Ragu Bolognese – As Prepared for The Dalai Lama

bowl bolognese top bike tours italy italiaoutdoors food and wineNo matter where we travel in Italy, we find various types of meat ragu on the menu. A ragu is a sauce of sauteed vegetables and chopped meat cooked in a liquid. The liquid can be lots of things, – wine, beef or chicken broth, milk or cream, or a combination of several, but one thing it is not – a tomato sauce. A ragu can be flavored with tomato, but it is not a ‘marinara’ sauce with meat.

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Posted in Beef, cabernet, Emilia Romagna, Lamb, Meats, Pasta, Pork, sangiovese, Sausage, Travel, Uncategorized, Wine Pairings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Frittata Pasquale – Easter Frittata with Asparagus, Artichokes and Herbs

frittata luxury villa rental italy italiaoutdoors food and wineWe find frittatas all over Italy during our cycling tours and ski holidays, but each region has its own favorite traditional variation. This dish hails from Umbria, where it would be served for Easter lunch. Easter dishes to me always celebrate the beginning of spring, when after a long winter of root vegetables and soups, we welcome fresh baby greens, asparagus, artichokes and herbs. In the Veneto, discovering fresh asparagus and baby artichokes is one of the highlights of a market visit during our spring cycling tours. To quote from La Cucina – The Regional Cooking of Italy, “The sight, smell and taste of this dish will make it abundantly clear that spring has finally arrived.”

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Minestra di Farro – Hearty Farro Soup from Tuscany

minestra di farro bike tours tuscany italiaoutdoors food and wineWherever we travel in Italy on our bike tours, be it Tuscany, Umbria, the Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, or Friuli Venezia Giulia, we find farro dishes on the menu. Farro is one of my favorite whole grains, we which find in hearty wonderful soups in Tuscany and Umbria, or in creamy risottos in the Northeastern regions. However, I find much confusion exists about what exactly IS farro.

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Casunziei Ampezzani – Beet Ravioli with Poppy Seed Browned Butter

casunziei ampezzani private bike tours italy italiaoutdoors food and wineDuring our visits to the Dolomites, we enjoy some wonderful and distinctive local dishes, along with great skiing and cycling. One of the most unique, and striking, is casunziei ampezzani, a specialty of the ski town Cortina D’Ampezzo (Curtain of the Ampezzo Valley.) I enjoyed these on my last stop in Cortina itself, and I finally found the time to explore making these in my own kitchen.

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Posted in beets, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Pasta, Ricotta, Travel, Trentino Food, Uncategorized, Veneto Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

5 Easy Tips for Perfect Polenta

polenta bowl gourmet bike tours italy tuscany italiaoutdoors food and winePasta is considered by many to be the ‘staple’ starch in the standard Italian diet, but on our biking, skiing and hiking adventures in northern Italy, we see more polenta than pasta. Northern Italians literally survived on this staple for hundreds of years. As we explore the Veneto by bike, we ride through many a corn field, but never see fresh corn on the cob on the menu; the corn grown here is destined to be dried and ground, and used year round in polenta.

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Posted in Polenta, Travel, Uncategorized, Vegetarian, Veneto Food, Whole Grains | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments