This is our last menu idea with cold and hot summer recipes made only with vegetables but with eggs and cheese too.
It is a classical dinner menu or lunch menu composed by a starter (filled aubergines), a first course (pasta salad with ring-shaped ingredients), a second course (bean burgers) and a typical summer dessert of  Sicily that is watermelon ice (gelo di melone).

Watermelon ice served in a cup

The image above shows a glass filled with watermelon ice, what a tasty dessert!

Enjoy this menu with your friends!

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

Hi. This is the sixty second post about the art of cooking Italian pasta.
In these days we’ve created a tasty pasta salad with vegetarian ingredients and a particular kind of pasta shape: calamarata. Its name derives from  squid rings (in Italian squids are called calamari) and this type of pasta is often combined with ring-shaped  ingredients
But you can prepare this cold pasta dish with other pasta shapes according to your personal taste.
We published the complete recipe of pasta salad with ring-shaped  ingredients (vegetarian recipe) on our website.

Pasta salad with ring-shaped ingredients

Read it carefully.
It’s easy-to-do but original and you can impress your guests with it.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

As we promised some weeks ago when we told you about our pasta salad with rabbit and truffle the complete menu with this first course is ready.
You can read it with step-by-step instructions to do this  summer menu quickly and easily.
We also made a shopping list to help you.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

Carlo and I were in Maremma for our summer holidays in the last weeks. Obviously we wanted to taste some  traditional recipes of  Maremma to do them at home again.

Now we recommend some of them to you, obviously the best according to our taste and knowledge of Italian cuisine.

Grosseto
La 16. It’s a typical restaurant in the historical center. You can find traditional and original dishes made with fish and meat. Generally they use traditional Tuscan products or local products.
We ate some specialties and appreciated them very much. They were so tasty that we were able to eat a starter, a first and a second course.  We have already told of this restaurant in a previous entry. Read more about its strange name …

Pitigliano
Guastini hotel and restaurant.  It’s easy to find it. It is situated just before entering the historical center. Here you can taste typical Tuscan recipes but we also ate Sfratto dei Goym. Sfratto dei Goym is a cake due to the combination of Jewish and Maremma cuisine. Guastini restaurant offers other dishes born from this combination.
You can eat quickly and that’s important making a tour.

Marina di Grosseto
Pantagruel. The restaurant is in Via Bellini. It’s easy to find. Fantastic its dishes made with fish! We also ate assorted cheeses accompanied with fresh fruit such as kiwi. You can’t but have a lunch or dinner and taste its  fantastic starters or pasta dishes … Enjoy them!

If you’re in Maremma you should find and taste these products: Tuscan ham, stracchino soft cheese, smoked eel, mullet roe, wild boar sausage, Tuscan pecorino cheese, Tuscan olive oil, Tuscan pasta such as pici.
Remember to taste these recipes: tagliatelle or pappardelle with wild boar sauce, all the fantastic Tuscan soups such as acquacotta, lamb and veal recipes, sfratto (a typical cake of Pitigliano), Maremma cattle dishes ….

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

In the last weeks we went to Maremma (Tuscany) for our holidays.
Our aim was to go to the seaside but visit Maremma too. So we chose a place near to the sea but ideal to reach the most important touristic localities.
Maremma is full of resorts, historical remains and natural parks and it is possible to make some interesting gastronomic tours. If you want to make a great gift to yourself plan a vacation in Maremma.

We rented a little one-roomed flat in an apartment hotel at Principina a Mare.

Here are the details:

Il Tombolo

SP 40 della Trappola n.168/A
Loc. Bivio per Principina a Mare – 58100 Grosseto (GR)
Call  +39056432240

We had all we need a cooking area included. Our flat was well equipped and we liked very much a balcony where we could eat in the evening.
In the hotel there are also two swimming pools. We could have a relaxing  bathe after our tours.
Besides there is a restaurant near the hotel where we had dinner every time we returned too tired to cook. It offers fish and meat dishes of the local tradition.
Staff is kind and available to give us all the information we needed.

We spent quiet and relaxing vacations.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta