Martin's Milan Blog

So this year was an Inghiltano xmas dinner (English/Italian) mix, this year a bit less American influenced with a little more Piemonte, seeing it was served there with the Albasini family above!

However we were helping with the cooking, so after the Salami, Prosciutto & Tortellini in Brodo was Turkey time.

After some searching and after an upgrade in size and weight to 4kg and an early start to get everything together, Turkey was roasted in the oven for around 4 hours, served with gravy and stuffing and wasn't too shabby, and was well received importantly by Rosella & Eugenio! However by the time we started the panettone I was fading fast..

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Christmas Eve in a freezing cold Alessandria, actually less than zero during the day.

Visit to friends, some Bagna Calda and midnight mass in Tortona completed our evening!

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Maybe....at 'Da Willy' which sounds like a porn movie or late night club, but is actually a name of a pizza restaurant chain. However the pizza's are absolutely huge, far more than a mere human can eat.  Here is a picture of Silvia and her pizza which I finished...after my own.

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One of the reasons we went to Bologna, apart from the reputation for the city and good food was to check out the Italian motor show.

Reasons being that since selling the Mini in San Francisco I would like to get another car before I forget how to drive all together. However I'm still afraid to drive with the italians, and as mentioned there is 0 parking spaces in Milan, so it might take a while...

Plus I was thinking Italian's are quite well know for decent cars so might be a good place to check them out.

The show was a bit low key though, we missed the new electric Mini as there was no BMW stand, and overall there was not much interest in the new hybrid cars apart from the concepts on display - something I thought would be everywhere due to the investment in it in the U.S.  There were lots of women sitting in/on cars but little information or demo's, and the fanboys were mostly at the race track or driving challenges around the expo. It seems the car shows in Europe are having a bit of a rough time, and I can see why a bit, as discussed in the Independent

But I did like the fact there were British cars there called "Martin" hurrah! as I have the Martin guitar there is just one more Martin I need....ideally in the dbs version... 

More info http://www.motorshow.it/en/index.html

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Last weekend we got out of Milan to investigate Emilia-Romagna which is the region in the center of northern Italy alongside Tuscany, Bologna is a beautiful city about 2 hours by train from Milan.  We went for the long weekend Dec 8th was a holiday in Italy, and to visit the motor show, which I'll upload another post about.  Bologna is known as "the fat one" and is the home of tortellini, bolognese (literally coming from Bologna) and the region as a whole is renown for good food & wine. We had some recommendations from a couple of locals, as well as found a few places to eat and drink that were really good, great tortellini and bolognese, lasagne verde & Sangiovese.  The city and main piazza below were really stunning, and as a famous university town, I could imagine many worse places to be stuck for a while...

More photos on Silvia's flickr

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I just had to mention this restaurant as I accidentally had to eat there twice last week, this is a new excellent local restaurant to us in Porta Romana. Its called Casa Tua and it has excellent rustic Tuscan food, fresh pasta & slow cooked secondi, by the owners of Giulio pane e Ojo which has a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin guide for good food & decent prices. Video below in Italian

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I read this today, and thought it was a good description of what I believe in and practice, after slow food movement comes the slow blog manifesto!

http://toddsieling.com/slowblog/?page_id=10

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