Cooking and Cuisine of Piemonte and Val d'Aosta

[Kevin72]

Let's give this one a spin. After some PM conversations with interested members, I'm changing my own ideas around a bit on how it should go. We can always discuss it further and modify it along the way of course.

My thinking is this: this will be an open, collaborative thread. No one has to commit to cooking in just this style for the whole year. We'll decide by popular vote the next region we want to cover, then if you make a meal or dish from or inspired by that region, post it. Use any resources you want: cookbooks, living or traveling there, ancestry from that area, my original thread, etc.

I won't be as active and involved this year as I was last; after this month, we're starting a diet, and, not that Italian food isn't diet-friendly, but when you want to cook as close to regional traditions as possible, and are raised on American-sized portions, it's awfully hard. I may cook a couple of items from that region a month and share, particularly if it's one I didn't get to previously.

So, thoughts?

[Kevin72]

To get this month rolling, and as a bridge from the other thread, we can stick with Piemonte and Val d'Aosta, so if you know of a dish from those regions and want to cook it, please share.

Regional cookbooks to use, regardless of what region we are in:

Culinaria: Italy

The Foods of Italy: Region by Region, by Claudia Roden

Italian Regional Cooking, by Ada Boni

The Food of Italy, by Waverly Root

Regional Foods of Northern Italy, by Marlena di Blasi

For a Piemonte-specific cookbook, you have A Passion for Piedmont by Matt Kramer.

To chose the next region, my thinking was that at the beginning of the month before, we look at the regions left, and then over the course of the month, we vote and decide what we will cover. The deadline is the last day of the month before.

So, for example, we have all of January to chose the next region we will be cooking from in February.

Here are the regions of Italy:

Lombardia

The Veneto

Trentino Alto-Adige

Friuli Venezia-Giulia

Emilia-Romagna

Liguria

Tuscany

Umbria

Le Marche

Abruzzo

Lazio

Campania

Molise

Puglia

Basilicata

Calabria

Sicily

Sardinia

I'll try to find a regional map of Italy and post it, but if anyone has one handy, please share.

I submit that double-headers on lesser-known/travelled regions should be allowable, i.e., a Calabria/Basilicata twofer. More than two a month though may get a bit crowded, and picking two non-neighboring regions may make it a little too jarring, so no Molise/Trentino combos.

[Anna N]

...

I'll try to find a regional map of Italy and post it, but if anyone has one handy, please share.

←

Here's a link to a site with the regions highlighted: Regions of Italy

[Adam Balic]

Excellent idea Kevin, you are generous.

O.K. I am going to make Torta di Peperoni from the Tanaro valley in Piemonte sometime in the next week.

[Kevin72]

Great! Though I must admit that most of this idea came from Hathor's suggestions in my old thread, and, seeing how fun Chufi's Dutch Cooking thread is, I figured I'd see how this would go.

[kanljung]

Great idea, Kevin!

Piemonte is one of my favourite italian regions and I've had some of my best meals in Italy in and around Alba.

I'm thinking of making either agnolotti dal plin or maybe tajarin with some meat based sauce, something which I had planned to make sometime soon anyway.

The books on Piemonte that I've got are a couple of Italian ones published by Slow Food:

Ricette di Osterie di Langa edited by Armando Gambera.

Ricette di Osterie di Cuneo e delle sue valli by Elma Schema and Adriano Ravera.

Both of these only covers a sub-region of piemonte though.

[mrbigjas]

excellent idea, kevin. we gonna get that rhubarb cake recipe this spring?

[Kevin72]

Dammit, dammit, dammit! I was at my parent's house for 4 days and Christmas and believe it or not I had thought to try and get the recipe but then got sidetracked.

[Megan Blocker]

Here's a regional map! Not interactive, but hopefully helpful...

This is a great idea, Kevin!

[Kevin72]

Perfect. Thanks Megan!

[Eden]

This sounds like fun, I'm thinking of making Carbonada and an apple tart for dinner, although Seupa Valpellinentze (bread, fontina & cabbage soup) also sounds really good...

For next month I selfishly vote for Le Marche. I have a copy of 'Marche in bocca' (in italian) that I have yet to try anything from & this would be a great excuse

[SWISS_CHEF]

Great Idea! We (Melanie and I) will be in the Piemonte for the next few months (starting next week) solely for the purpose of researching food and wine. I expect to have plenty of time to take pictures and cook the local recipes with the local ingredients. We are looking forward to contributing!

[hathor]

Well done Kevin!

I'll dig up some recipes and get going!

[Chufi]

This is going to be fun!

Thanks for starting this!

[mrbigjas]

Dammit, dammit, dammit! I was at my parent's house for 4 days and Christmas and believe it or not I had thought to try and get the recipe but then got sidetracked.

←

don't worrry, it's only january. you have a good four months or so before you even need to begin thinking about it...

[azureus]

To get this month rolling, and as a bridge from the other thread, we can stick with Piemonte and Val d'Aosta, so if you know of a dish from those regions and want to cook it, please share.

Regional cookbooks to use, regardless of what region we are in:

Culinaria: Italy

The Foods of Italy: Region by Region, by Claudia Roden

Italian Regional Cooking, by Ada Boni

The Food of Italy, by Waverly Root

Regional Foods of Northern Italy, by Marlena di Blasi

For a Piemonte-specific cookbook, you have A Passion for Piedmont by Matt Kramer.

←

My wonderful husband gave me Culinaria: Italy for Christmas, so I'm set there. Some searching for more Piemonte cookbooks has turned up some more possibilites:

Piedmont by Maria Paola Dettore; part of the Time-Life "Flavors of Italy" series; published 2000, has 60 recipes

The Food of North Italy: Authentic Recipes from Piedmont, Lombardy, and Valle D'Aosta by Luigi Veronelli;

Cucina Piemontese by Brian Yavin and Maria Grazia Asselle

I don't know anything about these books, and only the last one is available "new" with a 4-6 week shipping time, from Amazon. They can all be had inexpensively from on-line sellers, however. Does anyone have any experience with these books?

Here are some on-line resources:

About.com's Italian Food Site

VirtualItalia

DeliciousItaly

These sites have on-line recipes listed by region.

To chose the next region, my thinking was that at the beginning of the month before, we look at the regions left, and then over the course of the month, we vote and decide what we will cover.  The deadline is the last day of the month before.

←

The order doesn't matter to me, but I vote for giving precedence to the regions that were missed last year: Lombardia, Trentino Alto-Adige, Molise, and Sardina.

Now, I'm off to decide what to make for my contribution!

April

[Pontormo]

This link to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze lists 24 books.

To see the full entry for each book, click on the circle with an image of a magnifying glass that is found to the left of each entry.

Please note that the BNCF times sessions in which online searches are conducted. I learned this by trying the link I offered originally in the thread on Italian Bibliography. If you fail to find a list of 20 books on the first page--followed by 4 more entries on the next page--it probably means your session is timed out. (In this case, you will see one line of text vs. the list.)

If this happens, look to the left for a series of buttons. To find the comprehensive thread on cooking, first click the button with the word "Nuovo" to begin a new search. A good key word to use is "Culinaria" vs. "cucina" (under "parole chiave" or "sogetto" for subject).

In a minute I will add one entry from the two relevant texts at the New York Public Library. I actually used the author's name to find the books at the BNCF.

Edited January 4, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[Pontormo]

Molinari Pradelli, Alessandro. La cucina piemontese : una appetitosa carrellata culinaria tra le ricette tradizionali e moderne di una cucina regionale che ha saputo preservare nel tempo la genuinità e la varietà dei sapori originari. Rome: Newton & Compton, 1998.

Number 267 in series entitled Quest'Italia. Source: New York City Public Library. See the link to the catalog that I provide in thread concerning Italian bibliography. Judging by my online search at the BNCF, this author may actually be the editor of the series since there are many, many books listed under his name, each devoted to a different region of Italy.

Also, I encourage you to check out Swiss Chef's blog since he has contributed to the thread already. There is a demonstration of a kind of egg noodle that is made in this region. The comments about what "went wrong" by using ONLY ten eggs from a store vs. more from a farm are quite interesting.

[Eden]

I made a batch of Seupa Valpellinentze last night. It interested me for being rather medieval in concept, plus it seemed like a good dish for a potluck I was attending...

This recipe is so simple but it's a BIG winner. There's no sulpherous cabbage taste at all, nor is it "all cheese all the time" (which I love but others don't), everything just melds together and the subtle background of cinnamon & nutmeg really finishes it beatufully. It's more of a gloppy casserole than a soup, i.e. you can eat it from a plate quite safely.

My recipe called for "whole grain or rye bread" so I used a mix of extra-dark russian pumpernickel rye and regular sourdough because that was what we had in house, and I thought the pumpernickle might overwhelm the soup on it's own. I get the feeling this recipe is fairly forgiving though, and almost anything would work as long as the bread had some flavor & body. I also had to supplement my Fontina val d'aosta with a little danish fontina, but in small enough proportion that it wasn't really noticable.

I'll add this to recipeGullet later. Tonight the carbonada...

[Kevin72]

I'm considering a version of that myself in the coming weeks. Too bad the weather won't cooperate though. There's a similar version I've seen with a splash of red wine in each bowl that sound particularly good.

[Eden]

I'm considering a version of that myself in the coming weeks.  Too bad the weather won't cooperate though.  There's a similar version I've seen with a splash of red wine in each bowl that sound particularly good.

←

Actually you remind me that mine actually had some wine as well, because the beef broth I used was leftover from a pot roast that had a good bit of red wine in it. I guess it was more of a Valpellinentze inspired Seupa - but it was still really tasty regardless

[Adam Balic]

I will have to wait at least a week to do this as I want to use the ingredients from the area and the local importer hasn't begun orders yet. One thing I have learn't the hard way is that some regional recipes are not worth making without specific ingredients, often the more simple dishes are actually the most difficult to produce.

[Pontormo]

More bibliography. Scroll down to back issue, no. 56 of The Art of Eating.

Since I am unfamiliar with the cooking of this region, I would be grateful if entries could provide some information about dishes such as Eden's Seupa Valpellinentze.

[Pontormo]

Just found recipes online in Italian here and in what appears to be an English translation here. ("Cow broth! Ummmmm....!")

This sounds very close to pizzoccheri, or wide buckwheat noodles with Swiss chard, potatoes, Fontina and Parmigiano.

[Eden]

From DiscoverItalia.com:

Dishes from Val d'Aosta have the same history as what is normally referred to as ”poor“, mountain cuisine. First courses are mainly soups, and the perfect example is the Valpellinentze soup, of very ancient origins, made with stale, wholemeal bread sliced and soaked with meat broth with diced fontina cheese.

Here's a picture of mine, I'm afraid it's not a very aesthetic dish - brutta ma buona...

and here's the recipe.

pizzoccheri sounds good too!

edited to add recipe link

Edited January 6, 2006 by Eden (log)