Announcing “A Taste of Amore”

With a pinch of anxiety, a dash of nerves and a teaspoon of “what have I gotten myself into?”, I’m so proud to introduce my recipe collection website, A Taste of Amore, to you. What started (several iterations ago) as an Instagram-only account used to capture some of my regular meals, I realized I had an opportunity to more formally document and catalogue these recipes for myself, friends, family and anyone who was interested in trying them.

This isn’t meant to be a flashy endeavor and I certainly don’t have anything to sell, but I hope share my passion, and moreover a history-through-food of my family and others from the Puglia region of Italy. While I was born and raised in America, my heart (and taste buds) is in Molfetta, my parents’ hometown. This city and the region’s bright, simple ingredients are at the core of many of my dishes and continues to inspire my cooking every day.

This site won’t capture the highest-touch recipes with the most complex, daring preparations. Haute cuisine this is not. But — it will be authentic. Salt cod from salt-of-the-earth people.

And I hope you find me equally authentic. I am the girl who once questioned a friend’s mother in 1st grade, “why is this pasta yellow?” (I’d never seen mac-and-cheese before). My mother’s cooking and its influences are a common thread of my own life experiences. The Sunday pasta dinner after church and a visit to “the nonnas”, the oversized cookies at Easter, the frittelle on Christmas Eve. She has always been the best cook in the family and I hope I’m on track to make her proud with these renditions of some of her (and her mother’s, and her mother’s, etc.) classics.

So — with that, enjoy this initial set of recipes and try them yourself. I will be (hopefully) updating the site on a weekly basis.

Please feel free to reach out, connect, share feedback or even collaborate. Find me on Instagram at “a_taste_of_amore” and tell me what you think.

Looking forward to the next culinary adventure,

-Dore