francesca bezzone

Whether they are on holiday or moved abroad for work, Italians do show some unmistakeable behaviors. If you have Italian friends and you hang around them often enough, you certainly noticed at least some of them. Actually, you may even  …

Agnolotti are Piemonte’s best comfort food: warm, filling, tasty, they are so quintessentially Piedmontese they are part of the region’s official list of traditional products (P.A.T.).  Reassuring in their ubiquitous presence on Piemonte’s festive table, they are today  declined in …

Italy is known worldwide for its bread: fragrant, tasty, a magnificent balance of crunchiness and softness, it is the perfect companion  to all dishes and the most essential ingredient of countless types of sandwiches.  We all know Italian bread comes …

Ligurians, often, don’t come across as particularly pleasant: they lack the expansiveness of our Southerners, but also the good-tempered simplicity of the Piedmontese. Perceived as perennially in a  bad mood and unfriendly to the verge of rudeness, in truth Ligurians …

Valtellina is a beautiful alpine area in the Sondrio province of Lombardia. You may think not to know it, but you’re certainly familiar with places like Bormio and Livigno, famous for their ski resorts and picturesque views; truth is, Valtellina …

Venezia, la Serenissima and bellissima Venezia.  For centuries queen  of the  seas, always battling for the crown with Genova, la Superba. Hub of cultures, trends, people and…diseases. Yes because, as all places with high people passage and presence, Venezia had …

When we think of Italian immigration to the US,  our thoughts immediately go to the sunny shores and hills of Southern Italy and we’re not making a mistake, really: of the 9 million people who arrived to America from the  …

Second probably only to pizza when it comes to its “iconic” status, caprese salad, or insalata caprese if we want to say it in Italian, is one of the country’s favorite dishes. A staple in the summer, when the juiciest, …

Every chocaholic knows that Italy has three capitals when it comes to cioccolato: Turin, Perugia, Modica. Trying to pick an absolute queen would be useless and even damaging,  for there is no reason to have a favorite: three is such  …

Who says that good food must be complicated to make, or  that it has to take loads of time to prepare? There is a lot to learn from the way our grandmothers used to cook: it may  have  been a …