March marks the month-long celebration of my birthday bringing together friends and family, heartfelt presents and gift receipts. But more importantly, March is the unofficial-official beginning of Zeppole month. This Italian dessert is usually made once a year to celebrate St. Joseph’s day, but for local bakeries, they take the entire month and the opportunity to produce these light and fluffy doughnut-like treats to satiate cravings that have been building up over the past year.
Category:
Saint-Édouard
I hit up this spot on the edge of Little Italy that is practically the antithesis of anything related to Italian cuisine… if you don’t count meat-sweats and taking a nap after a big meal. We’re talking about BBQ, and not backyard pits that you nonno tirelessly tends to in between hosing down the driveway and fertilizing tomato plants – but the likes of which will make you question everything you’ve ever known about what you think you know.
So what’s your pasta style? Are you a straight up tomato sauce kind of person? Meat sauce? Alfredo? Salad? Or are you like me and like your pasta in a red sauce, but the next day in a sandwich with cold cuts? Strange right? But try it, and you can thank me later! I ask because recently I almost forgot what it was like to eat good pasta. Wait stop, I mean, GOOD pasta – the type of pasta where when you eat it, you’re convinced that the restaurant or chef has some sort of secret supply of pasta. You believe that it’s next to impossible to get pasta like that at home unless you flour up the kitchen, make a mess and make your own; and even then enough of it will stick to everything and your whole process won’t yield more than a biteful… Don’t ask me how I know.
You know that feeling when your nonna gives you a great big hug, then slobbers a smackeroonie on each cheek, her moustache pokes and tickles your face, then she tells you to go get something to eat in the kitchen? No? Not Italian? Neither am I, but I can imagine it. However, the closest thing I can get to this warm fuzzy feeling it is hitting up one of my favourite spots on the edge of Littally (Little Itally – get it? I’m so funny) called Tre Marie.