I have no intention to set intentions

The new year and the absence of resolutions | A new cookbook crush: Via Carota | A new recipe: ricotta cheesecake with dark chocolate hazelnut spread

I stopped writing my new year’s resolutions years ago when I introduced the habit of choosing a word that would guide me through the next 12 months. Through the years I have carefully picked craft, seasonality, ahead… some words worked better than others. This year, though, there are no resolutions or words.

There’s a business plan, as that aspect of our life needs to be guarded and organized, but apart from that, I have no intention to set intentions.

Maybe it’s because I’m older now (41 candles last July), or because Livia taught us to live in the moment, in the here and now, grabbing our faces with two hands when we are distracted by a notification and she wants our undivided attention. Or maybe it was this sentence I read in Things Worth Knowing with Farrah Storr a couple of weeks ago.

The stuff we didn’t plan for, or crave or dream about when we went to sleep at night. The best moments, in hindsight, are never the expected ones.

Her newsletter is one of the gifts of 2022. I rarely felt such a deep connection with someone’s writing. Every time, I feel like she is writing directly to me, knowing my inner thoughts, fears, hopes: it make me laugh, it makes me reflect, it inspires me and challenges me, giving me new perspectives on writing and art, on being forty, and on life.

Unexpected, in the early days of 2023, came also one of the best cheesecakes I have ever made, an Italian ricotta cheesecake inspired by Rita Sodi and Jodi Williams’ recipe for Sweet Ricotta Cake in their Via Carota, one of my favourite cookbooks of 2022, if not my favourite.

2022 Cookbook Crush: Via Carota

Even though the book was published in October 2022, it quickly became my favourite cookbook of the year. The authors are Rita Sodi, owner of I Sodi in New York, Jody Williams, owner of Buvette, and Anna Kovel. Rita Sodi and Jody Williams are life and business partners, as they also co-own the restaurant Via Carota. [You can read more about their partnership and love story in this old New York Times article, Via Carota, a Love Story.]

Recipes are fresh, vegetable-focused, and inspired by ingredients and seasons. There’s nothing in this book I wouldn’t cook, nothing I wouldn’t eat. These two quotes pulled from the introduction perfectly explain their philosophy, which shines through in recipes such as Stracci con Pesto di Fave (fresh pasta squares with fave pesto), Carpaccio di Asparagi Bianchi (shaved raw white asparagus with aged balsamic), or Sottobosco (shaved porcini, walnuts, and blueberries).

Is The Via Carota Cookbook a vegetarian cookbook? Maybe a better description is “vegetable forward.”

While we often talk about breaking with tradition in our cooking, eating a vegetable-focused diet is, in fact, traditional. Via Carota food is simple. The ingredients are at its core.

What is Italian food? This, exactly this. It means putting ingredients on the forefront, following seasonality, embracing a simpler, traditional yet extremely modern way of cooking and eating.

Via Carota Cookbook is all of this, and much more: you find delicious, easy-to-replicate Italian recipes, bits of history and glimpses of personal life, and the beautiful, warm photography of Andrea Gentl & Martin Hyers.

This is the kind of food I’m fond of, when it goes beyond traditions and strict rules. This is the way I’m trying to cook during cooking classes, to teach a new approach to Italian food, and hopefully the kind of food you find here and on our blog.

RECIPE - Italian ricotta cheesecake with dark chocolate hazelnut spread

To make this cheesecake, I followed Via Carota‘s recipe for ricotta cake – a perfect recipe! I’ve been searching for years for a cheesecake with an Italian flair, and ricotta gave me that feeling, along with a delicious lightness. I added also a crust made with some of the most common breakfast cookies we have in Italy, Oro Saiwa, but you could use regular Digestive cookies.

I picked a dark chocolate hazelnut spread as a topping for my Italian ricotta cheesecake, as it perfectly complements its fresh, citrus flavour and its light texture given by the ricotta and mascarpone cheese.

You can find the new recipe on the blog.

If you make this recipe, share it via email and send me a picture at juls@julskitchen.com, or on Social Media using the hashtags #myseasonaltable #julskitchen and #lettersfromtuscany, and tag @julskitchen

PRE-ORDER our cookbook Cucina Povera

The book will be available everywhere books are sold on April 4 2023, but is available for preorder now. For anyone who preorders, please keep your receipts for a surprise bonus coming your way in a couple of weeks.

The Italians call it l’arte dell’arrangiarsi, or the “art of making do with what you’ve got.” This centuries-old approach to ingredients and techniques, known as cucina povera, or peasant cooking, reveals the soul of Italian food at its best. It starts with the humblest components—beans and lentils, inexpensive fish and cuts of meat, vegetables from the garden, rice, pasta, leftovers—and through the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the cook, results in unforgettably delicious and satisfying meals. Read more about the book here.

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