As with a lot of the rest of the site, this page is a work in progress, due to the untimely but thankfully temporary demise of Sam's laptop. I am catching up, but in a very haphazard manner - my aim is to have everything in temporal order, meaning that sometimes new entries are at the end, sometimes they're crammed in the middle somewhere - sorry! Hopefully they're enjoyable wherever you find them...
Ok, update: I've now decided to split the food pages into regions. Several reasons, including the fact that it felt like it was all getting a bit unmanageable as one great big long page, and the fact that now I can add in little blurbs at the top of each region telling you all about anything of particular note in that region's culinary or alcoholic traditions. There will also be a whole bunch of cross links going in, to give more options of how to navigate around from Sam's what-we-saw blurbs to my what-we-stuffed-ourselves with blurbs...
Food Glorious Food and Wine Beautiful Wine
As you've probably all noticed, Sam is taking care of the touristy update side of the blog, and so I've taken it upon myself to deal with the food and drink side of things. So, this is the section where I get to wax lyrical about any food we've eaten that I feel is worth waxing lyrical about, as well as any wines, or other beverages for that matter, that were worth remembering. Which means this section could get rather long I guess. But, I'm writing it for anyone who wants to eat vicariously through us, so I'm sure there won't be any complaints (apart from those regarding our not sharing...).
I'm guessing that there isn't a single person reading this who hasn't tried some kind of Italian food at some point in their lives, even if it was only 'italian'. Spaghetti anyone? Which means that you'd think not much of an intro is necessary, since we all know all about Italian food. Well, not so it seems. The regional differences are many and wonderful, although the over-riding themes such as pasta, the meal order (antipasto, primo, secondo with contorno, dolce, caffe/liquor, food induced stupor), and there being no such things as vegetarians seem the same throughout the country (a note for any vegetarians/vegans reading this - good luck if you're ever here - the Italians seem to consider prosciutto a vegetable type, and share my view that non-cheese eaters are weirdos). Throughout the trip we've been constantly surprised, delighted and/or intrigued by all the slightly different ways in which the Italians prepare their food.
To offset some of this surprise, we've been referring quite frequently to a sizeable tome by the name of "The Gourmet Traveller's Guide to Italy", by one Fred Plotkin, bought by me as a Christmas present "for Sam". Mr Plotkin is a food and opera expert who studied in Bologna and now writes for the New York Times. He is apparently the person other experts on Italy/opera/food consult when they want to check things. And he really appreciates his food, in a wonderfully wordy way (which I fear I am beginning to emulate at times). He's also the source of quite a lot of my extra info on the differences between the regional cuisines, which I hope he won't mind! The book itself has now come to be known simply as "Fred", as in "what does Fred say about this place?", and that's what I'm talking about if I mention "Fred" in the course of all this. Anyhow, back to the food...
The following links will take you to the food pages for each region, including of course, all the non-Italy bits once we get there - we have no intention of stopping eating...