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Rachel Priestley, a cook and wine and food consultant, has opened Italian restaurants and wine bars in Italy and in Vienna. Passionate about Italian food, she has spent 10 years living and working in Italy, including six years in Tuscany. She exports a line of gourmet artisan-produced Italian products and fine Italian wines into New Zealand, where she produces a range of products. She divides her time between Tuscany and New Zealand. You can contact her at info@prodigal-daughter.com and follow her on twitter: @ProdigaDaughter.
There is a saying in Italian: Natale con i tuoi e Pasqua con chi vuoi (‘Christmas with your family and Easter with whomever you want'). And who you want to feast with is as important as what you eat: food is the centre of celebrations, and tradition has it
Most seaside towns in Italy have their own antique version of zuppa di pesce, and the Tuscan port town of Livorno is no exception: here they call it cacciucco: the fish stew with five c's and 13 different types of seafood, all slow-cooked in red wine with lots
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to massage pig fat? Does the idea of ribbons of pig fat on pieces of toasted bread make your mouth water? Do you wake up in the morning wondering how you will choose to feed your pig cravings each day? Or is
Christmas is a special time to share with friends and family. Here in Italy, whether you are with family, new friends or friends who are now your Florentine family, what's on the table at Christmas Eve, before midnight mass, is a top priority. Why such a decadent abundance
With the cooler days and nights and the richer colours and flavours of autumn, I find myself longing for Tuscan chestnut dishes. Foraging is great at this time of the year: autumn walks in the countryside yield pockets full of castagne, sweet chestnuts; funghi, wild mushrooms; and branches of
At harvest time, Elia Palazzesi gets up around four in the morning and works outdoors until dusk. This doesn't give him much time for anything else during the vendemmia, the wine harvest. Elia and his family have long been making one of the most well-known wines in Tuscany-
Driving back from Puglia in August, on the stretch between Bari and Naples, I passed 36 trucks filled to their brims with pomodori San Marzano, on their way to the canneries. I dodged the tomatoes flying out of the overflowing open-top trucks as they wound their way up the
Italy's 54th Art Biennale (see page 20) is finally here, and in this world of artists and curators set on the backdrop of a city where the roads are made of water and the taxis are boats, I will set up shop to cook New Zealand and Venetian fare
Employed by the Egyptians for the first time more than 3,000 years ago; employed by Reuters International news agencies until the fax machine put the last 45 out of work; retired out of India's Police Service in Orissa as recently as 2002; currently banned from work in Afghanistan
Aphrodisiacal, addictive, adds punch to any dish, has wonderful digestive properties? I needed no further convincing on a recent trip to Thailand to try chilli in my morning omelette; ...
Carnival is a time to kick up one’s heels, hide behind a mask, pretend, elaborate, and eat ‘rags.’ For most people, the greatest feature of Carnival season is the elaborate ...
La gallina vecchia fa un buon brodo: ‘An old chicken makes a good broth’ is one of Italy’s time-tested aphorisms. And whether you believe that tortellini-filled-pasta parcels, usually served in ...
Here comes Christmas and the chill of the December air in Florence is sweetened with the enticing aromas of artisan bakers making Tony's Bread, pan di Toni. This famous fifteenth- century Milanese Christmas cake, known in Italian as panettone, is now the national Christmas cake of Italy. Many competing
Tradition has it that in Italy old people and children spend time in the mountains during summer so that they can breathe some healthy fresh air at higher altitudes. An even older tradition says that animals need this same treatment. Come summer, my valley-dwelling friends in Umbria-one
Tuscan hunting season is officially open. With about 100,000 hunters renewing their licences annually in the region alone, hunting here is serious business. And, with locals from Momigno (population 1,000), a small town on the way to Femminamorta in the hills above Pistoia, the cinghiali (wild boar), don'
If bread is the staff of life, then some bread is la dolce vita-the sweet life. Around the time of the vendemmia in Tuscany, I like making schiacciata con l'uva, a Florentine dessert made with bread dough, red wine, olive oil, rosemary and grapes. Made only during grape
Italy is as famous for pizza as it is for design. Over the summer, I went to Gaeta, where I once lived, to see old friends-and to eat pizza. Pizza-making in Gaeta is an art. Situated on the Mediterranean coast 90 kilometres north of Naples, Gaeta also
My latest consulting job finds me working for a prince in a palace surrounded by olive groves and vineyards. Among horses and children, fields of green grass and gardens, I am organizing traditional Tuscan gourmet picnics, lunches and cooking classes to offer in the restaurant and wine-tasting room. I
I went downstairs to eat at Fuori Porta the other day and was lucky enough to find my friend Donald walking in the door with some free time for an aperitivo. We enjoy chatting about politics, the weather (and how Italians always talk about politics and the weather), but our
With spring well under way and with the puntarelle season now finished, it is time to start planting my garden for spring and summer fare: cetrioli, melanzane, pomodori, pomodorini, basilico, zucchine, cipolle rosse, and more. When the plant seller I recently visited at Sant'Ambrogio market asked if I
It seems that everybody is finally coming out of hibernation after a very long, very damp, cold winter in Florence (which even included a frosting of snow). However, although flowers are beginning to bloom and grass is beginning to send up lush green shoots, it is still too cold to
‘Chianti,’ one of the most famous words in the wine world today, is the source of much confusion. Maybe you tasted a great Chianti wine at a restaurant but when ...
In New York, London or Auckland you may be served ‘Italian' food in which basil pesto, for example, has been added to, say, orecchiette pasta and semi-dried tomatoes. No such marriage of regional specialties would work here in Italy, however. And when you observe a cross-regional marriage
The holidays are over and we're midway into January. The month may be long and cold, but it is also the start of puntarelle season. I have only just discovered this vegetable, but, like someone in love, I don't remember what life was like before I tasted a
