When one thinks of great Italian wines, immediately the great reds pop into mind: Brunello, Barolo, Chianti, Amarone, etc. World class wines that are in demand all over the world. When one thinks about white wines, however, different associations are made. Food friendly, quaffable, light, cheap, and so on. There are some great white wines…
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Simply delicious” Spaghetti with Clams
I have noticed that the so-called great cooking experts are creating a violence against decent cooking that actually is surprisingly simple. They will add complexity for its own sake, add surprising taste sensations when none are needed. Among the unnecessary ingredients I have found are lemon juice, white wine, bottarga, various herbs and extraneous spices.…
Bagels in Italy
What do you do on a snowy day in Bologna? Today it started to rain but ended up snowing—very nicely. But I came across an interesting bagel recipe. It seemed simple enough to make the dough. Once the dough was made I could ignore the rest of the instructions as I knew better how to…
La Famiglia Sagre I: Porcini!
Sagre is an Italian word for a festival. It is a kind of cross between a low-brow foodie event and something like a state fair. Like the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a Sagre has a single theme. The theme is a celebration of some type of famous local cuisine. They have Sagre’s for almost every type…
Piccolo Corpo: an intimate film of epic proportions
There is an amazing film that is so powerful that watching it is one of those events you can’t get out of your mind hours or days after seeing it. The film, Piccolo Corpo (Little Body) by debut director Laura Samani is an almost virtuoso display of the all too human struggle of women in…
Bologna Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival
I was in Sardinia with Claudia, Mackenson and Christina, to escape the heat. It was only a matter of time until I had to go home. It was almost arbitrary when I would come back. First because in Bologna it will be in the mid-thirties (celsius) for the next 2 months, as far as I…
The Unesco City of Music
I choose to live in Bologna for, among other things, its cultural life. Especially music. And I was not prepared for 3 of the best orchestras I don’t think you’ll ever hear of. I’ve already been to a mediocre performance of Ariadne auf Naxos with an unprofessional soprano who spoke more than she could sing,…
Meal II Osteria Francescana: The best meal of my entire life
This post is updated with extra photos courtesy of Brian Ng. With a title like that it is hard to imagine how one can pull off a meal like that. Well, in order to do that a chef must transcend their genre and hit something universal and that is exactly what Osteria Francescana did. First, it…
Sicilia: first impression, first measurement
Our trip to Sicily was an amazing adventure, I will try and give some of the highlights of our trip, out of sequential order. I already related my finest trattoria experience and here is my initial impressions of Sicily. I was never in Sicily before so I was prepared for anything … so I thought.…
Meal I: A parade of fish in Sicily
I have a lot of catching up to do in this blog. So look for some updates on music, film, wine, art and food. Here is the first of 4 entries of the 4 best meals I had ever had in my life. This one in a worker’s neighborhood in Sicily. One of the main…