Italy

Friuli has the right wine for asparagus

Posted on by David
Asparagus is notoriously difficult to pair with wine because sulfur-bearing compounds in the stalks produce a chemical bouquet that clashes mightily with the tannins in red wine or in whites aged in oak. Eat asparagus and drink your average pinot noir or barrel-aged chardonnay and the wine will literally taste like garbage. The French solve the problem by pairing asparagus with Loire Valley whites or white Sancerre-wines based on Sauvignon Blanc that never see a whiff of oak. But just as Friuli grows some of the best asparagus in Europe (see If it's asparagus it must be Friuli), the northeast corner of Italy also produces the best wine to pair with it. Since 2008 it's been on the market as Friulano, though in Friuli some...Read More

If it’s asparagus it must be Friuli

Posted on by David
Guidebooks to Italy have a maddening tendency to completely ignore one of my favorite areas for gastronomic tourism: the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the northeast corner of the country. Sharing a northern border with Austria and an eastern border with Slovenia, Friuli has both a dialect and a cuisine with strong Germanic influences. The local version of Italian is full of the hard Rs and the chewy "sch" sounds of central Europe, and the menus are laden with pork and a bevy of mitteleuropan dumplings masquerading as gnocchi. Many of the dishes draw their depth of flavor from cream, butter, or smoked fish. [caption id="attachment_854" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Piazza Libertà, Udine"][/caption] But most food in Friuli is based on whatever is freshest from the fields....Read More

What to buy in an Italian grocery store

Posted on by Pat and David
Since so many of the regional Italian cuisines are based on food that is fresh, fresh, fresh, we're limited in what we can bring back home. But there are some dry goods and conserves that turn out to be very useful in cooking Italian dishes. We've learned not to bother with colored pastas, which cook up to a gray mess anyway, because we can buy good imported dry pasta for about the same price we'd pay for it in Italy. Here's our Italian grocery list: Anchovies. Many Americans think they don't like anchovies because they have never tasted good ones used with the restraint characteristic of Italian recipes. We look for anchovies packed in glass jars so we can make sure they are firm and...Read More

Pressure cooker artichoke risotto

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_276" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="Castraure, or baby artichokes"][/caption] We’d always thought of making risotto as a laborious process that required standing at the stove and stirring for nearly half an hour, sometimes with disappointing results. Not for Anna Maria Andreola, the pressure cooker queen of Venice. Earlier in the day, we’d gone together to the Rialto market and bought gorgeous baby artichokes, which we trimmed as Anna Maria talked us through the risotto she was going to make. She sauteed the trimmed artichokes for three minutes in the open pressure cooker with a clove of minced garlic and a splash of olive oil. Then she added a teacup (about a half cup or 110 grams) of arborio rice per serving, and dumped in a half...Read More

Cucina Italiana moderna

Posted on by David
[caption id="attachment_268" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Anna Maria cooks rombo in her Venice kitchen."][/caption] Anna Maria Andreola's kitchen at Le Mansarde B&B in Venice was not what we expected, especially in a lovingly maintained but traditional old stone palazzo that wore its two centuries proudly. The aroma of fresh bread greeted us at the door. She had dumped all the ingredients into a high tech bread machine that morning and set the timer so bread would be ready for dinner. Right next to the breadmaker stood her universal kitchen machine that weighs, processes and slow-cooks food. (It also serves as a mixer and a blender.) The counter also held a juicer and an electric ice cream freezer. Silly us. We'd been expecting a big stove and nothing...Read More

Cooking in Venice changed our lives

Posted on by David
[caption id="attachment_172" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Crossing the Grand Canal on a traghetto"][/caption] Venice changed our lives. Really. More exactly, it changed the way we eat. After a week of cruising the Venetian lagoon on a rental houseboat, we spent several days in the city, staying with Anna Maria Andreola at the B&B in her family's 18th century Cannaregio palazzo. (It's called Le Mansarde, but has no web site. Contact Anna Maria Andreola at 011-39-041-718-826 or [mobile] 011-39-338-868-8935. Her email is cazzar.ola@libero.it.) One day she took us shopping and showed us how to make a Venetian meal. From the B&B on Rio Tera San Leonardo, we headed straight to the Grand Canal and boarded a "traghetto," a bare-bones gondola that crisscrosses the canal and saves walking long...Read More