Meet the suppliers:
Antica Macelleria Malavasi
Roberto Malavasi & Rosa Latte
Husband and wife team Roberto Malavasi and Rosa Latte have had the butcher shop in Via Jacopo Dal Verme since November 1st 1970. Roberto started when he was just a teenager and now hopes to hand the business down to his son Marco.
The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into Roberto’s shop is that there is always a cue. Morning, evening, weekend or weekday there is always someone. Sometimes they are waiting in line and sometimes they are there just to chat but you’ll never find an empty shop unless of course you try to visit during their lunch hour.
The next thing you’ll notice are the chickens. They are so clean it looks like they had pedicures before calmly taking off their feathers and lying down in the fridge. This purity comes through in the taste of the meat once cooked. This is real farm fresh.
Next to the chickens you’ll find finely selected cuts of pork and beef from Piemonte. Not only does Malavasi butcher the meat that comes into his shop, he visits the farms in the Astigiano region to personally select each animal for his shop and negotiates with the farmer directly.

Via J. Dal Verme, 14
Milano
02 6081589

A lifetime of experience
Armida Filippini

Ask Armida Filippini how long she has been cooking and she will tell you forever. Armida is 95 and has been cooking for at least 80 years. Raised in Veneto in a farming family with eight children. She had her first cooking job at the age of 16 when she went to work in the kitchen of the landlord where her family were tenant farmers.
The year was 1932  and the food was simple, seasonal and of course local. They ate what was in season from the surrounding fields. Minestrone with fave, lenticche and patate and braciole di maiale. One speciality she particularly enjoyed was polenta e osei, songbirds caught in a specially constructed roccolo. An arboreal architecture designed to capture song birds when they fly in a flock. 
Armida and her husband Giovanni, an engineer and architect, moved to Milan in 1943 and had three daughters.  Armida now has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
With all the advances in technology and cooking techniques Armida still insists on cooking everything from scratch and doesn’t even buy passata. Her favourite dish has been the same for almost a century, polenta and gorgonzola.
Each morning she wakes up and thinks about what to cook for lunch, by 10am she has decided and goes out to collect her groceries. She cooks for herself, slowly, in motions so practiced it looks like a well rehearsed dance, she never burns, never over cooks  and everything she makes has that distinctive nonna richness of flavour that comes from 80 years of experience.

Meet the suppliers:
Frutta e Verdura da Josef Megtofi


It is not always easy shopping at the market, especially if you look like a tourist. You might find a rotten arancia in your bag, but not if you happen upon the stand run by Josef Megtofi and his four friendly staff.
His stand is like a fashion show for meloni and arance, the broccolo so green and firm it looks like it has been working out. And best of all you’ll never get any surprises in your bag when you get home.
Megtofi and his team work hard, getting up as early as 3 am to select fruit and vegetables at the mercato generale. Then they set everything up meticulously six days a week in different milanese neighbourhoods.
You would expect them to be tired and grumpy by the time you arrive at the market but they are always full of energy and greeting customers by name.
Megtofi, who took over the business from his father 10 years ago, sells seven truckloads of fruit and vegetables a week. His favourite fruit is melone, in fact when you bring one of his fragrant delights home your apartment smells like you bought flowers.
It’s not just local families who seek his produce, but ristoranti, pasticcerie, and gelaterie as well. Whether you are a chef or a nonna if you have Josef’s number you can have anything you need fresh and delivered by bike anywhere in Milan. A nice resource if you suddenly run out of fragole and you have a fully booked dinner service coming up, or eight hungry grandchildren to satisfy.




Monday Via kramer - Tuesday Piazzale Lagosta - Wednesday Via de Capitani - Thursday Via Pietro Calvi  - Friday Via Catone - Saturday Piazzale Lagosta
347 1025 370

Bollito misto a Pro Loco

"He looked up from his wintry bollito misto, looked right past me, looked back down at the boiled lovemaking of his seven meats and seven vegetable sauces, looked back up, looked right past me again."*   

In northern Italy winter means mixed boiled meat, Bollito Misto. Pro Loco means for the place, basically a community association. All over Italy in small towns, I haven't seen any in Milan, locals organize communal meals once a month or even more depending on the season. This one is was in Carciano di Stresa, since we were married there we count as locals...kind of. First there were grilled vegetables and and then some home made ravioli in a broth made from the boiled meats that made up the next plate.

Strictly for non vegetarians, bollito misto is one of the best meals to warm up during the cold foggy Italian winter.

Bollito misto

Testina - head of calf

Pollo - chicken

Cotechino - sausage made from pork skins

Manzo - beef

Salsa verde - green sauce made from parsley, capers, anchovies and cooked egg yolk

Mostarda - fruit preserved with mustard essence.

* Shteyngart, Gary. "Do Not Go Gentle." Super Sad True Love Story: a Novel. New York: Random House, 2010. 3. Print.

Hiking through Sciacchetrà

Gastro Hiking
Cinque Terre


I grew up hiking. Canada is filled with great hiking spots. You can practically walk out your backdoor and hike up a mountain, see a beaver and bump into a deer. Italy is a bit more populated, about 58 times more, and the wild animals have, for the most part, been turned into nice purses, shoes and salami. The chance of going out on a hike and not constantly bumping into other hikers is practically impossible. Not so in the Cinque Terre. The terraces that spread up and down the rugged cliffs and mountains have been built over centuries so there are literally thousands of sentieri, or trails, leading through the grapes vines, wild fennel in the lush coastal paradise. Meaning you stay away from the heavily populated tourist trails by following the old grape harvesting trails that lead into the villages.  On a hot day you can really smell the sugars inside the grapes fermenting into the local sweet wine Sciacchetrà. Or maybe it was just a touch of heatstroke.

Sciacchetrà is made from 60 % Bosco, and 40 % Albarola and Vermentino grapes. The best bunches of grapes from the September harvest are set aside in the cases they were collected in for two months. Then they are carefully macerated and fermented for eight days. After the wine is matured for five months in wooden barrels and 15 months in stainless steel vats before being bottled. Locals say it is best enjoyed served at ambient temperature. 

The result is a rich straw colored sweet wine that goes great with pandolci bassi, local almond biscuits or simply on its own at the end of great meal. 

Not just a melon

Its hot, 28.5 degrees in the apartment, so that means very little cooking unless I'd like to turn the whole apartment into a slow cooking oven. Luckily there is melon, not just any melon, but provenance assured by laser marking melon! The origins of fruit and vegetables is important in Italy but this is the first time I have seen laser tattooed fruit. Talk about indelible branding!

As soon as I picked it up at the market I went home and put the code into the company's website expecting to see a photo of young man in overalls happily holding my melon. But….my code doesn't seem to work! I guess they sell so much melon that they don't have time to update their database. 

Not only was this melon incredibly delicious but it was so fragrant it was like I had bought flowers. 

It is a Jolli melon grown in the area of Mantova and it is only available between the end of May and the beginning of September.
I sent off an email to the company asking about the traceability code and they took all of 20 minutes to respond that my melon was grown in the village of Sermide. It was planted and fertilized with manure in October 15 2010. It was treated with lady bugs to protect it from aphids, and sulfur powder to protect it from fungus. And that they hope to have the tracing function working on their website as soon as possible. 

Spaghetti alla chitarra

This week is pasta making trials. This is spaghetti alla chitarra made by cutting a sheet of pasta on a chitarra, a guitar, not so much in tune for musical purposes but makes very tasty spaghetti. Come try them at Ristorante Zena, Ripa di Porta Ticinese 37, 20143 Milano