Tuscany

Quick guide to Italian ingredients: Olives

  Legend has it that two gods once competed for the patronage of an Ancient greek city, and the people decided to choose based on what gifts the gods would offer them. The sea god, Poseidon, offered them the gift of water, essential for life. The goddess Athena offered them the gift of a single …

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La befana

In Italy, Christmas comes twice a year

  Christmas comes but once a year, but it’s a little known fact that in Italy, children get two bites at the panforte. Another festival, with huge similarities to the festivities on the 25th December, occurs just twelve days later. On the night of the 5th January, Italian children hang up their stockings at the end of the …

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Florence at Christmas: a photo essay

  The magic of Florence is legendary. The city, with its red-tiled roofs fills the wide valley of the river Arno, straddled by the ponte vecchio, literally paved with gold shops. The enormous cupola of the duomo, also red-tiled, has given Florence one of the most recognized skylines in the world, to rival, Paris, London, New York, but …

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Quick guide to Italian ingredients: Pasta secca

  I remember it coming as quite a shock, a few years ago,  when discussing what to have for lunch with my English partner that my suggestion of pasta was met with an incredulous, ‘but we ate that yesterday. We can’t have it every day. It will get boring.’ For me, having been brought up on an …

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Torta di noci: walnut and chocolate cake – Chestnuts and Truffles TV

This classic recipe comes from La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene by Pellegrino Artusi, first published in 1891. Not widely known outside Italy, this book is considered to be the definitive text on traditional Italian cooking, however, a great many of the recipes are from Tuscan cuisine. Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli …

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