TASTE the AUTHENTIC ITALY with the LOCAL EXPERTS

We are so proud to announce that our Stile Mediterraneo blog has been chosen to receive a Tripbase 2011 Blog Award. This award has been given to the best 10 Italian cuisine blogs in 2011.

This year, all awards have been featured in CNBC, CBS and AOL News.

We thank all Tripbase readers for voting for us and look forward to providing lots of more interesting content about Puglia food and wine.

Watch a video of our past special tours at the villa castle. This is what to expect if you enter and win our contest! There are 20 days left. Don’t miss this opportunity.

I and Marika are just back from a wonderful 3-day cooking workshop held in Milan where all best Italian and International chefs got together to share the secrets behind their Italian recipes and dishes.

Imagine yourself in the same room with Italian chefs from Massimiliano Alajmo, Carlo Cracco, Gennaro Esposito, Davide Oldani, Antonello Colonna, Niko Romito, Andrea Berton, to Elio Sironi, Davide Scabin, Ciccio Sultano and Massimo Bottura, who was recently awarded as the best chef in the world by the International Academy of Gastronomy in Paris.

The International chefs included: Inaki Aizpitarte, Paul Liebrandt, Sat Bains, Magnus Nilsson, Yoshihiro Narisawa.

During the three days, they prepared their famous dishes, telling about the ingredients they use, why they use them and how they put them together. In a few words they opened their kitchen doors to us.

Moreover, we got to taste most of the dishes they prepared, which means that we started eating at 10am until 7pm. We promise you that even if at some point we started getting full, these dishes were so fantastic that it was impossible to resist.

Our favorite workshops were the pasta sessions. Our number one favorite pasta dish was the pasta – pizza by Davide Scabin.

We also loved the idea of Carbonara pasta for breakfast by Elio Sironi (chef at the Bulgari hotel). He made it on top a nice bruschetta bread. Very nice way to start the day!

Of course we loved Gennaro Esposito and Carlo Cracco who are always so interesting. The biggest idea among many of them is that pasta can be cooked as if it was a risotto, without boiling the pasta in the water. Of course you can only do it with very high quality pasta. Cooking the pasta as a risotto helps preserving all the health benefits of pasta.

Finally we loved the spaghetti cacio e pepe by Antonello Colonna: so simple, but so wonderful!

The other super interesting cooking wokshop was the pizza session. We never had such a delicious pizza before. We got to learn (and taste!) the real pizza Napoletana from Napoli, the real Pizza Metro from Vico Equense and the fantastic pizza with natural yeast by Simone Padoan (and we could not believe he is from Verona!). Each pizza was made in three totally different ways.

As if all this was not enough, only the best food and wine producers were exhibiting their products: from best cheese, Parma ham, best pasta, to best wines and so much more.

A Grappa tasting was a good end to such good meals.

We think the best part was to see all these chefs (some of them so young!) supporting and praising each other without jealousy, rivalry or without comparing the different regional cuisines! They were all representatives of the Italian cuisine.

We are now back home ready to put together all the great learnings, videos and recipes….and to start eating again!

We already knew that New York is a place where a good idea can be taken so seriously that it becomes a huge trend. However, we never expected that after our last three weeks in the US, New York would become one of our favorite places in the world for espresso coffee. Being Italians and picky (when it comes to food, wine and coffee), this is a strong consideration!
It all started on our first day in NYC, about three weeks ago. I and Marika love the ACE Hotel (on W 29th St. and Broadway) and so we arranged all our meetings at its beautiful vintage lobby. When we first tasted the excellent espresso at the coffee bar just next door (Stumptown Coffee Roaster), we thought it was just a nice coincidence, or may be the jet lag.

When a few days later, we read Oliver Strand’s article on the New York Times, we understood it was not just a coincidence: something very serious was going on in New York.
On our spare time I and Marika went on a coffee tour trying as many coffee places recommended by Oliver Strand as we could. At the end of the tour, the Stumptown Coffee Roaster (by the Ace Hotel) was our first choice (first love!); but we also liked a lot the Third Rail Coffee, not too far from our favorite Soho area.

There are lots of things we liked about the coffee places we tried. First, noone of them belongs to a chain but they are all small and sort of boutique cafes (similar to what we have in Italy).
Moreover, as highlighted by Oliver Strand, lots of attention is dedicated to quality: from the origin, to roasting and grinding the beans, every little detail is taken into serious consideration (even more than in Italy!).

Finally, the espresso is always served in a ceramic coffee cup (real beautiful Italian style). This means that people must drink their espresso inside the coffee bar, when it’s still warm. As Oliver Strand points out, people cannot take it away and drink it cold. We also tried the “macchiato” which came with a little “heart” on top, made with the foam milk (again, like in Italy). We loved it!

The only coffee bar which we would add to Oliver Strand’s list would be Gina’s on Amsterdam Avenue (just next to our favorite Cesare Casella’s Salumeria Rosi). We particularly loved the “Italian way” of serving the coffee: the guy who made the coffee also came to talk to us. He started with a “buongiorno” and we ended up talking about his coffee for more than 10 minutes.
When we go to good restaurants we love having the chef/owner at our table explaining his or her dishes. When we have a good coffee we love talking to the person who made it for us. The coffee just tastes different and even “warmer”.

Finally the cherry on the cake of our trip to New York was having a tea (for a change!) with Fred Plotkin, which was a great honor for us since we love his book: Italy for the Gourmet Traveler. After the super fascinating conversation we had with him about the Italian cuisine, traditions, opera and culture (all in its perfect Italian!!!), he also told us how to taste a good coffee. And so we found out that Fred is a certified Maestro del Caffè (Coffee Master) with great knowledge and passion on topic.
What a wonderful trip! what interesting people! We love New York!

If you travel around Italy, you will certainly notice that food and recipes change completely from region to region and most of the times also from town to town. Even pasta, which is always thought of as the typical Italian food, is made with different ingredients depending on whether you are in the South or North of Italy.

Pizza is certainly one of the few national Italian dishes. Pizza was first made in Naples, but now you find it anywhere in Italy. The pizza dough is always made with the same ingredients: water, yeast, flour, salt, extra virgin olive oil.
What changes from region to region is the thickness of the dough or may be the topping variety.

We are putting together a list of some of the best pizza places in Italy. Please tell us where in Italy you had your best pizza!