Recco, a small town a few miles East of Genoa on the Italian Riviera, is not the most interesting city of that area. In fact, its most significant feature is culinary! Recco gives its name to the most famous focaccia dish- the Focaccia di Recco. It is said that in ancient times, the population of [...]
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Making risotto is not particularly hard: rice, water, ingredient, time, right? Well, not quite. The route to risotto perfection is scattered with obstacles, but these five steps will make your dish an impeccable one!
Step 1: Soffritto
Every great risotto starts with a good soffritto: sautéing onions in butter or olive oil. Butter is really for it [...]
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When picking rice for your Italian dishes, you are probably under the impression that Arborio rice is the highest standard. In fact, as it is well known in Asian culinary cultures, each rice variety has different characteristics that make it more apt for one dish or another.
Risotto rice is made of two types of starches: [...]
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My husband is from Cuneo, in Piemonte, and ever since meeting him I have been introduced to all sorts of Piedmont delicacies I was not familiar with. Castelmagno is one of those- a hard cheese that is shaped in a cylinder, it looks like a small Parmigiano, and it shares Parmigiano’s scaly texture and [...]
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Sole di ghiaccio imbottigliato, “Sun of ice in a bottle”: a grappa description by Paolo Montelli, an Italian journalist who served in the alpini force during WW1. What a fit phrasing!
Grappa is a distillate made from leftovers of wine production: mainly skins, but also seeds and stems. Once the drink of the poor- [...]
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