Tina To Table

On Friday evening, after a trip upstate to do yoga with my friend Julie, I found myself roaming the streets of Astoria with a Dunkin’ Donuts hot cocoa in search of broccolini. Weird, right? My days of roaming the streets on Friday nights, and stumbling into bars, is a long gone memory of the past. Now I wear sweat pants or wide leg jeans, leggings and a sweatshirt if I want to feel “sexy” and troll for fresh produce. I’d like to think of this as a sign of maturity, although it feels more like a sign of giving up or a resoundingly loud and cotton clad resignation to being 44, low estrogen and single.

Read More

With Fall in full swing in New York, warming meals come to mind, but I’m not quite ready for stews. I figured I could hold on to a shred of summer by combining pasta with a hearty sausage and eggplant sauce, you know, in order to make it filling and Fall friendly. When I traveled to Rome on my own in 2016, I took myself out to a lovely and memorable dinner at a small restaurant off of the Spanish Steps. Surprisingly, the spot was not touristy and the waiters spoke to me in Italian even though I, Tina Marie Theresa Corrado of Italian heritage do not speak Italian. I speak Spanish, una mala Italiana, as I often tell my friends in Mexico. From a young age, I’ve been a lover of eggplant.

Read More

When I was a little girl, my father used to drive a Polly-O cheese truck. The truck was big, bright yellow, happy and filled with cheese, not unlike my dad. I thought it was cool that he delivered cheese to pizzerias because cheese makes most people happy and, well, I believed that those who could not eat cheese would generally be less happy. I still hold the same beliefs today (my sincerest apologies to vegans and those with lactose intolerance). My dad used to eat a lot of cheese and, so, I thought he would be happy forever. I also thought that he would live forever, and that nothing would ever change, but his age has been a marker of change. While his dementia has brought out a different side of my father, one that is varied and changes daily, his love of cheese has remained constant; tried and true. 

Read More

Somehow, at the end of every summer, I end up with an ABUNDANCE of zucchinis in the house. In the month of August, zucchinis are plentiful and inexpensive, hence the attractiveness of overbuying. Sure, I might not be buying much clothing or home goods any more, but somehow overbuying something is still in the addiction cards. I guess it could be worse than zucchini. The seniors in the house love zucchini, but I wanted to do more than pan fry, roast or grill it to serve it as a side or over pasta.

Read More

Living, I mean staying with my parents, has brought with it my official title as Sr. Manager of the Senior Center. Duties have included (but have not been limited to) cooking, finding new meal strategies and efficiencies, while also helping with house decluttering, organization, calling haulers to remove “junk” and donating goods. My favorite responsibilities are getting creative in the kitchen and playing word games with the seniors. Not every day is easy, but every day comes with a new learning or discovery about love, God, compassion and cottage cheese. 

Read More

During the summer of ‘88 my grandma made my dream come true.  She finally caved at the repeated request (can’t we have a pool?  why can’t we have a pool? there’s so much space in the yard for a pool?) and somehow managed to convince my grandfather that it was a good idea.  We had one of the biggest yards on the block, so much of it was going to waste - you know, like the huge garden we kept, rose bushes, grape vines, the cherry tree.  Get rid of that garbage, we could have a pool!  I was chubby, but man was I stoked at the thought of cannon balls

Read More

Pickling eggplant, preserving tomatoes and sun-drying zucchini were signs that summer was coming to a close in the Corrado household.  Late August through early September my family was purchasing and preserving fresh vegetables in an effort to stock up for cooler weather months.  Even in October, my grandmother’s sandwiches held on to summer. And since I wish to do the same as my grandmother, I went wacky with the pickling in memory of her. No your sandwiches can taste like summer all year long too.

Read More

Stepping into a fish market will always prove to be somewhat of a time machine. No matter where I’ve lived or traveled, the fish market is always loud, as loud as crashing waves that pound the sand on the beach with fury. The voices of men that can carry for miles and, that, realistically, do not need to be that loud in a small store. Salumeria’s work the same way. I think men who play with fish and meat are in a similar club, lots of bravado, knife skills and the moving of heavy protein, objects and machinery. I’m kind of also really into it. Men who cook and use their hands.

Read More

I’ve been told by a good friend, and trustworthy cook, that my bolognese is the best that he has ever had. If you knew my 6’5” honest to a fault friend, you would know that these words are to be taken as a compliment of the highest order. He is tall, can fill a room with laughter or fear, is brutally candid and equally kind. There are many reasons to love him, including the fact that he almost always picks up the phone when I need his advice. When we were on the phone, some weeks ago, before I left NY, we were catching up. Shooting the breeze about colonoscopies and the weekend. He said “We had dinner at a friend’s house. It was nice. He made bolognese. But it was no Tinamarie bolognese. I’ve yet to eat a bolognese that was that good ever again.”

Read More

I am shamelessly in my egg sandwich era. I’ve never enjoyed packaged bread with a never ending shelf life. Although I could, with little to no convincing, get down with bologna and mayo on two thick slices of Arnold Country White or take my Skippy PB with Welch's Grape Jelly on Wonder bread - all in the name of nostalgia. But, for now, I prefer to keep it classy with breakfast for dinner. I have always loved a soft scramble, frankly, anytime of day. I’ve said it many times, and I would never retract on the statement, eggs truly are the perfect food. Bright, filling, not heavy, and can be served with nearly any grain, pasta, bread or vegetable. It might seem simple or, even silly, to anyone who cooks professionally, but the art of cooking a perfectly scrambled egg is a true skill

Read More

After securing my half loaf of bread on Sunday afternoon, I came home and dunked one piece in olive oil with salt, a true test of a breads ability to stand up on its own. On Monday, I woke up and it was pouring. I mean, raining buckets, and while the birds chirped, the sky was dark. I found sunshine in making turmeric hummus, bright, golden, spicy and exactly what the day needed to alleviate darkness and welcome the possibility of light. I recalled a curried couscous mom used to make as a summer side and took those flavor profiles and melded some of them into a salad. Lunch would be bright, spicy, sweet, crunchy and make full use of the immersion blender that I packed with me and took to Mexico as my faithful cooking companion .

Read More

My love affair with bread began at a young age. It began sneaky, not seductively, but was it ever a grand and true love. Our house was always full of bread. Seeded loaves of semonlina, sliced bishop, loaves of Italian bread stowed away in the freezer, you know, just in case. There were bagels every Sunday after church, big, fat, doughy and round. The perfect specimen for butter and dipping; or both. My brother Louis and I would enter the house, rip the warm, semi-wet paper bag of bagels open and walk to the refrigerator to take out the Breakstone’s whipped butter. We’d each break our bagels open, by hand, uncivilized midget Italian heathen children, and stick the knife with a wad of butter right in the center. CHOMP. We would devour our buttered bagels and then take another, split it in half, and dunk it in the Sunday gravy when mom left the kitchen. We couldn’t get enough.

Read More

I'm not writing about this meal because I expect you to cook it. I mean, if you want to, please, go ahead. I placed the recipe all the way at the bottom. But this is really a tale of how I broke my own heart. About how I allowed myself to believe that a man would change his mind about me. Sad, I know, but pretty common - I think. And after we spent the weekend cooking, I lied to myself again and again. Three more times, in fact. But after that I was done, at least with the cooking part. To this day, I have never cooked with or for another man.
Here is our story. The story of how I lied to my heart, believed, cooked and burned myself. But my God, was the food we made together delicious. There was more than this timpano and, little by little, I’ll write those food stories too.

Read More

It’s been hot. So hot. So hot that cooking has been a chore, but I knew I needed to really settle in down and make something besides eggs. Sorry, eggs, you’ll always be the perfect food  but I’m ready to sweat for my meals. I think. Because of the heat, the walk up Cosijopi to Mercado Sanchez Pascuas didn’t seem like the best idea for my grocery haul and I was craving fish, which took me to Mercado de la Merced. Mercado de la Merced is a flat, close, 7 minute walk from my apartment and, bonus, it’s across the street from Marisqueria El Mulle - which is where I buy fish. I hadn’t been to Merced simply because I go to markets for different reasons, but I’ll get into that in another post. 

Read More

Often, the easiest way to walk back to myself, to walk back home, is through a market and into the kitchen. Sometimes, I don’t think there isn’t a single, solitary thing that a soft, runny egg, cannot cure. It’s been quite a month of change, having given up my apartment in New York City. I’m one of those rotten Brooklynites who left Brooklyn, fell hard for Queens, and never looked back. Now I’m one of those rotten former Queens dwellers who woke up in Oaxaca Mexico, as planned, for a 3.5 month trip. But I had no idea, in January, when I booked the ticket to Oaxaca, that I’d no longer have a home in NYC as of today.

Read More

Today is Easter Sunday - and I’m also approaching the one year anniversary of my re-constructed rack. So, it was only right to share tonight’s dinner with Channon - as she’s one of the many women who was there when I needed help the most. My boobs are tops, in my book, but they’re not meant for glazing or roasting.
So, the only other rack for me is - you guessed it - that of a lamb. Give it to me pink, and let me suck on the bones until there’s no flavor left.  Then, let me go in for one more gnaw - just to be sure I didn’t miss a stray bit of meat. At Easter, lamb was our thing, and I waited all year for it. Kinda how a kid waits for Santa Clause, that’s how I waited for lamb.

Read More

Easter holds a happy place in my heart.  No, not because I was the fat kid and my family would give me fruit baskets instead of chocolate to open up (every Easter morning for a number of years) that was terrible and traumatic. But because Easter - in our home - was celebrated with an all out protein party. We’re talking salamis, provolone, ricotta salata, hard boiled eggs, lamb and or goat. I still recall sitting in church, in my too tight and too pastel Easter costume - scalp itching from some stupid straw bonnet - with a bow, of course - fantasizing about young spring goat and lamb and how tasty and tender they are.  I was 9. What kind of 9 year old fantasizes about goat meat covered in wine, eggs, cheese and peas? 

Read More

If there’s anything that takes me back to the Easter Sunday’s of my past, it’s Pizza Rustica. Pizza Rustica is a traditional Italian meat pie.  Imagine quiche lorraine on crack.  Or as Mindy Saraco, pork and cheese aficionado, put it: Pizza Rustica is like Lard Bread on steroids.  Lard Bread is meat and cheese stuffed bread and this is its dirty baked pie counterpart.  Imagine a cured meat and cheese cornucopia which includes: prosciutto, sopressata, boiled ham, pancetta, provolone, ricotta salata, locatelli, mozzarella and ricotta – all baked into a buttery homemade pastry shell (with 12 eggs to bind all the goodness together– in the pie and to your arteries).  There are variations on the meat combinations (and the cheese too), but I went with what I remembered.  

Read More