It’s December, “tis the Season - the season for Christmas, the season for shopping or spirituality, but surely also the Season for eating! All around the world Christmas has always been one of the major celebrations around which families and friends get together for a day of togetherness, Christmas presents exchange, and enjoy together huge gourmet meals!

This is why at Academia Barilla we decided to publish a full Christmas menu, from the appetizer to the entree, the main course and the dessert. We will publish the recipes one at the time this month, one per week until December 24.

I let you give a peek preview at the Academia Barilla Gourmet Christmas Menu, which of course is composed by dishes taken from the Christmas traditions of our region, Emilia-Romagna:

Appetizer - Chicken Galantine with pistachio nuts (Bologna recipe)

Entree - Herbs Tortelli (Parma recipe)

Main Course - Cotechino in jail with mashed potato (Modena recipe)

Dessert - English soup with Vanilla ice cream

Mmmm…. yummy! Let’s start immediately with the perfect appetizer for your Christmas dinners (and other occasions, too) - Chicken Galantine with pistachio nuts.

CHICKEN GALATINE WITH PISTACHIO NUTS

Recipe from the book “Il cucchiaio d’Argento” (The silver spoon)
Milan, Domus, 1951

INGREDIENTS

- 1 full chicken
- 1/2 cup marsala
- 100 grams lean ham in a single slice, cubed
- 100 grams corned tongue in one slice, diced
- 2 black truffles, peeled and cubed
- 1 pinch of pistachios (skinned in boiling water)
- 400 grams lean veal
- 400 grams lard, blanched and cubed
- 2 calves feet
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1/2 bunch parsley
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 clove
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 nutmeg
- gelatine (aspic)

PREPARATION

Take a good chicken (or even a hen) blaze it (pass it quickly over a flame in order to flame the skin) and cut the neck off, leaving as much skin as possible around the neck; place it on a chopping board with the chest down.

Slice the chicken in the middle of the back with a sharp knife, a straight incision from the neck joint down to the tail. Then proceed discarding the skin without damaging it, continuing to tear off the flesh from the bones, cutting wings and thigh joints to facilitate the operation; keep the skeleton and the skin with the flesh separate.

Lay the chicken on the chopping board and remove the entire flesh without tearing the skin. Place the skin in a large bowl and season with salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, sprinkle with a bit of marsala, twine and leave for later.

In a separate bowl, place all of the chicken breast (diced), add the ham cut into cubes, the diced corned tongue, a pinch of pistachios skinned in boiling water, washed blacked truffles, peeled and cut into cubes, with the blanched lard, cut into cubes, too.

To blanch the lard, divide it into slices and put them in a bowl with boiling water, letting to rest for about twenty minutes; place the lard in a bowl of fresh water and when cold, dry it, cut it into cubes and combine with the remaining ingredients.
Season all these diced ingredients at the same way you seasoned the chicken skin (season with salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, sprinkle with a bit of marsala, twine and leave for later), mix well and keep apart.

Then chop the veal meat, the rest of the lard and the flesh of the chicken previously removed from the skin. Mix at length, and season with salt and pepper to form a compact mixture with no traces of calf or lard parts.

In order to prepare a pesto in a perfect way, you should also pound them in a mortar and then pass through a sieve. Put this pesto in a bowl, add nuts and mix again.

Stretch out the chicken’s skin, put the compact mixture inside, shaping in a rounded form, stitch it nicely, wrap it tightly in a napkin or in a white canvas, tie it well at the edges and make a fold at the center.

Place the galantine in a oval shaped casserole (pot), add bones and chicken’s waste (bones, wings, neck), veal legs, carrot, onion in which you stuck the clove, parsley, celery, a little salt and cover it all with water and boil very slowly for an hour and a half.
Pull out the galantine and place it on a plate. After half an hour, remove it from the canvas, rinse it in fresh water, squeeze it and tie it back around the galantine, exactly just like the first time.

Place it on a serving plate and after 7-8 hours cut it into slices and fill it with the gelatine as indicated below.

CHEF TIPS - HOW TO MIX CHICKEN WITH GELATINE

Remove the galantine from heat and add a bit of water in the pot to finish cooking the calves’ feet, which have to be almost discarded.

At this point, pass the jelly through a canvas, gathering in a bowl and then eliminate the fat lying on the surface. To clarify, the gelatine, which is usually never clear, is placed in a saucepan with the white part of the egg and a glass of marsala, add the cold defatted broth and mix well.

Put the casserole back on the fire and keep stirring until boil. Remove the pot and let the soup rest for 5 minutes.

Pass the jelly through a squeezed wet canvas and pour it into a mold that will be placed on ice to let the jelly set. At the time of use, lay the wet squeezed canvas on the table, and pour the gelatine over it, which will be cut in triangles or other shapes to garnish the galantine.

WINE PAIRING TIP

Try to serve it with the Italian sweet white wine Malvasia, or with the sparkling white Prosecco, king of Italian aperitivos!

Merry Gourmet Christmas from Academia Barilla!

The Verdi Festival 2007, dedicated to the famous Italian opera composer and director Giuseppe Verdi by the City of Parma, Italy, closed yesterday October 31, after a month-long of opera shows and collateral events dedicated to the Italian Maestro.

The Festival has has been a triumph, not only because all the shows, including some of the most famous Italian Operas such as La Traviata, Aida, Rigoletto and Luise Miller, were sold out; the collateral events, in which Academia Barilla was fully involved, have been looked after and talked about as some of the most precious moments of the Festival.

The gourmet side of the Festival has been crafted to art, also in honor to Maestro Verdi, who was a notorious gourmet foodie - if he were among us now, sure he would be reading Italian Food Lovers!

Giuseppe Verdi, son of an osteria owner, knew several traditional recipes and is known for giving detailed instructions to her lifetime cook Ermelinda Berni, so that she could excel in both cooking and presentation.

Academia Barilla, who dedicates part of its commitment in the promotion of traditional Italian gastronomy, created in 2004 the first and more comprehensive Gastronomic Library in the world, with more than 8,000 titles (same of which very rare and dating back to the 17th century) dedicated to the Italian food culture, but actually embracing a worldwide knowledge on culinary, gastronomy, and food culture.

Giancarlo Gonizzi, the responsible and creator of Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library, honored Giuseppe Verdi at the Verdi Festival with a dedicated exhibition of traditional recipes from the Verdi times, that actually got prepared and presented to the Festival guests by amazing Chefs of the Academia Barilla Culinary School.

Academia Barilla Chef Roberto Ronzoni, here in the picture, guided a team of gourmet Chef from the Culinary school to prepare incredible historic menus for the Verdi Festival, including typical dishes known to be among the Maestro’s favorites.
Reporter Maria Celeste Crucilla’, from the popular Italian magazine Oggi, wrote a very nice article last week about the historic menu created by the Academia Barilla team for the Verdi Festival.

Among the several creations of the Academia Barilla team for the Verdi Festival, we would like to talk about three of them, Verdi’s favorite dishes: Mortified Wild Duck (Faraona Mortificata), Flan with Spalla Cotta (Flan with Cooked Ham), and Cacio Bavarese (Bavarian Cheese Dessert).

The Mortified Wild Duck (Faraona Mortificata) gets its name from the fact that the Faraona (Wild duck) would have been hung from his feet for a few days to macerate, before getting stuffed with Parmigiano-Reggiano, eggs, crumbled bread, Prosciutto di Parma, Italian parsley, basil, salt and pepper.

Flan with Spalla Cotta (Flan with Cooked Ham) definitly was the Maestro’s favorite dish. The flan is made with Parmigiano-Reggiano, and the ham, in the traditional recipe, is the typical “Spalla di San Secondo“, a special cut from the pork’s shoulder that is generally served in thin slices.

Giuseppe Verdi was so passionate about this dish that he would always bring it as a present to his close friends, and teaching them how to make it according to the traditional recipe. In a letter from April 27, 1872, to his friend Conte Oprandino Arrivabene, Giuseppe Verdi gives all the instructions on how to cook the ham at its best:

“Before cooking it on the fire, you must take most of the salt off, just leave the ham for two hours in water. Then boil it on fire, in a pot filled with water. Slow-flame cook it for 6 hours, then leave it resting in his soup until cold. When cold, take the ham from the pot, dry it, and eat it”.

Cacio Bavarese (Bavarian Cheese Dessert) is also known as The Bishop’s Flan, and traditionally made with finger biscuits (Savoiardi, try the Pavesini, also a classic main ingredient for Tiramisu’, at our online shop). Savoiardi get soaked in white wine from the Parma hills and Ron, then alternated with vanilla-chocolate cream and cherry marmalate. To be served with a zabaglione cream like your (Italian) mother used to make!

See you at the next Verdi Festival in Parma, October 2008! We will be surely talking a lot about it next year, as we did this year!

One of the most important cultural events of the Italian cultural winter scene, the Festival Verdi, opens today its 2007 edition.

The event is a must for Italian opera and lirica lovers, as the Festival dedicates the entire month of October to Giuseppe Verdi, the Italian opera Maestro, with daily concerts performed in some of the most prestigious opera theaters of Italy, such as Teatro Regio and Teatro Farnese.

The Italian opera Festival, as our Italian Food Lovers readers know, is held in Parma, Italy, home to Giuseppe Verdi. Teatro Regio, one of the major venues for the month-long event, publishes the entire schedule of opera shows, for those interested to the full calendar.

The Festival opens today, October 1, 2007, with one of the most famous operas from the Maestro, Luisa Miller. Check the details of the three-acts opera on Wikipedia, who dedicates an entire page to the famous libretto.

This summer we dedicated several blog posts to the Ultimate Italian Travel Experience, the perfect travel package proposed by Academia Barilla that put together two of the most important traditions of Italy, opera and food, framing them in the beautiful context of Parma and the surrounding Italian Food Valley area - also known as Terre Verdiane in honor to one of its most famous natives, Giuseppe Verdi.

Academia Barilla proposes a 5-days trip that includes accommodation in a 5-star hotel in the center of Parma, gourmet meals, two opera shows from the Festival Verdi, an hands-on cooking class at the Academia Barilla Culinary School (with typical menus from the 19th century, the era of Giuseppe Verdi), guided tours of Parma and some of the most beautiful locations of the Italian Food Valley to visit the land of Giuseppe Verdi, a castle, and local artisan farmers and producers of traditional gourmet food, such as Parmigiano-Reggiano - all of the above tossed with the style and the friendly but professional guidance of the Academia Barilla team in Parma.

This is definitely the best way to enjoy the Festival Verdi and discover Italy in style, a true Ultimate Italian Travel Experience. You can have a taste of this trip through the virtual tour we published on the blog, but we strongly advice all Italian food and opera lovers to go for the real thing, and check out all the booking information provided at this page of the Academia Barilla website.

Hurry up, the Verdi Festival already opened today, and will last for this month only, until October 31 - but be aware that Academia Barilla’s tour dates are only scheduled on the following October 2007 schedule:

October 6-10, 2007
October 10-14, 2007
October 16-20, 2007
October 21-25, 2007

This is the last installment in the saga of The Ultimate Italian Travel Experience, the Italian opera and gourmet cooking virtual tour designed by our Italian Food Lovers blogging team to anticipate the real gourmet travel package, launched by Academia Barilla.

The tour is designed to better experience the lifestyle, the culture and the food of Parma and the Italian Food Valley, while attending the world-famous opera Festival dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi next October 2007.

After discovering the treasures of Parma and attending the first opera concert on the first two days, and exploring the land and history of Maestro Giuseppe Verdi on day three, on day four our guests will head out of town again to re-discover the Italian Food Valley region, this time with a gastronomic tour, hunting for the most hidden production secrets of some of the top gourmet Italian food products.

Day four will start with a visit to a traditional Parmigiano-Reggiano producer that will include of course a Parmigiano tasting session.

Next gourmet production secrets will be unveiled during the visit to an artisan Salumificio that produces, among many different kind of hams and salami, the precious Culatello di Zibello. A tasting session under the guidance of an Italian Culinary Specialist from the Academia Barilla Culinary School will be part of the guided tour in the Salumificio.

More traditional Italian gourmet food is on the agenda, with a lunch in a local restaurant of the Medieval burg of Fontanellato, organized by Academia Barilla after the visit to Rocca Sanvitale, one of the most beautiful castles of Northern Italy, that treasures paintings and frescoes of Parmigianino.

We really love Fontanellato, and we invite you to explore it more in details by checking the customized Google Map we designed and enriched with photos to give you a preview of this magic place, that surely deserves a real visit, not just a virtual one. Click this link or the Google Map image below to interact with places and pictures of Fontanellato.

You can also explore Fontanellato browsing our Flickr.com photo album - click on the image below to see all the pictures we took for you from outside, inside and around the beautiful medieval opera castle.

After the lunch organized by Academia Barilla, the group will return to Parma for a free afternoon. Guests can choose to either relax with some shopping in one of the most exclusive fashion outlets in Italy, or keep discovering on their own the beauties of the City of Parma.

Don’t forget we have plenty of content for you from Parma, such as interactive Google Maps with photo and videos, Flickr.com photo albums, and online picture slideshows. Click the Google Maps, Flickr and Slide images in this post to get to the interactive content.

We invite you to include, link or embed our online content in your blogs and website - just mention Academia Barilla and, if possible, let us know you are linking to us, we’ll be so happy we’ll definitely link you back!
If you don’t know how to include, link or embed videos and other interactive content, feel free to ask as for help, we are learning fast here at Italian Food Lovers, so we can share with you some of our blog tech knowledge!

The evening of day four is dedicated to an opera concert from the Verdi Festival calendar. The Verdi’s opera, either La Traviata or Louise Miller, will be based on the festival calendar and ticket availability.

After the show and before the guests will return to their hotel, Academia Barilla will host a farewell dinner for the group’s guests, with exclusive gourmet menus designed by the Academia Barilla Executive Chefs.

The next day, day 5 of the tour, tour guests will be free to check out from their hotels or choose to stay few more days in Parma (highly recommended strategic location to explore more than 20 castles in the Italian Food Valley region).

Academia Barilla will be running these exclusive Italian opera and gourmet cooking tours for 5 weeks only, some might even want to participate again to the next tour and get more traveling, visiting, cooking and operas!

We hope you enjoyed the blog virtual tour of The Ultimate Italian Travel Experience - you can find all the info for the real October 2007 only tours, plus booking information, at this link on AcademiaBarilla.com.

Stay tuned with Italian Food Lovers!.

The Italian Food Lovers virtual tour of the Ultimate Italian Travel Experience proposed by Academia Barilla is really getting us excited about what the real tour experience will be, as dates for the Giuseppe Verdi Festival 2007 are approaching fast (October 2007).

After covering day one and two with the previous posts, we now enter day three, which is dedicated to the history and the places of the Maestro Giuseppe Verdi in Parma and in the surrounding Italian Food Valley region.

Our tour guests will leave their hotels in the morning to visit the Terre Verdiane, starting with Roncole. All transportations are obviously already included in the Italian opera and gourmet cooking travel package, so just jump on a bus for about half an hour, and Academia Barilla will take you to discover the land of Maestro Giuseppe Verdi.

Check out the interactive Google Map we created for the day trip, just click the image below to interact with it, and discover more Italian Food Valley and Roncole pictures.

In Roncole, today Roncole Verdi, we’ll visit the home where Giuseppe Verdi was born, now a Giuseppe Verdi Museum, and the church where he received the first music lessons.

Discover more pictures from Roncole Verdi on Flickr.com, we created an entire photo album on Giuseppe Verdi’s birthplace. Click on the image below to reach the photo album.

Next stop is Busseto, home to the famous Verdi’s Theater and to the Barezzi’s House & Hall, the seat of the Filarmonica di Busseto, where Verdi emerged as a young composer.

A typical lunch based on local and traditional antipasti has been arranged by Academia Barilla in a characteristic restaurant in Busseto where Verdi’s music is constantly played.
One of the highlights of the restaurant, beside its gourmet traditional Italian food, is the famous guest book with a signature collections that include those of Giuseppe Verdi and his friends, the singer Teresa Stolz, the publisher Giulio Ricordi, Ottorino Respighi, Arturo Toscanini, Gabriele D’Annunzio and a variety of singers, painters, writers and gourmets from all over the world.

The afternoon will continue with a visit of Orlandi’s Palace, a building that the Maestro bought in the centre of Busseto, and to Villa Sant’Agata 4 miles outside Busseto where Verdi, already rich and famous, had this beautiful residence built, and where he lived for almost half century.

Do you like our interactive Google Maps? Here is another one full of pictures of Busseto, that you can also find as a photo album at our brand new Flickr.com account.