cucina piemontese

Planning a trip to Torino so naturally need to find out what the cuisine of this northwestern part of Italy is like.

The context

Piedmonte - as all parts of Italy - has a past of its own. Coming under Roman control in 220 BC and this is when the capital Torino was founded. After the romans there was the usual progression of goth invasions known to most parts of western Europe. In 1046 though it was incorporated into the County of Savoy with a capital in Chambéry. This would then define the next 800 years of its history in different flavors. In the years before Italy was created it was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia - a bit weird construction consisting of that island and Piedmonte including Savoy and the area around Nice. The first capital of modern Italy was actually Torino which also installed its royalties on the new throne of Italy. The capital - of course - moved to Rome rather soon as soon as the papas had been persuaded by the sword to give up its land. So the french connection is strong in these areas of Italy and that has a clear influence on the cuisine.

Il vino

Wine is perhaps at its best in this part of Italy with the Barolo and Barbaresco being on top of my mind. These Nebbiolo based wines only accounts for 3% of the wine production in Piedmonte though so there is certainly lots of other wines to explore. Wine folly has a superb guide to this topic. The short version is that there are lots of other Nebbiolos than the ones from the two Bars and that the more common grape may be Barbera. From Piedmonte also comes the nice Moscato based sweet sparling whites called Moscato d’Asti - muscat grapes from Asti.

Aperitivo

Piedmonte also got that lovely Italian thing where you get snacks to eat with your drinks during the aperitivo hours from 6pm to 8pm or so. All explained in this lovely article.

Il cibo

So what is the food like? In the pasta area there is:

agnolotti del plin - a kind of ravioli filled with veal and pork
gnocchi - the nice potato pasta
tajarin - heavy with egg yolks this is a long thin pasta much like spaghetti

When it comes to secondi we are looking at vitello tonnato - thin veal with tuna sauce. Brasato al Barolo - basically beef cooked in Barolo - what could go wrong here? Coniglia is not so common in other countries but here rabbit is a real delicacy. The influence of the french may be at its peak with the tartar.

When it comes to dolce the italians are not the best but I’m not really a desert person. There is something called Bonet that is supposed to be a panna cotta with cioccolato. Also nutella is a thing from Piedmonte.

Conclusion

It looks to be an epic place to be food wise. I also just learnd about baladin that is a brewery - nice!

written by fredrik at 2021-11-30