When my cousin Silvana married a boy from up near Cavalese, I thought I was losing her to the mountains forever. But every September she would come back down to us with a sack of pearl barley tied with string,…
When I was a young bride living near the fish market at Rialto, my mother-in-law took me by the wrist one morning and said, ‘Today you learn to cook like a Venetian, not like a girl from the hills.’ She…
When the last frost lifted off the vegetable gardens along the lagoon, my grandmother would set a basket of pea pods on the kitchen table and call it the first real meal of spring. We children would sit for an…
In our house, the colour yellow always meant something good was coming. My mother kept a little tin of saffron threads locked away like they were gold coins, because in a way, they were — she used to say one…
In Piemonte we have a saying about Barolo: ‘il vino dei re, il re dei vini’ — the wine of kings, the king of wines. My grandfather kept only two bottles a year for himself, and one of them always…
This authentic porcini mushroom risotto recipe comes from the heart of the Dolomites, where Nonna Fiore has been cooking for her family for over sixty years. She waits for the porcini. In the forests above her village, porcini mushrooms emerge…