Tag: Veneto

Christmas appetizers: 10 ideas to try at least once – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Whether we’re talking about the Christmas Eve dinner or the lunch on the 25th, the Christmas appetizers they are often a big worry. What to do to amaze family members, without taking away the warmth of tradition? No problem: just use your imagination and seasonal ingredients.

A classic, for example, is the Neapolitan reinforcement salad, which has always been a side dish but, given the richness of dinners and today’s lunches, it can easily be “moved” to the starter. One appetizer pull the other one. Staying on the topic of appetizers traditional, also interesting fried cauliflower, typical of Abruzzo and Calabrian cuisine. Or the zeppoline with seaweed, another delicacy of Neapolitan cuisine. But let’s try to revisit tradition: so here are 10 ideas to start Christmas off right at the table

Christmas appetizers: our 10 unmissable ideas

So let’s start immediately with the 10 best recipes in our cookbook, to be revisited with imagination: from quiche to classic crostini to raw fish.

Spicy salami quiche

Speaking of Calabria: why not put spicy salami or ‘nduja in a delicious quiche, for an entirely Mediterranean dish? The savory pie is filled with a filling of ricotta, cherry tomatoes, spicy salami, oregano, olives and extra virgin olive oil. But be careful: the risk is that her taste “cannibalizes” the rest of the lunch…

Crostini with stracchino and sausage

Liver croutons Tuscans they are a classic of the Italian mixed appetizer. And all year round. But we offer you an interesting variant: crostini with sausage and stracchino. After lightly grilling the bread, just fill it with stracchino and crumbled sausage and put it in the oven for a few minutes.

Cockles au gratin or… raw

An excellent appetizer for any dinner, the cockles from the Northern Adriatic can be a truly original idea: the shells must be filled with breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, extra virgin olive oil, white wine, pepper and parsley. And then cooked in the oven. Or, for those who have a trusted fishmonger, shells and molluscs, all raw.

Savory yule log

The name recalls the famous French dessert, but obviously it is something completely different: take some slices of bread for sandwichessprinkle it with Capricciosa salad and mayonnaiseand then roll them up giving them the shape of a log. A quick and really clever appetizer! A bit like slices of sandwich in the shape of a Christmas tree…

Lasagna cupcakes

Put the Emilian lasagna in the appetizer? You can, by cutting the lasagna into squares and creating scenographic shapes baskets. And seasoning them with sauce tomato, bechamel and sausage.

Speck and cheese rolls

Slices of speckSouth Tyrol roll up and fill with a stick of Asiago and chives. Heat in the oven or on the griddle. Is there a simpler and, at the same time, appetizing appetizer?

Orange prawns

Refined and Mediterranean dish: it is necessary to cut thesliced orange, with all the peel, and cook it lightly in butter. Then, once the slices have been removed, i prawns shelled, they are cooked in a pan with Cointreau, chives, orange juice and salt. And then you arrange the prawns on the orange slices like a crouton. To try!

Gourmet panettone

The most classic of Milanese Christmas desserts also exists in savory version, all to be stuffed. There are ready-made ones: just cut it into a series of discs of dough about one centimeter high, divide them in two and then move on to the filling, adding the butter first. And here the imagination kicks in: salami fantasies, smoked salmon, shrimp with cocktail sauce, cheese layers with taleggio cream, gorgonzola and crescenza. And then again olive pâté, dried tomatoes, grilled vegetables, walnuts, Russian salad, pesto, béchamel sauce, pickles, pickles. A true “tower” of taste!

Radicchio boats

Treviso red radicchio or Belgian endive can be used for spectacular “boats”. The crew? Mozzarella, anchovies and rocket. And you can also use the hoax.

Parmesan Cheese Baskets

They always make an impact on the table. But what they contain should not be underestimated at all: don’t settle for the usual saladbut enrich them with slices of cured meats and cheeses, mushrooms and why not, also use someegg with Norcia black truffle!

Eating in via Veneto, waiting for the rebirth of the sweet life – Italian Cuisine

Eating in via Veneto in Rome, the most famous street in the capital, was not easy. But something is changing. Because via Veneto is being reborn after years of oblivion and it is doing so starting from the kitchen. Roman and Italian-American.

The first scandalous striptease

It all began, officially, on 5 November 1958, with the party for the twenty-fourth birthday of Countess Olghina di Robilant at the Rugantino in Trastevere: here the Turkish-Armenian dancer Aïché Nana performed the famous striptease, ending up half naked in all the newspapers of the time. Rome had become the international capital of entertainment and social life, and its epicenter was Via Veneto. Due to the presence of the most luxurious hotels and clubs open until dawn, Via Veneto has been the meeting point for VIPs, actors, night owls and paparazzi for twenty years. Here they stayed and spent their evenings, among the bars, lobbies and hotel rooms that made the history of the street. AtHarry’s Bar Frank Sinatra played the piano and even today in the evening we dine with the background of the piano bar. Since 1962 he has animated Rome by Night and hosted Hollywood actors visiting the capital, but it has nothing to do with Venice, so there’s no point in looking for a plate of carpaccio.

The great beauty: a construction site

In 2013 it was the set of The great beauty by Paolo Sorrentino, a film that photographed the upper class of Roman salons, good and even decadent. «The great beauty It is to The sweet life like the Via Veneto of today is the Via Veneto of 1959. Now it is just a street of luxury hotels where it is in vain to seek the nocturnal atmosphere of the past” wrote Alessandra Levantesi Kezich, film critic for “La Stampa”, on the occasion of the his exit. Well yes, because it really is it is useless to come to via Veneto in search of cafés crowded with artists, intellectuals, stars and photographers. Over the years, other neighborhoods have made their way into the preferences of Romans and tourists and Via Veneto has remained comfortable on its laurels. Today Via Veneto is a construction site.

Between public and private, there is the project (already started) of redevelop the urban planning aspect and to relaunch the historic premises to bring back Via Veneto great again. Many prestigious hotels are currently closed or under renovation: the first hotel on via Veneto, the Hotel Majestic, inaugurated in 1889 and designed by the architect Gaetano Koch, author among others of the nearby American embassy building and the Bank of Italy building (Palazzo Koch), has closed its doors and has been acquired by Boscalt Hospitality (Rothschild) and will be renovated. The Westin Excelsior Rome, designed by architect Otto Mariani in the early twentieth century in neo-baroque style, has been bought and will close shortly for renovations. The Grand Hotel Via Veneto will be transformed into a Nobu Hotel and Restaurant, although it is not yet known when. Not far away, in via Boncompagni, work has begun on the new Mandarin Oriental. The only discordant note, for the Cafè de Paris, however, after the seizure and ten years of closure, the shutter still remains lowered and everything is silent. The street is still divided in two, to the south apart Signorvino it’s still all a construction site or bars serving American Breakfast for a few euros, whereas towards the north the rebirth has already begun.

Make Dolce Vita Great Again

First to lead the rebirth consortium, the InterContinental Rome Ambasciatori Palace, named in honor of the nearby American embassy. Built as the ambassador’s residence, then transformed into a library, it is the first five-star hotel to inaugurate the new course of the most famous street in the capital. One hundred and sixty rooms with a pure leisure vocation, a design that takes inspiration from the Roman style, a rooftop with a view and a restaurant NYC shoe which attracts an audience of American and local tourists; which in via Veneto still means Americans. Scarpetta NYC is a short circuit: a restaurant serving Italian-American cuisinewanted by a New Yorker, inspired by the concept of The sweet life, hence the name of the LDV Hospitality group. A foreign format that embodies Italianness abroad, and not an attempt to bastardize Italian cuisine to meet the tastes of others. Homemade pasta and bread, spaghetti with tomato sauce (and butter, very creamy) and steak house menus, just like in the United States. Much loved by expats, diplomats, American citizens of Rome and even traveling tourists who thus rediscover the flavors of home and a place where they feel transported to New York. Via Veneto is in fact an American outpost in Italy, it is no coincidence that the first Italian Hard Rock Cafe opened here, way back in 1998, and one of the most famous nightclubs in the capital (opened in 1972) is right in the area and is called Jackie O’ , named after the iconic Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK’s widow, who became Mrs. Onassis in 1968.

Venice: special spaghetti with garlic, oil and chilli (and more) – Italian Cuisine

Where I ate i best spaghetti with garlic, oil and chilli? In Venice, yes.

Venice it is an open-air museum that fascinates with the beauties of the past and a city with an eye towards the future, fearless and proud as only the Serenissima can be. To the The Gritti Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel, yesterday and today dialogue in a continuous exchange of ideas and original proposals in order to offer a high level of hospitality from every point of view. In fact, even at its fine dining restaurant Doge’s Clubthe attention to gastronomic excellence passes through continuous research between tradition and innovation, which today is transmitted by the new Executive Chef, Alberto Fol.

News in the lagoon

Born in 1974, chef Alberto Fol he has a long experience, including in starred restaurants, which has led him to prefer hotel kitchens, an environment he knows well – “I grew up there, my grandfather had two hotels, then my father too”, he says fondly. Above all, he appreciates the movement as a complete little world that offers many opportunities to get involved, «from the lobster omelette for off-menu breakfast to the course at The Gritti Epicurean School, he adds, smiling. By the way, the kitchens of the iconic Venetian hotel are nothing new for him: a good twenty years earlier he had taken his first steps here as commis to chef Celestino Giacomello. We don’t know if it was a sign of destiny, but life is certainly bizarre sometimes and it’s nice when the circles close.

It was the same Paolo LorenzoniGeneral Manager of The Gritti Palace, strongly desired the chef from Belluno, revealing his successful intent: «I had already known him since 2009 (chef Fol arrived at Danieli five years ago, preceded by what was then The Westin Europa & Regina, also in Venice, ed.), I was looking for someone who could prepare local cuisine while respecting seasonality and tradition. And then, Alberto and I both love the mountains, a point in common that has allowed us to bond a lot.”

In fact, Alberto Fol’s cuisine could be summed up in the concept “seas and mountains”, which expresses his personality as a man born from the Dolomites, integrated very well in Venice and well represented by a signature dish like the Cacciatore style scallops: «Ever since I started working on the menu now on the menu, one thing was immediately clear to me: I wanted to bring people to the places where I was born, raised and educated. Through these dishes, I wanted to tell a story, mine”. The autumn menu on the menu at the Club del Doge brings to the table the scents of the mountains, the fruits of the earth and the treasures hidden in the woods, in a balanced combination with the fish richness of the local waters, entering the lagoon and reaching the sea.

Chef Fol’s spaghetti with garlic, oil and chilli pepper

Alpine butter, selected flours, local products from the market, are just some examples that express the love for the ingredients at the basis of the cuisine of Alberto Folwhich starts from the big one respect for quality and attention to well-being: «On average 40% of Italians have health problems related to nutrition. It is essential to start giving food education right from school, providing complete information, investing in the value of food, which is strongly linked to our culinary tradition. Conscious consumption is what we should teach, not going to the supermarket with your eyes closed in a hurry. Institutions, municipalities, regions, together we should work for the well-being of the community through good and simple food.”