In deep summer, I go to bed at night dreaming of the dish that I know my mother will soon prepare. Once locally harvested eggplant, red peppers and tomatoes are available, it’s only a matter of time before my mother takes those simple ingredients and turns them into a creamy, colourful dish that to me is summer at its very best: Peperonata.

This brilliant dish is, for me, Italian soul food at its best. All you need is a fork, some crusty bread and a glass of cool wine.

And of course, in my humble opinion, no one makes a better Peperonata than Mama Cream Puff. As a reminder to everyone that the deadline for La Festa al Fresco is this Monday, September 3rd, I give you one of my mother’s best summer dishes.

It is the essence of summer.

Ciao!

La Peperonata
Treasured family recipe.

4 red peppers (we use a type of pepper called Shepperd pepper which is long and narrow - if you can’t find these, use bell peppers)
1 small eggplant
1-1/4 cups crushed tomatoes
4 basil leaves
3 to 4 tbsp. olive oil
3/4 tbsp. salt

Cut peppers into 1-inch strips. (If using bell peppers, cut into 3/4-inch strips). Cut eggplant into 1/2-inch strips.

Heat 3 tbsp. olive oil in a large pan over medium heat and add peppers. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes. (Bell peppers will take a bit longer.) Be sure to stir occasionally.

Add eggplant to cooking peppers. The eggplant will absorb a lot of the oil so add more if you notice that the mixture is too dry.

Cook for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add half the salt and stir.

Move the pepper and eggplant mixture to one side of the pan so that it is covering about three-quarters of the pan.

To the remaining quarter of the pan, add the crushed tomatoes, the basil and remaining salt. Heat for about 2 minutes and then blend the entire contents of the pan together.

Continue to cook for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Serve warm or at room temperature with lots of bread!

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: peperonata, la festa al fresco

Some months, I wait anxiously for the day to post the Daring Baker challenge. And then other months, like this one, I wake up one morning only to find that the month is almost gone and the Daring Baker challenge is about to escape me.

My friends, it has been a busy and frenzied month to say the least.

Luckily, however, things have calmed down just in time to celebrate another Daring Baker challenge. And this time around, we’re getting all tarted up!

The hosts for this month’s challenge are the lovely Veronica of Veronica’s Test Kitchen and Patricia of Technicolor Kitchen. They took pity on our Daring Baker souls and decided to choose a challenge recipe that didn’t feature forty steps and didn’t require that we start baking a week in advance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved all the challenges up until now, but they have been quite involved. It was more than pleasant to settle down to baking a most elegant and simple Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart.

As with most tarts, this one begins with a great tart base. The tart pastry consists of butter, icing sugar, ground hazelnuts, cinnamon, eggs, cake flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. I usually make crusts by hand but I decided to try this one in the bowl of the stand mixer and it worked out very well.

After creaming the butter, sugar, ground hazelnuts and cinnamon together, I added the eggs and then the dry ingredients. I gathered the dough into a ball and refrigerated it for eight hours (the recipe instructs you to refrigerate overnight but I made the dough in the morning and baked the tart late in the day).

When it came time to roll out the tart dough, I ran into a few problems in that the pastry cracked quite a bit. It seemed a bit on the dry side. However, after a bit of work I managed to line all my tart pans with the lovely cinnamon-scented dough. The recipe yields quite a bit of pastry so I was able to make a 9-inch tart and six 4-inch tarts.

I blind baked the tart shells (baked them with parchment paper filled with dried beans) for 15 minutes before removing them from the oven while I made the caramel filling.

Usually when I make caramel I begin with a sugar and water mixture. This particular recipe calls for a dry caramel, which means that you simply put sugar into a pot and slowly melt it until it turns the desired colour. I’d never made caramel this way before and was a bit worried as caramel can be tricky.

However, it worked out very well. I had to really watch it as it would have been quite easy to burn the caramel. As soon as it reached the desired colour, I added heavy cream and butter and set it aside to cool a bit. While it cooled, I mixed together eggs and flour, which I then added to the caramel mixture. This was poured into the waiting tart shells. I then put the tarts back into the oven for another 15 minutes.

By this time, the tart shells were a lovely golden colour and the caramel filling was firm. I could have easily dug in at this point but the tarts weren’t quite finished.

After the tarts were completely cooled, I put together the final layer which was a milk chocolate mousse. I whipped heavy cream and poured in melted milk chocolate. I spread the mixture over the tops of all the tarts and then refrigerated them for several hours.

Wanting to decorate my tarts simply yet elegantly, I drizzled the tops with melted white chocolate and made some chocolate curls with some leftover milk chocolate.

Finally, it was time to try one.

The first sensation I experienced when I sampled the tart was the deep flavour of cinnamon against the lighter, sweeter flavour of the chocolate. At first I didn’t notice the caramel but after a few chews, the caramel texture came through. Combined with the lightness of the mousse topping, it was a very interesting flavour experience. The tart was spicy and cool all at the same time.

I decided to bring the tarts to work for my coworkers and judging by how quickly they were gobbled up, I knew they were a great success.

I enjoyed making a layered tart using caramel having never made a tart like this before. It was a straightforward recipe and the results were more than worth it. I would like to thank Veronica and Elle for choosing such a classy recipe!

Ciao!

For the recipe for the Milk Chocolate Caramel Tart, please visit Veronica’s blog or Patricia’s blog.

To see what all the other Daring Bakers did with their tarts, please check The Daring Bakers’ Blogroll over the next day or so!

Technorati tags: daring bakers, tarts, milk chocolate, caramel

While many people are familiar with the City of Toronto, I often feel that not enough people know that Toronto is located within the province of Ontario (Canada is divided into ten provinces and three territories).

For those of us who live in Ontario, we’re blessed to be in a location where both urban and rural settings are easily accessible. That means we can enjoy the best of both worlds. I love living in a multicultural, modern city. But it’s also very nice to get in the car and know that in a relatively short time, you can be driving by picturesque farms or visiting any one of the province’s beautiful parks. I’ve always felt especially lucky that here in Ontario, we grow a variety of fruits and vegetables that should not be missed.

For this month’s edition of Sugar High Friday, the event started by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess, Johanna of The Passionate Cook has chosen the theme of Sweet Specialties. She’s given us the opportunity to prepare a dessert that features what’s truly special in our neck of the woods.

I’m not sure how many people would consider a peach a delicacy. I can say in all honesty, however, that a juicy summer peach is unsurpassed as far as I’m concerned. When I visited the farmer’s market last Wednesday, I couldn’t help but buy a basket of fragrant Redhaven peaches grown in my very own province.

I thought about a simple preparation for the peaches, like grilling them to caramelize the tops and then topping them with a scoop of perfect vanilla ice cream. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to compliment the peaches with some sort of buttery crust. I perused my cookbooks but didn’t really find anything that struck my fancy. I visted Epicurious and came across a recipe for a peach tart that featured an almond spread as a base for the peaches.

I began the dessert by making the dough which came together very quickly in the food processor. While the dough chilled, I prepared the almond base, which consisted of blanched almonds, butter and almond extract.

My beautiful Redhaven peaches were a joy to slice. I loved the hint of colour on each thin slice of peach as they waited to be layered on the tart. After slicing the peaches, I quickly rolled out the dough and used a 4-inch fluted cookie cutter to cut out rounds. I pricked the rounds with a fork before putting them in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.

I spread about a tablespoonful of almond cream on each round and then topped each with several slices of peach. The tarts baked up beautifully.

Once cooled, I took an extra step not included in the recipe. I melted some apricot jam with a bit of water and then strained it. I used a pastry brush to spread some of the apricot glaze over the cooled tarts. I then sprinkled some sliced, blanched almonds over the glaze. Just before serving, I lightly dusted the tarts with icing sugar.

These tarts were delicious! The dough was buttery, flaky and perfectly cooked while the peaches were a lovely combination of tart and sweet. The apricot glaze gave them a pretty sheen.

I would like to thank Johanna for coming up with this wonderful them for SHF #34. It was a joy to use one of Ontario’s greatest delicacies: the beautiful summer peach!

Ciao!

Peach Almond Tarts

Note: I used this recipe for peach tarts from Epicurious. However, I have reproduced the recipe according to how I made it. I added an extra step. I doubled the recipe and made 32 4-inch tarts. The recipe below is for one batch of tarts.

For the crust:

1 stick plus 2 tbsp. (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, cut into tiny pieces
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
a small bowl of ice water

Place the flour, sugar and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a few times to combine.

Add the butter pieces and pulse 15 to 20 times, until the butter has been incorporated into the flour and the mixture is very coarse.

With the machine running, begin pouring water through the feed tube, a tablespoon at a time. You will need 5 to 6 tablespoons to make the dough come together. The dough will gather in a ball around the blade of the processor.

Stop the machine and turn the dough out onto a well-floured counter top. Knead gently for a few seconds, gathering the dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

For the almond base:

3/4 cup sliced and blanched almonds
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp. almond extract

Place all of the ingredients in the bowl of the food processor and process until smooth. Set filling aside until ready to use.

For the peach topping:

4 to 5 large ripe peaches, pitted and sliced thinly
1/2 stick unsalted butter
sugar for sprinkling

When you are ready to bake the tarts, remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll out to a thickness of about 1/8th of an inch. If you’re countertop isn’t large enough, divide the dough in half and roll it out in two batches.

Using a round cookie cutter or a dish, cut circles out of the dough. I used a 4-inch round cookie cutter.

Place the rounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once you’ve filled the sheet, prick the rounds with a fork and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

While the rounds are chilling, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Once the rounds have chilled, assemble the tarts by spreading about a tablespoon of almond base on each round. Leave a slight edge around the corners of the round so that the almond base doesn’t leak over.

Layer your peach slices over the almond base in whatever design you wish.

Bake the tarts in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes (begin checking after 25 minutes to ensure your tarts don’t burn). You can bake the tarts one sheet at a time or you can bake them two sheets at a time with one sheet in the top part of the oven and one in the bottom, but be sure to rotate the sheets halfway through baking.

Once baked, let the tarts cool on a wire rack before glazing.

For the glaze:

1/2 cup apricot jam
a few tablespoons of water
sliced and blanched almonds (optional)
icing sugar (optional)

Melt the apricot jam with the water in a small saucepan.

Once melted, pass the jam through a strainer.

Brush the cooled tarts with the resulting glaze. If you wish, sprinkle on some almonds and dust with icing sugar.

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: peaches, Ontario, Redhaven peaches, sugar high friday, shf #34, peach tarts, tarts

After my very first baking job, the thrill of baking on a professional level quickly combined with the multitude of questions and problems that bakers who bake for a living face each day.

While I’m nowhere close to baking for a living (I have a full-time non-baking job thank you very much!), it did get me thinking about the challenges of trying to make a livelihood from flour, sugar and eggs.

As I tried to work my way through deciding how much a cupcake should cost or how much I should charge for a dozen cookies, a very interesting offer came my way.

A co-worker asked me to bake a birthday cake for her son. She wanted a frosted chocolate cake.

Easy!

Well … not quite.

As it happens, my co-worker’s son has a very serious peanut allergy.

Initially, I wanted to turn down her offer. While I was intrigued by the idea of baking and being paid for my first official birthday cake, I had no experience with peanut-free baking.

And so began the odyssey!

My co-worker was very reassuring and told me that as long as I took some very basic steps, everything should be okay. These steps included washing the counter and any utensils that I used with a bleach solution.

Okay. That didn’t sound too bad.

But deciding that I didn’t know nearly enough about the subject, I hit the Internet and quickly found myself falling into a pit of self-doubt. The more I read, the more concerned I became about accidental contamination.

Is a bleach solution strong enough to properly sanitize the baking area? Do the baking pans have to be cleaned as well? What about the mixer? What about the oven?

The more I read, the more scared I became. And the more I realized what a challenge it is to live with a food allergy. I never realized how much I take for granted that I can scoop up a handful of nuts and add them to anything that I’m cooking or baking.

After a second discussion with my co-worker, I calmed down and realized that as long as I sanitized my work area and my utensils, I’d be okay.

I emptied the refrigerator of any nuts and my mother helped me by cleaning it out and washing it down with a solution of water, dishwashing liquid and bleach. I washed the refrigerator because I usually store nuts in there and I wanted it to be completely sanitized before putting the cake in there overnight (I put the cake in a box first).

I washed all the surface areas in the kitchen, my stand mixer and my utensils with the same solution. I even bought a new baking pan and washed that as well for fear that my current baking pans might have residue on them that I wouldn’t be able to remove.

I even took the precaution of buying entirely new ingredients in the event that I’d dipped a measuring cup that had once held nuts into a container of flour or sugar.

Having gone through all this prep work, I finally got down to the business of baking. Because my co-worker and I decided that it would be best not to use any food colouring in decorating the cake, I was limited to mixing cocoa powder into some of the frosting for colour. This gave me the idea for a black and white cake.

My inspiration for the cake came from a cover of Gourmet magazine in 2004. From the moment that I saw this cake I knew that I would have to one day try making it. While my cake was square and my cupcakes were not as large (my co-worker was transporting the cake home via transit so I had to take into consideration that she couldn’t carry anything too big), I used the Gourmet cake as a visual inspiration for my own version of a polka dot cake.

Overall, the experience was quite rewarding. My co-worker (and her son) loved the cake and everyone seemed impressed with the way I decorated it (even though I felt it was a bit amateurish). I won’t lie, though. The preparation for baking the cake was intense and to be honest, I didn’t make a dime from this cake. I was exhausted when it was done and I spent a good part of the day worrying that there wouldn’t be any allergic reactions to the cake.

But the experience also made me realize how complicated baking profesionally can be. There is so much to consider! I see that the road to a successful business, is a long one. You truly have to love to bake!

Ciao!

For the cake recipe: Easy Chocolate Cupcakes. I doubled the recipe and baked it in a 12-inch square cake pan. I then baked a second cake repeating the same process. I stacked the cakes and filled and frosted them with a basic icing.

Technorati tags: baking, cake

Today is the great Julia Child’s birthday!

To honour this day, Lisa of Champaign Taste is hosting the second annual food blog event to honour the birth of one of the most influential women in food history. Not bad for someone who didn’t start cooking seriously until she was in her 30s!

What else can I possibly say about Julia Child that hasn’t already been said? She was glorious. On her birthday, I wish simply that we would all take a page out of her life book. Let’s get into the kitchen. Let’s cook. Let’s bake. Let’s enjoy!

Ciao!

To celebrate Julia’s birthday this year, I decided to finally try a recipe that I’d had bookmarked for many years. It’s the Pizza Rustica from the book Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. It’s essentially a slightly sweet pie dough that’s stuffed with a ricotta filling dotted with prosciutto and basil. Delicious!

For Julia’s birthday last year, I made Cantuccini.

Technorati tags: julia child, pizza rustica

Summer without a vegetable garden is unimagineable to me.

For as far back as I can remember, my summers are dotted with memories of the garden. I can still see my beloved Papu’ (maternal grandfather) with a sprig of basil tucked behind his ear. And I can picture my paternal grandparents preparing to hike up into the hills to tend their plots of land.

Mostly, though, I am filled with memories of my father planting, tilling, watering, tending and watching. I can still remember the watering can he fashioned for me by attaching an old coffee can to the end of a long stick. This enabled me to walk along the high concrete wall bordering one end of our home garden and water all the plants without having to actually step in between them.

I was a girl, after all. As much as I wanted to be in the garden I was all about sugar and spice and everything nice. All those icky bugs were a bit much!

Now that I’m grown, I think nothing of plunging my bare hands into the earth - something I would have NEVER done when I was a younger.

Our home garden is an homage to the farming background of both of my parents. In Italy, the land was the main source of food. The very idea of going to a store to buy your tomatoes or onions must have once seemed so strange to my parents.

Our little garden is a wild place and I love it. Tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, onions, swiss chard, lettuce, lavender, strawberries, sage, mint, cucumbers, rosemary, tarragon and basil are gathered together like an outrageous green family. At times you have to strain to see through it all lest you miss a perfectly ripe tomato, ready to be plucked. The strawberries and the tarragon bush hang over the cracked concrete wall that holds up one side of the raised garden bed. That same side is covered by an old makeshift trellis built by my father, many years ago, as a support for his grape vines. Though they are old, to this day they still spread their leaves along the precarious structure before producing the lovely green grapes that dangle down so tantalizingly.

It’s a jumbled, edible forest and I love it. I cannot imagine my life without it.

For this reason, I chose to feature Viana La Place’s My Italian Garden as the Flavour of the Month for August 2007. While August is already almost half over, it was high time to introduce this book.

It is a gem.

It is a testament to a person’s will to grow fresh food in whatever little corner they inhabit. To read La Place’s account of how she transformed her backyard into a small garden oasis is truly inspiring. And the recipes - oh, the recipes!

While I have yet to try one, I will very soon and of course you shall be the beneficiaries. In the meantime, I decided to use so many of the beautiful zucchini flowers our plants yield to make one of my very favourite summer dishes: ricotta stuffed zucchini flowers.

I hope you all have a garden to love!

Ciao!

I don’t use a recipe to stuff zucchini flowers but if you need one, try this one from Leite’s Culinaria.

Technorati tags: zucchini flowers, ricotta, italian garden

My apologies for the lack of posts around here.

It’s not that the Cream Puff has abandoned you or anything. It’s just that in all the recent heat and steam we’ve been experiencing lately, I’ve barely been able to muster the energy to lift a glass of iced tea to my lips.

Yes, it’s been that hot. Yes, it’s been that steamy. So much so that I suspect I may lose my title as honourary Southern Belle based on my inability to deal with it all.

What can I say? I’m a Northern girl at heart. I needs me my ice and snow!

But more than the steamy summer, I haven’t posted of late because, to be quite honest, I’ve had a bit of trouble letting go.

It was hard to let go of July and Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Berry Desserts (my Flavour of the Month for July).

It was hard to let go of sitting under the canopy in the yard as opposed to sitting in the basement in front of a computer.

It was just hard to let go.

And yet, in so many ways, July was about letting go. I hate to be the bearer of bad news to all you summer-lovers, but July’s end means that we’ve let go of the heart of summer. Sure most of August stretches before us and yes summer isn’t technically over until September. But you know once those school bells start ringing, it’s au revoir summer!

On a more personal level, July was the month that I let go of a lot of deadweight in the form of paper. I am embarrassed by the sheaves and sheaves of paper that I have been hoarding away in virtually every corner of my house. In the form of magazines, books, loose papers, they were everywhere! The arrival of my uncle from Italy and the impending arrival of two houseguests in the form of my Aunt D and my sweet cousin A from San Jose meant that it was time to take a serious look in all the cupboards and spooky places that I normally prefer not to look.

Food magazines galore.

Recipes galore.

Newspaper clippings of recipes galore.

All of it over every inch of this house. In every drawer, in every closet, in every cupboard, in every corner.

And the shame of it all is that in most cases, I’d barely even looked at any of these items in years. Case-in-point: last summer when we had the house painted, I packed away a stack of magazines and recipes in a large storage bin and shoehorned it into the closet.

“I’ll go through those as soon as the painting is done.”

Uh huh.

More than a year later, those very magazines and recipes in that very large storage bin remained buried at the bottom of the closet under a million other things.

Unlike other times, where I’ve merely paid lipservice to the act of truly cleaning and simply shuffled some papers here and stacked some more magazines there, it was time to truly take stock.

Why do I keep all these magazines? And why do I have all these loose bits of paper with recipes printed on them flying around my house? What is this all about?

As I sifted through the endless pile, I kept thinking to myself that I couldn’t possibly throw this recipe out or recycle that magazine. This is the 2002 issue of so-and-so that has that perfect recipe for watchamacallit that when I finally get around to making it will be the best thing ever.

And this faded piece of newsprint from 1992 has a recipe for baked you-knows that I’m going to make for whatshername’s party and wow everyone.

Oh, yes and there’s that post-it note with the recipe for that dish on it. It’s written in that horribly faded red ink and I’m probably going to have to hire an Egyptologist to decipher the hieroglyphics otherwise known as the instructions but that’s okay. When I finally do I’m going to cook up the dish of the century!

And so on. And so on. And so on.

A hundred best-chocolate-cakes ever. A thousand mouth-watering sugar cookies. A million mind-blowing apple pies. They were all there. Spread across my house like a trail of breadcrumbs.

And without thinking about it, I picked up all the bits of paper and put them in the recycling bin. I gathered all the magazines and brought them to work for my coworkers.

In one massive act of cleansing, I bid adieu to years worth of printed recipes and magazines.

Just like that. I let them all go.

Crazy of me? Perhaps.

But I think it’s more to do with the fact that it finally occurred to me that the best chocolate cake I will ever make is the one that I actually make. The imagination is delicious, but reality is even moreso.

It occurred to me that it was time to squelch the insecure little baker in me that keeps telling me I can bake a better this or a better that and just get down to the act of baking.

I let it all go.

I just let it all go. And I don’t regret it one bit.

Ciao!

Blueberry Cheesecake
From Luscious Berry Desserts by Lori Longbotham.

Note: My Flavour of the Month for August 2007 is Viana La Place’s lovely My Italian Garden. But before I get to that pretty little book, I had to say one last goodbye to Luscious Berry Desserts. Glory in the season’s most beautiful blueberries with this incredible cheesecake!

For the crust:

2 cups shortbread crumbs (about 20 to 25 shortbread cookies finely crushed)
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Generously butter a 9-inch springform pan.

Combine the shortbread crumbs and the butter in a bowl and mix well.

Pack the crumbs into the pan, making sure to spread them about a quarter of the way up the sides of the pan. Place the crust in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

For the filling:

3 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups ripe blueberries

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Combine the cream cheese and the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix at medium speed until smooth and fluffy (4 to 5 minutes).

Beat the eggs and the yolk in one at a time making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally.

Add the heavy cream, the lemon zest and juice, the flour, vanilla and the salt. Mix well.

Using a rubber spatula, carefully mix in the blueberries.

Pour the filling into the prepared pan. Place the pan in the oven for 15 minutes.

Lower the oven temperature to 200 degrees F. and bake for an hour. Once done, turn off the oven and open the door slightly. Leave the cheesecake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake and let it cool completely on a wire rack. Once cool, refrigerate the cheesecake overnight (or for about 8 hours) before serving.

Serve the cheesecake with a fruit sauce like raspberry curd.

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: cheesecake, blueberries

They say time flies and they are most certainly right! It’s hard to believe that it’s already been almost a year since my “blog sister” Lis and I hosted what turned out to be a hugely successful event: La Festa al Fresco 2006!

For those of you that flew in, walked in, ran in, sailed in, beamed in from elsewhere, you’ll recall that La Festa al Fresco was a resounding success with bloggers sending virtual dishes from all over the world.

For those of you that are new to the festa, La Festa al Fresco is the blog world’s biggest patio party.

The premise is very simple: prepare a dish using a fresh, seasonal ingredient, and then send it over. Oh and don’t forget to bring yourself as well.

You can prepare any dish you like. It can be an appetizer; a soup; a salad; a meat, fish or vegetarian dish; a dessert or even a beverage. The only rule is that it must feature a fresh, seasonal ingredient, preferably something that grows in your neck of the woods.

Once you’ve prepared your dish, please post about it on your blog and then let Lis (lamiacucina67@gmail.com) and myself (creampuffsinvenice@gmail.com) know. The deadline for the event is midnight on September 3, 2007. As we did last year, Lis and I will be splitting the round up, which we will post a few days after the deadline has passed.

So to recap, here are the particulars:

Prepare a dish of your choosing featuring a fresh, seasonal ingredient.

Post about it by midnight on September 3, 2007.

Send an e-mail to Lis and myself and include your name, blog name and blog address. Also include a link to your post and 100 x 100 pixel photo of your dish.

In Italian we say, “tutti a tavola” which means “everyone to the table”.

Lis and I are polishing the patio and tables as we speak. Tutti a tavola for La Festa al Fresco 2007!

Ciao!

P.S. My dear friend of Ari of the beautiful Baking and Books is overseeing an incredible event. Ari is hosting a fundraiser to benefit the 2007 Jewish Environmental Bike Ride. Buying a raffle ticket will allow you to be eligible for a number of wonderful prizes. To read all the details, please visit Ari’s blog here. Good luck to Ari with this worthy cause!

Technorati tags: la festa al fresco