"babbo" news and stories

And now, as the Monty Python group would say, for something completely different . . . and, in truth, something wild, we offer up a Wednesday side of ramps. A little bit garlic, a little bit leek, ramps are wild members of the Allium family. If you're lucky enough to find them growing rampantly (sorry!) in a field or being offered at the farmers market, grab them and sauté them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and eat them just like that. Or sauté the bulbs with garlic and sherry and wilt the leaves with lemon and shallots, as blogger garrettkern did, above, and serve them with griddle corn cakes and a swirl of sour cream.

Ramps are delicious in a creamy soup that also includes sweet onions (keeping it in the family). But I think my favorite ramps dish is one from Manhattan restaurant Babbo, which one of its former chefs, Yoshi Yamada, shared with Gourmet readers a couple of years ago. The recipe uses both bulb and leaf, mixes in breadcrumbs, and is a beautiful celebration of spring.

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Mario Batali. Photo: Bauer-Griffin.

Mario Batali's on the hook for some back rent. According to a suit filed Sept. 4, the celebrity chef and his business partner Joseph Bastianich, owe $75,000 for their now defunct seafood restaurant, the John Dory.

"It's going to be settled," Bastianich told the New York Daily News on Wednesday. "We've returned the space back to the landlord, and the rent is going to be paid today or tomorrow."

The pair were guarantors of the failed restaurant, the Daily News reports.

'Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes From My Two Villages'
By Mario Batali
Photographs by Mark Ferri
Clarkson Potter -- 1998
Buy it on Amazon

More than a decade ago -- long before Del Posto, Otto and road trips through Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow -- Mario Batali had two restaurants, Pó and Babbo, and was just beginning to grow his rock-'n'-roll, orange-Croc-wearing legend through the Food Network.

It's there that we find him with "Mario Batali Simple Italian Food," his first cookbook, which takes readers through the tastes of Borgo Capanne, where Batali worked in Trattoria La Volta on the border of the Italian regions Emilia-Romagna and Toscana, as well as his other "village," New York.

Batali divides the recipes of these villages by color: The orange-titled ones are those he invented in New York; the brown titles are those he learned in Italy.

See what we tested and whether it's worth buying after the jump.

Until this Monday, Babbo Pastry Chef Gina DePalma was the Kate Winslet of the culinary world, earning six James Beard Award nominations for the honor of Outstanding Pastry Chef but never taking the cake. The seventh time, though, proved to be the ... er ... icing. We caught up with DePalma this morning to chat about victory, pastry, her battle with ovarian cancer and her boss, the boisterous Mario Batali (aka Mr. Fanta Pants).

What did it feel like to the finally win a James Beard Award?
I tried not to break down into tears. I tried to keep myself together up there. After seven years, you try to emotionally turn yourself off. In past years I thought it was such a big deal to win, but it still felt good.

Is that why you were emotional on stage? That was part of it. It's also been a very tough year for me. I don't know if you know, I have been battling ovarian cancer. I was diagnosed four days after my sixth loss. I had a huge operation and went through chemo and lost all my hair. I am still in treatment. It was stage four. It was end of the line, but they got it all in surgery.

Hear why salted caramels should die and why DePalma is afraid to rock orange crocs after the jump.