Italian Food Lovers

Today, March 21, is the first day of Spring; we leave behind us the cold days of winter (not so cold this year, after all) and look forward for more and more beautiful days of primavera, spring time.

So how about planning a trip to Parma, in the heart of Emilia-Romagna and the Italian Food Valley? Academia Barilla could be your perfect host for your Italian gourmet vacations.

Amazing Medieval town rich of culture and with plenty of historic highlights that meet culinary culture (check out our blog article from last year for a virtual visit to the city), Parma is also, as our readership knows, home to Academia Barilla, its Culinary School, and of course BIGAB, Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library.

Both Academia Barilla’s Culinary School and Gastronomic Library will release their official calendar of events and gourmet and cultural initiatives soon (you get a peek preview on BIGAB’s activities from a previous post), but make sure that you will have plenty of choices that you can customize.

Academia Barilla’s culinary learning vacations include everything from gourmet tours of the Italian Food Valley to hands-on Italian cooking classes at the Culinary School, cultural guided tours, exploration of traditional farms and local artisan producers of Italian regional specialties and more, including on the cultural side of experiencing Italy. Opera? We got that too. Contemporary art? Of course. Cinema? Yep.

Getting curious? We suggest you stay tuned with this blog for more details coming up soon, but also that you start inquiring at Academia Barilla about the gastronomic and cultural initiatives for 2008. You can call directly Academia Barilla in Parma, Italy at +39 0521 264-060 or toll-free number (numero verde) 800 376-116; if you are in the United States you can reach Academia Barilla the toll-free number 866 772-2233.

In the meanwhile, explore our Parma photo set on Flickr.com! (click on the image to go to the photo set).

See you in Parma in primavera!

More Italian Easter recipes for your Easter Day menu. As we told you yesterday, the Easter Dove is one of they key symbols of the Italian Pasqua, both in religious iconography and in holiday food tradition.

Symbolizing both peace and the Holy Spirit, the Dove, has become the shape of the famous traditional Easter cake, Colomba Pasquale (Easter Dove), a classic dessert at any Easter meal in Italy. Here is the recipe for our Italian Food Lovers readers!

Ref: The source of the image above is Iginio Massari and Achille Zoia’s cookbook “Cresci - L’arte della pasta lievitata” (Grow - The art of baking dough), edited by Pavoni, and available at the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library in Parma, Italy.

COLOMBA PASQUALE
(serves 8-10)

INGREDIENTS - for the dough

- 11.6 oz flour
- 1 oz yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 8 oz of lukewarm milk
- 3 oz butter
- 1.3 sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2.7 oz candy lemon zest finely minced
- 1/2 grated zest of fresh lemon

INGREDIENTS - for the syrup

- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons water

OTHER INGREDIENDS

- flour to the base
- margarine to grease aluminum foil
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 oz sifted powdered sugar
- 1.4 oz peeled almonds
- 2 raisins

PREPARATION

Preheat the oven to 360 °F

For the dough

Place the flour in a large bowl, forming it into a mound. Add the yeast, sugar, 4 oz of lukewarm milk in the middle of the mound and knead the dough.

When completely incorporated, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place for 15 minutes so that the dough is puffy.

While the dough is rising, melt the butter in a small pan or microwave it in a microwave safe container. In another small bowl, beat the yolks with the sugar.

When the sugar is completely mixed with the yolks, add the melted butter to the mixture and mix. Add the mixture of the yolks, sugar and butter and the remaining milk and flour to the dough, and continue to knead vigorously until the dough is firm and compact, making sure it is not sticky.

Subsequently, add the fresh lemon zest and candied lemon to the dough, and form a ball. Set aside and let the dough rise for approximately 30 minutes in a warm place.

For the syrup

In a small pot, bring the 2 tablespoons of water and 2 tablespoons of sugar to a boil; remove from heat and let cool.

For the dough

When the dough is ready, divide it in half and make 2 rolls (approximately 7 to 8 inches in size). Shape each roll into a dove. You may also choose to place each roll in a dove-shaped mold.

Cover the dough and let each dove-shaped roll rise for about 20 to 30 minutes until each is double in size. When the dough is ready, brush the surface with the syrup mixture and sift the powdered sugar over the top. Top each dove-shaped roll with almonds, pressing them in slightly.

Add one raisin to each dove-shaped roll in order to make the eyes of the dove. To preserve the shape, wrap the cake with greased aluminum foil. Place the dove-shaped rolls in the preheated oven on the lower rack for 40 minutes.

When ready, gently remove the aluminum foil and allow the Colomba Pasquale cool before serving.

Buon Appetito and again Buona Pasqua from 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?

We really like interactive stuff, especially when it’s related to Italian food, of course. So we couldn’t help but notice that our friends of Barilla USA published a nice interactive minisite called Discover Barilla, that you can easily find at www.discoverbarilla.com.

The website, with catchy graphics that remind of Italian traditional cookbooks and authentic popular cooking, presents a virtual gastronomic and culinary tour of some among the top gourmet (and cultural) destinations across Italy. An itinerary that will take the online book readers on a trip starting in Parma to proceed to Cinque Terre, Lake Como, Verona, Tuscany, Umbria, Naples and Amalfi.

At each destination the book will unveil local gastronomy traditions, and reports local traditional recipes as well as a review of local restaurants where you can surely enjoy traditional local gourmet cuisine.

We explored for you one of the gourmet itinerary, and of course is… Parma! The Discover Barilla book gives an overview of the city in a page that includes slideshows of images and videos, before introducing to local specialties such as Parmigiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma, and presenting two local recipes (two new regional recipes are provided at each destination of the Discover Barilla virtual culinary tour).

The Discover Barilla recipe we explored for you is Barilla Farfalle with Prosciutto and Green Peas.

BARILLA FARFALLE WITH PROSCIUTTO AND GREEN PEAS
(a traditional recipe proposed by Discover Barilla)

INGREDIENTS

- 1 box Barilla Farfalle
- 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 cups prosciutto, cut into strips
- 1 1/2 cups green peas (may use frozen)
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 2 cups half-an-half
- 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
- salt and pepper to taste

PREPARATION

Cook Farfalle according to package directions.

Meanwhile, sauté the onion in the olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes

Add the prosciutto and peas, sauté 3 minutes.

Add white wine, simmer until mixture has reduced by about half.

Stir in half-half and heavy whipping cream, season with salt and black pepper; simmer for 1-2 minutes.

Drain pasta, toss with the sauce.

Stir in Parmesan cheese before serving.

—

Thank you Barilla USA and DiscoverBarilla.com for the recipe. We invite you to browse them all, and also have a look at the final section of the Discover Barilla online book, which is of course about discovering Barilla, its family, history and traditions.

Enjoy the virtual Italian gourmet trip, and stand by for a calendar of the real gastronomy and gourmet tours offered by Academia Barilla - we’ll publish soon our 2008 calendar of gourmet events!

Last December a group of American students from NY Universities (Monroe College and Paul Smith College, NY) spent some time in Parma to study Italian Cuisine at the Academia Barilla Culinary Center .

The group of students were headed by Giacomo Berselli, President of the Marco Polo Foundation, the organization who sponsored the students’ trip to Italy. After spending 7 weeks in Otranto (Puglia) and 3 weeks in Ferrara (Emilia-Romagna), the students attended cooking classes at the Academia Barilla Culinary School in Parma for additional 2 weeks.

During their Parma residency the US students of the Marco Polo project studied the typical products of the Parma region, and attended classes of olive oil tasting, Parmigiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma tasting, as well as Balsamic Vinegar of Modena and wine tasting. After theory and tasting classes in the morning the young Chefs spent some time researching Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library, with the support of the Library Curator Giancarlo Gonizzi and his team.
The afternoon were generally spent in the kitchen, trying dishes and recipes containing the ingredients the students have been working on all day, under the guidance of Academia Barilla Executive Chef Nicola Bindini and his Chef team.

To complete the students’ full immersion into the art of Italian gastronomy, Academia Barilla organized also culinary and gastronomy tours for the students, allowing them to discover the secrets of producers and farmers of authentic regional products, and to meet the countryside traditions and history of the Emilia-Romagna region, that certainly is a key ingredient of our traditional recipes.

At the end of the 2 weeks of classes the Academia Barilla Culinary School released to each student a certificate of completion of studies that, join with the other certificates awarded by the students at the other learning locations across Italy, would have grant them the formal recognition of the exams and classes by their respective original colleges (Monroe College and Paul Smith College, both in the NY State).

Here below a couple of testimonial notes from the Marco Polo students, as written on the Academia guest book, pictured here above with more Marco Polo testimonials:

“Thank you Barilla for such an informative 2 weeks. I enjoyed myself thoroughly would tell my family friends about this wonderful place. Thank you so much.”

“Ciao, this school has taught me that food to the Italian is religion and the kitchen is their church. Thank you Academia Barilla.”

To know more about the student program we interviewed Marco Polo Foundation President Giacomo Berselli who firmly says that “Academia Barilla is state-of-the-art of the Italian Cuisine“!

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