Italian Food Lovers

Experience the ultimate Italian travel experience in the heart of Parma and Emilia-Romagna, Italy’s Food Valley, with Academia Barilla and the VIP gourmet tour organized by Academia Barilla Culinary School Alumni Frank DiMaria we announced with a previous post.

The VIP gastronomy tour dates are September 21-26, 2008, and the gourmet guided tour to Emilia-Romagna includes:

Culinary Hands-on Experience
Exclusive tasting sessions
Regional delicacies
Authentic menus
Specialty recipes
English-Italian translation
5-Star hotel accommodations
All meals included
Castle and winery visits
World class facilities
Individualized instruction
Courses from Italy’s top local Chefs
One-of-a-kind gourmet and culinary tours
Daily transportation and transfers
Tuition and course materials

Culinary travel highlights include:

The cultural street life, authentic markets, food stores, retail shops, restaurants and cafés of Parma and surrounding areas of Emilia-Romagna

Two hands-on culinary courses at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center
The spectacular historic Torrechiara Castle and medieval town nestled in the countryside of Emilia-Romagna

Gourmet tours to award-winning Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma producers, where we will witness the production, authenticity and quality of traditional Italian products

Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar tastings with professional, expert techniques on how to taste these regional delicacies

An excursion to a winery in the Emilia-Romagna region for a tasting and lesson on discovering the intricacies and flavors of different wines

An excursion to the Ferrari Museum in Imola to experience first hand the history of an Italian icon

Gelato and sorbetto tasting in local area cafés

The exclusive group price for this luxury VIP guided tour is $2,900 per person, airfare excluded. For more detailed information about the VIP tour features, cost and booking please call Frank DiMaria at +1 847 965-0672 or +1 847 417-7587, or email Frank at frankdimaria@comcast.net.

We will be blogging more over the next few weeks about this VIP gastronomy tour to Emilia-Romagna, getting into details of each activity and destination to feed you with more Italian food culture and some desire to come cook with us in Parma!

After discovering how to choose a ripe melon at the market, today Chef Matteo Carboni of the Academia Barilla Culinary School will teach us an easy and fresh dessert recipe for a hot summer: Melon Sorbet.

Chef Matteo introduces the ingredients at the beginning of today’s video: 1 melon (1.5 oz), 1/2 oz white sugar, 3 oz glucose, the juice of 1/2 lemon, and Academia Barilla Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena 12 years old. Let’s watch the entire preparation on video!

After introducing the ingredients, Chef Carboni proceeds with the sorbet preparation: first he cuts the edges of the melon off, then he cuts the melon in half, cleaning the inside with a spoon, and finally he chops the melon in slices. When you peel the melon, reminds Matteo, be careful not to cut your finger!

Chef Carboni roughly chops the melon in pieces, then puts them inside a food processor (mixer) and moves on to the preparation of the sugar syrup, for which you will need the 1/2 oz white sugar, 3 oz of water and 3 oz of glucose.

To prepare the syrup, put the sugar and the water in a pot and bring it to 250 degrees F, then add the glucose, mix and let it rest.

In the meanwhile, start blending the melon in the food processor, then add the syrup and the lemon juice, and mix for a few seconds more.

Chef Matteo Carboni uses a professional ice-cream machine in this video, but gives all the tips on how to prepare ice-cream at home.

If you don’t have a professional ice-cream machine you can put the mixture in a bowl and place it in the freezer for 10 minutes, take it out, whip it, put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes, take it out and whip it again, then back in the freezer and so on.

You will have to keep repeating this step until the mixture is ice-cream dense, and this will vary according to the power of your home freezer.

To finalize the recipe, Chef Carboni uses an ice-cream scoop to serve 2 ice balls in a glass, and adds a finishing touch using a dash of Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena and a fresh mint leaf - ready to serve!

Thank you very much Matteo, see you soon on Italian Food Lovers!

Welcome to a new blog post in the Ingredient of the Month series! After introducing watermelon as a mid-summer dessert, today we introduce a strict relative of the watermelon as the ingredient of the month of August: the melon.

Chef Matteo Carboni of the Academia Barilla Culinary School gives us today a Chef tip: how to choose a ripe melon at the market. In Italy melon is a quite versatile ingredient, says Matteo; it used as an antipasto, for example with Prosciutto di Parma, and also as a dessert.

As Chef Matteo says in the video below, the first thing to check in a melon is its flavor that must have a strong and full, ripe smell.

Another important thing to verify before buying a ripe melon is the color of the side stripes. The melon is ripe, says Chef Carboni at the end of this video, when the green stripes have turned yellow.

Thank you very much Chef Carboni for this short but interesting video. Tomorrow we will publish part two of the video; Chef Carboni will delight us with a gourmet recipe of the month using melon as the ingredient. Stay tuned!

We have been blogging a lot in the past about Academia Barilla’s gourmet and gastronomy tours in Parma and Emilia-Romagna, as well as the several initiatives from the Academia Barilla Culinary Center such as the culinary learning vacations that conjugate the pleasure of discovering Italian culture and food tradition with the ultimate experience of learning how to cook with top Italian Chefs.

We also blogged several times about other Academia Barilla initiatives that put together Italian food and culture - and no, we don’t mean “just” Italian food culture, but actually gourmet food plus Italian culture, such as in the gourmet cultural tours proposed by Academia Barilla to discover historic and artistic landmarks, contemporary art or classic opera.

Talking about which, we can anticipate that also for this year Academia Barilla will offer gourmet luxury packages to enjoy the Festival Verdi 2008, dedicated to the Italian Opera Maestro Giuseppe Verdi. We’ll blog about it soon, stay tuned!

We are not the only one blogging about the Academia Barilla gourmet, cultural and culinary tours to Italy. The Academia Barilla Culinary Center in Parma, Italy, is listed as a top culinary destination by several Italian food websites and directories, such as ChicagoTribune.com, Cooking In Italy, Alta Cucina and GreatEveryDayWines.com, among others. Not to mention of course Gourmet Magazine, who recently ranked the Academia Barilla Culinary Center among the world’s best cooking schools, among the top 5 in the world in the Luxury category. 

If you want to get more info and details about the cultural, culinary and gastronomic tours of Academia Barilla please get in touch with Academia Barilla in Parma at +39 0521 264060 (toll-free number from Italy 800 376-116), or in the United States at the US toll-free number 1-866-772-2233.

We also already talked about our VIP tours, too, as in the recent case of Lynn Novo’s VIP gourmet tour to Parma, organized by Chef and food entrepreneur Lynn Novo from Atlanta, Georgia.

The Academia Barilla VIP tours are luxury guided cultural and culinary tours designed by Academia Barilla and managed by Academia Barilla Culinary School Alumni such as Lynn Novo or Frank DiMaria, who is organizing a new VIP tour from Chicago, Illinois.

Over the next few weeks we will publish a series of blog posts that will help recreate the experience, albeit in a virtual way, proposed by the Academia Barilla VIP tour organized and guided by Frank DiMaria. For the moment, we anticipate that there will be a lot of cooking, but also visits to local artisan food producers, Medieval castles, the Ferrari Museum, and guided tours to the historic and monument beauties of the cities of Parma and Bologna.

Stay tuned for the next blog posts. If you want to book or get more info on this specific Academia Barilla VIP tour, please call Frank DiMaria at all +1 847-965-0672 or email frankdimaria@comcast.net to reserve your space!

There is no better symbol for summer than a watermelon, at least in Italy where its sweet and juicy pulp refreshes million of Italians (plus all the tourists) every summer - in July and August you can even buy watermelon by the slice in many public squares and beaches across Italy!

The Italian name for watermelon is anguria, but in Central Italy it is also called cocomero while in the South people calls it melone. No matter the name, everybody loves the juicy watermelon in summertime!

This is why we picked up a very summer-ish recipe for this Ferragosto (the Italian public mid-summer holiday on August 15) which is fresh, easy to prepare, and mostly made out of watermelon.

We browsed the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library and found a cookbook by Italian celebrity Chef Gianfranco Vissani, “Il Vissani - 400 recipes in 100 menus proposed by Gianfranco Vissani” (2002, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Editions).

Our Ferragosto recipe of choice here at Italian Food Lovers definitely is Watermelon Chill with Sugar Grate, a recipe proposed by Chef Vissani and based on the very popular Sicilian summer dessert Gelo di Mellone. Ready? Let’s go to the kitchen!

WATERMELON CHILL WITH SUGAR GRATE

A recipe by Chef Gianfranco Vissani
(serves 4)

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS

- 21 oz Watermelon
- 5.3 oz Icing sugar
- 2.8 oz Dark chocolate grains
- 3.5 oz Sugar
- 1 fl oz Water

PREPARATION

Using a food processor, blend the watermelon into a fine pulp. Then, slowly mix in the icing sugar.

Distribute the watermelon mix into cups, decorate with the dark chocolate grains and let it store in the fridge until it has reached the right consistence (approximately one hour).

When the watermelon mix is ready, decorate with an abundant amount of icing sugar on top.

To prepare the sugar grinds cook the sugar with water until it reaches a temperature of 200°F. Continue cooking until it has caramelized.

Place the pot into a container filled with cool water in order to stop the cooking process. Then spread the caramel onto parchment paper.

Using a fork, shape some crossed stripes obtaining a grind made of sugar. Put the sugar grind on top of the watermelon chill and serve.

Happy and fresh Ferragosto to all Italian food lovers from our blog team and from the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library!