Italy Archives - Hungry Travelers

Italy

‘Italian Coastal’ conjures tasty memories of land and sea

Posted on April 16, 2024April 16, 2024 by Pat and David

Every so often a cookbook comes our way that plucks the heartstrings of memory. Having eated most of the way down the Tyrrhenian coast from Tuscany to Sicily, recipe after recipe reminds us of some sunny day at a long table in the open air. The book's subtitle says it well ‶Recipes and stories from where the land meets the sea.″ This isn't author Amber Guinness's first rodeo. Her initial book, A House Party in Tuscany, featured stories and recipes from the family's Arniano Painting School, a residential program that features, among other attractions, Amber's cooking. Born in London and educated in England, Guinness had the great fortune of growing up in Arniano in Tuscany. She has broadened her horizons, gleaning tastes and traditions from...Read More

Bar Enza’s breezy fare summons Italian summer

Posted on June 20, 2023June 17, 2023 by Pat and David

We explain the title of this website with the subtitle ‶Bringing the tastes of travel back home.″ Sometimes, though, tastes close to home can be transporting in themselves. It's the middle of June and we're already pining for summer on the Italian coast. But in our case, we can get a dose of that sublime experience by going to Bar Enza (Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St.; 617-661-5050; bar-enza.com) in Harvard Square. It's nice that the food and wines of the Cinqueterre, the Amalfi Coast, or the beach at Capri are a 10-minute walk from our home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We have chef Tony Susi to thank for that. Since he took over the helm at Bar Enza in April, he's crafted menus that embody the...Read More

Abruzzo means more than just Montepulciano

Posted on November 21, 2022November 21, 2022 by Pat and David

Italy is famed primarily for its red wines, including Montepulciano in Abruzzo. But the region also produces some excellent whites. The best of them are Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, made from the regional clone of the white wine grape that accounts for nearly a third of the white wine vineyards in all of Italy. For example, Soave and Orvieto are based on the same grape. But Trebbiano displays a special character in Abruzzo that justifies going under its own name. We recently acquired a bottle of Trebbiano d'Abruzzo from Cantina Terzini (cantinaterzini.it). The Terzini family has grown grapes for generations but started making wine under its own name in 2007. Cantina Terzini has been a big success in Europe and Australia but is still seeking an American...Read More

‘Serafina’ capitalizes on tender summer harvests

Posted on July 16, 2022July 8, 2022 by Pat and David

How this cookbook would have made the late Tony May smile! The champion of Italian food in America always insisted that Italian cuisine had been emphasizing fresh ingredients centuries before the farm-to-table fad. The Italian penchant for combining a few terrific fresh ingredients to make a dish underlies Serafina: Modern Italian Cuisine for Everyday Home Cooking by Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato, text by Lavinia Branca Snyder (Rizzoli, New York, 2022, $39.95). Of course, a good origin story never hurts. Assaf and Granato were lost at sea in a small sailboat. They comforted each other by vowing that if they survived, they'd open a restaurant serving the best pizza and pasta in the world. And so they did, launching Serafina in New York in 1995....Read More

Ligurian minestrone recalls tastes from the land of pesto

Posted on February 19, 2022February 18, 2022 by Pat and David

One of the smallest regions of Italy, Liguria wraps around the salty rim of the northern Mediterranean. It is a great place to eat. The mountain conifers and herds of sheep provide Liguria's pine nuts and cheese. Groves on the foothills above the sea yield a delicate olive oil. The farms sprouting on the thin strip of arable coastline abound in intensely perfumed basil. The village of Boccadasse, on the east end of the capital city of Genoa, is home to fishing boats that supply the city's restaurants. When David visited a few years ago, he wandered the ancient streets of Genoa, marveling over Baroque palaces built with wealth from bankrolling Spain's New World adventures. Even some of the most modest 17th century homes on...Read More

Hearty fare from the Dolomites in Alto Adige

Posted on January 29, 2022February 3, 2022 by Pat and David

You might be wondering what the heck this photo has to do with soup. The picture shows the unveiling of the speck at a Speckfest. David attended the festival in the mountains of Alto Adige near the Austrian border. Like so many of the edges of what is now Italy, Alto Adige was long considered part of another country—Austria, to be exact. In fact, it's known in the local German dialect as Sudtirol, or South Tyrol. Our soup this Saturday (when we are forecast to receive around 2 feet/60 centimeters of snow) is warming winter fare. The Alto Adige version of barley soup gets much of its flavor from speck, the smoked mountain ham that is something of a fetish in the region. It's such...Read More

Journey to Sicily with pasta alla Norma

Posted on April 17, 2021April 17, 2021 by Pat and David

Somehow it seemed fitting that Stanley Tucci's quick survey of Italian cooking on CNN concluded in Sicily, a rugged land with overlays of Greek, Arab, and even Norman traditions. Because so many sons and daughters of the island emigrated to the U.S., Sicilian cooking became the departure point for many Italian-American dishes. Admittedly, American Italians show a penchant for piling on the cheese. Order eggplant parm in the U.S., and the hearty dish will probably have more ricotta and mozzarella than eggplant. Yet the original Sicilian cuisine is the model of a healthy Mediterranean diet. It emphasizes fresh vegetables—Sicily supplies the rest of Italy with winter produce—and goes light on the animal protein. Yes, many dishes are fried, but they're fried in extra virgin olive...Read More

Polenta, the thrifty side of Milanese cuisine

Posted on March 20, 2021March 20, 2021 by Pat and David

Given the cost of saffron, risotto alla milanese can be an indulgence. But the folks in Milan also favor maize (as they call American corn) as a base for many great dishes. Polenta is nothing more than coarse cornmeal cooked into a kind of porridge. That's a little like saying great bread is ‶nothing more″ than ground up wheat. Polenta can be a subtle treat on its own and makes a versatile base for almost any kind of sauce or even leftovers. In Milan, as Stanley Tucci pointed out in part four of Searching for Italy, it's often served topped with pot roast. Maize was introduced to Italy when Columbus sent corn to the Vatican in the 1490s. In the half millennium since, Italians have...Read More

In Milan, a little wealth helps make rich risotto

Posted on March 13, 2021March 13, 2021 by Pat and David

Our experience with Milan is a little like Stanley Tucci's before he started shooting the Searching for Italy series now running on CNN. It was always a place we admired from afar and but visited mostly when we were changing trains or planes. For many years, Alitalia had direct flights between Boston and Milan, so we often flew through Malpensa when we were visiting northern Italy. As Tucci observed, the first thing that hit us about Milan is the pace. The city has a hurry-scurry that almost makes Manhattan feel laid-back. That's probably because the Milanese are so busy making money. The city is home to the Italian stock market, the furniture industry, and to Italian fashion and design. It helps to have all that...Read More

Tortellini and Ferrari, Modena’s gifts to the world

Posted on March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 by Pat and David

Episode 3 of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN was ostensibly devoted to the food of Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna. But our restless Italian gourmand does wander a bit from the hometown of mortadella (the more sophisticated ancestor of American ‶baloney″) to visit Parma (amazing prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano) and even Modena. We'd contend that Modena has given the world two of the most beautiful things to come out of Italy: the sleek red racing machines of Enzo Ferrari's automotive company, and the navel-shaped filled pasta called tortellini. (It's also the home of the greatest balsamic vinegar in the world, but that's another story.) Bologna may be the premier university city but Modena has a powerful and ancient university of its own. It also...Read More