We are not talking about the opera orchestras that will perform next month in Parma, Italy, for the Opera Verdi Festival 2008. We will blog soon about the Parma festival dedicated to the Italian opera Maestro Giuseppe Verdi, and about the initiatives and cultural gourmet tour designed by Academia Barilla to help you enjoy the event, Parma, the Italian Food Valley and of course Italian food culture!

Today we want to talk about MSC Orchestra, the luxury Italian cruise ship recently aquired by MSC Cruises, who added the Italian cruise ship to their fleet of luxury cruise ships.

Academia Barilla just sealed a partnership with MSC Orchestra, and all their customers and guests now get a special discount at the Academia Barilla online store. MSC Cruises even set up an Academia Barilla partner page on their website, and other pages where users get direct access to Academia Barilla’s recipes, culinary courses info and both the Academia Barilla product line and the new Giada De Laurentiis Selected by Academia Barilla Italian gourmet food products. All products are of course available at the Academia Barilla online store.

MSC Orchestra is a ship designed to create an atmosphere of luxury cruising, boasting 18 decks, a spacious Body and Mind Spa, and both meditation area and fitness center overlooking the bow of the ship. There are 5 restaurants onboard the MSC Orchestra, offering a gourmet food experience that ranges from authentic Italian cuisine to sophisticated Shanghai dishes. 

The state-of-the art Italian luxury cruise ship also offers Internet Café, tennis and basketball courts, and two stunning pools (Acapulco and Cala Blanca). MSC Orchestra’s guests are accomodated in luxurious cabins, most featuring private balconies.

Check out the video on the website dedicated to MSC Orchestra, The Orchestra is coming to town, or just to browse the great pictures on the website (we grabbed a few of them for this blog post) to discover this truly amazing Italian cruise ship.

Also, check out the cruise packages and offers for this winter’s Inaugural Carribean and Bermuda Season - prices start at $449* (check MSC Cruises’ website for pricing and booking details), and kids 17 and under sail free! All of MSC Orchestra’s Winter 2008/2009 offers are at this link.

We will be blogging again about this sea jewel of Italian design, and will also try to track down MSC Orchestra’s Executive Chef to get a recipe or two, as soon as the cruise ship will come to town!

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!

The perfect companion drink for the crispy Parmigiano Flatbread just introduced by Chef Tony Mantuano? According to wine expert Cathy Mantuano, Tony’s wife and also co-author of the cookbook Wine Bar Food, is the Bellini Cocktail, an Italian classic.

Today Cathy Mantuano will teach us how to make the perfect Bellini cocktail - not only, she also give us a great tip on how to make little changes to the original recipe to prepare also Rossini and Tiziano cocktails!

We know you are going to love all of them, so go ahead and enjoy the three cocktails, just please remember to drink responsibly. Wine expert Cathy Mantuano suggest to serve these cocktails at brunch, or at cocktail hours.

BELLINI COCKTAIL
A cocktail recipe by wine expert Cathy Mantuano
(makes 1 cocktail)

WINE EXPERT NOTES AND TIPS

This sparkling wine drink, invented at the famous Harry’s Bar in Venice, is made there with white peach juice, though yellow peach juice would also be delicious.

INGREDIENTS

- 2 ounces chilled peach juice or peach nectar
- 4 ounces chilled Prosecco or other dry sparkling wine

PREPARATION

In a champagne flute, combine the juice and the wine.

ROSSINI COCKTAIL

To make this fruity sparkling wine drink, substitute strawberry juice for the peach juice.

TIZIANO COCKTAIL

Perfect for fall, this refreshing cocktail substitutes Concord grape juice for the peach juice.

Thanks Cathy, and cheers to all Italian Food Lovers!

Remember that today, July 2, wine expert Cathy Mantuano and her husband and cookbook co-writer Chef Tony Mantuano have a book signing and demo beginning at 2 p.m. as part of the Taste of Chicago event. They will be located outside the Zagat pavilion signing copies and showcasing recipes from Wine Bar Food, their latest cookbook. Can’t miss this!

Just a final note from the Italian Food Lovers blog team, as you know we live and breath food culture but we also love Italian culture overall. Did you know that the cocktails are named after three major Italian artists?

When the famous Harry’s Bar in Piazza San Marco, Venice (Venezia, not LA), created the Bellini cocktail, it was dedicated to Venetian Renaissance painter and Maestro Giovanni Bellini, while the Tiziano cocktail is named after another Venetian Reinassance painter, Tiziano Vecelli (Titian).

The Rossini cocktail honors a more recent artist, the Italian opera composer and Maestro Gioacchino Rossini, the author of famous operas such as The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Sivilla), William Tell (Guillaume Tell) and Tancredi. Maestro Rossini was born in Pesaro and not in Venice, but has performed a lot in Venice, granting him the honor of a virtual Venice honorary citizenship and… naming a great cocktail!

These final images are taken from Wikipedia and so are the links, that we invite you to explore to get to know more about the three Italian Maestros. Maybe while sipping their drinks!

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!

Well, this Parma Google Map is technically the same Map we recently published.

Newly released functionalities on Google Maps now allow us to integrate our customized Italian Food Valley Google Maps, gourmet tours and itineraries on Italian Food Lovers, and you will be able to browse the photos and video we posted on Google Maps directly from here!

Check it out! Just click on the placemarks to discover Parma a little bit more!

View Larger Map on Google Maps

Remember also that the best way to visit Parma is discovering its cultural and culinary treasures with Academia Barilla. The Academia Barilla Culinary Center in Parma organizes gourmet tours and culinary learning vacations in Parma and the surrounding Italian Food Valley.

Check out also the Opera Verdi Tours we have largely introduced this summer on the blog - tour dates are approaching fast, and you can find all booking info here.