We love Wikipedia, maybe not as much as we love Italian food, but we really think Wikipedia is a priceless resource for all the Internet users, including us. We referenced Wikipedia sources and articles several times in our blog posts, and also pointed a link or two to a couple of topics we asked you to explore more in-depth.

Last month, while browsing the popular online encyclopedia, we realized that their editorial team always welcomes new contributors in many area yet to be fully covered - one of which is Italian cuisine.

We couldn’t resist the call and started by creating a basic profile for Academia Barilla, before started experiencing the pleasure of online collaboration and contributing to an article we linked to in recent times, right before Christmas.

Remember the Zuppa Inglese recipe we published as part of our Christmas Recipe Series?

In that blog post we actually used part of Wikipedia knowledge, when reporting about the origins of the dessert’s name. In order to pay back for the knowledge we got, we decided to publish the complete recipe of the Zuppa Inglese dessert on the same Wikipedia page, so that other Web users will be able to find it easily in the future.

We will definitely contribute more and more to the Wikipedia, and we’ll let you know when we do - but don’t worry, we made a commitment on sharing our premium content with you at Italian Food Lovers before sharing it with everybody else, so we’ll always be blogging here before publishing everywhere else on the web! Stay tuned with us!

Our Academia Barilla Culinary School has been recently included in the Alta Cucina directory of Italian Culinary Courses at www.altacucinasociety.com, and we would like to thank our new Italian culinary friends by blogging about them.

Alta Cucina is a Manhattan-based epicurean society founded to explore, share and celebrate premium-quality Italian food and wine products. Created by a group of Italian cuisine connoisseurs who value the company of others “at table” as a way of sharing the experiences of life, Alta Cucina started proposing in New York interesting experiments in dining and food experience.

Alta Cucina recognizes that the enjoyment of fine food is an art form in which every ingredient plays an important role and must be carefully chosen, and each event or product they select is of certified excellence and tied closely to local Italian craft traditions.

As they report on they website,

Product and recipe selections are always made with deference to natural seasonal rhythms, because to know the essence of Italian cuisine in its purest form also means to understand that each dish or ingredient is the product of precise climactic and territorial conditions. Therefore, there are foods whose true flavor can only be enjoyed a few times during the year.

Here at Italian Food Lovers we definitely like this attitude towards Italian food, so let us tell you also about their events such as the upcoming Day of Slowness promoted by Alta Cucina in New York last February 25, or The Aperitivo Series, introducing in busy NY the traditional Italian experience of “aperitivo“, meant for chilling out with friends after work pairing wines, beers and cocktails to a wide range of finger food made from original Italian gourmet products.

In The Aperitivo Series Alta Cucina throws in also a friendly expert or Chef who introduces dishes and wines, talks about their traditional origins and about the differences with similar, non-Italian food products. Well done, it sounds like the series of Academia Barilla gourmet events, where our guests can always count on the presence of an Academia Barilla Italian Culinary Specialist to ask questions to, and get precious Chef and Tasting Tips too.

Alta Cucina Inc’s CEO Amedeo Angiolillo, who has been interviewed for this blog post, invites also discovering the newly launched series of events Alta Cucina Dinners, featuring themed dinners prepared by Italian visiting Chefs in several restaurants of the US East Coast. The next Alta Cucina Dinners will be held in March at the Barbetta Restaurant (New York) and at the Cafe Oggi Restaurant (Washington, DC).

For more details and full schedule of events visit the Alta Cucina website.

Want to catch-up with Italian cookbook writer and Food Network celebrity Chef Giada De Laurentiis and get an autographed copy of her popular cookbooks, Everyday Pasta, Everyday Italian, and Giada’s Family Dinners?

Just head tomorrow, February 20th between 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm, to the Crate&Barrel store on Union Street, in San Francisco, CA. During Giada’s book signing there will also be free sample tastings available for guests, made with Giada’s new Italian Gourmet specialty foods created in collaboration with Academia Barilla.

Space is limited, so please contact the store for more information and booking. Below find store info, including a Google Map for driving directions to the Crate & Barrel shop:

CRATE & BARREL
55 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 982-5200

Get driving directions on Google Maps

As suggested by the Food Network Recipe Fan Club on their blog, you can also wish Giada big congrats on her first new little baby, a girl due in April!

After helping us with the Valentine’s day recipe we published yesterday, our friends from the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library team sent us a Valentine’s card, wishing to both the blogging team and the readership of Italian Food Lovers an Happy Gourmet Valentine’s Day. The card we received is nice, and we want to share it with you.

Thanks BIGAB team for your nice thought and your constant support to our blog! (BIGAB is how we internally call the “BIblioteca Gastronomica Academia Barilla). We’ll be blogging more about you and the treasures of the Gastronomic Library soon!

Happy Valentine’s Day to everybody from Italian Food Lovers and Academia Barilla!

Today we would like to introduce a couple of interesting publication that can be of interest for our Italian Food Lovers readership.
The first one is The New Regional Italian Cuisine Cookbook, written by Reinhardt Hess, Cornelia Schinharl, and Sabine Sälzer.

Reinhardt Hess is a Munich-based Bavarian food and wine journalist who has a special love for Italian and other Mediterranean foods and cooking styles. Cornelia Schinharl is a food editor at Graf und Unser, a major German book publisher, the author of several cookbooks, and an expert on Italian cuisine. She lives in Munich and visits Italy often to discover new foods and new wines. Sabine Sälzer is a world renowned cookbook editor.

When food lovers open this cookbook they’ll find themselves on a lively excursion through eight distinct and innovative culinary Italian regions. It’s an illustrated, recipe-filled cookbook and a coffee table guide to Italy’s people and traditions, from the Alpine Piedmont area in the north to the southern island of Sicily.

The book is structured into separate chapter for each of the eight regions, each opening with a landscape photo followed by several photo-filled pages describing the region’s people, their way of life, and their locally-produced foods and wines. The rest of each chapter is devoted to the region’s recipes.

Two dozen or more recipes per region are introduced, each of them illustrated with plenty of photos, and presented in the typical Italian style for hearty five-course dinners. The authors present great ways to prepare and serve meats, fish, pasta, sauces, fruits, vegetables, soups, salads, and desserts, and also offer suggestions for regional wines that go perfectly with each delightful Italian meal.

Among the several reviews for this cookbook, a couple of them caught our attention. Mat Schaffer at the Boston Herald reviewed it as “… A pictorial tour of Italy, its culture and customs. It’s like a gastronomic visit to Italy.”, while the internationally renowned Chef and restaurateur Mario Batali defines it “Definitive in a way that few books attempt, the recipes in this beautiful tome reflect the delicious diversity all dancing under the umbrella of Italian food. This beautiful book captures (Italy’s) entire boot in its mellifluous magnificence.”

Published by the NY-based publisher Barron’s Books for its Educational Series, the book is available at major bookstore worldwide, and also online at this link.

We really like this cookbook, even if it skipped our beautiful Emilia-Romagna region during the virtual Italian gastronomic tour - as our readers know, Academia Barilla and the Academia Barilla Culinary School are headquartered in Parma, the heart of the Italian Food Valley.

If you want to add to your virtual gastronomy tour Parma’s culinary traditions, culture and recipes, we also strongly suggest to check out world-renowed Chef and cookbook writer Giuliano Bugialli’s “Parma, A capital of Italian Gastronomy“, Academia Barilla’s first venture as a publisher.

Giuliano Bugialli’s cookbook celebrates the art, culture and tradition of the city of Parma, an extraordinary mix that you can find in our traditional plates. The Parma cookbook contains dozens of typical local recipes explained through stunning pictures and detailed descriptions, and infuses gastronomy tradition with culinary innovation, according to the true spirit of Parma.

The cookbook is available online at the Academia Barilla online store. Its luxury hardcover makes it a perfect gift - maybe the right gift idea for next Valentine’s Day?