Category Archives: Travel

Antipasto calabro [Calabrian appetizer]

7


I’m back after a vacation in the beautiful Calabria region. As every year when I come back home a little piece of my heart remains there. Unfortunately I cannot bring back the sun or the sea with me, but the food is an other story, and I always make sure to have enough space in my trunk for it. I mitigate the nostalgia by cooking some of the dishes I used to eat there, and if it’s not enough, I invite friends over for dinner and share with them the specialties they already know plus some new discoveries.

Antipasto calabro is the typical appetizer that I enjoy eating when I’m on vacation there, and I love to prepare it for my guests when I’m back in Verona. It’s a simple dish that encompasses the main products of this land: red hot pepper, pork meat, sheep milk cheeses, red onions from Tropea, tomatoes, eggplants and mushrooms. Continue reading →

A trip to Bolzano: a glimpse inside the Tyrolean cuisine

8

Walther Square

Italy, as I always say, is a land of many facets, some of them have a few aspects in common, some others are completely different from each other. One place that doesn’t have so much in common with the rest of Italy is Bolzano, in the Trentino Alto Adige region. I love to go to Bolzano and I often recommend others to go visit it too. If you’re not aware Bolzano became Italian right after the first world war before then it was part of South Tyrol. The city is bilingual (German-Italian) and even if a century almost has passed it still seems to be in an Austrian city. I love the architecture, some buildings are similar to those in Innsbruck. The typical cuisine is Tyrolean influenced by the Italian cuisine and the population that has lived in this territory in the past 2000 years.

You can easily access to Bolzano either by train or by car. It has numerous parking ramps. One is right close to the train station which is right next to the historical city center. The fulcrum of the city is in Walther square with its characteristic buildings, cafes, restaurants and the dome. It’s the square that every Christmas hosts the famous Christmas market filled with small wooden houses that sell Christmas decorations made in wood, glass or ceramic. The right place to find original Christmas presents from the Mittel-European tradition. You’ll also find Christmas cookies, the Lebkuchen (chocolate spiced cookies) and cakes like the well known Zelten made with dry figs, raisins, almonds, candied fruit flavored with cinnamon and cloves. Continue reading →

Jewel from Calabria: ‘Nduja

9


I’m in Tropea right now enjoying my holidays. I first came here 27 years ago, our family’s first vacation in the South of Italy. When I saw Tropea, called the pearl of Calabria, I fell desperately in love with the town. This place entered in my blood and I’m still not able to spend one year without coming here. It’s almost a physical pain if I don’t see it, it’s difficult to explain. Calabria is an untraveled region compared to Campania and Sicily, discovered by tourists not so long ago.  In this arid land everything has to fight to grow, but when it does it is marvelous. Palms, banana trees, figs, prickly pears, red onions famous world wide and red hot peppers, a lot of them. It’s a land with strong colors and big contrasts luxuriant and arid, imposing mountains descending to the seashore. Thanks to this diversity the cuisine is a combination of ingredients from the sea and mountains. Continue reading →

A trip to Piedmont: Potato and Tomato Salad

5


I went to visit my relatives in Piemonte (Piedmont) for a short holiday. They live in a little village close to Turin where I spent many of my summer vacations as a child. The village is in the Pellice Valley surrounded by high mountains, rich with water springs and a thick vegetation: hazelnut trees, chestnuts trees, wild berries are all part of the landscape.

This time instead of going only to the mountains I decided to spent one day in Turin. It was a long time since I’d been there and I rediscovered its beauty. It’s really a wonderful city, once the residence of House of Savoy and later the capital of Italy (1861 – 1864), and  has not lost its grandiosity still reflected in its royal castles, elegant palaces, immense squares, churches, museums which are famous world wide like the Mole Antonelliana that now houses the National Museum of Cinema and the Egyptian Museum second only to the Egyptian Museum in  Cairo, universities and the Italian automobile industry. Continue reading →

Related Posts with Thumbnails