It’s pumpkin season here in Italy and this weekend we finally made it to the Fiera della Zucca di Piozzo just a short drive from our house. This regional pumpkin festival has been held for more than quarter of a century and this year more than 550 varieties were on display. The town has trademarked…
Category: Italy
Foraged fig jam
It’s been a wonderful season for fruit and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to pick wild figs from a tree close to our house all summer long. Last year I tried my hand at foraged fig chutney which was delicious with cheese, but this year I decided to go down the sweet route,…
Garden vegetable soup
As Summer slides into Autumn here in Italy, I’m busy picking the crops that I planted as seeds back in the Spring. Last month I harvested more than 30kg of tomatoes…of which more later! I’m now moving onto the root vegetables, beans and leafy greens including iron-rich cavalo nero which I’m growing for the first…
Warm potato salad with feta and fava beans
I grew up in a tiny farmhouse in the Welsh hills and one of my strongest memories as a child is sitting at the wooden table in the kitchen with my mum and dad popping broad beans out of their soft white furry pods. But I really didn’t like the taste of broad beans –…
Torta rustica ai luvertin
The weather has been very changeable here in Italy over the past few months. After a long hard winter with seemingly endless snow we had a few very warm weeks and now the weather veers between sunshine and heavy rain – which may sound very familiar to those of you living in the UK but…
Torta Pasqualina
Torta Pasqualina – or Easter Cake – dates back to the 1500s and originates from Liguria which lies just to the South of us here in Piemonte. It’s not actually a cake but a savoury pie made with layers of thinly rolled pasta brisee, a shortcrust pastry made with olive oil instead of butter, and…
Baccalà, chickpea and tomato stew
Since living in Italy I’ve often see piles of dry salted cod (known here as baccalà) piled high in wooden crates but until now I had never actually eaten it and rarely seen it on the menu in our local restaurants. The history of baccalà goes back a long way, most likely to the Vikings,…
Lentil and mushroom cannelloni
So this weekend I held my first ese ne tekrema cooking experience via Zoom. Despite a few technical hitches it was great to cook with two friends in Portugal and the UK, both of whom were making fresh pasta for first time. I’m calling it an ’experience’ rather than a ‘lesson’ because for me cooking…
Italian lemon and ricotta cake
I’m finding the second lockdown in Italy much tougher than the first. Maybe it’s because winter is upon us and we know this is how things will be at least until the Spring, maybe it’s the relentless online Zoom meetings, a novelty when they started back in March, now anything but. I’m also acutely aware…
Roasted chestnut and squash soup
There is something very special about the chestnut (castagne) season in Northern Italy. It starts at the end of September when the first spiky green shells fall from the trees and within a few weeks the floors of the woods that surround our house are strewn, the shells bursting open to reveal the burnished brown…
Ese ne tekrema 