Antica Corte Pallavicina, Polesine Parmense

February saw central Italy experiencing over a metre of snow and my research itinerary took me bang slap in the middle of the chaos. Bologna airport closed and I ended up in Venice with all the motorways closed. Not good, given I should have been enjoying the hospitality of Antica Corte Pallavicina. More »

Food Map Italy

I’ve added a new section to my blog: Food Map Italy. The idea behind it is put everything that I like to do with food and wine on the map so interested folk can track stuff down for themselves. It covers food and producers that I mention in the blog, but also other things – particularly wine – which I think are great, but don’t blog about. The map is very much in its infancy and I’ll be adding to it through the year. Please tell me what you think.

Cooking for Christmas

Gosh, blogging and book writing don’t go together, especially in the run up to Christmas. This year there is no opportunity for a turkey (that’s okay) or goose (deep sigh, I spose there’s still time tomorrow to go buy one).  We’re having a ‘family and friends left behind in London open house’ on Christmas Eve. My head has been full of how to condense the subject of pasta into 2000 words, not rustle up cheese straws, so I’ve ordered canapés from Marks and Spencer to supplement the gravadlax and game pie  I’ve made (more about that in another post). I’m about to have a go at Nigella Lawson’s Clementine almond cake as a lighter alternative to the usual fruit cake. A girlfriend bought it over for a school reunion supper party the other week and it was delicious.

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Piave cheese salad

I’ve been commissioned to write a book on Italian food called ‘Mangiare – Eating Italy at Home’, due to be published in Spring 2013. Only I have 6 months to write it, gulp.

So I’ve been working on the cheese section (3000 words, or thereabouts) and have enlisted the support of Antonio Maurizio Gaetani and the folk at Gastronomica – specifically, Joseph Tchikou, the manager at the Borough Market stall. He’s an Italian speaking Scot of Russian descent. The owner, Marco Vineis, hails from Piedmont – and that region is particularly well represented in their cheese selection. More »

Drogheria della Rosa Bologna

Billy and I wandered past Drogheria della Rosa, tucked away down a back street in central Bologna and thought we’d made a find; surely no other tourists could have found such a charming little restaurant, situated  as it is in a colonnaded row of hairdressers and beauty parlours. Well, it seems from a brief google search that it’s firmly on the map and locals and tourists alike are happy to search it out.

We had a great fun when we had Sunday lunch there. The owner, Emanuele Addone, is a larger than life character happy to chat to all his clients. The small dining room also encourages customers to chat to one another (if you speak Italian), which is just the sort of thing my husband likes to do whether he speaks the lingo or not. So I s’pose if you’re a curmudgeonly so and so, or someone who likes temples of gastronomy where everyone whispers in reverential tones – don’t eat here! Leave it for jolly folk who like good food at reasonable prices.  More »

Casa Monica Bologna restaurant review

I’ve just done a week long learn to speak Italian course in Bologna. I think I now speak Italian even worse than I did before as I’m now trying to remember – for example – whether it’s essere or avere for the past tense of andare. Something that never troubled me before.

One of the extra curricular activities arranged by the Cultura Italiana was an evening’s cookery lesson. This was fun, but I have to say the food we produced was a bit of a disaster. Dessert was a pear sponge cake, and – as most of us know – to make a cake one needs to cream the sugar, butter, eggs, the flour – and then finally gently fold in the whipped until stiff egg whites. The lovely ladies assigned this task beat the mixture vigorously until it was a paste. The resulting cake looked like a sodden cowpat. More »

Cavatelli Pasta Recipe

Cavatelli pasta shapes are typical of the Campania region. At a distance they look like gnocchi; actually they do up close too, but unlike gnocchi they are flour and water creations. I came across them being made at Agriturismo Seliano. The two cooks were busily prepping the supper for 30 odd people in the quiet of an afternoon.

They dished up the cavatelli that evening with diced and fried zucchini and  ricotta. I was enthused: pasta that doesn’t require a pasta machine! I thought I’d have a go when I got home.

The recipe the lovely chef, Eugenia, gave me was:

500g soft (cake) white flour

500g strong white flour (I used ‘Manitoba’ flour which is used for pizzas and bread)

1 medium egg, beaten

approximately 500ml of warm water More »

Pizzeria Pellone Naples

My new friend Mauro di Benedetto (the marketing maestro at L’Oro di Gragnano) took me to this pizzeria on the way to the train station. It was his favoured lunchtime spot for many years when he worked in the nearby Chamber of Commerce. He knows the menu by heart and the waiters by name. These guys all look like they are extras from The Sopranos: they are most definitely Neapolitan not metropolitan. More »

L’Oro di Gragnano – artisanal dried pasta

Until recently I nearly always bought the shop branded (Waitrose admittedly) value pack of spaghetti, and didn’t think too much about it – other than to ensure I didn’t overcook it.

But thanks to a morning spent at the pasta making premises – pastificio – of L’Oro di Gragnano, I have seen the error of my ways. From now on I’m going to be a pasta nerd, searching for the magic phrases ‘extruded through bronze dies’ – trafilata al bronzo -and ‘dried at low temperatures’ – essiccazione lenta a basse temperature - on the packaging.

I now know to look out for Gragnano mentioned on the label, as this is another good way to spot decent pasta. The town, to the south of Naples, has been an important dried (non egg) pasta-making centre for centuries. More »

Porcupines and pigs

Porcupines seem too exotic an animal to be indigenous to Italy. Nevertheless, they seem common enough judging by the number killed on the roads. I think they’re largely nocturnal: I saw a family of them once, caught in my headlights at the side of a country road on a moonlit night  - cantering along, quills clacking.

We’ve been experiencing them in a different way recently: one has decided that our garden is a deli worth exploring and has busily dug up the lawn every night. I’ve put netting across the bottom of the garden gate, assuming them to be too big to get through the railings – and hoped for the best.

Last night I heard some snuffling, oink-like sounds outside. I didn’t know porcupines sound like pigs, I thought, but didn’t leap out to investigate as I’d seen a scorpion hanging about the doorframe earlier (Italy and its wildlife!) and didn’t fancy a barefoot encounter with either.

It turned out the pork wasn’t of the spiny variety, but a wild boar. Maurizio, full time nursing lecturer, spare time naturalist, watched a large cinghiale noshing the walnuts from his tree, about 20 metres away. I think this was a ‘yah-boo-sucks’, nose thumbing exercise on the part of the pig, as hunters (of which there are several in this frazione) cannot shoot at it until the end of the month.

Tonight I’m going to keep a pair of shoes and binoculars by the bed, just in case.