Madonn', so much of the bel paese is a mindblowing museum, foodie paradise, and more. Rome, Venice, Florence, Sicily, Naples, Milan - so many of the most iconic destinations in travel - along with thousands of lovely and fascinating back roads. If you haven't been here, you must remedy that immediately.
Cover photo: Daniel Vogel
Beautiful Bari!
alxpin Italy is famously packed with glorious cities to explore, which means a magical spot like Bari – which would be a headliner in many other countries – here tends to be overshadowed by the likes of Rome, Florence, Venice, its fellow southern-Italian destination Naples, and even neighbouring Apulia (Puglia) region gem Lecce. But to miss out on Apulia’s capital – astride the Adriatic Sea right on the heel of Italy’s famous boot shape – would be a shame for reasons I’m about to go into. And…
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(Forimmediaterelease.net) Though Italian gelato is considered the world’s best ice cream, you wouldn’t go to Italy just to get an ice cream cone But, hey, if you’re going to Italy anyway, why not get a free gelato?
TourCrafters, the Italian tour operator known for its good deals, is offering a new 7-day/6-night “Eat Your Gelato in Italy” package that starts at US$1,119 in April and includes round-trip air from New York to Florence, fuel surcharge, three nights at the Hotel Roma in Florence, three nights at the Hotel-Spa Villa Aurea in Cortona, daily breakfasts, a spa course with Turkish bath and sauna at the Villa Aurea, service charges, and taxes… and that free gelato. The price goes up US$165 per person in May and from September 19 to October 31.
This is a chance to have a real vacation, to enjoy the relaxing lifestyle of Tuscany, the fabulous art, the fashionable boutiques, the rejuvenating spa waters, the wonderful restaurants — yes, the taste of real food, and that free gelato at Vivoldi, which has the most celebrated ice cream in Florence.
The 4-star Hotel Roma has all the modern comforts in an 18th-century palazzo that overlooks the Piazza Santa Maria Novella and is only a short walk to the Duomo. The 4-star Villa Aurea, in the town of Cortona (made famous by the book and movie Under the Tuscan Sun), boasts a pool and full-service health spa. A car rental, which is more or less necessary, is available on request.
Air fare add-ons are US$25 from Boston and US$120 from Chicago and Miami. All prices quoted are per person, double occupancy, do not include airport taxes of approximately US$116, and are subject to availability and change. Reservations must be paid for within 72 hours of booking. For additional information, visit www.tourcrafters.com . For reservations, call 800-482-5995.
...and qualify to win a gourmet Italian food basket of your choice! http://selectitaly.com/TravelPlanner/
Adesso ho fame!
Learning to make fresh pasta in Bologna, Italy
BY ERICA MARCUS
August 31, 2008
If it is possible to get a bad meal in Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna, I have been unable to find one. The worst meals I have had there were very good; the best, transcendent.
The Bolognese have a saying that their city excels in the three T's: torri (two leaning 12th-century towers are the only ones remaining of many more that once dominated the skyline), tetti (the defining characteristic of the legendarily well-endowed Bolognese women) and tortellini, which are less a regional specialty than a municipal obsession.
On a recent visit, I concentrated on tortellini - and lasagna and tagliatelle - the glories of Bolognese fresh pasta. Whereas dried pasta (e.g. spaghetti, linguine, shaped macaroni) is made from hard-wheat flour and water and is kneaded and extruded by machine, fresh pasta is made with soft-wheat flour and eggs and is kneaded and rolled into a sheet, a "sfoglia," optimally, by hand.
We ate our fill of fresh pasta in Bologna and we spent a couple of hours one morning learning to make it at La Vecchia Scuola (literally, "the old school"), run by Alessandra Spisni.
The school is housed in a small shop-front in a residential neighborhood (Via Malvasia 49, 011-39-051-6491576, www.la vecchiascuola.com). Stefania Spisni, whose facility with both pasta and school administration belie her 22 years, teaches alongside her mother and her uncle Alessandro, who also makes pasta for Anna Maria (Via Belli Arti, 17/A, 011-39-051-266894), home of Bologna's best lasagna (in my humble opinion).
The school's one-day "tourist" course consists of a three-hour lesson in preparing and rolling out pasta dough, as well as tortellini, tortelloni and tagliatelle. After the lesson there is a three-course lunch featuring fresh pasta. Cost is 70 euros a person (multiday courses also available).
Stefania and Alessandro guided us through the pasta-making process: weighing out the ingredients, mixing the flour and eggs first by fork, then by hand, on the wooden work surface; kneading the yellow dough until it is smooth and then rolling it out with a 3-foot-long dowel. This is definitely the hardest part, because as you roll the dowel back and forth you also move your hands from the center of the dowel out toward the ends and then back again. Stefania did this with grace and assurance. Me, not so much.
Then we learned how to cut the sfloglia into noodles, and fill it and fold it to form the tortellini and tortelloni that we later enjoyed at lunch in the dining room.
Hand-rolled pasta, we learned from eating it, has a springiness and porousness impossible to achieve with a machine, which tends to make the dough smoother and more compressed. Armed with this newfound point of snobbishness, I waddled back into Bologna for dinner.
Cooking schools in Italy
There are hundreds of cooking schools in Italy geared toward vacationing Americans. Here is a sampling of reputable ones:
CAMPANIA: SALERNO
Cook at Seliano
718-783-2626, thefoodmaven.com/seliano
Formerly host of Food Talk on WOR, Arthur Schwartz is one of this country's foremost teachers of Italian cooking - and we share a great-grandmother. Four times a year he conducts a cooking school at Tenuta Seliano, an agriturismo (farm-inn) that belongs to his friend Baronessa Cecilia Bellelli Bartta.
PUGLIA: LECCE
Awaiting Table Cooking School
awaitingtable.com
Silvestro Sivestori is the owner, instructor, chef and sommelier of this well-run school in the gorgeous Baroque city of Lecce, the vibrant cultural capital of the Salentine Penisula in Puglia.
VENETO: VERONA
Cooking with Giuliano Hazan
941-923-1333, giulianohazan.com
Hazan is the son of the great Italian cooking teacher and author Marcella Hazan, and he has established himself as an authority in his own right. The school, held at a Renaissance villa, is run by Hazan and Marilisa Allegrini, one of the regions best winemakers.
LAZIO: ROME
Maureen Fant
Fant runs half-day cooking programs in Rome. Participants "join my life for part of a day, and in a few hours I try to teach them everything it took me more than 20 years to learn the hard way." After a morning of shopping, "we take the bus back home to cook lunch in my apartment kitchen. I never plan a menu. Instead, I always hope people will find things at the market they've never tasted, or even seen, and will be curious enough to want to try them." E-mail Fant at info@maureenbfant.com
TUSCANY: CHIANTI
Giuliano Bugialli's Foods of Italy
215-922-2086, bugialli.com
The granddaddy of Italian cooking schools geared to Americans: In 1973, cookbook author Giuliano Bugialli founded the first cooking school in Italy to be taught in English. Guests stay at a hotel in Florence and are transported by bus to the school, in a 15th-century farmhouse in the Chianti Classico region.
TUSCANY: FLORENCE
La Cucina del Garga
011-39-055-211396, garga.it
Trattoria Garga is one of Florence's most acclaimed restaurants. Proprietor Sharon Oddson runs one-day cooking classes as well as four-day and eight-day gastronomic excursions in southern Tuscany.
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