Blog - Mama Margaret Cooking Adventures

Fennel Gratin With Crispy Bread Crumb Topping: Great For Festive Italian Dinners

December 11, 2013 – 9:15 am

This recipe comes from A Star Chef’s Italian Christmas by Chef Fabio Trabocchi, featured on foodandwine.com/articles/a-star-chefs-italian-Christmas where you’ll see a slide show with 11 Italian Christmas recipes from citrus-marinated pork rib roast to Italian trifle with Marsala syrup. Yummy!! All you need for Christmas dining except for turkey!

Serves 10.

Salt
5 fennel bulbs (5 pounds), quartered
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 quart heavy cream
1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
Freshly ground white pepper
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350°. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the fennel and cook until crisp-tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and pat dry.
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Add the garlic and cook over moderate heat until softened, 2 minutes. Add the cream and cook until reduced to 2 cups, about 20 minutes. Off the heat, whisk in 1 cup of the cheese. Gradually add the eggs and whisk until incorporated. Transfer the sauce to a blender and puree until smooth. Season with salt and white pepper.
In a small bowl, mix the bread crumbs with the parsley and the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese. Season the bread crumb mixture lightly with salt and white pepper.
Arrange the fennel in a single layer in a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Pour the cream sauce over the fennel, sprinkle with the bread crumb mixture and drizzle with the olive oil. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the fennel is tender, the sauce is bubbling and the crumbs are browned on top. Let stand for 15 minutes before serving.

Make Ahead: The assembled gratin can be refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before baking.

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy, Newsletter, recipe | Comments (0)

Italian Experiences Make Ideal Gifts For Italophiles

December 11, 2013 – 9:00 am

Margaret at Bella Gelateria in Vancouver with owner, James

What to give your Italy loving friends? More and more we’re giving experiences that inspire, entertain and inform our friends and family, instead of more stuff they may not want. Better still, experiences they can share with you!

Some Italian Style Experience Ideas For You:

a ticket to an Italian movie with you (In Vancouver, our first Italian film festival happens January 10-16, 2014)
a gift certificate for an Italian language class
a gift certificate to dine at their favourite Italian restaurant with you
a gift certificate to an Italian wine tasting event
a gift certificate for their favourite gelateria–Italian ice cream is good any time of year!
their favourite Italian dessert (tiramisu?) or appetizer (caponata?) that you made at home
a night of cooking their favourite Italian dinner together at your home with you buying all the food and wine

What if you really want to impress and delight your Italy loving friend who likes to cook Italian style?

Give a gift certificate to pay for all or part of a Mama Margaret & Friends cooking tour in Italy!

Contact us for more info today. We’ll email you a personalized gift certificate.

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy, Newsletter | Tagged certificates, cooking tours, gelato, gifts, italy, shopping, tours | Comments (0)

How To Find The Right Italy Cooking Tour For You

December 11, 2013 – 8:55 am

a family celebrating parents’ big birthdays with charming, welcoming, passionate Chef Roberto by cooking with him in his restaurant in a hamlet in Tuscany

How to find the best Italian cooking school and wine tour for you? Here are some basic questions to ask yourself so you can quickly look at an Italy cooking tour itinerary and decide if it’s the one for you.

1. What’s important to me on this food and wine trip to Italy?

For example, do you want to really connect with local people, heart to heart, as you share food and wine, so they feel like new friends when you leave? Go on our Italy cooking and Brunello tour in Tuscany where you get to know a cast of locals in a variety of places from hamlets to homes.

Do you want to take several cooking classes? Choose a five or six day Italy cooking tour with four hands-on cooking classes like one Italy cooking with four chefs in Tuscany or one Italy cooking with local mammas in Puglia.

2. Besides cooking classes, what do I want to experience?

For example, if you like hiking in beautiful nature, choose an Italy cooking and wine tour like our Italy cooking & Barolo wine tour in Piedmont where you walk in magnificent hills covered in vineyards.

Or one in Sicily where you walk in exotic volcanic lands under Mount Etna and Aeolian Island of Stromboli…and get some exercise so you go home weighing the same.

walking among Barolo vineyards in Piedmont

3. Are you more of a food lover or wine lover? If you love food above all else in life, our Emilia-Romagna, Italy cooking tour is for you—see first hand how they make parmesan cheese, traditional balsamic vinegar of Modena that feels like liquid velvet in your mouth and delicate pastas.

If you love top Italian wines like Amarone, go to the Veneto on our Italy cooking and Amarone wine tour. Your local guide is a sommelier and her family owns a winery —- lots of insider wine experiences!

4. Ask Mama Margaret. We’ll ask you lots more questions to zero in on the right Italy cooking tour for you.

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Italy Vacation, Newsletter, Piedmont, Puglia, Sicily, Tuscany, Veneto | Tagged italy, Italy cooking and wine tour, Italy cooking tour, wine tour | Comments (0)

One Of The Best Gifts You Can Give At Christmas Or Any Time

December 9, 2013 – 1:00 am

Some of the gifts people appreciate the most are free and priceless. Like really listening to a friend or family member, 100% focussed on what she’s telling you, not offering any “fix it” advice, just listening.

Here are two stories about how valuable your gift of listening can be.

1.When my mum was alive, every year, I’d listen carefully, sifting through our conversations and watching what she did, to find something that would truly delight her for Christmas. One year every shop’s window seemed full of teddy bears. When my mum and I were out together, I noticed she’d stop us at these windows and “oooh” and “ahhh” over the cute displays.

Then it hit me, “She’s in her 60s but she wants a teddy bear!” I went to Birks, a high end jewelry and gift store, and found a beautiful, cuddly teddy bear with soft fur and a friendly face. Perfect!

I should tell you my mum came from a reserved Scottish family and held her emotions mostly inside. On Christmas morning when she opened the box with the teddy bear, her face lit up and tears welled up in her eyes…but didn’t roll down her cheeks. She said softly, “I’ve never had a teddy bear.” She’d grown up in the Depression in a family that could only buy necessities and had always wanted a teddy bear.

2. For years, a long time man friend, like a brother for me, has been part of a “men’s group” of about 10 men, some married, some single, mostly baby boomers, that meets twice a month. Each meeting each man, one at a time, takes the floor and tells the others what’s been happening in his life, what his concerns and successes are. The other men stay silent—they just listen. At the end, if the man wants comments, he’ll ask for them. If he doesn’t ask, nobody offers any opinions.

Some men in the group have said this meeting is the only time when people truly listen to them. Even those who are married. It makes me wonder why we don’t slow down and take the time to listen to those close to us at least and those around us too.

The gift of listening is one of the best and easiest gifts you can give, now in this festive season or any time of the year. Give lots of it in 2014!

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy | Comments (0)

8 Italy Food & Travel Apps Make Perfect Gifts For Italy Foodie Travelers

December 4, 2013 – 9:00 am

All these apps are available at iTunes through Sutro Media and got updated in 2013.

Italian Menu Decoder

This app gives you 6,000 words for local dishes in Italy’s regions, with descriptions of what’s in a dish, what goes well with it & more. You’ll understand 100s of kinds of cheeses, pasta shapes, fish plus local specialties, cheese & wine terms, cookware. 3500 photos.

Since 1986, authors Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls have written 26 Cadogan Guides covering every town and region of Italy.

Chianti: Food + Wine

Learn where and how to eat, drink, shop and sleep in the Chianti region. Discover its villages, towns, old farm houses, castles, olive groves, best wine producing vineyards and most important, passionate artisans and artists.

Author Judy Witts Francini has lived in Florence/ the Chianti region since 1984. This cooking teacher, cooking tour leader and food writer has delighted in exploring the Chianti hills and making food and wine friends there for years. See her blog at divinacucina-blog.com

Tuscany for Foodies introduces you to butchers, bakers, and cheese makers, small food shops, restaurants big and small using local ingredients in traditional recipes, some off the beaten track.

Author James Martin has written about European travel for 9 years and lives half time in Tuscany.

Tuscany Wineries

Discover the best Tuscan wineries to visit, their backgrounds, winery visit etiquette, visiting hours, winery tours, towns to visit, restaurant recommendations, Italian wine regulations, wine regions, grape varietals & more.

Author Rebecca Wine settled in Italy in the 1990s. In Tuscany she’s been involved in wine bars and restaurants, guided wine tours, and now co-owns a Tuscan wine school in Florence.

Katie Parla’s Rome
Katie shows you 175 personally selected restaurants (few are famous), pizzerias, wine bars, craft beer pubs, gelato shops, and bakeries and gives you an expert’s view of Rome’s finest food and drink.

This culinary historian, food journalist and sommelier has lived in Rome for 10 years. She blogs at parlafood.com, contributed to 20 food and travel guides and writes often for the New York Times.

Eat Rome

Get expert food advice for 150 of Rome’s best restaurants, bakeries, pizzerias, bakeries, wine bars, kitchen and food stores, coffee bars. The author gives you her frank opinions and tells you what to look for, what to expect. Over 900 photos.

Author and Rome resident, Elizabeth Minchilli has been eating her way around Rome all her life, wrote six books on Italian living, and contributes to over forty magazines and newspapers. See her blog at elizabethminchilliinrome.com

delicious seafood lunch in a Venice restaurant

Eat Florence

Elizabeth Minchilli gives you 110 personally chosen restaurants, bakeries, pizzerias, bakeries, wine bars, kitchen and food stores, coffee bars in Florence, where she visits frequently. 800 photos.

Eat Venice

Elizabeth Minchilli gives you 90 carefully selected restaurants, bakeries, pizzerias, bakeries, wine bars, kitchen and food stores, coffee bars spots in Venice, where she visits regularly. 700 photos.

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy, Newsletter | Tagged apps, food, italy, Italy food, Italy travel app, travel | Comments (0)

How Does Mama Margaret Find & Vet New Italy Cooking Tour Colleagues?

December 4, 2013 – 8:55 am

Margaret and Puglia cooking tour colleagues in Gallipoli, Puglia

Thanks to our newsletter reader, Claire for asking us this question! Over the years, I’ve found our Italy tour colleagues through serendipity, referrals or an Internet search.

Then we email back and forth on what I want in the new cooking and wine tour itinerary we’re creating and talk on the phone or Skype. From that I figure out how knowledgeable and experienced they are, and if they’re friendly, fun people who are passionate about their region and really care about giving food lovers top notch service and experiences.

From there, we create a solid itinerary. Then I go to Italy to meet them personally and with them, visit all the people and places on our new itinerary, taking lots of photographs and notes.

Here’s my favourite serendipity “how we met” Italy cooking tour story. In 2005 in Sicily I visited the Aeolian island, Stromboli for the first time in 10 years. I took the fast boat from Naples to get there and spent three relaxed days. Then I discovered the fast boat to Naples had finished for the season. I’d have to take a three hour boat ride to Sicily’s mainland and a long train ride to Rome!

Stromboli’s main beach and volcano mountain

How could I make such a mistake? A voice inside said, “Maybe there’s a reason for this.” Looking out the boat window at a Stromboli hill, I saw a big heart shape in the land. Could Stromboli be a heart path for me? Of course not, I’d talked to hardly anyone there!

At the next port, I stretched my legs. When I got back to my seat, a man was sitting one seat over from me in the row of three seats. Obviously Sicilian, my age, in shorts and hiking boots. A voice inside prodded, “Say something to him!” I smiled, “E bella Stromboli, vero?—Stromboli is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Our conversation started. He’d guided three groups to the top of Stromboli (900 metres),was tired and heading home to Mount Etna. I told him about my long trip. I’d miss the bus connection from the port to the train station. “I’ll drive you to the station,” he said. My gut said he was a gentleman so I accepted. He moved to the seat next to me.

Margaret & Sicilian cooking tour colleague,
Lara

I told him about my tour company. ”I’ve always dreamed of a cooking, wine and walking tour at Mount Etna and Stromboli.” He smiled, “My family has a hiking tour company near Mount Etna.”

We exchanged cards, I contacted his sister-in-law, Lara and we created our cooking, wine, volcano and walking tour in Mount Etna & Stromboli. We ran our first very successful tour in 2006 and have all been friends ever since.

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy, Italy Vacation, Newsletter, Puglia, Sicily, Stromboli | Tagged cooking tours, italy, Italy cooking tours, puglia, Sicily | Comments (0)

Drink Wine In Italy & Help Save A National Park

December 2, 2013 – 9:00 am

vineyards above Corniglia, Cinque Terre

How can you drink wine in Italy and help save a national park at the same time? What a noble cause for us Italian wine lovers! Cheers! Let’s drink up!

Which wines? Which national park?

Christine Mitchell, a resident of Monterosso in the Cinque Terre, put these two seemingly unconnected ideas together in her article, “How Drinking Wine Can Help Save A National Park”. The title intrigued me right away, and even more so when I realized the national park was Cinque Terre, a place I’ve loved since I first walked its paths in 1979.

She points out that Cinque Terre’s famous stone wall terraces, spilling down the steep hillsides, literally hold these lands up, especially during bad weather and floods. Most terraces have vineyards (and olive groves) where local family style owners harvest their grapes and olives that make Cinque Terre’s wines and olive oil.

When you buy Cinque Terre wine and olive oil, local vineyard and olive grove owners, who labour in harsh conditions up and down in their terraces, earn money to keep their farms going and to maintain the terraces. No terraces would lead to loss of land in landslides and literally the loss of a well loved national park.

Christine’s article, beautifully illustrated with her photographs, reminds us how important it is to buy local products from local families when we go on holiday to support the local economy and land preservation. If you’re in Sicily, eat the local pistachio nuts and oranges. On the Amalfi Coast, drink local limoncello. In Tuscany, eat local pecorino cheese. In Cinque Terre, drink the local wines and buy local olive oil.

See the whole November 25 article at italiannotebook.com/local-interest/cinque-terre-wine-terraces

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Cinque Terre, Italian Riviera, Italy Wine | Tagged Cinque Terre, italy, National Park Cinque Terre, wine | Comments (0)

What Are Italy’s Best Wines For 2014?

November 27, 2013 – 8:55 am

town of Barbaresco, Piedmont where Mama Margaret’s tour takes you to a Barbaresco winery on the top 2014 list. Photo courtesy Don Whittemore

What are Italy’s best wines? In what regions in Italy? With thousands of wine producers in Italy’s 20 regions, how can you taste and judge so many wines fairly? Who would take on this monumental project?

Gambero Rosso, a huge Italian gastronomic media group (wine and restaurant guides, magazine and TV programs), organizes an annual series of wine tastings that culminate in the best wines receiving its prestigious Tre Bicchieri (three glasses) award. If your wine gets this award, it’s one of the best in Italy so your winery gets a big boost in sales and publicity. The winemaker feels her/his craftsmanship is validated by fellow wine experts.

How do they make sure the tastings are fair? Over a few months, about 60 wine experts work in panels of five and taste the wines blind. Between all of the panels, they taste about 25,000 wines from 2300 wineries. The panels score each one. No room for individual favourites. This year 1500 top scoring wines made it to the final round. Of those, 415 got the Tre Bicchieri award.

What are top regions? Of the 415 wines: 77 from Piedmont, 72 from Tuscany, 36 from the Veneto , 27 from Alto Adige(north east Italy), 24 from Friuli Venezia Giulia (north east Italy), 23 from Lombardy, 20 from Campania and 19 from Sicily.

Our guide for our cooking & Amarone tour is part of the family owning Brigaldara winery which is on the top wines for 2014 list. We visited their home to taste their Amarone with chocolate cake.

Which wines?

In Piedmont out of 77, Barolo 34, Barbaresco 13.
In Tuscany out of 72, Brunello di Montalcino 15, Chianti Classico 17, Bolghieri 8, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 4.
In the Veneto of 36, Amarone 10, including one from Brigaldara, the winery owned by Mama Margaret’s Veneto tour guide’s family, Soave Classico 7 and Valpolicella 5.
In Alto Adige of 27, Pinot Bianco 8, Gewurztraminer 3, Riesling 3.
In Friuli Venezia Giulia with 24, an amazing variety of wines made the list, with regions of Colli Orientali 8 and Collio 7.
In Lombardy of 23, the fizzy Brut 9 and region, Franciaforta dominating with 11.
Campania with 20 showed an amazing variety like Fiano di Avellino (3), Aglianico (2), Greco di Tufo (2) and the Taurasi region with 3.
In Sicily with 19, winners came from around the island like Etna Rosso 3, Etna Bianco 3 and dessert wines like Malvasia delle Lipari Passito Riserva (Aeolian Islands), Marsala Superiore Ambra Semisecco Riserva and my favourite sweet wine, Passito di Pantelleria (island south of Sicily).

You can see the complete list at a wonderful site about Italian wines at winewordswisdom.com/aboutitalwine/tre-bicchieri-awards-2014.html or simply visit winewordswisdom.com and scroll down to the article, “Italy’s Best Wines: Gambero Rosso’s 2014 Tre Bicchieri Winners”.

What are your favourite Italian wines?

By Margaret Cowan | Posted in Italy, Italy Wine, Newsletter, Piedmont, Sicily, Tuscany, Veneto | Tagged cooking, italy, sicilian, tours, wine | Comments (0)

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