.

Simply Divina!!!

Try using the salsa verde on any vegetable, boiled meats or fish!

It will become a pantry staple in your house too.

One of my favorite ways to use the salsa verde, is to mix with the egg yolks for an Italian deviled egg. No mayo is needed.


Salsa Verde

1 cup parsley leaves, no stems
2 tbs capers 
2 garlic cloves

2 anchovies, packed in oil
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar

optional: pinenuts
bread soaked in vinegar

Mince the parsley, capers and garlic together.
Add the anchovy filets and mince until fine.

Place the mixture into a small bowl and add extra virgin olive oil.
Add vinegar to taste. Should have a nice tang.


As with all recipes, it is all about the ingredients.

I use salt packed capers, rinsed.
home made red wine vinegar
Tuscan extra virgin olive oil

Each cooks recipes will taste different based on their ingredients.

learn to taste and tweek flavors with salt to highlight flavors.

Spring is Here

I just returned from two weeks in Calfornia where Spring is far ahead of Spring in Tuscany. But on arriving home, I did find that the winter chill has finally left and sunny days have arrived.

At the weekly market in Certaldo, we found signs of spring.

In the village i live in, We are famous for the red onion, Cipolla di Certaldo. The spring onions inspired me to recreate a recipe that I had cooked by the famous chef Aimo, of Aimo and Nadia's restaurant in Milano, when I worked at the Macelleria Cecchini in Panzano.

Aimo had kept us out of the kitchen while cooking to keep the recipe a secret, but when i Googled it today, there it was;  Spaghettoni with Spring Onion.

Of course, I was missing something, the cherry tomatoes, it is a bit early for those here in Tuscany, so I just added a splash of tomato sauce.

Parsley and fresh thyme and the bay leaves came from my garden.

Can't get fresher than that.

The thyme is in flower now, so I added some of the blossoms too.

Has spring arrived where you live?
What are you cooking?

On The Road- California

It has been a wild and crazy trip.

But now, I am stopping to smell the flowers, in my case,get my fill of favorite foods. I am enjoying a ripe Haas avocado for breakfast at my friends house this morning and will be taking a Mexican cooking class later today.
I will post more later on my adventures here later when I get home.
I know I have maxed out my Facebook friends, but you can still chose to " follow my FB page" where I post photos all the time, if you need a fix of Italy.

Tomorrow will have a fabulous Sunday brunch in the sun on the Bay.
I head back to Tuscany Monday night.

Having some problems blogging on the new mini ipad, so keeping it short.