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: Vegetables
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…
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,…
Tibetan momo with chilli sauce
Tibetan momo have a very special place in my cooking heart. There was a time in my life when I used to visit India on a very regular basis, sometimes two or three times a year, spending a month at a time in Sikkim which sits in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was there…
Leek, cheese and potato pie
I adore Italian food for obvious reasons but one of the things that Italians don’t make enough of is a good pie! Pies are something of a staple food in the UK and come in very many different forms – large and small, savoury and sweet – with a huge variety of fillings. Whilst pies…
Roasted sprouts with chestnuts and maple syrup
Lots of people think they don’t like sprouts but it’s simply not true…what they don’t like is the way sprouts are typically cooked! You should never, ever boil sprouts. The trick is to roast them in butter adding chestnuts and maple syrup or honey for extra sweetness. Perfect for Christmas lunch but also at any…
Roast stuffed pumpkin
Lockdown in Italy has been tough but this weekend Piemonte turned yellow which means we are now allowed to travel outside our commune for both essential and non-essential reasons and the shops are fully open, albeit with a 6pm curfew. I don’t enjoy shopping in general but I do enjoy a trip to our local…
Roasted aloo gobi
One of the very nice things about travelling on the Indian Subcontinent – which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Butan and Sri Lanka – is the predominance of vegetarian and vegan dishes. The fact that you specifically have to ask for dishes that are ’non-veg’ if you want to eat meat or fish tells you…
Ese ne tekrema 