We're in the new Taste Italia

Taste Italia - the only UK magazine specialising in Italian food - is out with our feature about Bologna. There are recommendations for hotels, restaurants and the best places for an aperitivo. Plus loads of Liz Cousins' evocative pictures of Italy's food mad city.

The best tagliatelle in Bologna?

The sfoglina – or pasta maker – is the person who makes a restaurant’s   reputation in Bologna. And a little known place just outside the city has now become the tagliatelle hot spot after chef Beniamino Baleottti  - that's him in the centre in the blue t-shirt - won the prize of sfoglino d’oro at the recent international competition in Bologna’s Sala Borsa in Piazza Maggiore. Agriturismo Le Ginestre at Pianoro, just by the motorway’s Sasso Marconi entrance, is run by an ex-mountaineer, his wife and their seven off-spring including Beniamino. Their organic farm produces ham and salami, fruit and vegetables. As well as dinner, bed and breakfast they offer cookery courses taught, naturally, by the new sfoglino d’oro.

Contact them at www.agrileginestre.it

Aperitivo time

Almost as important as lunch and dinner in the Bolognese diary is the aperitivo. Even during the depths of the winter, when a biting wind sweeps in from the Plain of the River  Po, people can be seen huddled around the doors of bars all over the city, a calice - champagne glass -  of prosecco or pignoletto  in one hand and a cigarette in the other.  In summer it is a more relaxed affair, extending through the evening. As essential as the drinks are the accompaniments. In recent years, there has been a stuzzicati boom. This, the  Italian equivalent of tapas,  is the way that bars compete for trade. In some places you will find long tables groaning under the weight of an imposing buffet consisting of tiny pizzas and sausage rolls, ham and cheese flavoured focaccie, deep fried vegetables, salami and crisps. But choose carefully to avoid eating loads of stodgy carbohydrates.

Time for an aperitivo?

Zanarini

Let’s start with somewhere select or ‘snob’ as they say in Bologna: Zanarini because it’s a lovely place in its own right, with ample space inside, by the bar, upstairs where the buffet is laid out, and outside in the square. This is a place where many people go to see and be seen, and to graze on  food carefully prepared and presented. Zanarini, with its courtly service and splendid displays of canapés, cakes and chocolates, is less a bar than a grand institution.  Funnily enough, an aperitivo here at 8 euros  costs hardly any  more than anywhere else.

Spritz Campari at Zanarini

Piazza Galvani 1, Bologna

MAMBo

You may prefer somewhere less grand but with equally interesting clientele and a good buffet. The bar at MAMBo, the modern art museum, attracts the young and the artistic intelligentsia. Sometimes at the weekend there will be a DJ playing the classics of the last fifty years.  (Has rock and rolls really been going that long?) The drinks are standard but the buffet is more like a vegetarian feast with lots of wholesome salads. You can stand at the dimly lit bar, sit inside or under the portico outside. Depending on the season, you can stay warm and dry or bask in the evening sun.

Via Don Minzone 14, Bologna

Osteria del Sole

If you object to paying the price for a buffet you don’t want, then Osteria del  Sole is the answer. It’s easier to find in the evening – you can spot it by the huddle of people, glass in hand, spilling out into tiny Vicolo Ranocchi. Otherwise, it is easily missed; there is no sign outside the scruffy entrance.

Osteria del Sole: scruffy hospitality

If anything, the interior is even less prepossessing.  But that really doesn’t matter. The attraction is that this is a genuine osteria, a (usually rough and ready) place that you go to drink and chat, a bit like a pub.  Here you can rub shoulders with a wide cross section of Bolognese society, including writers, politicians, academics and talkers. Many osterie do provide food these days but not here. Not even a bag of crisps. Instead the deal is that you bring your own – an inversion of the usual BYO theme. And since Osteria del Sole is right in the middle of the Quadrilatero, you can assemble lunch or a couple of stuzzicati from the best food shops in town.

You eat and drink at long tables, making room for newcomers and clearing up as you go. A wide variety of wines is sold by the glass - starting at 2 euros - or the bottle, or you can buy beer. They will provide serving boards for bread and salami.

Vicolo Ranocchi 1b, Bologna

Crostini ai funghi selvatici con pancetta croccante Wild mushroom crostini with crunchy pancetta

This morning, with the weather locally shifting from damp autumnal to Indian summer, I went foraging. Driving into town, I’d spotted a pasture two minutes from home dotted with field mushrooms, so I stopped and quickly gathered half a kilo of very fresh fungus.

Mushrooms sauted with pancetta or bacon, onion and garlic is a universal classic. What makes this version Bolognese is the finishing touches – balsamic vinegar and grated parmesan. I would serve it on crostini – griddled bread – smeared with olive oil.

Or you could use streaky bacon

One tip: fry the mushrooms hard so that they begin to caramelise. You don’t want mushy soft funghi for this dish. All the ingredients should remain distinct – this is cooking alla italiana. If you like, you could finish off the dish with a couple of tablespoons of thick cream.

Ingredients for 4

150g pancetta or bacon

4tbl olive oil

1 medium onion

2 cloves garlic

4 slices sour dough bread

350g wild mushrooms

2tbl balsamic vinegar

2tbl double or thick cream (optional)

4tbl finely chopped parsley

4tbl finely grated parmesan

salt and pepper



Method

1. Cut the pancetta or bacon into slivers or tiny cubes and fry rapidly in half the olive oil so they become crunchy. Remove and set aside.

2. Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry it in the pancetta or bacon fat. Remove and set aside.

3. Heat a griddle or heavy frying pan, brush both sides of the bread with the remaining olive oil, and toast on both sides until crisp.

4. Clean with a damp cloth the mushrooms and coarsely slice, discarding damaged and muddy parts.

5. Quickly sauté the mushrooms until they begin to brown, then add back the onion and garlic and stir in the balsamic vinegar. Add freshly ground black pepper and salt if necessary. If you are using cream, this is the moment to stir it in.

6. Put a generous spoonful of the mushrooms onto each slice of toast, sprinkle with the crunchy bacon, the parsley and the parmesan.

Shopping in Bologna: Davide Simoni – new generation family business

Davide Simoni - champion of mortadella

Davide Simoni’s ambition is to make the best quality artisan salami. He’s spent two years learning the ropes on the factory floor at Ennio Pasquini’s mortadella laboratorio.Now he’s back at the family shop, Simoni, learning to run one of the landmark family businesses in the Quadrilatero.

A tiny part of Simoni's ham and salami repertoire

Simoni are famous for their hams, salamis and cheeses and are one of the few  outlets for the highly prized Pasquini mortadella.

Simoni - one of the shopping delights of Bologna

After completing a literature degree, Davide went to work as a journalist before trying his hand as a mortadella maker. That is what has really inspired him. In the meantime, he is planning to set up a blog. ‘I am so well placed. I have access to all the best food businesses in the city. I’m sitting on treasure.’ At Christmas, he works extra hours helping out in the family’s other business, a pasta fresca shop on via Murri. He’ll be joined there by siblings and cousins, amongst them an economist, a psychiatrist and a pharmacist. They may not share his passion for sausage making but like him they remain part of the family business, a common feature in Bologna.

See Davide Simoni's guide to the Quadrilatero at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=654742518&sk=wall#!/profile.php?id=100001878283172 (Forgive the interviewer's Italo-American)

Atti - give us this day our daily bread

Anna Maria Bonaga - doyenne master baker

Paolo Atti e Figli - Bakers and Confectioners

via Caprairie 7 and via Drapperie 6

 By five past six, the shelves are empty – the afternoon bread is sold out. If you live or work in the city centre, Atti is the bakery to head to for bread for the evening meal.  ‘We want our customers to have fresh bread so we bake twice a day, says Francesco Bonaga, one of four siblings who now run Atti under  the friendly but firm supervision of  Anna-Maria, their octogenarian mother.  Despite the growing presence of local supermarket chains, most Bolognese still buy their daily bread from an independent baker, and of these Atti is the biggest in the city.

Francesco Bonaga - inheriting a family tradition

Francesco claims that they make over 50 different kinds of bread plus dozens of cakes and biscuits. Their crescente, a bit like focaccia but flatter and made with lard as well as oil, is delicious, especially the ones with flecks of mortadella or prosciutto. They are famed for their certosino, a  kind of  Bolognese Christmas  cake  packed with dried fruits, and equally for the design of the box it is sold in. Atti also produce a  wide range of pasta, especially tortellini, tortellone – the larger variety with ricotta and vegetable fillings -  and lasagne. Many of these can be consumed with a glass of wine in the bigger of their two shops. Or taken home in another type of beautifully designed box.

Everything hand made

Let them eat cake

Surely too beautiful to eat - Caffe e Dolce

Cake fills the gap nicely between lunch and dinner in Bologna, a gap of six or seven hours. You will see luscious displays of chocolate and fruit cakes  as well as some over-dressed fantasies involving layers of cream and crystalised fruit  in the windows of Atti, Zanarini and Gamberini.  They and others also sell mignon – miniature French-style beauties – singly or weighed by the kilo. You can enjoy them on the premises or take them home.  Other good places to try are

The display at Pallotti

• Caffe e Dolce on the corner of Carbonesi and  Massimo, 
• Colazione a Bianca at the beginning of  Santo Stefano,   
• FP    risto Pallotti, on the corner of Irnerio and  Alessandrini,  good for breakfast, and very convenient if you’re desperate for a mid-afternoon snack after a visit to the Botanical Gardens. 
• Lo Sfizio, via Riva de Reno 100A, has a wonderful range of Bolognese cakes, pastries and biscuits  - to buy to take away only.

Zanarini - where smart babies go for their brioche con crema