Tribute to Roma

Recently Saveur magazine featured Roman food.  As if reading about eating in Rome was not inspirational enough, the pictures did me in.  I just had to cook these dishes–or as many of them as I could–I settled on tackling four.  An ambitious meal for a weeknight, but well worth it!

I’ll let the photos do most of the work on this post.  They’ll do more justice than writing possibly could, but in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I learned that balsamic vinegar and butter can catch on fire (oopsy daisy).  Watch it closely if you’re cooking on a gas stove when starting the pork dish.  Thankfully my husband wasn’t home yet, so there are no pictures of the flames or smokey kitchen that resulted.

Maiale in Agrodolce

With every burner on the stove going, running to the backyard to grill the pork wasn’t feasible for me, but I bet it would be even more delicious had I grilled it.

Cacio e Pepe

Adding pasta put this meal over the top in terms of quantity of food, but I was dying to try this simple pasta dish.  I should have been a little more liberal with the pepper!

Broccoli Strascinati

Not for the faint of heart when it comes to garlic.

Finocchio con Latte al Forno

If you clicked on this link (or know Italian), then you know this is a fennel dish.  I must appeal to those of you who think you hate fennel because it tastes like licorice.  Raw, yes, it does, and I can’t stand it.  But cooking fennel can completely eliminate the anise-y flavor.  The preparation here seems very odd (braising in milk?  Really?).  I was quite skeptical, but it was absolutely delicious.

I would like to dedicate this post to Tami, who I hope can taste vicariously through me!  It is for her that I post only the Italian names of these dishes.