Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce is a quintessential Italian dish known around the world, despite taking many twists and turns on its voyage. Last month I had the unique opportunity to be an observer at a cooking demonstration conducted by Maestro Ivan Bombieri, Chef at Risotrante La Taverna, just outside of Udine, in Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Mr. Bombieri is a soft-spoken, charismatic man of no pretension who like his cooking to speak for itself.

Like many North Americans I grew-up eating lasagna. I recalled how my grandmother, who hailed from Genoa, would explain that lasagna was the name of a pasta, not a dish. Her style of preparing lasagna was to boil the pasta, then layer it with a Tucco sauce (dialect) and Parmigiano–Reggiano cheese, with no baking in the oven.

Pancake Day always takes place on Shrove Tuesday in Great Britain, the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of the Christian season of Lent in the run up to Easter. Traditionally, Shrove Tuesday was a day for using up food that could not be eaten during Lent, which was a time for fasting. Therefore people made pancakes …

On a recent trip to Curacao I had the good fortune to taste Chef Taco’s African Peanut Soup on two occasions. The first was at the local restaurant, Trio Penotti, on the west side of the island. It is an unassuming place, typical for a local’s country place in that it had open-air seating in a rustic outside pavilion. It …

Susanne Servin of Herzerl Tours shares her Apfelstrudel family recipe. Says Susanne: “It may seem overwhelming but believe me, it’s not. In a two hour session I taught a group of my German students how to make it.”

I first met Toño Pérez (of Atrio Restaurante in Cáceres, Spain) in Manhattan. I took a master class he taught last October at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). He handed out photos and descriptions of his signature tapas dishes and then created them for us. It was amazing!