Okay, you might know by now that I will be participating in an interesting challenge. There are a group of 7 of us (oops, it’s really 9) who are going to cook our way through Marcella Hazan’s book “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”. Remember Julie doing that with Julia Child’s book? Well, what normal person with a normal life can cook a recipe every single day for over a year? No one I know! So that’s why there are 9 of us sharing this challenge. We were each assigned a day of the week we will post. That’s where the 9 participants come in-there are two days that rather than just one person being responsible, two will share that responsibility. My day to post will be Thursdays. So for the next 62 weeks you will see on my blog a recipe from “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”. Yes, that means that my last post will be on June 2, 2011. In my posts, I will not be giving the recipes-you can buy the book and enjoy cooking many of the recipes along with us. I will give you a synopsis of the process and then share my results.
Our rules for this challenge were pretty simple-
1. Follow the recipe. No tinkering around with the recipe.
2. We would take the recipes as they came in the book. No trading. Even if you got stuck with something that you’d really prefer not to try (I’ll give you two examples-tripe and lamb’s kidneys).
3. Since seasonal & fresh is the basis for all good Italian cooking, it’s ok if we cook ahead and save our post until the appropriate date.
We were originally just going to post on Facebook. But we decided to set up a blog exclusively for this challenge, along with posting on Facebook. So if you’re on Facebook, send a friend request to Pomodori E Vino, our name. Then watch for our daily postings. If you’re not on Facebook, or just want to follow our posts on a blog, here’s where you’ll find it. And as mentioned earlier, you’ll find the recipes I cook every Thursday here on my Baked Alaska blog.
I hope you’ll follow our progress and offer your comments and words of support along the way. I know it will be challenging at times, but it’s a challenge I’m really looking forward to.