Basilicata, the instep of the boot, includes the extinct volcano Mount Vulture and is the home of one of my go-to wine varietals, Aglianico del Vulture, particularly the one from the Paternoster vineyards. For a white wine, I like Falanghina from Basilicata. Although I had some general familiarity with the wine, I had to hit […]
I don’t have any Sardinia stories. With any luck, someday I will, but it is going to take a while to get through my ever-increasing list of places I “must” visit if I ever get a chance. I was able to find several cookbooks dedicated to the food of Sardinia, including some in Italian. While […]
When I started down this path of virtual travels, one of the first “trips” was to Trentino-Alto Adige, but then I never did a post about it. That “trip” involved beer-braised beef and a side of whole grain spaetzle. The bacon/onion braise was quite good. Neither looked particularly good in photos, and the whole grain […]
This is another region that I have not visited, but for which I have a lovely regional cookbook. The food reminds me of Abruzzese cooking, particularly the use of pork and rosemary, which should not be surprising considering that the regions border each other. I have experiment with a few recipes from the cookbook, including […]
There are only a few regions of Italy to go before I meet my goal of posting about each one individually. We technically touched on Veneto with the Cortina post (https://auntastasia.blog/travels-in-cortina-dampezzo/), but if I am going to write about Veneto, it really should be Venice, and I have been reluctant to do that. It’s not […]
There is a great region-specific cookbook that takes you through the diverse areas of the small region of Friuli in north-east Italy. The region borders Austria and Slovenia and the recipes involve a lot more potato than you might expect. There’s also a good amount of horseradish. I have made several recipes from the cookbook, […]
We will get back to regional Italy shortly, but the Meyer lemons have remained on sale, so I have been working on perfecting Meyer lemon curd. Perfection is, of course, subjective in this case. Meyer lemons – not really lemons at all – are sweeter than actual lemons. And I like citrus recipes to be […]
We are going to jump down to the heel of the “boot” into Puglia. I have been obsessed with the idea of going to Puglia since I read Matt Goulding’s Pasta Pane Vino. If you have read it, you know that the second chapter is about the Dicecca brothers and their fresh mozzarella, burrata, and […]
Although we still have several regions to “visit,” we are going back to Abruzzo first. When you search for Abruzzese food, one dish that always comes up is cif e ciaf. According to one article about cif e ciaf, it is not so much a dish as it is an approach. Typically, it involves tough […]
When I started this blog a little more than a year ago, I intended to “visit” every region of Italy through its food, ideally in a way that made sense geographically to fit with my sense of order. If you have been following from the beginning, you know I got distracted along the way. I […]