tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-210742562012-01-08T19:33:09.185-05:00It all started in October 2002. I didn’t have a job so decided to spend time cooking food from all over the world from A to Z. It took 2 years to go through the alphabet once. At the beginning of the second round I decided to document my dinners in a blog to share the experience with friends and family. Work commitments slowed me down so it took 5 years to go from A to Z again but I finally got there and am looking forward to continue on my culinary journey. Would you like to come for dinner?Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.comBlogger381100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-88401869228824865652012-01-01T23:59:00.001-05:002012-01-01T23:59:58.165-05:00

Happy New Year! It just dawned on me that I cooked an alphabetical dinner exactly one year ago in Italy. My sister Maristella and her husband Jacopo kindly let me and Eric mess up their kitchen in exchange for some Indonesian fare.  And they still brag about how good it was.  This also means that it took 12 months to go through another 8 countries and I think this is actually not bad at all

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-86541065939292173262011-12-28T21:21:00.001-05:002011-12-28T21:23:40.516-05:00

Another trip to memory land... this one to my first L country: Laos.  My email distribution list was getting bigger and interestingly even though it was in Italian there were a few Americans who were hoping to learn the language. Here is the translation of the email I sent on March 31st 2003: "After a few weeks of culinary silence, primarily due to the fact that I joined Weight Watchers, I

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-58641634777857385922011-12-26T21:41:00.001-05:002011-12-26T21:56:49.073-05:00

In the spirit of documenting the past, I have recently (like a year ago...) started to post all the recipes of the alphabetical dinners I prepared and hosted before I started the blog.  When I first started I didn't write about the dinner itself but after a while I started to send an email to a few faithful Italian friends and to my sisters and slowly the list grew.  Below is a translation of

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-23217573275599703192011-11-06T17:06:00.000-05:002011-11-06T17:06:27.222-05:00

The lilies have bloomed!  Elaine was a bit worried that the lovely vase of lilies she brought Eric and I wouldn't open up but instead we woke up to find some really beautiful flowers on our kitchen island. Now, a week later, they are still really beautiful and their scent is almost powerful enough to almost cover up the smell of the great chili Eric made on Tuesday, and of the pork roast & the

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-77644587272301840192011-09-17T18:40:00.001-04:002011-09-17T18:40:23.128-04:00

I was recently invited to a Japanese cooking demo in a fancy appliances store by my friend Kako. With fancy appliances store I don't mean to say the store was fancy, but the appliances were really something. One thing that truly caught my attention was a steamer; I've had an electric steamer at some point in my cooking life - that was in London, I probably purchased it at a catalogue store and

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-4996750995425939772011-07-31T21:44:00.000-04:002011-07-31T21:44:02.952-04:00

I need more parsnip in my life.  It looks like a pale carrot and it tastes like... uh... a parsnip really.  When I lived in England I used to eat it occasionally but I don't recall ever having it since moving to Atlanta.  So when one of the recipes for my dinner featuring Dutch food was calling for parsnip I jumped at the occasion to eat it again and I was glad I did.  It was delicious.  There

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-53025688842813566832011-06-05T20:14:00.000-04:002011-06-05T20:14:07.320-04:00

It is so freaking hot!  My brain is melting.  They say that after 40 your body begins to change.  I have not noticed any significant change in the actual look of it but if I didn't know any better, I'd be thinking that I'm having hot flashes! Last year (2010) I remember I could never get warm all the way through May.  Then in the summer it was hot but I don't recall suffering.  This year, I am. 

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-13759822447215760352011-05-01T22:43:00.001-04:002011-05-01T22:44:16.008-04:00

As I was preparing my Lebanese dinner on Friday night and then Saturday morning, I became more and more confused as to why a country with such wonderful cuisine would ever want to get into a war... do you know that scene from "Legally Blonde" where Elle is explaining to the rest of the lawyer team why Brooke could not possibly be guilty? "Happy people don't kill their husbands... they just don't"

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-80008600146855495362011-04-03T21:43:00.000-04:002011-04-03T21:43:49.798-04:00

Everyone, repeat after me: Ki-ri-bass.  That's how you pronounce this country located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean.  It's composed by 32 atolls (not even islands...) and 1 coral island and apparently it used to be called "Gilbert Islands.  I have never heard of either, and any information about the country is courtesy of Wikipedia, however Eric had at least heard of the Gilbert Islands,

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-87973976712026624912011-02-20T13:47:00.002-05:002011-02-20T21:24:18.574-05:00

It is beginning to appear that my New Year's Resolution to never again through away any food is turning into a curse: Eric and I are still eating leftovers from my 40th birthday party in January and now I also have a considerable amount of leftovers from last night's dinner.  Thankfully Jan and Jeff were happy to take some home with them and Joanne, who couldn't come since she returned late from

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-82425691971112267342011-01-03T13:19:00.000-05:002011-01-03T13:19:48.144-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Florence offers a great variety of international ingredients. I guess time passed there too.  In 2011, it will be 20 years since I left Italy and the way I remember it, it was not very culturally diverse and an ethnic dinner was fried rice, chicken with cashew nuts and fried ice cream at a Chinese restaurant. It would probably be fair to also note that at

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-40099031935544604182010-12-19T21:25:00.004-05:002010-12-23T10:43:08.378-05:00

Despite the fact that I had already planned to have Hungarian night on December 18th a few months ago, I was about to cancel it last week when Eric suggested we went to a new Chinese restaurant's opening.  But as fate would want it, he waited too long to RSVP and the place was full.  So, I decided to go ahead with my original plans and hosted a Hungarian Christmas dinner.  In reality, I really

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-31427174030879539262010-11-15T21:45:00.003-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.841-05:00

Sometimes there is no better way of making an international dinner "international" than preparing it with a friend visiting from outside the country.  My friend Kristiane was visiting from London and I asked her whether she would have liked to help me prepare and host one of my alphabetical dinner. She was very enthusiastic at the idea and loved the planning and shopping side of things... then I

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-18206281400952135452010-10-23T19:09:00.003-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.848-05:00

"No, the rien, no, je regret de rien..." All the butter All the cream.... Yes, it was real not a dream.... The above would sound even better with on the tune of Edith Piaf which was, by the way, in the background for much of the evening but I very much doubted anyone noticed. If I could describe this evening in just one word, butter would be it.  That all food tastes absolutely delicious when

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-63648421573028149832010-09-26T14:16:00.020-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.855-05:00

The world isn't what it used to be.... Literally: when I first started cooking in alphabetical order, East Timor had just won its independence from Indonesia after a long and bloody war. I am not sure when it was finally recognized by the rest of the world as a sovereign country but it is only on my third round that I have finally realized I had to retrace my steps to the top of the E list and

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-88820958837952331092010-08-29T10:42:00.014-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.860-05:00

It would appear that my laptop has finally died... It has been moribund for a while but somehow we always managed to revive its struggling heart until last night, while trying to load a Bob Marley CD to play during dinner on my iPod, the screen erupted into a multitude of colors, flashed green emeralds, yellow diamonds and red rubies in front of my eyes and then disappeared into a black hole like

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-85451443395951586212010-06-25T13:46:00.023-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.867-05:00

When I asked my work colleagues if anyone knew where I might find fiddleheads, they all gave one of their blank stares that really mean: here she goes again, what is she after this time? I work in a large open space and I am known for just stopping what I do an average of 10 times an hour and ask questions to the group at large (read: whoever is around that can hear). I thought that perhaps

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-46675061323717983742010-05-30T20:18:00.027-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.873-05:00

It was a lucky coincidence that I arranged to have lunch with Neeta, a colleague and friend of mine who is from India, one day before hosting a Bangladeshi dinner. She and I had a wonderful Indian meal at Cafe Bombay, about 4 miles from my house and while lunching on chicken dipped in spicy yogurt sauces, accompanied by lovely fresh roti (she knows every waiter there and of course she got us

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-83349164017534501072010-05-02T17:06:00.018-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.881-05:00

Back to A. Not as in back to square one, mind you, since I definitely have come a long way since that day in the fall of 2002 when I started the culinary journey across the world... back to A as in Algeria. Now, this is a country that has a special meaning to me since I actually knew quite a bit about it already and had had many many Algerian style dinners in the past: it so happens that my first

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-27173096234173684212010-03-14T18:09:00.011-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.887-05:00

I hosted an Albanian dinner in early June 2005 so this means that it took me almost 5 years to go through the alphabet the second time round. That happens when work gets in the way of entertaining friends. But it is bad form to complain about working these days since I suppose one should just be happy one has a job. Mine has actually recently changed and since I can't complain about the job as

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-4035229198984584002009-11-23T22:46:00.010-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.893-05:00

Great timing: the Rosaries have just arrived. A couple of days too late perhaps but after that sacrilegious night of blasphemy they might still be handy. It's just as well that this isn't a very superstitious (or religious) household or we would really be in trouble. Did I tickle your curiosity yet? Good, read on. I really didn't intend to include the Vatican City in the list of my culinary

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-89452987319616258442009-11-02T20:47:00.019-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.899-05:00

The invitation was clear: wear your best interpretation of what a Ukrainian look like. I had ten people expected for dinner and for once I actually got a little better organized; I sent out the invitations well in advance so to give enough time to everyone to find suitable attire. Except that in my case, I failed to get my creative colleagues at work to take enough pity on me and actually make me

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-14283271065912153832009-09-27T18:37:00.012-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.905-05:00

It's the day after the dinner and it seems like it's finally stopped raining. I don't remember having seen anything like this ever before (and that's saying a lot for someone who lived in London for 11 years): days of heavy rain - I mean really heavy - like if you were out for 1 minute it would be the equivalent of a shower, like if you're driving and a big car drives past you in the opposite

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-44210743493196891742009-08-09T17:10:00.021-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.910-05:00

I've recently read Julie & Julia, a book - now a movie - about a girl in NYC who starts a blog about a challenge she posed to herself in 2002: to cook all the recipes from Julia Childs' "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year. What do you know, she's got herself quite a following on her blog and finally landed both a book deal and now a movie deal. Mmmm... I guess I was setting my

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-73083695759165629672009-05-12T21:22:00.009-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.915-05:00

It was a stormy, dark, cold night... oh come on now, we ate Russian food but we were in Atlanta not in Russia! And although the weather has been wet and weird lately (with several powerful storms), it's hardly cold and dark in May around here. But there, I always wanted to open up by writing something like this. Very Wuthering heights (or however it's spelled). I have been looking forward to

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-52611829752859717802009-01-19T10:38:00.025-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.923-05:00

This was another of those countries I've barely heard of before I decided to make a meal to represent its cuisine. OK, perhaps I should take out the barely: honestly, I'd never heard of Palau and given its size and relatively unimportance, I'm not that surprised. Turned out, though, that's it is a really popular scuba diving destination (Eric says there's a few derelict II World War warships

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-62506968983349617912008-07-25T20:04:00.017-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.930-05:00

Maybe it's the effect of Mount Everest, but Nepal really has a very exotic appeal to me. And this is not a word I would normally choose to describe anything that doesn't have white beaches and palm trees but somehow Nepal really is exotic. Such a small country in between 2 huge countries (India and China) but with the tallest mountain in the world. You can almost hear it nagging at India and

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-82088850303146044212008-05-15T21:19:00.005-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.937-05:00

I have most definitely fallen behind on my entertaining curve lately. In fact this was my first alphabetical dinner of 2008 and we’re already in May; at this rate, I expect that the world will have changed shape 3 times over by the time I manage to go over all the countries – what the hell, with all these wars happening left and right there are bound to be different borders in the near future.

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-52209783009800972212007-10-14T20:07:00.006-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.943-05:00

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I have been quite busy in the past couple of weeks and so I haven't had a chance to write about my latest culinary adventure in Latvia (by way of my stove and my dining room) until now. I wasn't only busy because of work, though, as last week end Eric and I made a trip to San Francisco. What a wonderful week-end, we went out on a boat with his friend Scott and

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-49649144192127134072007-08-26T17:51:00.003-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.948-05:00

I had planned this dinner well in advance... I want to say, probably 3 weeks in advance to make sure I had enough time to prepare and also I had planned it around some deadline at work, so imagine how upset I was when management at work moved the deadline with little notice and almost demanded that I cancel my plans. I must have missed the sign that said: "give up your personal life upon entering

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-19216735336840261512007-07-15T16:57:00.003-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.956-05:00

Whilst French might have been more appropriate on Bastille Day, I am glad that I finally managed to organize another of my alphabetical dinners and continue on the journey to culinary discovery... The idea of cooking Japanese food is probably quite daunting to most people that have ever ventured to a sushi bar. Seeing the sushi chef handling those huge knives and coming up with the littlest

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-7982077932808595822007-02-04T21:28:00.003-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.963-05:00

The fact that we are in 2007 is disconcerning enough since I feel like it was just yesterday that we were preparing for the Y2K bug and the plans for the new year's celebration was a simple trip down to the Thames to see the fireworks with Simo (it ended up being a full dinner with lots of people at my house, then a trip to the Big Ben - never made it to the Thames, the crowd was just too thick -

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1167096062375175112006-12-25T20:20:00.005-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.968-05:00

It was a surprisingly balmy evening last Friday, December 22nd: a little too warm for Christmas if you ask me, then again, the weather has been really bizarre in the last few weeks (months? Years??)… Reports were coming from everywhere in the US and Europe that it was simply a little too warm for December. Global warming? Maybe. Certainly for those of us that went to see “An Inconvenient Truth”,

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1162775290219138682006-11-05T19:42:00.004-05:002010-12-21T19:01:33.973-05:00

Where did the summer go??? I think I fell asleep and then I woke up and it was November. Well, not quite. What happened is that I've got another job and ended up doing my old job plus my new job plus my new boss' job who as soon as he hired me announced that he was moving to Australia. Lucky him! But what a hell for me. Anyway, got a new boss (a nice one), they hired a replacement for my old

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1151272286674469112006-06-25T17:51:00.004-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.977-05:00

"Finland, Finland, Finland. The country where I want to be, pony trekking or camping, or just watching TV, Finland, Finland, Finland. It's the country for me. You're so near to Russia. So far from Japan, Quite a long way from Cairo, Lots of miles from Vietnam. Finland, Finland, Finland. The country where I want to be, Eating breakfast or dinner, Or snack lunch in the Hall, Finland, Finland,

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1147629387513342202006-05-14T13:56:00.003-04:002010-12-21T19:01:33.981-05:00

It was a strange day yesterday... I woke up (or better Amanda woke me up) fairly early and the weather was gorgeous... lovely blue sky and a really nice breeze. I had just enough time to pick up the zucchini blossoms from my garden and it started to pour down. Then it stopped, then it started again, then it stopped and started again. And on it went pretty much all day so that it even spoiled the

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1143390318494838872006-03-26T11:09:00.003-05:002010-12-21T18:57:13.635-05:00

It was not a written New Year's resolution, but I had it in my mind to cook and host an alphabetical dinner at least once a month... Well, what happened to February then? I did cook and host a dinner but it was our annual Seafood Lasagna (Eric and I version of Valentine's day - a lot more fun than the real thing!) so I didn't really have much time to organize a "D" dinner as well. The "D" dinner

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21074256.post-1137465169080078232006-01-16T20:48:00.004-05:002010-12-21T18:56:54.023-05:00

It's almost funny how many people have asked me if I was cooking some kind of diet food when I first mentioned that I was planning a Cameroonian dinner... I think they thought it was some kind of spin off from Atkins or something as weird. Of course one should be shocked at the thought that there are people who do not know that Cameroon is in fact an African nation but, hey, I've never heard of

Rossana Rocchinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134657161410419813noreply@blogger.com7