New videos were released this weekend showing Pandel, chef of the soon-to-open Balena, making homemade Tajarin and Chitarra. Watch and drool. more ›

Take the time to create this traditional Italian dish and you won't be sorry. more ›

Flourish Bakery and Cafe is starting a deal next week that is sure to be a hit. On Tuesday, March 1 (and every Tuesday after that) Flourish will throw a "family dinner" - a chance to get home-cooked food without the hassle of shopping and cleanup. The price is unbeatable, the joint is sure to be hopping and great Flourish breads will be on the menu. more ›

Sometimes, meals seem to pass beyond the ordinary and into the realm of a glowing imaginary. This can happy for any number of reasons - good food, good company, flirtation, the right night, the perfect cocktail - and it rarely has anything to do with the price of the food. Those wonderful nights, and the restaurants that create them, have to be savored and shared. We were lucky enough to be lulled into one of those nights by Anteprima, and we cannot recommend it highly enough. more ›

Playing Santa to a foodie this year? Us, too. Cooking classes make great gifts, but in a city where many different restaurants and cooking schools offer classes aimed at educating the home cook, how do you choose wisely? Take pasta. You can learn to make it from scratch at two of Chicago's popular "recreational" cooking schools, the Chopping Block and Cooking Fools. To help you make an informed purchase for your fellow-foodie, we did some fieldwork at both spots. more ›

Calling all at-home cooks. Chicagoist has the scoop on cooking classes to help fine tune your culinary skills. Check out a couple coming up this month. more ›

You’ve likely seen products like “spelt spaghetti” or “quinoa spirals” while perusing the pasta section of your grocery store. These alternatives to refined white pasta typically provide more nutrients and fiber and impart unique tastes and textures. When consumed in moderation, pasta has its place in a nutritious diet. A healthy serving of pasta is generally about ½ cup cooked, or about ¼ of your plate, which is a whole lot less than what we typically consume. Think of pasta as a great side dish to accompany lean meat or fish and a big helping of veggies. Here is a quick run-down of some commonly sold alternative grain pastas. more ›

Now that the farmer’s markets are filling up with tomatoes, it’s time to start finding great recipes to use them up. At this time of year, we prefer relatively simple, unadorned recipes - all the better to show off the freshness of the produce. This recipe is an adaptation of an old standard, usually made with vodka and a ton of cream. We use much less cream, to allow the flavors of the tomatoes and shallots to come through. Using grappa, instead of vodka, gives the pasta a kick AND some extra flavor. If you don’t have any grappa, we’d recommend using brandy. more ›

Home-made, fresh pasta is certainly the best kind. Unfortunately, we don’t have a pasta machine, or a ton of spare time, so we usually settle for dried. While shopping for produce, we ran into Pasta Puttana (translation: Pasta Whore) at the indoor version of the Green City Market, back in April. Owner Jessica Volpe was standing behind her entirely empty table and, when we went up to beg for scraps, she had nothing left. It was only 11 AM and the market had only been open for a couple of hours - we probably should have known better. Clearly, we aren’t the only people who love her products. more ›

Over the past six months, we’ve developed a love of dark, leafy greens. Kale, Collards, Chard - we like all of them, and somehow they’d never crossed our path before. This recipe uses another under-utilized leaf: Beet Greens. more ›

This pasta is amazing. Absolutely amazing. It’s not our recipe, so we can say that without sounding like a self-promoter. It’s from Wine Bar Food, by Tony and Cathy Mantuano (of Spiaggia) and it’s filled with some unlikely combinations (Anthony's visited recipes from Wine Bar Food for a "Simple Cooking" post before; please check out his take on the Mantuano's faux gras — Sudo.). Oranges? Raw tomatoes? Clams? more ›

We might eat much more pasta than the average person. While we have a lot of great recipes in our arsenal, most of them follow the same basic pattern: make tasty sauce, boil pasta, put tab A in slot B and serve. This pasta recipe takes on a slightly different pattern, as the pasta finishes boiling in the wine sauce. This turns the pasta a deep burgundy and gives it a rich, slightly bitter flavor, complimented by the slight spice of the pepper. more ›

Here at Chicagoist, we like to keep it simple. On a freezing cold night like the ones we’ve been having lately, that means making tasty meals out of what you have in your refrigerator and your pantry. We don’t know about all of our readers, but if our pantry is any example, we don’t have quail eggs, fresh tarragon and homemade pasta sitting around after a week of avoiding grocery shopping. We usually do have onions, garlic and canned tomatoes. This pasta dish will impress any dinner guest. More importantly it’s quick, delicious and all the ingredients are things that any home cook has on hand. It takes about 20 minutes, but no one else needs to know that. more ›