Food Bloggers Unplugged

Having been tagged twice, by Kate at What Kate Baked and Suelle at Mainly Baking, for Food Bloggers Unplugged, I thought I had better get on and think of some answers. The idea of the ten questions is to learn a little more of the person who writes the blog and it was started by Susan of A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate

So here are my answers....

1. What, or who inspired you to start a blog?

I clearly remember the first food blog I ever looked at - I was searching for a Nigella Lawson chocolate cake recipe that I knew I had seen in a book borrowed from the library, and wondered if I could find it online. I stumbled across A Spoonful of Sugar. It sort of went from there - I read blogs for a while, and then decided to take the plunge and start my own, with some trepidation - I wasn't sure I could keep it up, but three and a half years later I'm still here!

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?

I don't think I really have one foodie inspiration. I think lots of people and things influence me - other bloggers, television chefs, lots and lots really.

3. Your greasiest, batter - splattered food/drink book is?

I do try really, really hard not to splatter my books, but the prize here defnintely goes to Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. I bought this book a very long time ago, after seeing it at my Grans and repeatedly reading it and wishing for my own copy. This was before Amazon and cheap supermarket books on offer so it was an indulgent treat. It was also before I started earning my own money! It has been well used and is a little spattered but it had a rather unfortunate meeting with a hot hotplate and was only rescued when we all wondered what the disgusting smell was.... it's never quite been the same since, but I still enjoy looking through it!

 

4. Tell us all about the best thing you have ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?

As a slight understatement, I am not an adventurous foodie. I have been lucky enough to go to some lovely places on holiday (although not far-flung exotics) but am never very adventurous. However, my stand out delicious dish was a pizza I ate in Bologna a couple of years ago. J and I had wandered down some back streets and came across a little restaurant. As we walked past we could see the wood fired oven in the kitchen and made a note to come back for dinner later. I had a pizza with the most sublime aubergine on it, which made me realise just how meltingly soft and delicious aubergine can be, and there was parmesan on my pizza too, which was amazing. I wish I were back there now!

5. Another food bloggers table you'd like to eat at is?

Hmmm, do I have to choose just one? I'd like to eat at Celia's table because everything she produces looks absolutely delicious and I'd love to be part of her family's conversations! But I'd equally well like to eat at Joanna's table, because her food all looks amazing too, and I'd love to verify that her bread tastes as fabulous as it looks (I'm sure it does). And who wouldn't want to meet Zeb?

6. What is the one kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year (money no object of course)?

Um, if money is really no object would Santa mind an entire new kitchen (to replace the nasty falling apart mess that currently masquerades as a place to cook) please? Or is that just too cheeky? Honestly, I'm not sure, I'm rubbish at asking for Christmas presents!

Random flower to break up my wordy post and remind me of lovely Italian holidays!

7. Who taught you how to cook?

I don't really do cooking; I do bake though. I picked up bits from my mum mostly and then just added other things myself.

8. I'm coming to you for dinner what's your signature dish?

See the answer to question 7! How do you fancy bread for your main followed by cake for dessert? I could run to spreading the bread with some really good butter though... I don't really think I have a signature dish I can be proud of!

 

9. What is your guilty food pleasure?

I don't think it's a guilty food pleasure, because I don't feel guilty, but I eat a lot of chocolate. And I really do mean a lot.

10. Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn?

When I was little I wanted to eat honey straight from the jar (well, via a spoon rather than Winnie the Pooh like) and my mum said I wouldn't like it. Well, I did and I do. Quite often. Actually this might have been a better answer to number 9 really mightn't it!

Best pizza ever!

I'm supposed to tag five other people now, but lots of the blogs I visit have already been tagged so apologies if you've already been tagged and please don't feel obliged to participate but I'd like to tag

Lou at Please Do Not Feed the Animals
Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial
Joanna at Zeb Bakes
Katie at Apple and Spice
and... The Caked Crusader (whose identity shall never be revealed!)

Forever Nigella 3 - Ciao Italia

I'm cutting this rather fine, because despite all my good intentions to make something Italian from Nigella early in the month, I only made my submission this afternoon. So, as you've no doubt gathered, this month's Forever Nigella is Italian.

There were many Italian recipes to choose from, but fewer baking recipes. I ended up plumping for Nigella's Italian biscuits from How to be a Domestic Goddess. Although there is no picture of them I was drawn to them by the memories I have of the little bakeries in Italy where these are sold, as Nigella says, by weight. I've not had them from Italy, but next time I go, perhaps I will, just to compare!

I will give the recipe here, because although Nigella's in essence I had to modify it to make it work for me.

Italian Biscuits

Ingredients

110g butter, softened

75g caster sugar

1 medium egg

zest of 1/4 lemon

175g plain flour

2g(1/4tsp) baking powder

glace cherries - enough to cut in half to decorate

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Line a baking tray with parchment.

- Cream the butter and sugar together until very light, almost moussy, with an electric whisk.

- Add the egg, lemon zest and beat to combine.

- Add the flour and baking powder and beat to combine.

Tricky bit - you need the dough to be soft enough to pipe. I tried with 1/2 egg in the mixture and there was no way it was going to pipe through a nozzle. I added the extra 1/2 egg plus probably about 2 tbsp water too to get a consistency I could pipe.

- Pipe swirls and decorate as desired.

- Bake for 18-20 minutes (Nigella says 12, but mine were nowhere near done).

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

- Makes about 20 - I got 19!

Taste? Well, I probably wouldn't make them again. They're nice, and perfect with a good espresso (note the sad lack of crema on my espresso - this is what comes of not having a proper machine to do it with!). I can quite well imagine countless people across Italy enjoying these with a morning espresso or cappucino. They are slightly crisp round the edge, but deliciously crumbly within, finished with a good, chewy red cherry. They are buttery and not dry, but perhaps not quite as sweet as I would have liked. However, Nigella does say that these aren't as sweet as some biscuits. I'm glad I made them though, because they were great fun to pipe!

As an aside - Nigella says that if you want to make these slightly differently, use vanilla extract in the dough and top with Minstrels. I had run out of cherries, but did have some minstrels so decided to give this idea a go. I think that since How to be a Domestic Goddess was published in 2000, the recipe for minstrel colouring/composition must have changed. My minstrels looked most peculiar when they were cooked. So much so that I picked off the minstrels on the biscuits waiting to be cooked and replaced them with Silver Spoon chocolate sugar beans, seen below. Not mini Smarties, though, because their natural colourings don't survive the oven any more either!

I'm back!

I've had a lovely time in Turin and on Lake Maggiore, eaten lots and lots of pizza (and thoroughly recommend Sico Moro in Turin - Via Stampatori 6, Torino - best pizza we found in Turin!) and plenty of gelato - if you get a chance to eat gelato from Grom you won't regret it, it's amazing (thanks T, for the recommendation!).

Back to earth with a bump now, but looking forward to catching up on what everyone else has been making and eating.....

Oven dried tomato and basil rolls

These rolls are what happened to the rest of the dough that I used to make the bread bowls and foccacia here. You can find the recipe in that post, so I'll just outline how I made these here.

I had some cherry tomatoes in the fridge crying out to be used up, so I decided to roast them with a little dried thyme and a drizzle of olive oil. I used a 250g punnet of tomatoes, halved them and roasted fairly slowly, probably on a medium heat (although I can't quite remember, about Gas 4 ish) for a while (oh, this is so precise isn't it!!!) until they looked shrivelled but not cremated. Probably around an hour, but start checking earlier and keep checking. I had other things in the oven at the same time, so I'm not sure exactly how long they took. Remove and allow to cool.

When the dough was ready for shaping, I patted it out into a rectangle, and spread the roasted tomatoes (I probably used about half of the punnet) over the dough, and add a liberal amount of fresh basil. Roll into a sausage and cut 6 slices. I then pinched one side of the slices together to stop the tomatoes escaping from inside, and turned the rolls onto that sealed side, so that the open side faced upwards, see below.

I allowed the rolls to prove for around 40 minutes (I think, again these were a side line to various other things going in and out of the oven) and then baked at 200C/Gas 6 for around 30 minutes - again check to make sure they're not burning.

They were delicious - the sweet tartness of the tomato worked really well with the silky soft, smooth olive oil enriched dough, which was moist and very more-ish. I was really pleased with the way these looked and would definitely make them again. Really good with any Italian meal requiring a bread roll, or with soup for winter lunchtimes. Perfect when there's frost on the ground and a nip in the air.

Fresh from the oven - Edible bread bowls and focaccia

A while ago, Jules over at Domestic Goddess in Training mentioned that the baking group she is part of were looking for new members. I have started to really enjoy making my own bread, as followers of this blog will realise by now! but I wanted something to push me out of my comfort zone (T take note!) and joining a baking group seemed like a good way to do it so I jumped at the chance! I am now a member of Fresh from the Oven.

My first challenge was hosted by Corry of Bake It Off and was to make edible bread bowls, based on a recipe by Richard Bertinet and published in his book 'Dough'. I actually have this book, and have opened it and admired the lovely photography and creative ideas many times but had only baked once from it (a plain white loaf if I recall correctly), so I was really pleased to get another chance using a different recipe. Edible bread bowls sound like a nice idea, but I wasn't honestly sure how well I could get them to work, and my fears were well founded. The dough came together well, and was easy to work. I have a confession to make though, I'm afraid that I have tried Richard Bertinet's method of working dough in the past and found it messy with the dough being sticky and difficult to work, and I didn't find that the dough became smooth and pliable, remaining obstinately sticky when I tried in spite of watching the very helpful DVD that came with the book (and can be found here online - he is making a sweet dough in the video, but the technique is applicable to all dough) so I defaulted to my chosen Dan Lepard technique for the dough, which worked perfectly.

I had difficulty in shaping the dough around the bowls and found that the edge ended up significantly thicker than the base, which is annoying if you're planning to pour soup into it - the base needs to be strong and thick, not thin and weak! I think that resting the dough for a little after knocking the air out of it might help for the future. So my bowls were never graced with soup, I have to admit that I broke them up and used them as chunky croutons, which worked really well! The other problem I encountered was that the insides of the bowl were very pale in comparison to the exterior, as you can see by comparing the photos above and below. I'm not really sure how to recify this though.

I'm sure other people will have made much more successful attempts at this great idea than me though, so check out the round up over at the Fresh From The Oven blog for better pictures and more inspiration.



However, one of the benefits of owning this lovely book was that I could look at the original recipe. The book is divided into four main sections, covering four doughs - white, olive (used for this challenge), brown and rye. At the start of each section is an inspiring double page photographic spread of all the breads Bertinet will show you how to make with that particular dough. In the olive dough section are tempting delights such as pizza, pancetta and mixed olive bread and ciabatta, along with one of my favourites, rock salt and rosemary focaccia. How could I resist using some of my dough to make one of these lovely breads? Well, I couldn't and it was much more successful than the bread bowls!


I used dried rosemary I as find fresh tends to burn, and I thouroughly enjoyed this focaccia. The texture of the dough was superb - moist and tender and just slightly chewy, just the way I like my focaccia. A perfect accompaniment to a risotto or a lovely bowl of soup - enjoy!

Courgette Risotto

I don't often post savoury recipes. I love baking, and tend to share the fruits of my labours with my work colleagues or family if I happen to be visiting them at the right time, but my savoury side isn't as well developed. I blame it on living alone. It doesn't seem worth it half the time to make something interesting just for me, but I must get out of this mindset and start making more of an effort. Anyway, I was visiting J and T this weekend and we decided that we wanted courgette risotto. I've blogged about mushroom risotto before here and I use pretty much the same method for making the courgette risotto.

The inspiration for the recipe originally came from the BBC Food website, from their video section, Get Cooking, which is really instructive. The recipe is one of Sophie Grigson's, Courgette and Herb Risotto. I have to admit that I've never made it with all of the herbs specified (or in fact, any of them!) because lots of small amounts of fresh herbs are not budget friendly and the only thing growing in my garden at the moment (aside from weeds and grass) is rosemary, which wouldn't have quite the desired effect!

However, I think my take is good too!

Courgette risotto
Ingredients (for 3 people)
Olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 medium-large courgettes
250g arborio risotto rice
100ml dry sherry
750ml-1 litre vegetable stock (I use Marigold Bouillon powder)
Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
- Heat a good glug of olive oil in a large-ish pan, and add the chopped onion. Sweat slowly until softened but not coloured, about 5 minutes or so.
- Coarsely grate about 1/3 -1/2 of your courgette into the pan and continue to cook over a medium heat until the courgette has started to soften.
- In the meantime, coarsely chop the remaining courgette and saute over a medium heat in a large frying pan.
- Add the risotto rice to the grated courgettte/onion mix and stir for around a minute to coat the rice, which should go translucent.
- Add the dry sherry and simmer until it is all absorbed.
- Start adding the warm vegetable stock, a ladleful at a time keeping stirring as much as you can. The stock needs to simmer while it is being added, if the heat is too low the rice won't cook. Too high and the stock will evaporate before the rice has had a chance to absorb it.
- Add the stock until the rice is cooked to your liking. Al-dente is traditional, but I like mine softer.
- When it is cooked, add salt and pepper to taste and stir in a knob of butter and some grated parmesan (as much as you like!) and grate some more parmesan to add at the table.

J made a lovely rosemary and rock salt foccacia and a green salad to go with the risotto, which were great accompaniments.

Biscotti

Biscotti in many flavours! I have been wanting to make biscotti for a long time, probably about 18 months, ever since J and I went to Italy and she enjoyed some almond cantucci with an cappucino in a cafe. You can see them in the picture below. The displays of biscuits in the pasticchieri are gorgeous and I could help but take pictures and peer longingly into the windows. However, this particular treat had to wait for me to be in baking mode. The joy of making my own biscotti is that I can make them without the nuts present in all bought versions. Inauthentic? very likely, but at least I can eat them!

You will see from the first picture however, that the two lower pictures do indeed contain nuts. These were another part of J's Christmas present 2008 and she enjoys eating nuts. The recipe comes by way of Kevin at Closet Cooking, a really interesting blog that I've been reading for some time now. When I spotted this recipe it fitted the bill exactly. I knew I wanted to make a couple of different flavours and other recipes I've seen call for around 3 eggs, which doesn't halve easily, whereas this one required just one egg and didn't make masses.

I decided to go for the following flavours:

- double chocolate and brazil nut

- cranberry and pistachio

- raisin, cranberry, orange and spice

- double chocolate and cranberry

You can see the different stages above - first of all the biscotti are baked as a large log, then sliced and dried out at a low temperature. It may sound like a hassle, but I didn't find it a problem. The log can be difficult to slice neatly, depending on the size of your fruit/nut pieces, but I don't think there's a way around this.

I found that the raisin, cranberry and spice were the better of the two flavours. The addition of orange made them really fragrant and they really tasted 'Christmassy', perfect for the time of year! I liked the double chocolate and cranberry, but felt that the chocolate-y flavour wasn't as pronounced as I would have liked. I think this may be because there was no added fat in the biscuits to carry the flavour of the cocoa powder. J enjoyed the nut ones as part of her present this past Christmas, and they didn't last very long. Very more-ish indeed.

Kevin's recipe is in cups, but I prefer to work in grams, so I converted the recipe as I went along. I suspect these conversions won't be exactly the same as others on the web, but they worked for me.

Biscotti

Ingredients

140g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

70g sugar

1 egg

Flavourings:

(One of)

20g cocoa, 40g dark chocolate (chopped), 40g dried cranberries

20g cocoa, 40g dark chocolate (chopped), 40g brazil nuts (chopped roughly)

40g dried cranberries, 40g pistachios

40g dried cranberries, 40g raisins, grated zest of 1/2 orange, 1tsp mixed spice

Method

1. Mix the dry ingredients; flour, baking powder plus any flavourings eg cranberries and pistachios, in a bowl.

2. Mix the sugar and egg in another bowl.

3. Mix the dry and wet ingredients until they come together. Kevin notes that he needed to add a bit of water here, I didn't - perhaps my egg was bigger or I've weighed one cup of flour wrongly!

4. Form the dough into a rough log about 10 inches by 3 inches on parchment paper.

5. Bake in a preheated Gas 4/180C/350F oven for 30 minutes.

6. Cut it into 1/2 inch slices.

7. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes per side at Gas 3/160C/325F.

8. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy!!!

Perfect served with an espresso as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon pick me up.

2008 - The best bits

I haven't been blogging for a year yet, but have really enjoyed the time I've spent doing it and have read some really inspiring posts this past year. I'm really looking forward to creating more delicious things for the blog this year, perhaps with some forays into savoury cooking too. Anyway, here are my favourite posts of the past year, seven, randomly enough! Some of them are favourites because the outcome was utterly delicious, some because they represent something I learnt and others because I actually managed to get a decent shot of them. I hope you enjoy them. What were your favourite posts this past year?

These Butter Whirls were the first time I've successfully managed to use a piping bag. Great fun to make and delicious to eat, what's not to like.

Marbled chocolate cake - so simple to make, looks impressive and so easy to eat.

Although I have no idea what these coffee walnut cupcakes with coffee buttercream icing taste like personally, I'm guessing they're delicious from the speed they disappeared at work. These represent the first time I successfully piped buttercream icing to look as luscious and inviting as I wanted it to.

A combination of a fantastic recipe and some luck meant that these chocolate custard muffins were some of the best muffins I've ever tasted. Thanks to Dan Lepard for the recipe! I was really impressed that they turned out just like the photo.

The ginger spice cupcakes with lemon icing that I made in November were possibly the most more-ish cake I made this year. The sweet-sour icing perfectly offset the spicy soft cake underneath to perfect effect. Definitely on the to-make-again-ASAP list!

Both of the last choices come from December. It was a good month for baking. J enjoyed the Stollen I made as part of her Christmas present (thanks are again due to Dan Lepard for his fantastic recipe):

And all of us enjoyed this delicious Rosemary and Rock Salt Foccacia with our mushroom risotto on Boxing Day. (I sound like a record that's got stuck, but it just goes to show that Dan Lepard produces consistently good recipes!)

I hope you all had a great year in 2008 and here's to an even better 2009!

Focaccia

I first had foccacia when I visited Italy in the summer of 2006. J and I visited a couple of different places; Venice, the Lakes and then the mountains in the far North of the country. The food in the mountain areas is much more stereotypically Austrian or German in style than Italian, think Bratwurst not Bolognese, potatoes not pasta etc. However, it was here, in this perhaps unlikely place that I first ate foccacia. We bought a rosemary one from a little supermarket which was very nice, but then we found a proper bakery that was selling a green olive foccacia by the sheet. I bought a piece and fell in love instantly. It was thick and soft and crunchy and slightly oily with the most delicious flavour of olives and olive oil. Ever since, I have wanted to be able to recreate that type of foccacia.

I was lucky enough to go on a bread making course just over a year ago and we made a stunning foccacia there too. It was different because it was thinner, but just as delicious served with some lip tinglingly salty pecorino romano and wine for lunch that day. However, we weren't given the recipe, indeed, there wasn't really a set recipe. The baker worked by feel and look and although I attempted his method a couple of months after being shown, it didn't work in the same way for me. And sadly, I don't have an industrial bread oven. So the quest continued for a foccacia that I could make in my own home.

My first port of call for bread recipes, as regular readers will know by now, is the talented baker Dan Lepard. He has published a recipe for foccacia in the Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine a while ago and although it no longer appears to be on their website, it is on his website here. I have now made it a number of times and it is delicious. I have only ever made it with a rosemary and rock salt topping as that is my favourite, but green olives may be an imminent attempt, I just need to source some tasty olives first.

I'm glad this wasn't the first bread recipe I've ever tried though, as it can be a little soft and hard to work with. The most recent attempt was particularly sticky - it stuck badly to the work surface in spite of liberal application of olive oil and a dough scraper is very handy (but not essential!) for working the dough. However I promise that all this is worthwhile when you get the final product.

The crumb is nice and open but the bread has a good texture too, with a soft inside and lovely crispy top. I use dried rosemary on my foccacia because I have found that although fresh looks more attractive, it tends to burn to a crisp and then taste acrid and just plain nasty. Dried rosemary avoids this problem.

Since I follow the recipe and method exactly I am going to provide a link to avoid any copyright issues so here is the recipe for foccacia.

I use dried rosemary and rock salt for the topping and seem to have had best results when using the ale suggested in the recipe, but am only able to do this at home where there is someone else (you know who you are!) available to drink up the rest of the beer as I don't like it! I don't use the rendered pork/duck fat/dripping either.

Rather an unappealing photo to start with, but bear with me because things will improve.

The dough after it has been folded. It isn't exactly a rectangular shape, but you can see the folds.

On the baking tray after being dimpled. You can see the trapped bubbles of air at the edge of the crust. Sprinkled with dried rosemary and liberally doused with olive oil prior to being baked.

I love this bread, so thanks to Dan Lepard for a great recipe. I think this would lend itself quite well to variations - I've already mentioned that green olives would be next on my list of things to try and you could vary the herbs to suit the recipe you're accompanying. I particularly love this with mushroom risotto and it always goes down well at home.

On holiday

Just look at the colour of that sky. J and I went on holiday recently to Italy, to escape the grey dullness which appears to be passing for the great british summertime (well, at least here in the northwest!). The weather was gloriously hot and dry - perfect for doing nothing and just relaxing. We visited a few cities, travelling by train between them.

Unfortunately the Euro is really strong at the moment, and it almost seemed as though we were getting euros for pounds, which was quite dispiriting and made everything rather expensive. We didn't go out for any smart meals, preferring instead to stick to local pizzerias - inexpensive but extremely tasty. No pictures of pizza though because I still feel odd taking pictures in restaurants. I guess that'll pass though, as I decide I want pictures to share on here!!!

Our first port of call was Bologna, and we stayed in a really lovely hotel, the Albergo Centrale. (Thoroughly recommended - the hotel was in a very central location (the clue is in the name!), friendly staff and a great room!) They had a lovely breakfast spread, as seen in the photo below:

and they included some lovely little pastries too - J informs me that they were very tasty, but I prefer to stick to bread and jam for breakfast, no hardship at all as the bread is so delicious and fresh.
We moved on to Bolzano (Bozen) in the mountains in the far north of Italy. We had been there before (and stayed in Hotel Feichter last time and this) and loved it so much that we wanted to go back. I feel I ought to mention the breakfast provided by Hotel Feichter too - it was one of the reasons we both enjoyed staying there so much - there is a lovely spread with fresh rolls, alpine butter, homemade jam and what looked like rhubarb compote (as well as the more ubiquitous industrially made jams in little containers), crossaint type pastries (but sweeter than French croissants), cereals, milk, yogurt, sliced cheeses and cold sliced meats, fruit juices and your choice of coffee/cappuccino/hot chocolate etc made freshly and brought to your breakfast table and probably more that I'm forgetting - we only needed a light snack for lunch!!! Bolzano is very much more Germanic than Italian, in fact the principal language seems to be German (which suits me as my German is rather better than my non-existant Italian!) which is unsurprising as the area used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until relatively recently. It is slightly odd to be greeted in two languages when entering shops, museums and restaurants though! Below is a gorgeous display of bread in a shop window in Bolzano - there are so many yummy bakeries that it's hard to resist diving into all of them, and J let me peer into windows to indulge my fascination with all things bread. Yum! (If you look closely you'll be able to find the bread mouse in the basket - it's in the top right of the display!)
The rather sticky hazelnutty cakey slice above was also from one of the Bolzano bakeries.

Cantucci from a pasticceria in Florence, another brief stop on our tour of Italy - we certainly managed to cover a large area! I must find a recipe and try and make these myself, so that I can leave the nuts out (sometimes it's really irritating being allergic to stuff!) and see what they taste like for myself.

Anyway..... onto the important subject of Gelato. When in Italy, it is imperative to eat a lot of icecream. It's delicious and perfect for cooling down during the day, or eaten whilst walking back to the hotel in the evening as a way of rounding off a meal. On our last visit to Italy, we found a fabulous gelateria in Florence, which made the most delicious chocolate gelato, but sadly, when we went back this year it just didn't seem to live up to my excellent memories. I seemed to think that they included chocolate pieces in their chocolate gelato (always a bonus) but not this time. (Apologies for the shocking photo but there wasn't quite enough light and working with icecream is difficult since it has a tendency to drip and melt onto you if you take too long getting the picture!)

Perhaps the problem was that we'd been spoilt by the absolutely amazing (and I really, really mean that!) gelato that we'd had in Bologna.

This gelateria was recommended to us by a fellow traveller and was a bit of a walk (15 minutes from the city centre in 30+C heat!) but so, so worth it. Hidden away in a more residential part of the city this is an absolute gem. When you walk into the shop you can see through to the immaculate kitchens in the back where they make all of their own gelati, and the small crowd of Italians both in and outside the shop lets you know you're onto something very special.



The gelati below are chocolate and espresso, no prizes for guessing which is which! This is far and away the most intense and delicious chocolate gelato I have ever tasted and so with this final picture of seductively melting and dripping gelato I will leave you to drool.......