From Libellula's Kitchen & Land — organic olive oil

In the early hours of December 21, 1935, New York City’s mayor strolled into the bronx market followed by a dozen policemen.Hopping up onto the back of a cabbage truck, mayor LaGuardia turned and addressed the assembled farmers and street vendors.Starting in one week, the mayor announced, New York City will be instituting a total ban on the sale, display, or possession of a “a serious & threatening” commodity.This substance, which had been funding a vast underground mafia network, was the humble artichoke.You see, two decades earlier, a couple of Italian farmers out in California had started growing a crop...

Lucia was unusual from a young age.As a child, she highly unimpressed with the stuck up attitude of wealthy Italians.So, during church services, she would sneak under the pews and cut off the bottoms of wealthy women’s dresses.The unsuspecting women would only later realize what had happened as they stood to leave church, aghast at their ruined skirts.As Lucia grew, so did her captivating beauty.But she staunchly refused any offers of marriage, declaring she had absolutely no desire to rely on men who always seemed so certain of their gender’s superiority.By the time she was a teenager, Lucia would dress...

In the early 1100s, an evil duke named Guido III ruled the small Italian town of Ivrea. Now Guido was your typical cruel ruler; mean to his servants, demanding taxes so high that his townspeople were on the brink of starvation, and handing out harsh punishments to anyone who dared to disagree with him. But one night, Guido took his cruelty one step too far. On a snowy winter's evening, Violetta, the miller’s daughter had just sat down to her wedding feast. Beautiful, brave, and spirited, Violetta was beloved by the whole town. And as such her wedding to the...

You’ve probably eaten polpette many times before. But you would’ve called them by their English name: meatballs! In Italy, polpette are almost never served with pasta. Instead, Italians enjoy polpette as an antipasto or side dish. So if you try to order spaghetti with meatballs while in Italy, you’ll get some funny looks. This recipe for polpette comes from Abruzzo, a sunny region in central Italy. Unlike most meatballs you’ve had before, these are vegetarian and known as “pallotte.” Frying the pallotte in sunflower oil prevents them from becoming too dense, while the final drizzle of extra virgin olive oil...