Tag: Piedmont

White truffle hunting in Italy: flavours, places and traditions   White truffle is a gastronomic excellence of Italy. With its unmistakable fragrance and aroma, it is so important that every year in autumn, between October and November, the International Alba White Truffle Fair is held in Piedmont. The white truffle hunting, carried out together with the truffle dog, is one of the most exciting activities that takes place exclusively from September to December every year. What is the white truffle? White truffle is a fungus that lives underground. Called “Tuber Magnatum Pico”, it is the king of truffles, appreciated all over the world. For this reason, it is necessary to enhance its taste and quality while cooking. If you want to go white truffle hunting, you must be informed that the soils in which this fungus grows most are those where there are black and white poplars, oaks, limes, hazelnut trees, white willows and black hornbeams. In addition to this, it is essential to know that truffle does not tolerate pollution. For this reason, the truffle hunting must be carried out in uncontaminated woods. Being an underground fungus (that is to say, a fungus which lives below the ground) it can be found at a depth of metres, but also a few centimetres from the ground. The white truffle has got extremely different characteristics from the black one. First of all, with regard to the size, you can even find very small white truffles (such as a walnut). However, those who go truffle hunting and find them as large as oranges or even melons always cause a sensation. Of course they are rare and really worth a lot of money, but they are not impossible to find. The white truffle cannot be cultivated and must be harvested only from September

Between rice and blueberries, an experience in the heart of the rice fields   We are in Tornaco, in a unique place immersed in the rice-growing countryside of the lower Novarese area, on the border with Lomellina. Here a historic farm, the Vignarello Farmhouse, produces rice in the surrounding rice fields and many (but very many!) blueberries and small fruits in the internal orchard. The old family farmstead, made up of different structures, was renovated in the 2000s respecting the traditional country house style: in the rice field house, they created the guest rooms, in the stable a large restaurant room, in the manor house the processing, packaging and labelling laboratory. All around, the agricultural production, which is the heart of this place, is now well known for the combination of "rice and blueberries". Rice and blueberries are the fruits of the experience of an otolaryngologist who has decided to return to the grandparents' farmhouse, to take up the cultivation of rice and, after a specialisation in phytotherapy, to take a road that was still little travelled, that of berries and medicinal herbs production. Thus was born this productive oasis. The experience in Vignarello An experience in Vignarello begins with a walk among the rice fields, which in this season are still flooded but begin to colour green with growing plants: here you will discover the paddy ecosystem, made of water birds (herons, egrets, storks and so on), amphibians (frogs, tree frogs and many others) and insects (from dragonflies, very colourful, to mosquitoes, which thanks to the presence of dragonflies and frogs are less numerous). After a short pause to taste the nectars and small fruit jams, from the world of rice to that of blueberries: hundreds of plants, in the "historic" blueberry orchard and in the "young" orchard, produce