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Menu Development
Detroit Style Pizza: A Guide to Detroit Pizza
Discover Detroit-Style Pizza Detroit style pizza is a square, deep dish pizza that is known for its racing stripes sauce on top, cheese crust crown and light crust. Whether you call them red tops or square pizza, Detroit-style pizza is a unique pizza style that hast become one of the hottest pizza styles and one […]
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Menu Development
Parmesan Provolone
Parmesan and provolone are as different as night and day, but both of these cheeses are as important to Italian cuisine as Sophia Loren is to Naples. Parmesan is a cow’s milk cheese that is made in huge wheels and aged for a specific time. Parm...
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Menu Development
Hazelnut Chocolate Pudding Cake
I think it’s high time that we look a bit deeper into the riches that Italian sweet treats has to offer. It’s simple to take the easy way out –– not having to create, make and worry about desserts at all. But by doing so, you ...
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Menu Development
Portobello
Here’s the story: An overgrown crimini mushroom goes by the name of portobello. To put it another way, once the brown crimini gets to be around 4 to 6 inches in diameter it becomes a portobello. Here, we are dealing with a big brown mushroom wi...
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Menu Development
Thinking Organic
Single-ingredient organic foods, such as mushrooms, meat and cheese, are easy — anything that’s certified organic by a USDA certifier will bear the USDA Organic seal. There are other seals that denote other standards, such as free-range, ...
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Menu Development
Bruschetta Crostini
Bruschetta and Crostini are essentially in the same family of Italian appetizers, yet each has its own distinct personality. Add one or the other to your antipasti menu (if you add both it might confuse your customer). Generally speaking, if you are ...
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Menu Development
Chocolate Cake
More restaurants need to step up to the plate (so to speak) when it comes to desserts. Why? Because you lose income (lower check average) if you don’t. Why? Because you increase customer satisfaction. Absolutely, there are a gazillion dess...
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Menu Development
Marinating Mushrooms
One of the easiest ways to ramp up the flavor of any pizza featuring mushrooms is to marinate the earthy delights for a day or two. Not only will the produce taste better, but it won’t dry out in the oven, either. Start with white button mushro...
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Menu Development
Potato Tart
Some clarification on Pecorino Romano and Romano is in order. A true pecorino Romano is made from Sheep’s milk (pecorino translates as “little sheep”) and comes from an area around Rome (though pecorino is made in many regions of It...
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Menu Development
Sauce Doctoring
Ask ten French chefs to make a Béarnaise sauce and each of the sauces will taste the same. Ask ten Italian chefs to make a Bolognese sauce and none of the sauces will taste the same. No reflection on the expertise of either group of chefs, but...
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Menu Development
Spinach
If you are of a certain age you will easily make the connection between spinach and Popeye, the comic book character. When he was in trouble and needed a jolt of extra power and strength, Popeye would open a can of spinach and toss it down in one fel...
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Menu Development
Tiramisu & Chocolate Martini
Mascarpone (mahs-kar-POH-neh) is not actually a cheese (no starter or rennet is used to produce it), but it is always included in the cheese family when the subject of relatives come up. And in the Italian arsenal of cheeses it stands tall. A rich an...
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Menu Development
Hot Appetizers
Appetizers are sizzling. I have never seen appetizers getting so much attention. Some restaurants are referring to them as “small plates,” but what we are dealing with here are, in fact, appetizers using a pseudonym. Let’s take a lo...