Lega Sud

Many of you would know about the Lega Nord, the crazy right wing political party in the North of Italy that wants to cut the peninsula in half to separate the north from the south. The reasons for this are based on economics and immigration from North Africa.

I however, after eating food from 4 regions -  Piedmont, Liguria (actually Liguria was good), Valle D'Aosta and Lombardia - have come to the conclusion that I would like to create a culinary Lega Sud, where Italian food focuses on the regions of the South and separates itself from the North. The Northern cuisine, afterall, is focused on French cuisine, with far too much butter and not enough tomatoes or oil.

April - Lombardia

Lombardia's capital is Milan. It's cuisine has more rice (Arborio is the type used in Risotto) than other regions, and butter is used more so than olive oil, due to it's border with France.

Our Meal

Saffron Risotto

Roast Beef cooked in Milk

Apple Charlotte - before being cooked.

Throughout the preparation of the meal, we continued playing Blokus, which is in no way related to Lombardia, but is great fun none the less.

March - Liguria

Here are some things we know about Liguria*:

1. It is Christopher Columbus' birthplace 

2. Traces of the Neanderthal Man were found here

3. The city was awarded a gold medal for military valour in WWII for its struggle against German occupation 

More importantly, it's the land where foccacia, meringues, pesto, panettone and other such yummy things originate.  After all, Genova is the capital and Liguria is best known for the Cinque Terre aka the Italian Riveria and as such, knows how to have a good time.

And so do we. Or at least, we know how to eat. 

So, the menu for Liguria was: 

1. Triofie al Pesto (both nut and nut-free versions for yours truly)

2. Veal roll-ups and stuffed zucchini 

3. Olive oil raspberry cake with meringue topping (not from our Cucina Italian cookbook but thanks to Martha Stewart)

Yum yum in my tum... 

*Souce: Wikipedia (ie read: disclaimer for not-my-fault-if-this-is-not-strictly-factually-true). 

February - Piedmont

February - Piedmont

Boun appetito!

The first of our twenty regional dinners came as Sydney was enjoying the last throes of summer. Daisy was about to renew her teaching studies, Melissa had returned to Australia after amazing adventures abroad and Stephen was in his first few weeks of his doctoral studies in pure mathematics. As for me, I was just about to bid adieu to the College of Law - finally.

We selected as our first region Piedmont, home to the Shroud of Turin, Garibaldi and, as we found to our delight, some delicious cuisine.

We dipped our toe in the food of Piedmontese with Melissa's wonderful entree of capsicum served plump, succulent and lightly grilled in an enticing bruschetta style. Our main was a superbly cooked hunters chicken prepared by Daisy, which was a sensation of hearty tomatoey, oniony, chickeny goodness. Stephen and I offered a chocolate pear cake - a dense creation of slowly cooked pears and Italian cocoa, which emerged from its baking dish with a satisfying plop.

And thus began our adventure into the regional cooking of Italy.