January 20, 2023 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Visit Emilia Romagna

Come with us to Emilia-Romagna in 2024!

Beginning in the spring of 2024, we are excited to add a new region to our culinary tours: the beautiful area of Emilia-Romagna in north-central Italy!

A region that most tourists just pass through on the way from the hubs of Florence and Venice, Emilia-Romagna is one of our favorite places to visit. The rich food culture, delicious wines and historic architecture found in these two regions are worth a deeper dive. This is truly important if one is to understand Italy. The area is elegant, wealthy, and urbane, filled with open and friendly people.

For a more complete history of the region, dating back to Roman times, check out this Britannica link! https://www.britannica.com/place/Emilia-Romagna

Originally separate regions, Emilia and Romagna became joined administratively in 1947. The people of these two regions, recognizing their cultural diversity, still think of themselves as either Emiliano or Romagnolo.

Emilia

The western part of the region, Emilia, is known for its amazing food culture. These people are true gourmands, and it is in Emilia that many of Italy’s most iconic foods are born. It is home to Italy’s most important DOP foods such as Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano Reggiano, Aceto Balsamico di Modena, and Mortadella di Bologna. The pastas include tagliatelle or lasagna with Bolognese ragu, and garganelli. Among the many stuffed pastas are tortelli, cappelletti and tortellini. The wines of the Lambrusco grape are slightly frizzante and simple, yet perfect with the rich foods. The capital city of Bologna has leaning towers, medieval architecture, miles of loggias covering the sidewalks and the oldest university in Europe. The Basilica of San Petronio is incredible and opens onto the city’s largest public space, Piazza Maggiore.

Romagna

Romagna makes up the eastern half of the region and was originally part of the Byzantine Roman Empire, as evidenced by the amazing byzantine mosaics of Ravenna. Due to the geographical barrier of the Appenines and a shared coastline on the Adriatic, Romagna aligned itself with the Marche to the south, rather than to Florence and Tuscany. Rimini is famous for its beaches and nightlife. The ancient etruscan salt flats of Cervia are still in use today. The main grape is Sangiovese, not Lambrusco, and tradition says that the sangiovese grape may have originated here in Romagna. Beautiful vineyards, ancient artisan products like ceramics and hand-stamped fabrics, and modern upscale car production tie the old together with the new in Romagna.

The Ecco La Cucina tour

Our week-long stay in this beautiful region will include 4 nights in the classic city of Bologna. Our four days will be filled with visits to experience the production of prosciutto, parmigiano and aceto balsamico; a cooking class with a focus on fresh pasta, and walking tours of the cities of Bologna and Parma. Included are lots of amazing meals and fabulous wines. The last three nights will be on a lovely wine estate in the heart of Romagna with visits to Faenza for ceramics, Gambettola for fabrics, a winery tour and tasting, and a day exploring the ancient mosaics in Ravenna.

Spring is the perfect time to visit the area with flowers and vineyards in bloom, warm sunny days and pleasant nights. Contact us for more information and to sign up!

Gina and Mary have been leading small group tours to Italy for over 22 years! Check us out on our lovely website Ecco La Cucina!

May 20, 2020 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

May Blossoms and Edible Flowers

Edible flowers are both beautiful and functional. So many flowers are edible, from nasturtiums, pansies, and violets, to perennial herbs like rosemary, sage and chive. The effort you make to plant and cultivate them will reward you both in the garden and on the plate.

The burst of color from edible flowers to garnish a dish is common, especially in the Italian alpine regions of Friuli and Alto Adige. The pop of color you get from violets or nasturtiums sprinkled in a salad or served on a cheese board is a joyful alpine expression! A little further south, acacia and elder flowers are a springtime treat in the regions of Veneto and Lombardia. The acacia (aka black locust) trees are in bloom now in Italy and the US and line the roadways with their full white boughs. And everyone who has been to Italy knows that fried zucchini flowers are a summer staple. Plant zucchini now for flowers all summer long.

We have really been enjoying the chive flowers this spring, sprinkled on soup or in salads. The slight oniony bite gives an unexpected lift to so many dishes. Plant chives now and you will have flowers next spring. Rosemary flowers are delicious sprinkled on sautéed mushrooms that top a grilled steak. Sage flowers are wonderful fried and served as aperitivo with a cold glass of prosecco or white wine.

The blossoms of herbs carry the perfume and flavor of the herb, but with more subtlety. Sprinkle the flowers on anything you would normally flavor the dish with, just before serving. Be sure to only eat flowers that have not been treated with chemicals though. Buon Appetito!

July 16, 2015 by Gina Stipo 1 Comment

Cold Summer Wines

I love cold rose’ wine in the summer. It’s beautiful to look at, those peach and pink tones swirling around the glass, shining through the drops of condensation.

And when rose’ is made the traditional way, it’s a brilliant business strategy too.

Good quality rose’ wine is never a mix of white wine and red wine but is made with 100% juice from red grapes. Because wine gets it’s color from the skin, rose’ is made by pressing red grapes, like sangiovese in Tuscany or nebbiolo in Piedmont, and leaving the skin in contact with the just-pressed juice for just 8-10 hours.

Then some of the juice is removed and goes to a separate stainless steel tank to ferment for a few months and be bottled as rose’. The remaining juice will go to make a bigger and more aged red wine, like Chianti or Barolo, and the additional skins in the tank from the juice that was removed adds more tannins and color, resulting in a better red wine. In Italy and France this process gives the winery a fresh, young wine to sell while their big reds are still aging in the barrels. All in all a brilliant business model.

My other summertime favorite is cold Lambrusco! Famously imported into America in the 70’s under the Riunite label, lambrusco is the main wine of the Emilia Romagna region, home of some of the best food in all of Italy. Think prosciutto di Parma, parmigiano, balsamic vinegar. Lambrusco is frequently dissed as bad wine or unimportant and the 70’s ad “Riunite on Ice, how Nice”, did nothing to help that image. Lambrusco is inexpensive and not as important as other Italian reds such as Barolo or Chianti Classico or Amarone. But it goes beautifully with food of the region, the bright sharpness and light fizz cutting through the fattiness of local mortadella or prosciutto.

And it has the most brilliant color with a head like purple Coca Cola when you pour it into your glass. Look for one that isn’t dolce, or sweet.

Enjoy the heat of the summer with some cold wine tonight!

August 13, 2013 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

balsamic vinegar

real balsamic vinegar I often get questions on balsamic vinegar and how to judge the quality and discern the fakes from the real thing. There are two ways to tell whether it is an authentic aceto balsamico, the kind of bottle and the ingredients. The first is the bottle with its label: the real DOP product from Modena will be in a round bottle with a square bottom and a 3 inch neck; the label will read “Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena DOP“. Note the word “tradizionale“, meaning traditional, and DOP, the Italian guarantee that a food product adheres to specific, controllable guidelines. Anything else is called simply Aceto Balsamico di Modena, which means nothing. real balsamic vinegar

The second way is to read the ingredients. Real balsamic vinegar has only one ingredient and that is grape must (mosto d’uva), which is cooked grape juice. Imitation balsamic vinegar has a combination of concentrated grape must (think the difference between orange juice and concentrated orange juice), wine vinegar, caramel coloring, and a variety of thickeners, stabilizers and chemical additives.

Authentic balsamic vinegar is made seasonally and aged from 12 to 25 years in a series of wood barrels, each made of a different wood of graduated size, imparting a nuance of their own: cherry, ash, oak, juniper, acacia, chestnut and mulberry. Production is on a small scale and is done by hand.

Imitation balsamic vinegar is made industrially in stainless steel tanks and on a large scale. If wood is used at all, it is short term, 60 days, and is just oak. Much of this vinegar is good enough to put on a salad, but not good enough to be used as originally intended. Traditional aceto balsamico is not a vinegar at all, but a condiment and as such is drizzled on steak, fruit and parmigiano, even occasionally drunk as a digestivo out of tiny glasses.

The great majority of what you find in tourist shops is an artificial product, made with concentrated grape must and vinegar and put into a pretty bottle. The exception is the guy who’s making authentic balsamico and not paying for the DOP stamp of authenticity, but only believe that when he’s a personal friend.

A lovely product and very expensive, still made in the attics of large villas in the countryside surrounding Modena. The story goes that when a baby girl was born, a battery of aceto balsamico barrels was started the year she was born and aged slowly in the barrels. When she was old enough to marry, part of her dowery was the small oak barrel of aceto balsamico tradizionale, representing the wealth of the family.