We blogged several times this month about Giada De Laurentiis, to announce her new gourmet line Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla and to publish a couple of Giada’s recipes. Now we really want to give space to this great Giada photo shooting who’s traveling around the blogosphere.

Yes, we can answer the same question everybody is asking: “is this a photoshop effect?”  The answer is No. She really is Giada De Laurentiis bathing in a sea of tomato juice.

This is actually the third picture of a series by photographer Gavin Comb for Esquire, the men lifestyle magazine, who always dedicates stunning photo services to women celebrities, for the series Women We Love. Here is the first Giada photo shot of the 3-shot series.

And the second, right before she find herself in a lake of tomato juice as in the first picture we published.

As reported in the original article by Esquire, the concept for the photo shoot was:

In her crusade to show the world how much enjoyment can be derived from Italian cooking, De Laurentiis goes through a lot of tomatoes.

An average of two thirty-two-ounce cans per day (as shown in the first slide), to be precise. So in a month that would be… well, you can see that in the second photo.

“Canned tomatoes are packaged when they’re the ripest and the sweetest,” she says, “so there’s really no reason to go with fresh.”

Very smart article and concept for the photo shooting, and great Giada De Laurentiis pictures!

The article came with a recipe from Giada on how to make a great Giada’s Home-made Sauce, still online at the Esquire website, go have a look!

The event was part of the launch and official announcement of the US nationwide distribution of the new Italian gourmet food line Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla we already introduced on our Italian Food Lovers blog.

At the Astra Lounge, while Giada presented her new gourmet product line, a team of Chef from Barilla USA prepared some gourmet appetizers using Giada’s and Academia Barilla’s products, while Mionetto was partnering the NY event providing pairing wines.

We will be following up soon on this, publishing photos and recipes from the NY event, as soon as we get them at the blog editorial team. In the meanwhile, we are pleased to announce that we will publish in the next couple of weeks some Giada recipes prepared with her new products, so stay tuned!

So we introduced Giada’s product line a few months ago, then we tracked her book signing and other events, such as when Giada was featured as special guest of the month at Crate & Barrel, with a first preview and special limited distribution of the Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla line of Italian gourmet specialties.

Last Sunday June 29 Giada De Laurentiis and Academia Barilla organized a great cocktail party in NY as a collateral event for Fancy Food - don’t worry, we will blog about the event as soon as we get a couple of pictures and some gossip.

The NY event served also as an official Academia Barilla announcement of the nationwide distribution and availability of the new Italian gourmet food line (which is of course available also at the Academia Barilla online store) - a very official announcement, to the point that we broadcasted a press release to officialize the news.

You might have seen our press release online, republished via RSS by blogs and news aggregators who are into Italian food as we are, and now it is with great pleasure that we republish the press release also on our beloved Italian Food Lovers blog. The original version of the release is also available online at PRWeb, for our friends journalists and bloggers who need to download attachments and images.

Here we go (integral text from July 1st press release) -

Academia Barilla and Italian Celebrity Chef and Author Giada De Laurentiis Launch Italian Gourmet Line

Academia Barilla and Emmy nominated Italian celebrity chef and cookbook author Giada De Laurentiis launch a range of co-branded, specialty Italian food items for distribution in gourmet stores nationwide.

Bannockburn, IL (July 1, 2008) — Academia Barilla and Emmy nominated celebrity chef and cookbook author Giada De Laurentiis launch a range of co-branded, specialty food items for distribution in gourmet stores nationwide.

Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla® is Barilla’s first-ever gourmet celebrity product line, and offers food connoisseurs an authentic taste of Italy.  Products include Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, Sicilian Hand-Harvested Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon Zest, and Giada’s Tuscan Herb Mix, all personally selected by De Laurentiis. Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla® will also be available online at the Academia Barilla online store beginning today, July 1, 2008.

Giada De Laurentiis is host of two popular Food Network cooking shows, a co-host of NBC’s Today show, and author of three New York Times best-selling cookbooks, with two and a half million copies in print. Her most recent book, Everyday Pasta, was released in April 2007. A fourth cookbook, Giada’s Kitchen, will be in bookstores nationwide in Fall 2008. She is the granddaughter of famed Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis and legendary actress Silvana Mangano. 

Ms. De Laurentiis was the spokesperson for the Barilla Group’s U.S. Pasta division, appearing in print ad campaigns across the country for the past two years. Her ongoing relationship with the company through Academia Barilla is best described as a natural fit, as both are dedicated to the love of traditional Italian cooking with the best products and ingredients available.

As Giada De Laurentiis says, and reports on the back label of all Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla® products, “I was born in Rome, and I grew up in a large Italian family where the culture of food was an integral part of my life. My relationship with Academia Barilla is an obvious one, combining my love for traditional Italian cooking with the best ingredients available“.

About Academia Barilla - (note: we cut the boilerplate off as our readers already know Academia Barilla, but we leave the press contacts for the United States, just in case)

For more information, please contact Ms. Kim Sayid of Academia Barilla at 866.77.ACADEMIA or 847.405.7524. Visit also the Academia Barilla website and our Italian Food Lovers gourmet blog.

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PKN recently held a seminar at Academia Barilla, on the topic of responsible carbon emissions, introducing the Chicago Climate Exchange at the food and agriculture producers of the Italian Food Valley, planning towards being the first agri-food district in the world to reach the zero quota in carbon emission by 2010!

Today and tomorrow PKN will discuss more production-related topics, such as quality standardization in food production on the first day of the event, and the organization of international supply chains for produce and vegetable products.

Gianluigi Zenti, Academia Barilla’s President, said that “being an absolute prime player in the food industry not only in the Italian Food Valley but worldwide, Academia Barilla is taking a lead role in food industry innovation, going beyond corporate social responsibility and getting more and more involved with key initiatives such as those promoted by the Chicago Climate Exchange and, locally, by the Parma Knowledge Network. And, being PKN our Parma neighbor,” he continued, “it is a pleasure and an honor for Academia Barilla to host their international conferences and initiatives“.

The two-day conference, in English and Italian with live translations, is moderated by special guest Mary L. Shelman, Phd., Director of the Agribusiness Program at the Harvard Business School and Chair of the Annual Agribusiness Conference in Boston. We see her very busy and with an heavy event schedule, but we will try to do our best to corner her for a brief interview for our blog. Can’t promise that, but we’ll try!

The event, being hosted at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center, will definitely benefit from the presence of the Academia Barilla Chef Team, who will be taking care of all gourmet networking breaks, lunch and dinners!

For more info on PKN, the Parma Knowledge Network, please visit the PKN website (Italian language only, sorry) at www.parmakn.org.

What’s the most characteristic summertime food icon? Nine out of ten would say Ice Cream and sure gelato plays a big role in Italian gastronomy and food culture, so we decided to serve you a video on an event we hosted at the Academia Barilla Culinary School last month, for the Academia Barilla Short Film Awards, a satellite event to the well-know Brescello 2008 Film Festival.

During the gala event, Academia Barilla Executive Chef Nicola Bindini, helped by Chef Matteo Carboni of the Academia Barilla Chef Team, prepared and served to the participants of the event a very particular ice cream: liquid nitrogen ice cream.

We managed to get some video footage of the Academia Barilla Short Film Award Gala from TV Parma, who was partnering, filming and broadcasting the event. After some editing for the web format, and with the help of Chef Matteo Carboni whose voice-over comments the making of ice cream using the nitrogen freezing process, we are happy to present you the video on how to make a gourmet ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Used in creative cuisine, as well as in many other applications including surgery, liquid nitrogen has the power to freeze instantly and, in the ice cream making process, really helps in reducing preparation time, while not affecting the ice cream flavor nor its organoleptic properties.

As Matteo comments, liquid nitrogen has a boiling point at -320 Fahrenheit degrees, and this is why the Chefs have to use protection gloves to handle the preparation. So please don’t try this at home before taking all due safety precautions.

The ice cream base is composed by milk, cream, sugar and egg yolks. As Chef Matteo Carboni reminds in the video, it is important to pour the liquid nitrogen very slowly and keep mixing the ingredients to avoid crystallization, and to keep the ice cream homogeneous and smooth.

All the fog you see in the video and in the picture above is the product of the fast evaporation of the liquid nitrogen, and it is safe to breath for the few minutes of preparation. As Matteo says, the ice cream made with liquid nitrogen has a fresher flavor and a finer and smoother texture than the traditional ice cream - yummy!

Happy summertime to all Italian Food Lovers from the Academia Barilla Culinary School!