Hi, today’s post is dedicated to a conference Carlo and I have heart at Pasta Trend in Bologna.

The professor Di Nallo told us there is a connection between art and food shape and made some examples.

Sicily.
There is a connection between mosaics and roses of Acireale and typical Sicilian pastries.
Noto in Sicily is famous for its late baroque. You can see angels with swollen cheeks in a lot of decorations. Everything can come out from their mouth.  What about filled pasta? You can make everything in the filling: fish, meat, vegetables …

Another famous recipe of Bologna is tortellini. Well, tortellini shape remember us Venus label

Another example: ravioli shape remember us female side …

What do you yjink about this? find for the images we told you and make your own comment .

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

In the last two days we made our daily pasta dish with a particular kind of pasta, an handcrafted pasta made by Giovanni Fabbri in Tuscany.

We knew the owner of the pasta factory at the fair in Bologna known as Pasta Trend. He had drawn our attention for the passion he showed talking with people in his stand. His words were evidence of his love for the traditions, the hearth and its products and his work, obviously. Carlo and I got closer to listen to him better and look at a video. The video was sending images about the art of growing and harvesting wheat around Siena, Grosseto and Pisa according to the ancient tradition discovered again in the 1970s, the art of grinding wheat in a water-powered mill and finally the art of making pasta. Making pasta in the Fabbri factory is quite different from making pasta industrially. Semolina and water are mixed as it happens in every pasta factory in Italy, the difference is in the following steps. In fact  pasta dough passes through heavy bronze trafile (dies) patterned with the designs for scores of pasta shapes. The movement through the bronze trafile is very slow and so pasta is rough to the touch and can absorb the sauce easily.  At last pasta is put in drying cupboard and here the temperature is always under 38°C. If  temperature is more than 38°C the gluten is altered and the pasta’s ability to absorb water and sauce is compromised.
Have you understood? This is the secret of a great pasta!
But Carlo and I want to taste personally everything and so we brought home a precious packet of this pasta.
First of all this packet remembered us our infancy when our parents bought the pasta by weight and carried it home wrapped in brown paper …
We had great expectations and … now we tell you what happened in the last two days.

At first we decided the kind of sauce to toss this pasta. We wanted a simple sauce that enhanced the pasta if the pasta was good as we thought.  So we created a sauce whose recipe you can read on this page. It’s a duck-and-tomato sauce.

Pasta by Giovanni Fabbri tossed with duck-and-tomato sauce

This dish was successful, very successful!  The pasta is a great pasta, a good-quality pasta. When we opened its packet the pasta  smelled fantastic! The same aroma we smelt when children …

The second day we chose a typical Tuscan sauce called fava bean-and artichoke pasta sauce, Maremma-style. It is also known as poderana sauce. Its recipe is very simple. Read more here.

Pasta by Giovanni Fabbri tossed with poderana sauce, Maremma-style

What was the result? fantastic as the first day!

Visit the site of Giovanni Fabbri and discover more about his factory and his work.

Look at his products.  He has also very interesting gift packs.
This factory is in the Chianti Street in Tuscany. Go and visit him if you are in Tuscany.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo e Loretta

Hi, Carlo and I went to Bologna last Sunday where we visited Pasta Trend, the greatest event for the pasta world.
We decided to visit this fair because we are telling you about the pasta world in these last weeks and then we are very fond of pasta.

It was a very interesting experience and we decided to share it with you.
We learnt a lot about new pasta shapes, new ways for filling fresh pasta, making egg pasta dough or dressing pasta.

Besides we looked at top international chefs at work with advice, exclusive recipes and high-level demonstrations.

So we are ready to tell you how to cook pasta and sauces, to serve pasta,  to store it at home or present it in shops and restaurants.

To begin we want to remember a great opportunity.  Are you thinking of coming to Italy? are you thinking of tasting the real, authentic Italian cuisine? Well, we suggest to contact this association known as “Home food”.

“The Association for the Guardianship and Exploitation of the Traditional Culinary-Gastronomic Heritage of Italy with the Home Food project sponsored by the Ministry of Agricultural Politics, by various regions of Italy and in collaboration with the University of Bologna, emphasises and spreads the culture of traditional food interwoven with the culture of the typical products and the particular area. In this spirit it is possible to become a guest of Italian families and to taste foods cooked by the lady of the house, the repository of the old culinary ways and methods.”

You have really understood! You can taste our typical recipes directly at home. There are about 500 women from the north to the south of Italy that are top chefs and can prepare the typical dishes of their region.

Read more on their site: Home food.

The New York Times has dedicated a page to Home food and its women recently.

Being a Guest for Meals at Italian Homes

Join our community on our website. It’s easy!

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

Hi, we want to tell you how my husband and I spent the last evening of the year.
Well.  Our greatest desire is to spend the evening in the armchair with a lot of tasty bits to eat,  looking at a film.
We work so hard that such an evening is a great gift for us and on the 31st of December we could realize our dream.
So we made beans with onions, tasty meatballs, assorted salami with the accompaniment of bread with olives, cherry mozzarella, green olives, toasts with paté on top … panettone and other Italian Christmas cakes. Gnam, gnam. What tasty bits!!
But what a film? Our choice was Julie & Julia. What  beautiful evening we spent!
Julie and Paul are  like my husband and me, really! I’m very fond of cooking, trying new recipes, learning new techniques and, after all, I cook for I love my husband. To make a tasty and healthy dish for him and for me is the same thing to say: I love you, I’m thinking of you when I choose what I can prepare. Every dish  is the best for you.”  Obviously my husband likes eating well and it’s the same thing for me. He helps me in the kitchen, makes photos of my work  in the kitchen; then  we test the recipes often  to our great satisfaction, modify them if necessary and then publish them on our site.

So looking at Julie & Julia was to re-discover our work. We published a lot of recipes in the last years but we never thought to the basic thing: to teach the art of Italian cooking. I was born in the North of Italy and I lived in Umbria for a lot of years. My mother was from Piedmont and my father from Abruzzo where the land shook in the last April.  Carlo, my husband, is from Apulia. We both know the Italian recipes from the North to the South of Italy. Italian cuisine is for us the best in the world. Healthy, and if well chosen and made, low in fat and calories.

Well, where can we begin to make people learn to cook real and authentic Italian recipes and love Italian food?
From basic ingredients, of course. We are going to tell you about the Italian food necessary to prepare a tasty dish of pasta.
We’ll begin tomorrow!

Look at this photo. This is the image of one of the best known Italian pasta recipe in the world. Amatriciana bucatini. You’ll be able to prepare the authentic recipe in few days! Astonish your guests with a real Italian dinner party. Learn with us the art of Italian cooking,  from two authentic Italians!

Bucatini, amatriciana-style

Greetings from Italy

Read all our entries in this page!

Carlo & Loretta

Hi, a lot of people in the world are finding for a real Christmas menu as we use to do in Italy.

Here and in the following posts we are going to show you some examples of Italian menus at Christmastime. You can choose among them for your Christmas dinner party or New Year’s Eve dinner or other occasions at holiday according to the Italian style.

At first you have to know  how we plan a menu in Italy; a menu is composed by the following courses:
1) starter made with a lot of appetizers
2) first course,  in other words a rich dish of pasta or risotto
3) second course made with fish or meat with the accompaniment of assorted vegetables or other side dishes
4) assorted cheese (only at lunch)
5) dessert

Well, now we are going to suggest you a traditional Christmas menu of the North of Italy (this is the typical  Piedmont menu for Christmas)
1) assorted canapés or other finger food with the accompaniment of a good cocktail; you are not obliged to serve them at table. You can prepare a little corner with finger food and cocktails apart. After tasting them according to the Italian style your guests can sit down at the table.
2) assorted salami with pickled vegetables and/or vegetables in oil, a savoury pie sliced, Russian salad

Assorted salami

3) smoked salmon in slices sprinkled with lemon juice just before the traditional first course
4) first course:  risotto with wild mushrooms or another Italian risotto with seasonal ingredients

Risotto with wild mushrooms

5) second course:  boiled beef with the accompaniment of some sauces and/or Russian salad; this is a traditional dish in Italy. In Piedmont we add other kinds of meat to beef such as hen, pork sausage, beef tongue …
6) second course: roast turkey
7) assorted cheese; a tidbit is serving mascarpone cheese sprinkled with cocoa powder
At last:
- assorted cakes such as typical Italian Christmas cakes (panettone, pandoro, panforte, panpepato …)
- dried and fresh fruit

Christmas pepperbread, Italy-style

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta