Masterchef winner and chef Julie Friend has opened her garden for up to six guests to enjoy delicious food in beautiful countryside
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Honey, I’m bee whispering in Lombardy
High up in the hills of Lombardy, south of Milan, are 400 bee hives dotted around fields, woodlands and edging vineyards. They belong to siblings Michela and Paolo who for the past ten years have created a life in the countryside of Lombardy in northern Italy looking after bees, showing a sincere love and caring […]
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Bitter orange flowers offer sweet flavours
High above the Mediterranean Sea in Vallebona, an ancient town in the Italian province of Liguria, lies a grove of bitter orange trees. Family run, the La Vecchia Distilleria grove is developing a reputation for high quality orange water known as Acqua di Fiori d’Arancio Amaro and for a limited production of neroli, an essential […]
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CITRUS BITES: Agretti … Spring time in Italy
Agretti! I spotted the word in an Instagram post with by chef @kentcooking and it intrigued me. After mentioning my interest in this, a comment from Rome, Italy-based chef and teacher @carla_tomasi suggested I had better be quick as this vegetable was in season in Spring and this year’s Spring was already reshaping into Summer. […]
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A passion for fire and heat
We called him our ‘Renaissance Man’! Need a DJ for a party … call Giovanni. Need a website building … call Giovanni. Need a BBQ firing up … call Giovanni! And so, with the United Kingdom celebrating National BBQ Week, who else was I going to call, but … Giovanni. Also known as Blushu, Giovanni […]
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CITRUS BITES: MORO ORANGE
We arranged to meet on a deserted street in Bra, empty of people and atmosphere. Bra, a city in northern Italy famous for giving birth to Slow Food, a global activist movement working to give people access to food that is good, clean and fair. But this wasn’t on our minds at the time. No. […]
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Cooking with strangers around a Table Less Traveled
Squinting into the screen of my mini-iPad I see friendly, smiley anonymous faces staring back at me in a culinary Zoom session. We’re gathered with a sense of community, to share our time and isolated spaces and take part in an interactive cooking class. I’ve signed up for 90 minutes of expert tuition, connecting with […]
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White beans of Liguria
Hidden behind cardboard boxes of polenta and rice and alongside flimsy plastic bags of dried pasta lay a smallish cotton bag full of magic beans, known in the Italian province as Fagiolo Bianco di Conio, White Beans of Conio. This drawer sits in a cupboard in my Italian kitchen, in a small town about an […]
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Oranges and people pulped in Battaglia delle Arancie
Cool morning air blows down from the Alpine mountains into Ivrea, in Piedmont, northern Italy and mingles with the scent of oranges, stacked in quiet street corners and squares ready for the city’s annual carnival, the Battaglia delle Arancie (Battle of the Oranges). It’s mid-February and time for the carnival, in which locals pelt each […]
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New generation Barbaresco wines from La Vedetta
There’s a lot of energy in the air at the La Vedetta winery. Lying in the heart of the vine-covered rolling hills of Barbaresco, an extraordinary part of the wine-producing region of the Langhe, the winery is blessed with great soils, magical micro-climates and amazing views. But in the middle of February, the energy is […]
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