This week, I had big plans to move on from covering my month-long trip to Italy, France, and England. I've talked about it in this column for three straight weeks, after all.

But it seemed plain wrong not to mention the cheese-laden food find that made possibly the most impact on me: an alarmingly perfect pizza in the small industrial city of Foggia, Italy. So if I may indulge in just a bit more reminiscing, I'll share not only the topping, which I think can be easily replicated, but also the thing found in every pizzeria in Italy that makes pizza sing. More

I've been gone for the past month, traveling in Italy, England, and France. What I've known about the New York cheese scene was only reaffirmed: we have the world's best cheeses at our fingertips, excellent cheese shops with knowledgeable cheesemongers, and access to some of the most unique new cheeses around.

But sometimes, there's nothing like getting away. Here, my first installment from abroad: my findings on cheese in Italy, plus my favorite cheese while I was there. More

Sometimes there are so many bad renditions of a foreign dish, it takes a trip out of the country to realize how good the original is. That's how it was with focaccia for chef Nancy Silverton. One taste of the real thing in southern Italy sent her on a quest for the secrets of making great focaccia, which she shared in the LA Times last week. More

Do you like espresso? And dark chocolate? Together? These are the questions a friend asked before placing a retro-looking wrapped candy in my palm. I unwrapped it, ready to take a bite, when she just about knocked the piece of chocolate out of my hand. You can't just bite into half of Pocket Coffee, for one crucial reason. More

"Our mother made us, but our grandmother raised us. She taught us these things when we were very young: to go and put wood on the fire, to hand roll the pasta, to help with the bread or the slaughter. It's a lovely and natural thing to learn to cook first by the side of one's grandmother"
-- Carluccia More

Any lovers of Amarone out there? Despite being one of Italy's most symbolic wines it is little understood and often much under-appreciated. A recent tasting of the best the region has to offer certainly opened my mind. More

During this month of Escapes we asked some of our food blogger friends to share their food experiences and home cooking inspiration from travel and faraway places. Here's a Roman trattoria-style recipe from the delightful Maggie of Pithy & Cleaver.

When a friend of mine moved to Rome, I was consumed with pasta envy: every day, he could get amazing Spaghetti Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe, Bucatini all' Amatriciana...what a life! More

When we were in Italy in June, we stayed at a friend's house that, as luck would have it, was down the road from a fantastically fertile wild cherry tree. Each morning we'd hike up to it and fill our hats. One morning we even used the rental car as a ladder in order to reach some more choice branches.

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We've been here in Florence for a few days, wandering the bumpity-bump streets jet-lagged with a two-year-old who has finally had her first slurps of gelato and refers to fresh porcini as "meat" that she wants to "chunk." For the uninitiated, to chunk it is to take a bite out of something; new culinary vocabulary we might all want to add to our culinary lexicon. Even a two-year old knows Italy makes you dive deep into your mind for ways to describe eating. More

Brunello is a red Italian wine varietal made from a specific clone of Sangiovese grapes and grown in the area surrounding the town of Montalcino in Tuscany. It was first developed in the 14th century and is one of the top Italian wines, and considered to be among one of the best in the world. However, it may be banned in the US. Why? More