A Volontà: Blog

1. Pittuli

   April 26, 2020
   Bright yellow zucchini flowers are sold in neat stacks in farm stands everywhere these days, when they are in season in the height of summer. Everyone seems to be onto the joys of batter-fried zucchini flowers, known in Calabria as pittuli. They are both the most commonplace and celebrated…

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2. James Joyce of Trieste, buried in Zurich

   April 14, 2020
   Somehow, my morning walk took me to the grave of James Joyce. He and Nora Barnacle lived for many years in Trieste, where he met Italo Svevo, the writer of La coscienza di Zeno. Svevo (born Ettore Schmitz) became a close friend of Joyce and a model of the…

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3. The right way to make Easter bread

   April 12, 2020
   As part of the sourdough-making quarantine horde, I decided to make a traditional Easter bread as my aunt, who is 85 and the keeper of all of our family recipes from Calabria, always makes it. “Don’t use that dough you use, though,” she warned. “Use regular flour like Costco flour.…

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