While WorldBite is the place for my food musings – and my husband’s photographs — I also write about a lot of other subjects. Most of these involve travel. If you’re curious to read about our adventures in Italy, Spain, Portugal and the other places we like to go, click some of these links to our articles:
Bilbao, Spain, for Art, Architecture and Design
Attractions of the Amalfi Coast
By Barbara Radcliffe Rogers
Photos © Stillman Rogers
I can’t walk past a bakery in Portugal without stopping to inhale the heady aromas of fresh bread. And quite often I’ll walk away with one of the firm crusty loaves under my arm. We’ve laughed that a serrated bread knife should be a permanent part of our travel gear.
Bread has always been an important part of Portuguese cuisine, and each region has its own specialties. My favorite is from the Minho region in the north, a firm fine textured loaf made with cornmeal and wheat flour. There it’s simply called broa, which, like pão, means bread; elsewere it’s also called pão de milho.
I like to think as I travel through villages in the Minho, that the corn for the loaf I just bought was dried in one of the rustic espigueiros I see beside the road. These large corn cribs are built of wood and stand on stone pillars, each with one wide flat stone to keep mice from climbing inside to eat the corn.
Close behind broa in my catalog of Portuguese breads I love is another dense loaf, this time rye-based, from the Serra da Estrela mountains. Pão de centeio do Sabugueiro originates in Portugal’s highest village, Sabugueiro, and like most of the best breads is made from flour (60% or more rye), water, yeast and salt. Period. That, a lot of elbow grease for kneading, and a good oven.
A specialty of the Alentejo region in southern Portugal, pão Alentejano is a fine-textured wheat bread with a firm crunchy crust. Although its origins are in the Alentejo, the bread is popular all over Portugal. It’s a basic ingredient of açorda, a simple (and simply delicious) soup that’s also typical of the Alentejo.
Bread is so central to life in Portugal that it has its own museum. The Museu do Pão (Museum of Bread) is in the northwest, and dives deep into bread’s social and economic history as well as the science and artistry of its production. Interactive exhibits appeal to children and puppets demonstrate the stages of breadmaking. You can sample a variety of fresh breads in the café, in a sandwich or a full meal.
The museum also examines bread’s role in art and in religious observations. Among these are the sweet bread traditionally baked on the Feast of the Crowning, and fogaça da Feira, made for the feast day of San Sebastian in northern Portugal. That bread is shaped like a castle tower with four pinnacles.
On June 13th, the anniversary of Saint Anthony’s death and a holiday in Lisbon, one of the main ceremonies is a special mass attended by a woman from each household, where she receives bread to take home to her family.
Bread is an integral feature of one of Portugal’s most impressive festivals, the Festa dos Tabuleiros. It takes place every four years in Tomar, a town that merits UNESCO World Heritage designation as the home of Knights Templar’s magnificent Convent of Christ.
Young girls parade through the streets wearing massive columns of bread and flowers balanced on their heads. The festival, which celebrates devotion to the Holy Spirit, originated in the 13th century, but has evolved over the years. Each tabuleiro — tray — is made of 30 loaves of bread, each weighing nearly a pound, stacked in rows to a height that equals that of the girl carrying it.
The column of bread is secured by long canes attached to a wicker basket and is topped by a white dove or by a crown with the Cross of Christ. Flowers and sheaves of wheat are interspersed with the bread. It is among the most colorful of all Portugal’s festivals.
Festive breads, sweet breads for breakfast, lunch breads with chorizo or other meat baked inside – the variety is endless, but it’s the humble everyday crusty loaves that call me like the siren’s song.
By Barbara Radcliffe Rogers
Photos by Stillman Rogers
Sweet pastries are beloved all over Portugal, and towns across the country have their own traditional sweets, most of them a legacy of the great convents that once thrived here. Some are more famous than others – the pastel de nata in Lisbon, for example – and many of them can be found in bakeries beyond their town of origin.
Sintra, once the summer retreat of royalty in the green hills west of Lisbon, has two famous pastries, travesseiro and queijada de Sintra, and opinion is divided over which is the best, or the most famous. We don’t take sides on either point and happily consume both.
There is no question which is the oldest. It’s uncertain exactly when the first queijadas came out of the Sapa ovens, but the bakery has been in existence since 1756, and their pastries were acclaimed by 19th-century travelers stopping in Sintra on their Grand Tour. Other bakeries followed with their own closely guarded secret recipes, but all include fresh cow’s milk cheese, eggs, sugar, and a whiff of cinnamon encased in a thin flour crust. The entire process is by hand.
Sapa sells Queijadas da Sapa today at their bakery, not far from Sintra’s train station, where you can see the scales from their original kitchens. Because the baking was once done right in the open shop, they used stones instead of standard weights when they measured ingredients, to keep competitors from stealing their recipe. Sapa’s shopfront and the label proudly proclaim “Since 1756”.
Sintra’s second pastry may have come too late to be rhapsodized by 19th-century tourists, but has made up for lost time. Although Casa Piriquita had been in the bakery business since 1862, they began making travesseiros in the 1940s, based on a recipe found in an old cookbook.
The name means pillow, and it’s a good description of the feather-light almond pastry cream that fills the crisp rectangle of puff pastry. Eggs enrich the filling and give it the distinctive silky mouthfeel. Travesseiros were a particular favorite of King Carlos I, a regular guest in the bakery’s café, and he is responsible for the bakery’s name. The co-owner was a petite woman and the king called her Piriquita.
Casa Piriquita is on little walking street that winds its way uphill from the Praca da Republica, not far from the National Palace. If it’s closed or too crowded (the recipe may be a secret, but the bakery certainly isn’t), you can buy freshly baked travesseiros at the smaller annex up the same street.
How did the monasteries shape the Portuguese taste for sweet eggy pastries? Until 1834, cooks in monasteries and convents all over Portugal baked pastries, using the abundance of egg yolks left from clarifying wine and starching the nuns’ habits, both processes that used a lot of egg whites.
But in 1834 the monasteries were dissolved, their lands taken by the state. Monks and nuns had to make a living elsewhere. The cooks turned to what they knew best, and many of them either sold their secret recipes or opened their own bakeries.
While the pastries are a good enough reason to visit Sintra, you should stick around to see the two royal palaces, a ruined Moorish castle and a couple of spectacular private palaces. Two of these also have extensive gardens, so it’s easy to spend a couple of days here — and it gives you more time to sample all the pastries.
By Stillman Rogers
Photos © Stillman Rogers
Culinary adventures await travelers who drive north of Vermont into Quebec’s eastern Townships. Rolling farmland and the warming effect of the region’s many lakes provide the perfect conditions for vineyards, fruit orchards and pastures for dairy herds. From sparkling rose wines to prize-winning cheeses and flavorful pates, the Eastern townships are a prime destination for those who love good food.
The area close to Lake Memphremagog, the 31-mile-long lake that spills across the US-Canadian border, provides enough food and wine experiences for a long weekend trip. Begin at the lively town of Magog, a good base where there are several lodging options.
Just a few miles out of Magog, along the Magog River, is Le Cep D’Argent, a winery founded by a family of wine makers from the Champagne region of France. Tours here offer a chance to see the vineyards and learn about the method champenoise, which they use in making their sparkling rosé wines. They also produce non-sparkling rosé and other products. They are open for tours and tastings June to October, 10 to 5.
From Magog, take Rue Principale east through rolling agricultural countryside to St. Catherine de Hatley and then Route 108 to North Hatley, located at the north end of another unspoiled lake, Lac Massawipi. At North Hatley, follow Chemin Sherbrooke east to Route 143 north, turning right to Waterville and on via Chemin Flanders to Route 147 south, and the village of Compton.
Be sure to stop and explore these attractive small settlements. The small town of Compton was important in the history of Canada because it was the hometown of Louis St. Laurent, Canadian Prime Minister during the critical years 1948 to 1957. His boyhood home and the family’s general store are open as a museum. Stop for lunch across the street at Le Cinquième Élément, a splendid small restaurant run by a chef who believes in sourcing as much as possible locally. Each day brings a new menu based on the freshest local products, and the restaurant makes its own gelati using local fruits and berries.
In Compton, visit Fromagerie La Station at 440 Chemin de Hatley (route 208), a family-run organic farm and cheese producer. Here visitors can watch the cheesemaking process through glass walls, view the aging rooms and sample fantastic Comtomme, Le Fermier and raclette cheeses. To add to the experience, the farm has a collection of animals, including cows, lamas, and rare animals, grazing on the green meadows.
Nearby is Domaine Ives Hill, at 12 Chemin Boyce (corner of Ives Hill), maker of exquisite blackberry and black currant aperitifs and other fruit-based products. Their cassis makes a superb kir. Before leaving town, stop at Verger le Gros Pierre, at 6335 Route Louis-St-Laurent, especially in the late summer and fall. This family-owned apple farm is a great place for PYO apples and has a nice playground to keep kids occupied. Travelers can buy all sorts of apple products, from jams and jellies to relishes and apple chips, in the farm store here.
It wasn’t quite fair, I admit, to describe the delicious little tartlets so beloved in Leipzig and tell their story without including the recipe.
Making them is not difficult: they are simply shells of tart pastry filled with almond merengue and topped with a pastry cross. Just remember that you can’t sell these at your church bazaar or bake sale calling them Leipziger Lerchen — the name Leipziger Lerche is been protected by the Saxonian Bakery Guild. Even a baker from Leipzig whom we met at the Boyce Farmers Market in Fredericton, New Brunswick, didn’t presume to call them by their protected name. But a Leipziger Lerche by any other name would taste as sweet.
Leipziger Lerchen
(Makes 12-15)
Pastry Ingredients:
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup butter, cut in pieces
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 Tbsp apricot or other brandy
1/2 cup strawberry jam
Filling ingredients:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup butter
2 egg yolks
1 ½ cups powdered sugar
1 ½ cups ground almonds
¼ tsp almond extract or bitter almond oil
1 Tbsp cornstarch
4 egg whites
Instructions:
Pastry: Sift flour into a bowl. Add butter knead in with your fingers. Stir together the egg yolks, sugar, salt and brandy and stir into flour mixture until well mixed. Knead until dough is smooth and holds together well. Wrap dough in plastic and chill 30 minutes to an hour.
Unwrap dough and roll on a floured surface until it is a little over 1/8-inch thick. Cut several narrow strips from the rolled dough and set aside. Cut the remainder in circles and place each in a small fluted tart mold, lightly buttered. Press the dough into each, making sure edges extend a bit above the top. Pierce the bottoms once or twice with a fork and spoon a dab of jam into the center of each. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Filling: Whisk egg yolks lightly until blended and reserve about a teaspoonful. Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Stir in the powdered sugar gradually, then the egg yolks, almonds and almond oil or extract. Combine the flour with the cornstarch and stir into the almond mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in gently until blended. Fill pastry shells with almond mixture. Cut the strips of reserved dough into lengths a little shorter than the diameter of the tarts and place a cross of dough on top of each. Mix reserved egg yolk with a few drops of water and brush carefully on the crosses to glaze. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until pastry is golden.
Leipziger Lerchen (Photo Copyright Stillman Rogers)
Leipzig’s signature pastry is the Leipziger Lerche, Leipzig Lark. The name is more than a mere flight of fancy.
Since Medieval times – and probably before that – songbirds and especially larks were a popular dish, and those fattened in the terroir of Leipzig’s riversides were especially sought-after by those who could afford the luxury. Larks from the city were shipped by the hundreds of thousands each year to be stewed, grilled, pan-fried, sautéed and roasted in kitchens from Madrid to Moscow. Leipzig’s own favorite recipe, known as Leipziger Lerchen, stuffed and trussed the tiny birds (they are only about six inches long) and wrapped them in pastry to roast.
Hunting and exporting larks was a highly profitable business as early as the mid-1600s and by the 1720s exports from the city and surrounding region reached over a million annually. This mass slaughter of songbirds was decried by wildlife advocates for a century before the Saxon King Albert I outlawed their hunting in 1876.
Residents mourned the loss of their special dish, and an inventive Leipzig baker created a pastry to commemorate this lost pleasure. History doesn’t tell us the name of the baker who first created Leipziger Lerchen as a sweet pastry, nor can anyone claim to have the one original recipe. Each bakery developed its own version, but the basic ingredients, method and shape are all much the same.
Small fluted tart shells of butter-rich pastry are filled with a mixture of ground almonds lightened by beaten egg whites. Beneath this filling is a dot of red jam or a cherry, which – or so the story goes – represented the heart of the lark. Before baking, the tart is topped with a small cross made of the pastry, thought to represent the trussing that held the stuffing in place.
If you see these pastries for sale anywhere outside of Leipzig, they will (or should) have another name — the name Leipziger Lerche has been protected by the Saxonian Bakery Guild since 1998.
Springerle (Credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
You could drop a cookie on a map of Germany and be pretty sure that wherever the crumbs fell there would be a town with a Christmas market. But nowhere is there a more varied and interesting group than in Baden-Württemberg.
Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern corner of Germany that borders France and Switzerland. It includes well-known tourist destinations of Heidelberg and the spa town of Baden-Baden – both of which have good Christmas markets of their own.
But the part I like best at Christmastime begins in the region’s capital, Stuttgart, and includes the beautiful Medieval towns of the Black Forest. These villages of half-timbered buildings seem to have been designed as stage-sets for a Christkindlmarkt, those clusters of colorful cabins fragrant with fresh-cut greens, roasting chestnuts and spicy ginger cookies. And each market has a different way of celebrating the season.
Esslingen’s Christmas Market (Credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
We stepped back six or so centuries into the half-timbered squares of Esslingen, a short train ride from Stuttgart. Its location at the crossing of trade routes made Esslingen a prosperous market town from as early as the 8th century, leaving it with an eye-catching center filled with original medieval buildings. These form the setting for the Mittelaltermarkt, an authentic Medieval street market, where merchants and craftsmen dress as their counterparts would have dressed in medieval times.
Under canvas market tents are handcrafted leather cases, silverwork, calligraphy, hand-bound books, clothing of handwoven wool and linen, wooden bowls, handspun and plant-dyed yarns. Many craftspeople work as they sell: a blacksmith forges ornamental hooks in front of his forge, basket makers weave and you can have your own incense custom blended as you watch.
Grilling sausages at the Esslingen Medieval Market (Credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
Entertainment and children’s games are all authentic to the era — stilt walkers, minstrels, fire walkers, troubadours and jugglers — as are the foods. We feasted on venison goulash and roasted meats, munching on bread baked around a stick, and sipping berry wines in a square lit by torches.
A shuttle bus took us up to the crest of a steep hill, where the beautifully preserved castle of Burg Hohenzollern opens in December for the Royal Christmas Market. Inside its thick stone walls, wooden cabins in the forecourt serve thin German pancakes and glass mugs of hot gluhwein. The castle’s elegant halls are filled with high-quality local crafts and art. This is a juried market, with beautiful works, many original designs and one-of-a-kind works in wool, silk, leather, glass and wood. Here we found the most perfect springerle – white anise seed cookies formed in intricate hand-carved wooden molds. Much too pretty to dunk in coffee – as they are designed to be eaten.
Even deeper into the Black Forest, in a steep wooded valley under the stone viaduct of the 190-foot-high Devil‘s Valley Railway bridge, is the Ravenna Gorge Christmas Market. We visited at night, walking up the hill on a path behind the historic Hofgut Sternen inn to a clearing where 40 stalls are lit by lanterns and twinkling lights. Every now and then a train would rumble far overhead as we munched our way past cabins selling Black Forest specialties, including the famed hams we’d savored at dinner in the inn below.
Fruit buns fresh from a wood oven (credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
The smallest Christkindlmarkt we went to, in St Blaisen, was also the most endearing. It reminded me of a traditional New England church Christmas bazaar. All the little cabins were local craftspeople or civic groups, but that didn’t diminish the quality of the work we found there. Exquisitely embroidered fabric-covered buttons, colorful felted wool jewelry, hand-made wooden toys, shimmering jellies and tangy mustards, fragile herbal wreaths, bundles of mistletoe, and on the church steps the warmest hand-knit wool sox we have ever worn. They were made by a local group and the proceeds go to fund a job training program for farm women.
As we shopped, a choir of school children sang carols. It was small-town at its best, and we left St Blaisen with warm feet and warm hearts.
For more information, visit Baden-Württemberg Tourism.
[All photos © Stillman Rogers Photography]
‘Tis the season! Christmas markets have opened throughout Germany, each one filled with cabins piled high with spicy gingerbread, fruit-filled loaves, crunchy nut cookies, rock-hard springerli for dunking, glistening candied fruits, glazed nuts, sugar-dusted doughnuts, buttery shortbreads, and steaming kettles of glühwein– the hot mulled wine that warms my hands as I walk from treat to treat.
I’m in my favorite corner of Germany, in the southwest where the smart modern city of Stuttgart leads into fairy-tale villages of the Black Forest. Stuttgart is a highly overlooked city, which makes it especially appealing, with fewer crowds to jostle for a seat in its starred restaurants (it has more Michelin stars than any other place in Germany). And its Christmas market is one of the largest. Several hundred wooden cabins decorated with fragrant greens and rooftop holiday scenes line its streets and squares. The largest square is designed for children, with a miniature village and booths where they can bake their own cookies and dip candles.
But I head into the thick of the market, under an archway of twinkling lights and along a promenade formed by cabins displaying Christmas decorations and handcrafted gifts. They are tempting, but I resist, keeping my hands free for the food.
Ah, the food. White springerle with delicate scalloped edges and intricate embossed designs are displayed beside their hand-carved wooden molds. They are so beautiful that I feel guilty dipping one of the rock-like confections into my tea at a nearby café, but what a lovely new blend of flavors, adding a delicate anise scent to the tea’s aromas.
Rows of gingerbread boys are dressed in bright frosting clothes, and more gingerbread cookies are cut in reindeer heads and the traditional big hearts frosted with greetings of love and seasonal cheer. Honey-rich lebkuchen full of spices and ground nuts are everywhere, cut into stars, frosted, dipped in dark chocolate, loose, packaged in fancy boxes, each made from a slightly different cherished recipe, but every one dispersing its spicy fragrances into the air.
These mingle with the unmistakable fragrance of roasting chestnuts from a cute roasting wagon shaped like a steam engine. A paper cone full of these is a good hand-warmer. Nearby is a basket of “marzipan potatoes” – uneven little lumps of almond paste rolled in powdered cocoa.
Almost as ubiquitous as lebkuchen are stacks of warm Berliners, jelly- and custard-filled doughnuts rolled in glistening sugar or sometimes drizzled in frosting. Alongside them are buns filled with candied fruit, and loaves of fruit-filled sweet bread. This is the traditional stollen from Dresden, and bakers have traveled here to sell it.
It’s not all gingerbread and cookies. Along with the sweets are plenty of savories – plump juicy wursts on toasted rolls slathered with tangy mustard or pungent curry sauce, pots of savory thick soups, bright pink salmon on cedar planks above a bed of glowing coals, hot pretzels and booths dispensing thin pancakes spread with honey or fruity jams.
The fragrance of good things sizzling on a hot grill summons us, and we find Krautspaetzle, the thick Swabian dumplings called spaetzli stirred on a grill with chopped bacon and sauerkraut. We crowd into a tent sheltering a pop-up cafe and its impromptu kitchen, sharing a table and benches with locals. There’s an instant conviviality of warm food that transcends language and prompts strangers to strike up a conversation. Of course the subject is food.
[All photos copyright Stillman Rogers Photography]
pimentos padrones in Spain’s Canary Islands (credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
Padrones are especially popular in the Canary Islands, where a traditional meal begins with a dish of these and a dish of papas arrugadas, small potatoes boiled in saltwater. These potatoes are served with two bowls of mojo, which are much more up-front about their burn factor. The green one is mild and made of fresh cilantro; the red one is made with red peppers and is picante – hot — in varying degrees. But rarely as hot as the rogue padrones.
Apart from the padrones, the food you’ll find in Spain’s Canary Islands is pretty straightforward. It’s rarely pretentious or fussily presented, the empassis is on flavor and fresh ingredients. The seven islands in the archipelago share a common food heritage, and you can sample it best at small local restaurants, especially on Tenerife.
Ironically, it is on Tenerife, the most touristed and cosmopolitan of the islands, that you will find the most restaurants proudly serving traditional Canarian cuisine. The reason has much to do with current food trends. While other islands are still trying to make travelers feel comfortable with foods of their homelands, Tenerife has come to realize that today’s traveler wants to sample local cuisines. The number of places advertising typical Canarian foods shows this new awareness of local food traditions.
Chefs on Tenerife have long appreciated the ingredients produced by local farms, dairies and vineyards. They may not yet use the word ‘localvore’ to describe it, but, the concept of using local products in traditional ways was popular here long before it became fashionable.
That’s not to say that Tenerife doesn’t offer a full range of “exotic” dining, from Italian to German to Peruvian to Irish pub food. The array of international styles found at resort restaurants is astonishing, but it would be a shame not to sample all the local specialties in a typical Canarian restaurant.
Grilled fish with a flavorful sauce of fresh cilantro (credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
Limpets are lightly sauced and roasted quickly (Credit Stillman Rogers Photography)
In addition to the fresh seafood, pork and chicken are always offered, and rabbit and goat are also common in traditional restaurants. Meats are usually served as chops or cutlets, and in various savory stews.
Soups and stews are the most typical Canarian meals. Potaje has only vegetables; rancho canario has meat, and puchero has even more meat. A staple food of the Guanches – the island residents before the Spanish conquest – is gofio, a mixed grain once eaten as bread, and still used to thicken stews. Another common stew is garbanzo compuesto (chick-pea stew with meat), often available as a first course.
Except in Santa Cruz, most restaurants serve both full meals and light lunches – you can get a hearty meal at midday or in the evening, and can also get a sandwich, salad or light meal of tapas (often called “entradas” here) for lunch.
Canarians are casual about what you are expected to order at any time of day, happily serving several appetizers or tapas in place of a main course in the evening. More formal resort restaurants tend to be less flexible, but small independent restaurants still think customers should be able to eat what they want, when they want it.
Precious white truffles – Photo (c) Stillman Rogers Photography
While Americans are getting in the Halloween spirit and Mexicans are preparing for spirits of their own on the Day of the Dead, Alba Italy is also gearing up for a celebration of something dark and mysterious. Truffles.
These unprepossessing little dirt-colored nuggets grow underground in the oak forests of the surrounding Langhe Hills, in northern Italy’s Piemonte region. Unlike the more common black truffle rooted out by pigs in France and elsewhere, the white truffle is creamy white under its dark skin. And its intense flavor and haunting aroma is coveted by chefs. These truffles — Tuber magnatum pico — are prized so highly that the warty little funghi are known as white diamonds.
For good reason – the going price is about $3500 a pound. While a few ounces of thumb-sized white truffles would stock the wine cellar with the local Barolo, real money comes with the exceedingly rare big truffle. Price records were shattered by the 2007 auction of a 3.3-pound white truffle: the final selling price was $330,000.
As you might guess, finding these is not all that easy. They are rare and their habits a mystery to all but a few trifolai, whose highly trained dogs roam the woods with them to sniff out the prizes. And even when they know all the white truffle’s secrets, a truffle hunter will be delighted to return from a foraging trip with only a small bag of them.
A trifolao sniffs a white truffle – Photo (c) Stillman Rogers Photography
The fair is not just for serious buyers; a lot of food-lovers like me are busy inhaling, too. At the price of truffles, I figure that a few truffly sniffs is worth the cost of admission. I’m there early, just after the tent opens, and I make my way past rows of regional food producers displaying the Piemonte’s best, which many think are also the best of Italy. Cheesemakers offer me samples of Gorgonzola, vying with burly butchers coaxing me to take thin slivers of salami and prosciutto from nearby Bra, famous for its cured meats.
A rosy-cheeked farmer proffers generous chunks of tangy Piedmont mountain Toma. Tempting me at the neighboring booth are samples of hazelnut cake from Cortemilia and fat Piedmont hazelnuts, roasted and cemented into rich, dark chocolate.
I munch my way past these, and around the central market of studiedly rusticated trifolai with their little stacks of unimpressive-looking – but highly prized – white truffles, making deals with the chefs and traders anxious to buy them.
At the back of the tent, people stand around tables, savoring dishes of fried eggs. I join a short line and wait for my own, watching the black-coated truffle slicer, his hands hovering in a blur of motion above each plate as he shaves a layer of precious white truffles over the still-sizzling eggs. My ambrosial eggs are accompanied by a glass of Barolo, the Piedmont’s signature wine. This is my idea of breakfast.
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