albiston

Cy, no two stars lost theirs. I have no idea about the one starred places since I don't have the guide and the online version is still the 2004 one. I'm sure a list will pop up pretty soon with new entries and exclusions. ← And here it is (from Italian newspaper Il Giornale) Restaurants awarded with one star for the first time:La Locanda del Palazzo, Barile (Potenza); Mistral, Bellagio (Como); Osteria di Via Solata, Bergamo; Guido, Bra (Cuneo); L'olivo, Capri (Napoli); D'O, Cornaredo (Milano); Delle Antiche Contrade, Cuneo; Villa la Vedetta, Firenze ; San Donato, Perano Gaiole in Chianti (Siena); Vecchia Malcesine, Malcesine (Verona); Vecchia Cecchini, Pasiano di Pordenone; Hotel Pellicano, Porto Ercole (Grosseto); La Trota, Rivodutri (Rieti); Hostaria dell'Orso, Roma; Ostaria Altran, Ruda (Udine); Il Buco, Sorrento (Napoli); La Bastiglia, Spello (Perugia); La Barrique, Torino; Locanda Mongreno, Torino; Scrigno del Duomo, Trento; Osteria la Fontanina, Verona, Romano, Viareggio. Loose a star: L'Altra Bottiglia, Civita Castellana (Viterbo); Il Principe, Pompei (Napoli); Villa Negri, Riva del Garda (Trento;) Ringo, Travagliato (Brescia), L'Oca bianca, Viareggio; Maison de Laurent, la Thuile (Aosta). Apart D'O I mentioned in its own thread, and il Buco Matthew Grant reported about, it might be interesting to some of you to see Guido in Bra, i.e. Guido in Pollenzo get its first star.

Seth the sables look great. I'll be giving them a go over the week end. Any particular steps where special care should be observed? I love the tart dough too. Used it before to make the Nutella and raspberry tart with great results. I liked it so much I'm now using it for all the sweet tarts I bake.

Cy, no two stars lost theirs. I have no idea about the one starred places since I don't have the guide and the online version is still the 2004 one. I'm sure a list will pop up pretty soon with new entries and exclusions.

Michelin 2005 is now out as well (veronelli's guide is the only one missing) and causing quite a stir, as usual, among Italian foodies. The four three stareed restaurants are the same as last year, 'Le Calandre' in Rubano (Pd), 'Al Sorriso' in Soriso (Mn), 'Dal pescatore' a Canneto sull'Oglio (Mn) plus the new entry of 'Enoteca Pinchiorri' in Firenze. (correction:Pinchiorri had three stars last year too) The restaurant considered the best by the other guides, Gambero Rosso, Vissani and La Pergola keep two stars. There are three new two starred restaurants, 'Rossellinis' in Ravello (Sa) 'Il Rigoletto' in Reggiolo (Re) and 'Arquade' in San Pietro in Cariano (Vr), bringing the total to 23. There's also been an increase in one starred establishments, from 186 to 197.

Matthew, I think the confusion arises from the many regional names fish have in Italy. There are a few relatives of cod in the mediterranean and the name sometimes changes from one seaport to the next . Whiting, Hake and Pout can all go under the name Merluzzo.

Matthew, thank you for the very interesting review. Another place on my "to try" list for my next Neapolitan visit. The list is getting quite long though, I'm almost starting to think I should move back How did you come across this restaurant? Through the Michelin guide? I had seldom seen it mentioned in the Italian or even local Neapolitan papers.

Angelo, Benvenuto su eGullet! Thanks for your informed tips and we hope you'll join our discussions again, now that you've made the first step . A presto.

Suzie's cake came out great, but messing this one up is seriously difficult. I think it is a perfect example of those cakes your tastebuds cannot get enough of, while managing to fill your belly with the tiniest slice. It's moist, luscious, buttery: like a chocolate truffle, only it's a cake. It definitely needs to be made with very good chocolate to get the best out of the recipe. I should also mention that it is very fragile and tends to break very easily while unmolding, even after cooling two hours in the fridge. A good simple match for the cake would be plain unsweetened whipped cream. Something slightly more fancy, maybe slightly acidic, like an orange flavored creme anglaise or a berry coulis would probably work well too, giving some contrast. (edited to add image)

Just had the first slice off mine. A couple of questions: - The cake looks much paler than the one in the book. I didn't use Valrhona (hard to find here) but a good Dutch processed cocoa from a local German chocolate company, Sarotti. I'm wondering if the difference in color could depend on that. - Did anyone else try to mix the almond paste and sugar with a mixer paddle attachment? It seemed to take forever till to get the two to mix. The food processor took about 5 seconds to get the proper result. - Herme' calls for the egg-almond paste mixture to reach a thick mayonnaise consistency and claims it takes 8-10 minutes of whipping to do so. It took me maybe 2 minutes to get there . I stopped shortly after that to avoid overmixing: could that be a problem with this batter, or does it make no difference? - could dusting the apricots and ginger with flour or cornstarch prevent them from sinking to the bottom? No0t that this is a big problem but I'd like the chunks to be more diffuse in the cake instead of being all at the bottom of each slice. Seth, I agree with you, the cake is very simple and the ginger and apricot add a nice twist. I'd probably add more apricots, but no extra ginger, there's enough of that for my taste. While I was waiting for the cake to cool down I made the following one in the book, Suzie's cake, just to avoid getting bored . It's still cooling while I wrote. If I have to judge from how the batter tasted, it's going to be a luscious cake.

Ciao Fath, I usually go a bit by nose when looking for bread in Southern Italy, trying first of all to find places that still have wood burning ovens. There's still a lot to be discovered in Southern Italy which is completely off the beaten track: often these artisans (bakers, cheese makers, salumieri) don't even know what treasure they have in their hands. So it's a bit of a luck thing, sometimes the bread is just OK, sometimes great. The nice bread from Puglia I mentioned in my previous post came from one of these extremely simple bakeries in Patu' (close to S.Maria di Leuca), called, surprise surprise, nothing more than "Forno a legna" (on Via Giovanni XXIII, shuold you pass through this little town). The one kilo breads looked and tasted like they could have kept fresh for days but we never found out . I know that in Naples there still are a few bakeries that use levain to make pane cafone, one not too far away from Museo Nazionale (If you'd like I'll look for the exact address), but most bakers use, as you said yeast (which could be OK if used properly) and fast rises. And there's Leopoldo's fantastic taralli, but you probably know about them. I think Slow Food's L'Italia del Pane is a good book for any bread lover who travels to Italy and wants to sample the local specialities. Have you had a chance to look at the book?

John, thanks for the link. For those who'd like to read the end of the stroy here on eGullet, here is the concluding part of Charles Shere's report: Torino, Monday, Oct. 25 These have been five days absolutely packed with input -- conversational, informative, and physical, with two tasting workshops a day, fairly substantial breakfasts in the morning, and dinners in the evening ranging from a fine but unexceptional pizza-by-the-meter with friends to last night’s gala dinner, rather a formal one, in a rustic palace an hour’s drive away. The most impressive moment so far was a long one, the two-hour plenary session concluding Terra Madre. We were gathered in the Palazzo di Lavoro, the Worker’s Hall, an enormous hall built in modernist concrete in the 1960s when, as one speaker reminded us, the hope of the future lay in huge corporate industrial efficiency. On the stage a hundred and more delegates were seated facing us, delegates from a hundred and more countries around the world, many wearing the distinctive clothing of their communities -- Peruvians in brilliant red hats and capes, sequined or embroidered, Bolivians in their characteristic hats, an Amazonian whose cap sprouted amazingly long brilliant blue-green feathers standing straight up into the air -- to name only a few from one of the six continents represented. Between these delegates and the thousands of us in the audience stood the podium, sleek and elegant as only the Italians could make it, ground and transparent glass hovering over the floor, a seventeen-inch computer monitor almost invisible on it to help the speaker of the moment. And behind the delegates, and for all I know behind us as well, enormous multi-screen monitors relaying the proceedings of the moment in much-larger-than-life so everyone has an equal chance to see the facial expressions, the demeanor of the speakers, and occasional glimpses of closeups of the audience as it responded. All of this, of course, simultaneously translated into the seven official languages of the Terra Madre. (I was struck by the fact that six of them were European languages, the seventh being Japanese; the Africans and Asians present seemed little discommoded by this, being able to make do with English or French or Spanish; such has been the domination of the world by those of European extraction.) We heard a keynote speech by Winona LaDuke, who reminded us that all living organisms are related, that humans share the world with many thousand others having an equal right to their existence, and that we are all mutually dependent. A Mexican delegate -- I will have to get all these names later – spoke of Terra Madre as an unprecedented moment organizing the food-producer chain from everywhere in the world into a forum in which individuals retain their personal identities, a counter to the more familiar organization of global agriculture into a mechanism of constituent faceless business- and profit-oriented entities. A Kenyan spoke of the imperatives of food safety, biodiversity, and cultural integrity. Food rights are human rights, he declaimed to great applause; and powerful nations must stop mis-advising the agricultures and economies of developing nations, ruining their self-sufficiency in the name of profits elsewhere in the world. A woman from India thanked Terra Madre for its revalidation of the processes her seed-exchanging community had been developing. Terra Madre had put food production right back on its feet, she noted, and in so doing had shown the world the role of women in agriculture. An Italian fisherman noted that a failing of his tuna-roe community had been its tendency to guard its methods and knowledge as closely held secrets -- the inheritance of an earlier historical imperative. Terra Madre has suggested the greater need for shared information and mutual trust; it counters peasant suspicion and corporate intellectual property with the optimism of pooled knowledge. A Russian noted that here at Terra Madre we decide if there will be a future or not -- whether the world will be commited to technological development or ecological development. Then came the three important politicians involved, all of whom had spoken at the opening session a few days ago. The Mayor of the city of Torino spoke for the possibilities of an optimistic political cutlure, citing the United Nations and the example of Brazil’s President Lula. The future lies in growth, not development, he noted; and he thanked, quite passionately and earnestly, the huge audience and the delegates for reminding him of the qualities so impressionably conveyed by farmers: happiness, peace, dignity, and nobility. The governor of the region of Piemonte promised that his region, a proud and historically self-sufficient one, would be GMO-free as long as he was governor, and noted that Terra Madre was a logical extension of the political agricultural policy of Piemonte, whose rice, milk, cheese, beef, wine, and corn , I would add, leave little margin for improvement. And he noted that in this multiversity of languages and local cultures the first language is that of food, uniting us all, rather than separating us. The Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of the nation of Italy noted that he’d been to many conferences of economics and politics, and that Terra Madre was the first involving the farmers and producers themselves. We must commit to a fundamental issue, he noted: whether to confront agriculture from an international point of view; or to recognize that the production of food is different from other World Trade Organization preoccupations because it must necessarily reflect local differences. We must end pitting farmers against farmers, and we must end non-farmers profiting at the expense of farmers. Trade must enhance farming rather than spoil its lands, for it is difficult in the extreme to recover from the ruins of exploitation. Further, he argued, the living world must be protected from the demands of profit and intellectual property rights. Geographical terroirs must be designated and protected, through international political organizations working perhaps through Slow Food and Terra Madre. And the Kyoto Protocol on environmental issues, now finally signed by Russia, is now in force and will be enforced, and agriculture is a fundamental note in that protocol. These three speakers lent great political reality and substance to Terra Madre. I think Italy is developing a very interesting role in the community of developed nations. It is after all quite advanced technologically, but of all the most advanced First World nations it has retained most successfully (and proudly) the cultural and agricultural differences of its constituent regions; it has most successfuly combined the forward view of technology and the arts with the rootedness in tradition and history of its daily life values. I think it sees itself as a mediator between the developing nations and the developed, and I hope both Italy and the rest of the world remember that an evolving national character is bigger than any momentary political condition within it. Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, summed up the final session, and introduced the final two speakers, Alice Waters and Charles, Prince of Wales. The concluding address was set up by what one might have thought would have been the conclusion: the remarks given by Carlo Petrini, the founder of the international Slow Food movement. Petrini is a Piemontese, a native of this rather autonomous (though not officially) region of Italy. Piemonte boasts a rich combination of industry (automotive, hydroelectric, printing) and agriculture (wine, fruits, nuts, corn, rice, wheat). Further, it has stood for centuries as the buffer between southern and eastern Italy on the one hand and France to the west. Torino itself, the capital city, is elegant and intellectual, as French as it is Italian; the Piemontese cuisine has marked French influences; the dialect hovers between French and Italian; and the region has been French, Italian, and independent (as Savoia) by turns. Furthermore, it was the first part of Italy to move toward the integration of the modern Italy. Petrini draws on this heritage of pride in region within a framework of internationalism. He was active in the Italian Communist party, as I understand it; and as I understand it that party was always more Italian than communist as we in the United States think of international communism. But he has always been a gastronome as well. A journalist, he wrote for years on food as well as politics in a left-wing journal. A few years ago, revolted by the opening of yet another Big Mac in Italy, he had the happy idea of countering fast food with Slow Food, and ever since he has been working tirelessly in true leftist fashion to gather around him the populist forces of farmers, fishermen, butchers, dairymen, orchardists, vintners, and restaurateurs in a cordial but politically active gathering of local, independent “presidia” dedicated to local, traditional, artisanal foods, often endangered ones threatened with the extinction of the resources or methods on which they rely. He has folded this activity into a constantly expanding network of “convivia,” local gatherings of people who share his enthusiasms, either as producers themselves or, more often, as “consumers” – those of us who admire and desire such products, and resist seeing them disappear under increasing piles of hamburgers, tacos, and take-out. (In Sonoma County, where I live, there are at least four of these convivia.) So Carlo is the founder and the patron saint of Slow Food, and it was his place to conclude this historic first gathering of the presidia and convivia he has invented. He began by admitting that he didn’t know if this conference could be repeated with the same passion and force: everyone who attended -- press, politicians, visitors, and delegates -- were struck with the great lesson in life the conference had presented: the life, dignity, work, and methods of these independent producers, gathered from Siberia and New Zealand, Peru and Finland, Wisconsin and Kenya, Great Britain and India and all points in between. Other debates he had witnessed have been harsh, Petrini said;; this one was relaxed. And this was not an exercise in folklore: the delegates all exhibited a pride in their identity. The building we were in, the Palazzo di Lavoro, bad been built in 1961, when industrialism was paramount, when the “First World” was drawing its wealth from the resources of the Second. Now, Petrini said, we are living in a post-industrial age, and there are three worlds: one is poor, ruined, needy; another is balanced and sustainable; yet another is rich but committed to an unsustainable lifestyle. Beware, you of this rich world; you can no longer profit by exporting your poisons to the south. Farmers and scientists must begin to work together. Then he moved into his conclusion: We have played an overture: now the opera must begin. Its libretto, its words, will not be written by Slow Food; it will be written by all of you. It will be your history: what you do. You are twelve hundred communities, around the world. When we proposed this gathering, this Terra Madre, many said it was madness, utopian. But: Who sows utopia will reap reality. This drew a lot of applause. But then Carlo Petrini introduced Alice Waters, who quieted the audience, asking them to give a warm welcome to a radical guest who would conclude the session. Radical may seem a strange word to use to describe him, she said; but it is an accurate done: radical means rooted. And in the next moments we heard a remarkable address, elegantly written and eloquently delivered by Charles, Prince of Wales. He began by asking for indulgence: he had been eating and drinking his way through the Salone del Gusto, the huge exhibition of foods and beverages Slow Food has invited to fill Torino’s vast exhibition hall. “Despite the best intentions of many,” the Prince said, “we have to face up to the fact that often, the consequence of globalization is greater unsustainability... Left to its own devices, I fear that globalization will -- ironically -- sow seeds of ever-greater poverty, disease and hunger in the cities and the loss of viable, self-sufficient rural populations... “If all the money invested in agricultural biotechnology over the last fifteen years had been invested in developing and disseminating genuinely sustainable techniques -- those that work with, rather than against, the grain of Nature -- I believe that we would have seen extraordinary, and genuinely sustainable, progress.” He noted that “even without significant investment, and often in the face of official disapproval, improved organic practices have increased yields and outputs dramatically.” He supported this with citations of recent UN-FAO studies in Bolivia, Cuba, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Pakistan. In the United States, of course, studies of agricultural production in such countries are not exactly in the news, and we tend to accept another side of the story, locally written and paid for. A central paragraph in the Prince’s speech was particularly arresting: “Imposing industrial farming systems on traditional agricultural economies is actively destroying both biological and social capital and eliminating the cultural identity which has its roots in working on the land. It is also fueling the frightening acceleration of urbanization throughout the world and removing large parts of humanity from meaningful contact with Nature and the food that they eat. ... “At the end of the day, values such as sustainability, community, health and taste are more important than pure convenience. We need to have distinctive and varied places and distinctive and varied food in order to retain, if nothing else, our sanity.” He then addressed himself to Slow Food, which “is about celebrating the culture of food, and about sharing the extraordinary knowledge -- developed over millennia -- of the traditions involved with quality food production. ... “After all,” he concluded, “the food you produce is far more than just food, for it represents an entire culture -- the culture of the family farm. It represents the ancient tapestry of rural life; the dedicated animal husbandry, the struggle with the natural elements, the love of landscape, the childhood memories, the knowledge and wisdom learnt from parents and grandparents, the intimate understanding of local climate and conditions, the hopes and fears of succeeding generations. You represent genuinely sustainable agriculture and I salute you.” We were all greatly moved at this. We have all seen Prince Charles ridiculed in the press, caricatured and disparaged for the perceived irrelevance of his position, extremity of his disagreement with prevailing tastes in architecture, apparently eccentric attachments to such movements as organic food. But his speech, which went much further than I have been able to suggest here, ranged widely over both rural and urban problems today, revealing awareness of real social and economic conditions as well as the fundamental human and humane imperatives. Widely as it ranged, it was concise and articulate, and spoken with great clarity and dignity. Its delivery, and its reception, revealed the commonality of a prince and a peasantry, and as I say we were all immensely moved.

Great choices! Having baked all 4 before I can be lazy for a while . I'll probably try the brownies and Loaf cake again anyway since I'm not too happy about how they came out the first time. Let's just decide where to start and I'll add my comments and maybe a picture or two. I'd leave the raspberry tart for the moment, it does seem a bit late for getting nice tasting berries.

Here's the second part of Shere's report. Torino, Oct. 23 The Hotel Luxor Best Western here in Torino is not the Las Vegas Luxor. It is not a pyramid; it lacks slot machines; no Nile wends its lobby. I have not yet seen a Texan among its guests. On the other hand it is not an American Best Western. The television set is not much bigger than my 12-inch laptop screen. Not every electrical socket functions. There is no bathtub. There is, however, a bidet, compulsory it seems in every Italian bathroom, just as every shower has a mysterious pull-cord said to summon the medics in case you collapse while washing your hair. One understands that a Senator’s wife may have done so, resulting in this obligation imposed by the State on all hotels; but how explain the compulsory bidet? Perhaps it has been requested by the porcelain lobby. Our first hotel in Italy, thirty years ago — no, the second; the first was the Albergo Chiomonte, then in Lindsey’s family — our second hotel in Italy was in the hills above Lake Como in a town whose name I forget. It was found in a moment of desparation: all other hotels were unavailable for some unimaginable reason. It was a bare-bones country hotel with no amenities to speak of. But it did have a bidet, an enamelled steel basin of the correct size and shape, on folding wooden legs like those of a camp cot, tucked away underneath the bathroom sink. The Hotel Luxor is near the railroad station, nicely situated, small, friendly. Its breakfast is more than adequate: granolas, fruit compote, stewed prunes, croissants, fruit juice, fresh fruit. Cappuccinos, of course. But no eggs, ham, sausages, or cheese, which perhaps explains the absence of the Dutch among the guests. We hear plenty of English in the breakfast room, but mostly Italian. It’s the kind of place we like. Not that we’ll be spending much time in it. The Salone del Gusto could easily consume all of each day here; on top of that now, there is the Terra Madre to entertain us. Yesterday we made our first visit there, listening to a conference on “Healing the Soil.” Farmers from several continents discussed their methods of returning farmlands that have been compromised by technological farming methods to a more natural state. It occurred to me that Nature in her wisdom has buried most of her injurious matter, and that the history of man has included the systematic digging up of this stuff and its distribution. This is a recurrent narrative among the German Romantics. E.T.A. Hoffmann has a fine story about miners — is it called “The Mines of Falun?” Gold, petroleum, lead, uranium, copper, sulfur, noxious substances all, are dug up and hoarded and passed around and prized for the mischief they can do. Fertilizer, poison, and explosives are intimately related, and the chemical industry has much to answer for. And humanity is all too gullible. I don’t think it’s only the advertising industry that explains this; I think this dark trade has an attraction, an appeal which is built into our genetic makeup, an appeal which the advertisers no doubt take advantage of, if only without actually knowing it. Perhaps this use of dangerous substances is the Knowledge the gods wanted to withold from us, like the Promethean fire. In any case a farmer from Ontario recounted his decision, forced by economy, to depend on horses rather than petroleum for his farm-power: muscle-power reproduces; diesel power does not. He couldn’t afford a tractor until he had sold enough colts, the by-product of his team of horses, to pay for one. A fellow from Venezuela talked about returning dry tropical land to production of a native plant useful for its fibers, for fodder, for human food, and particularly for its ability to store water. An Italian microbiologist talked about the absolute need for soil bacteria, billions of them, to prepare minerals for their assimilation by the roots of plants. These bacteria are routinely slaughtered by deep herbicides and pesticides, and it takes years to replace them. A Greek agricultural economist askes if this may perhaps explain the spread of soil-based diseases, not only plant diseases but also animal diseases: might they not be flourishing in recently sterilized soils because their natural predators are no longer there? All this goes on in a number of languages, and is simultaneously translated into French, Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The audience comprises farmers from every corner of the world. In a large entrance hall, as big as a train station, our friend Lisa points out the Americans and a number of Europeans gathered at the Internet points and picking up their e-mail, while the Third World delegates from Siberia and Kenya and New Zealand (Maoris are still Third World, I think) and such have set up shop at folding tables. The Siberian, a small handsomely dressed man who might pass for a businessman from Milan, offers teas: the taste of one replicates a Siberian meadow; another a birch forest. They make me want to walk the Siberian countryside, a thought that has never come to me before. A Maori offers abalone chowder, little pieces of abalone he’d dived for, tenderized by a secret process he was glad to share and stewed in coconut milk. A fellow from Ecuador gives us a taste of a fiery hot sauce he’s made of pepper seeds: it persists through an emergency drop of Fernet Branca, but is flavorful and sweet and I’m glad I had it. Among the most colorfully dressed are the Africans, of course, and we move up to a table run by a Kenyan woman, very dark, indeterminably old, wrapped in a brown and white figured cloth. Her table is covered with clear plastic bags of dried herbs, each neatly labelled with copy that on first sight offers very little detailed information. She looks at me for a moment, sizing me up, and shows me one package of very dark twiglike herbs. “This is good for cancer,” she says. That’s very interesting, I tell her, I’ve had prostate cancer for nearly ten years now. She smiles. Good, she says, and I know that what she means is Good, you’re obviously in good health. I have had cancer for twenty years, she continues; I had breast surgery nineteen years ago. She has other herbs for HIV, for various immune-deficiency problems, for miscellaneous ailments. She sells them over the internet. She shows photos of one of the nineteen children she has adopted over the years: at birth, he was so dark and deformed there was little reason to keep him alive. She gave him herb teas and cared for him, though, and another photo at two years old showed a bright energetic little boy. We swap cards. I ask if I may take her photograph: Yes, she says, but you have to send me one! She wants Lindsey in the photo, and I take their portraits, smiling at one another, then smiling out at me. What handsome women they are, I think; how good they look together. We skip lunch and go straight to our workshops, saffron for Lindsey, four different-aged Goudas with Champagnes for me; then, at four o’clock, Duch pecorinos for Lindsey, the second in a series of wine tastings for me. In between we have a little time for a stroll in the food hall, ostensibly to meet a friend but she is detained. Instead we watch a violinist, an accordionist, and a man who plays guitar and mandolin, playing Italian street songs outside the lunchroom set up by the region of Emiglia-Romagna. (Many Italian regions have set up such restaurants, serving characteristic dishes at both lunch and dinner; they offer very good bargains and a rare chance to sit down for a half hour at this fatiguing exhibition.) Before long two couples are dancing. They dance quadrilles and couple-dances, dances dating back across a century and more. At one point I notice the older man is making mock menacing gestures to his partner, like a rooster with serious business on his mind. He crouches low as he wheels around her, his arms bowed at his sides, his eyes intent on her; and she pretends timidity, backing away, pinching the corners of the bottom of her jacket and holding them away from her like wing coverlets. I think of the colorful dress of the Africans, the Peruvians, the Mongols, the Ecuadorians; and I think of the colorful crests and wattles of the capons, plucked but proud in the refrigerated showcases of the poultrymen. The Salone, like Terra Madre, is a true celebration of life as well as the death life feeds on, and Italy is a country apparently at ease with the complexities and contradictions of poultry, religion, tradition, and folding bidets.

Francesco, nice to know you were trying to be provocative, I was trying too. Were I a cook or restaurant owner I'd probably find everything I've written before a bit too tight for my taste; I was being more sensible than I would ever be in real life. You make some very good points on creative cooking in Italy, which I mostly share, so I'll not add much to your last comment. Only one or two notes. According to the last things I heard Scabin's creative menu is now available without previous reservation. Probably there are now enough people who want to dine at Combal.0 to try this menu, to make the reservation superfluous. It would seem things are changing. That is not exactly true, and an easy mistake to make, since we tend to consider the English speaking press today as THE international one. Both Scabin and Cedroni have been on the cover of the German Feinschmecker magazine, probably the top restaurant magazine here in Germany, and had articles dedicated to them. Admittedly this publication has a clear affinity for creative and haute cuisine and demonstrates a good amount of prejudice when talking about simpler or more traditional Italian restaurants. Nonetheless you're right saying that these cooks are pretty much off the map when it comes to the largest part of the food/wine tourists visiting Italy. Thanks for finding the Patricia Wells article, it is, how to put it... interesting to say the least, especially when compared to her French reviews. I think that reading the full article, the introductory part to Marchesi in particular, pretty much shows what her bias is. The part about Vissani's bread was startling for me: I've never been there, but know a few people who have, and absolutely everyone, even those who deeply disliked Vissani's cooking, loved his bread. But who knows, maybe Ms Wells thinks Veyrat should "hang his head in shame" too for his "silly breads".

Faith, thank you for your inspiring answers. We have been talking about the difference between trattorie and ristoranti, or if you like between traditional and creative cooking in Italy and your replies have had a very stimulating effect on that discussion. Your comments on chefs like Alajmo, Colonna and Iaccarino (in another thread), startled me at first but made me think and see a certain kind of Italian creative cooking in a different, and maybe more intriguing, light. Because of your stimulating views, and your unique position as adoptive Italian (may I call you so?), I couldn't think of anyone better to answer a question on Italian restaurants and foreign press I've been thinking about for a while now. Both Italian press and food lovers, often accuse the foriegn press of ignoring the biggest cooking talents and instead of continuing to focus only on Italian traditional cuisine. In a way we do feel a little captive of our own traditions, making our strength the reason that prevents creative cooks being taken seriously. In a way, why is it OK for the Brits and the Spanish to be wildly creative, just to name two countries with top chefs often appearing in the media, and not for the Italians? Do you think there is a bit of prejudice in the foreign press when looking at the Italian scene?

Ore, Thank you for the very nice report and pictures. I remember having heard that Marenna's team was put together with the help of Rome's Cavalieri Hilton Pergola Chef Heinz Beck. Do you know if that's the case? Some of the dishes, the dessert for one, remind me quite a bit of dishes I've seen in Beck's book. The baccala' name you are looking for might be mussillo, which is the dorsal center cut. Some people compare it to the tenderloin cut in beef. In Campania it can be bought without any problem from Baccala' sellers.

I would still consider some of the chefs she mentions in the post as creative, but I guess it's a matter of definition. The important point she made mentioning those names, at least to my eyes, is that a chef can remain true to local ingredients and traditions without compromising creativity. Many of the best places in Italy are accused of being unable of doing so and being French. I don't share this view, but I understand the point behind that critique. The union of tradition and innovation is, to me, probably the only way for the development of a real and unique Italian haute-cuisine, which can subvert the common prejudice on Italian fancy restaurants. A way where the concept of restaurant and trattoria meet if you want, bringing out the best of both worlds. I think the Italian restaurant scene is showing quite a few sign that this is indeed happening, especially if you look at what some of the best young chefs are doing. There's plenty of creativity in their dishes, but also a great attention for the local traditional ingredients. ← Alberto, is this "fair"? I mean, and this is a question I have asked myself before, would someone who wished to pursue a different track, a Ferran Adria, be possible in Italy? Francesco, Fair? No. I'm well aware what I said is not fair. But it also does not want to be absolute. Don't take my thoughts as a party line . We know Italy and Italians, our land and our people, right? So we also know there will never be only one trend in Italian cooking. We're just to anarchic to fit in a line and follow without a note of dissent. If the restaurant trend in Italy would become that of evolving tradition in a creative direction, I bet there would be enough chefs and food journalists who'd go exactly the opposite direction, going absolutely wild on molecular gastronomy, probably even more than today. In a way it keeps a healthy balance. On the other hand I think it is important for at least some of our best chefs to be able to show ourselves and the world that Italian cooking can stand on its own legs, without being accused of being influenced by the French. One should certainly not forget the recurring problem that some techniques that are seen as French today actually evolved elsewere, more than a few in Italy. But that is not the point. The point is how Italian restaurants are seen both by Italians and foreigners. The problem with the Italian customer base is not an easy one, and I think that Ronald and Katia made a good point before when they observed the lack of a restaurant "middle", as a category of restaurants that has a clientele that likes to go out and has a fun approach to food. It reflects the fact that eating out, apart in big cities, is not considered a leisure activity by most, but more often a chance to celebrate a special occasion. Add to this that most Italians are reluctant to spend money for dishes many define as bollocks. With these thoughts in mind I think it is not too hard to see that a creative cuisine based strongly on tradition would be a way to win a few customers, to convince a few that restaurants (in the haute cuisine acception) need not be intimidating or alien to one's eating culture. Maybe in a paradoxal way I think that more customers visiting restaurant would bring more money to owners and chefs and eventually encourage a greater creative diversity. It would also give chefs, as you mentioned in one of your preceding posts, the chance to show which peaks of excellence tradition in its purest form can reach when prepared by a gifted professional. It is, in a sense, a problem of getting things in motion. With foreigners, customers, gourmets and press, clearly the wonderful people here at eGullet excluded , there is another problem, one we've talked about many times before and which can be summed up in Italian restaurant cuisine managing to be taken seriously. There are many reasons why our best chefs get little or no media recognition outside Italy, but IMO lack of skill is not one of them. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say: Given what you say above don't you think it would be a good idea to actually play to our strengths instead of leaving our (mainly) rural traditions outside the room while we dine at the High Table of culinary art?

Cara Faith, your mention of pane Ferrarese in your reply to Igles and Pia brought back a discussion we had on the Italy forum some time ago about Italian bread and its poosr quality. As a Southerner I always have the feeling this is more a Northern Italian problem: during my last visit to Italy, last summer, I had delicious bread almost anywhere in Salento and Naples. Still if I look at what most people around me were buying I had the feeling that their choices often went for slighlty underbaked bread (una pagnotta bella chiara!) and bread types that go stale pretty quickly. Not to mention the sad breads on sale at supermarkets. Living in Italy, do you have the feeling Italians are loosing touch with their baking tradition? Grazie mille per essere stata qui con noi e spero magari di rileggerti su eGullet, Alberto

Albiston, would you mind explaining a bit more what you mean about the trattorie people holding back the evolution of Italian gastronomy? Thanks. ← hathor, more than happy to. I would only like to make clear that this is not my opinion, so I'll try to do my best to sum up what I've been told by people who firmly believe in this point. To put things into perspective it should be noted that gastronomy is a big theme on the Italian media today, as you probably know living in Italy. Many food lovers both pro Slow Food and against, agree that in general this attention verges on the superficial to say the least: TV-shy top chefs who get two minutes to explain, badly, their creations; newspaper food columns written by uninterested and at times incompetent journalists and so on. In this situation the Italian (mainly TV) public is pushed towards an interest to food and wine, but it receives insufficient and contrasting information. All this, at least according to what I read and am told, is actually having an unwanted and opposite effect. People are slowly getting tired of all the chit chat about food since that is exactly what it is most of the times, empty shallow chatter. In this situation the work of the more serious food and wine operators, Slow Food, Gambero Rosso, Veronelli, Espresso and Associazione Italiana Sommelier, is constantly under scrutiny of the Italian gourmets, even too much so. This whole situation creates IMO a rather tense discussion atmosphere. Those who claim Slow Food is holding are not usually attacking trattorie as an eating out concept. They're are a fundamental part of the Italian eating out scene and, in the best cases, the depositary of Italian cooking traditions. What some find unsettling is the position SF sometimes shows towards creative restaurants, and how this influences those orbiting around SF's world. As a fitting example for this I would take the Osterie guide. Reading between the line of the guide's introduction it is very easy to get the idea that in SF's opinion trattorie are the only representative of real Italian culinary traditions. Since Italy is already a really conservative eating country when it comes to the average restaurant customer, opinions such as these can easily sound, to the ears of the above customer, like a direct attack at restaurants who walk even slightly step out of the tradition line. Therefore what those who accuse SF of holding the evolution of Italy's restaurants are saying is that SF, through it's research and support for tradition, is in a way stopping at a picturesque view of Italian eating that only in part represents the truth. The end result of all this is a strengthening the already conservative opinions many Italians have. I think there is a grain of truth in this view. I'm not a fan of everything SF does and at times their beliefs come through as too dogmatic, for example the ones on GMO. On the other hand as Italian I believe SF's work at home with both traditional products and cuisine should be appreciated and prized. Otherwise why would I keep trying to convince friends to start a local convivium ? I started the thread out of curiosity, because reading through the forum it seemed to me quite evident that many eGullet members have a certain kind of preference, but I don't really see a contrast between trattorie and restaurants myself. I do believe there is a distinction, if not at the nominal level, then at a conceptual one, between those places that are more anchored to family style cooking and those that offer a more creative take on cooking. That is not to say the distinction is sharp but rather we're looking at shades. It could be said that street food is one extreme and purely creative places the other. I do enjoy both the extremes, although admittedly more street food than avant-garde places, and the whole variety of eating out places one finds in Italy. Still I do understand, and pretty much share, Francesco's point on the Bill Brayson effect and I think he made a very good point saying that some of the best traditional dishes are found in top restaurants. Something Faith Willinger said with her reply on Italian Chefs and Restaurants gave me quite a bit to think of. She has a point when, talking about people like Gennaro Esposito of Torre del Saracino, she says that: I would still consider some of the chefs she mentions in the post as creative, but I guess it's a matter of definition. The important point she made mentioning those names, at least to my eyes, is that a chef can remain true to local ingredients and traditions without compromising creativity. Many of the best places in Italy are accused of being unable of doing so and being French. I don't share this view, but I understand the point behind that critique. The union of tradition and innovation is, to me, probably the only way for the development of a real and unique Italian haute-cuisine, which can subvert the common prejudice on Italian fancy restaurants. A way where the concept of restaurant and trattoria meet if you want, bringing out the best of both worlds. I think the Italian restaurant scene is showing quite a few sign that this is indeed happening, especially if you look at what some of the best young chefs are doing. There's plenty of creativity in their dishes, but also a great attention for the local traditional ingredients.

Faith, thanks for the opinion on Don Alfonso, I should really try it again next time I visit my relatives in Naples. L'Europeo is one of my favorites in Naples, though my last visit is not as recent as I'd like, instead I never heard of Antichi Sapori before. I'll definitely have to give it a try, thanks for the tip! ciao e grazie, Alberto

More recent news from the people at Alba Tartufi (thanks to robert for Forwarding this to me): "Thanks to a slight increase in truffle amounts and a decrease in demand, the awaited drop in prices for Tartufo Bianco D'Alba has finally taken place. The new prices are (for minimum amounts of 100g): 1400 € pro Kilo for truffles up to 20 g in size, 1900 € between 20-30 g and 2300 € above 30 g. The quality of the product is at the moment optimal."

Thanks to the generosity of Charles Shere eGullet has the good fortune to present in the Italy and Italian Cuisine forum his detailed and splendidly written reportage on his visit to the Salone del Gusto and participation in the Terra Madre section. You can read about Charles and his wife Lindsey, founders with Alice Waters of the world-renown restaurant Chez Panisse, by going to www.shere.org. It is a great contribution to our Salone coverage. We hope you enjoy reading it and check out the nice pictures that go with the report. A big thanks also goes to Robert Brown for getting in touch with Charles Shere and doing the behind the scenes work necessary to make available this report on eGullet. Each day of Shere's report will be posted seperately. But enough talk already. Here it goes: Torino, Oct. 21 The flight over the Alps, delayed a half hour by morning fog across Europe, was short and spectacular, the fog breaking just as we crested those hard and angular peaks. The Alps, from the air, are more awesome than our Sierra Nevada, and I always wonder why. The effect was heightened (if the word may be used) by our altitude; we seemed to clear the peaks by no more than a few hundred feet. And while the snow was deep and nearly universal, the steepest slopes were bare, bare granite. Then back into the fog except for one brief break revealing Italian farm country below. After landing and getting our beautiful blue Fiat Punto we drove out into that country, skirting fuel dumps and bleak airport villages and working girls and Novara before hitting the toll road in the full open beauty of the Po Plain, which I always find somehow curiously attractive. It’s like part of me knows it from way back; it’s resonant; I feel at home there. Flat open country with meandering rivers, occasional stands of poplars, big three-storey farmhous-barn combinations with tiled roofs, the walls pierced with grillages of roof-tiles, the same as those invariably roofing these handsome, utilitarian, stucco-over-brick buildings. It was perfect country for fighting, back in Napoleonic times (and earlier, of course), and it’s perfect for corn, and hay, and -- when you cross into Piemonte -- rice. There are two other kinds of landscape in Piemonte, “foot of the mountains”: those mountains themselves, the Alps bordering France and separating the province from that of Valle d’Aosta, to the north; and a series of river-valleys tieing those mountains to the Po Plain. Lindsey’s father was born in a hardscrabble town in one of those valleys, the one Hannibal led his elephants through, over two thousand years ago -- unless it’s true, as the residents of all the other valleys claim, that it was one of their valleys he descended. Torino, “Turin” in French and English, is the capital city of the province, and a fine, handsome, moderate city it is -- though it’s in the midst of preparations for the 2006 Winter Olympics, to be held here and in those valleys and on those mountains. So one of my favorite piazzas, the Piazza San Carlo, is hidden behind opaque plastic windows, for they’re digging it up entirely, to install below-ground parking. The Piazza straddles one of the two principal avenues, whose several blocks constitute a seamless 18th-century architectural unit, arcades lining it with shops and bars and cafes; but all the life has gone out of those arcades and piazzas for the moment, and we haven’t had time to find out where it’s gone. For today was given over to the Salone del Gusto, the biennial Slow Food fair that brought us here this time, and two years ago, and two years before that. It’s as huge and daunting and delightful as ever. We spent hours walking the main floor, inspecting the long aisles of producers of cheese, salame, wine, bread, beer, jam, pastry, spirits, dried beans and peas, poultry, pastas, beef -- all of it approved for one reason or another, its artisanality or its rarity, by the Slow Food Authority, however it works. This year the Salone is preceded by a similarly colossal undertaking, Terra Madre, a gathering of farmers who produce foodstuffs belonging to the Slow Food canon, whether for their traditional persistance in the face of global uniformity, or their threatened extinction, or simply because they have something important to offer to the part of the world most of us belong to, by far the largest part in terms of world culture and material worth and global power, but much the smallest in terms of cultural depth, and the most recent and ignorant in terms of awareness of life-and-death universalities. Our friends Jim and Lisa, who are staying in our hotel, attended the opening ceremony which we missed because of bad weather. They were impressed by its opening parade of delegates, one person chosen to represent each country. They were encouraged to wear their traditional garb, and that, along with color and stature and gait and demeanor, must have produced an amazingly varied scene, reminding everyone that the world is immensely rich and varied, and emphasizing the dreary sameness our first-world economy has tried to impose on it, like so many airports and shopping malls. Numbers: 4300 delegates from 130 nations. Breakdown: 15% each from Africa and Latin America; 14% from Canada and the United States; 12% from Asia and Oceania; 12% from Eastern Europe, 16% from Western Europe; 17% from Italy. Seven languages are officially recogized and provided for: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Italian. Yesterday these farmers were welcomed by the Mayor of Torino, the Governor of the province of Piemonte, and the Secretary of Agriculture; and the welcomes were not token statements, Jim tells me, but heartfelt and sympathetic invitations to the delegates to do their work, share their stories, and open their hearts and minds to tell Italy and, through her, the world, how their small and slow and local and ancient knowledges can correct the tendency of global commercial agriculture to destroy the variety of the world in its search for efficiency and profit. The Governor of Piemonte, Enzo Ghigo, had a column in today’s paper: “Why to say ‘no’ to GMO.” A practical politician, he writes that he has reason to believe that the legitimate motives of profit and the marketplace can be joined to the development of biodiversity through sustainable agriculture and thereby represent the guarantee of a market truly free to and a hope for many nations. And then he adds a remarkable paragraph, the centerpiece of his column: “The dedication to human concerns has brought us to stripping the earth of its fruits; the love of the earth will make of us a humanity ever more free.” (L’amore per l’uomo ci ha portato a sfruttare la terra, l’amore per la terra ci restituirà un uomo più libero. More elegant, concise, and striking in Italian.) -- This afternoon and evening Lindsey and I attended to workshop labs, and we’re stuffed and sleepy, and further comment will have to wait. Suffice it to say, for now, that I’ve sampled five fascinating wines of terroir in the first of four workshops investigating the influence of soils on wines, and then in the evening tasted four different preparations of raw beef, all from a single 16-month-old Piemontese cow specially bred for the high quality of its meat, each matched by a magnificent wine ranging from a dry Italian sparkler to a deep and magisterial Barolo. And Lindsey has similar things to report, involving hams from various countries matched to white wines, and four or five blue cheeses accompanied by as many sweet wines.

Redsugar, thanks for the link. It would seem my pure glucose is actually quite different from either glucose syrup or dry corn syrup, since it really is 99.5 glucose with no maltose or trisaccharides. Makes the scientist in me wonder if it would work better then glucose syrup though... guess I should just try using it. After all, if the main function of the glucose syrup is to prevent crystalization, pure glucose should work even better. I presume pastry chef do not use the pure stuff simply because it is much more expensive than normal glucose syrup. Could this be the case?

Ciao Faith, as a Napoletano (now abroad) I must admit it makes me quite proud to hear such positive opinions on some of the best places in Campania. Having tried a few of these I couldn't agree more on your judgment: I had a fantastic dinner at Gennarino Esposito's place lately and I can only hope more young Italian cooks will follow his cooking style balanced between great local ingredients and traditions and a subtle creativity. The South was in the past often seen as the culinary backwaters of Italy, doyou have the feeling that it is undergoing a gastronomic renaissance in the past few years? I'm slightly confused at seeing Don Alfonso in the list above, especially considering your previous comment on creative chefs in Italy. My experience at Don Alfonso goes back to 5 or 6 years ago, but at the time the style of the plates was to my eyes very much on the creative side, with many unusual ingredient combinations. The ingredients were clearly local, but so to my eyes are many of those Vissani uses, at least judging from his recipe book. Has the cooking style of Don Alfonso changed in these few years? thanks, Alberto

My favorite are cornmeal spritz cookies from piemonte called crumiri. Could be that I love them because they're the first ones I really liked, and as the saying goes, you never forget your first love . The cornmeal addition makes for an interesting and unusual taste, and they can be made even more delicious by dipping them in tempered (for looks) dark chocolate. But then, what doesn't taste better dipped in chocolate? The recipe is easy. I started using Carol Field's from The Italian Baker, which tatses OK, but had to play around a bit to get the dough stiffness right to get the cookies to look right too. You can find the recipe I use on my blog.