pumpkin galore

October and November in Turin are the months of the pumpkin but no matter when pumpkin season is where you live, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving Day or you just like its flavor, do it like us and make one of these amazing recipes of ours. You'll surprise and entice your family and friends and most definitely, you'll gratify yourselves 😋

Porta Palazzo market: the farmers' section

OUR lentil loaf

Happy 2018 dear all, our first post of the year was requested by our friend Jan Egan aka The Watchful Cook.

On NYE we made a delicious lentil loaf and after researching for the best recipe, we decided to give it a Piedmont twist by including some Jerusalem artichokes.

Regular Italian artichokes have always been an all time favorite of ours but it is only since a few months we started cooking and eating Jerusalem artichokes too.

Usually Jerusalem artichokes are part of bagna caoda THE Piedmont and family/friends dish, however, they can be cooked in virtually any way and can be eaten raw too.

Apparently their English name derives from the anglicized version of the Italian girasole or sunflower because the Italian immigrants in the US found the plant very similar to the sunflower one.
As for the artichoke part, it is due to their similarity with the regular artichokes, but they really have nothing else in common because "J art" are a tuber like potatoes.

In Italian we call them topinanbour and they come in 2 species, regular and white - the better and more delicate quality.

In the winter particularly, they are a super food as they are packed with potassium, iron, fibers and niacin, consequently they help you purifying your system, are  great option to bananas, give you strength and energy. Moreover, they reduce your cholesterol and regulate your blood pressure. 👌

As their flavor is mild and they can be cooked and roasted, slowly but steadily we are including them in many of our cold weather/comfort food dishes paired with rice, legumes and other vegetables to keep them in good company 😉

Ishita's love letter to Turin

Ishita at Al Bicerin here in Turin!

This week we are sharing our friend Ishita's second post, you can read the first one about Sacra di San Michele here.


Ishita Sood is an Indian blogger hopelessly in love with all things Italian. She pens downs her travels in her blog Italophilia and makes it a point to visit Italy every year. And naturally, we hope to see her very often right here in Turin.

Follow her on her stories and her great pictures of Italy on her Instagram account

Turin: an Italian discreet gem

Here's a second guest post by our dear friend Patty Boner of Foodie Sneak Peeks.

Patty Boner enjoying the aperitivo rite at "La Farmacia"

A guest of Turin Epicurean Capital 2017, she was very happy to make it back to Turin and try new foods and visit places!

Here below enjoy her second guest post about her Turinepi17 adventure 😎

Cintia Soto's Turin

This week we are sharing a guest post by our friend Cintia Soto, an amazing photographer and lover of all things Italian. After years of online friendship, we met her in person last September during the Slow Food convention Terra Madre in Turin and in front of a bicerin coffee, she shared with us her love for Piedmont and the authenticity of Turin.

White Truffles

We are always bragging about Piedmont and Turin, our royal lifestyle made of decadent chocolate, cashmere sweaters, designer's cars and long tradition slow food cuisine. 

It is true, but after all, despite our totally understated regional pride and local promotion, we can 😎

cornmeal cookies

All over northern Italy we have plenty of corn consequently, besides polenta, in Piedmont we also make traditional cookies with cornmeal, or in Italian, paste di meliga :P

delish tea flavored cornmeal cookies made by Tastinglife

organic Fassone farm

Just like the Mediterranean scrub is unique, so the Monferrato wine district is unique territory in the world: its landscape is highly varied, not simply steep hills or plains, but a mix of them both, uncultivated woods, vineyards, wheat fields, hazelnut groves, animal farms and vegetable farms. 

Every season changes its colors and its atmosphere: in the summer, days are literally endless while in the fall, haze and rain make the best time to savor its rich local specialties.

Being just at about 1h driving from both Turin and the Milan Malpensa international airport, it is the ideal destination to enjoy amazing food, outstanding wines, castles and art.

Azienda Agricola Monfrin on the Monferrato hills and its semi-wild cows

Krumiri cookies

Today we are talking about another royal Italian cookie: Krumiri.

You can easily find them everywhere in Italy, even in grocery stores, however, the traditional ones are from Casale Monferrato, in Piedmont and they are sold in traditional red tins.
There is only one kind of Krumiri, no variants, besides the industrial ones, of course, and they can make a delicious souvenir!

Food Parade in Mondovicino

All foodies, Piedmont visitors and residents, mark your calendars!

On April 22-25 and April 29-May 1 at the Mondovicino outlet near Turin there will be Food Parade a special event entirely devoted to street food, cooking shows, charities and with the collaboration of the local HTM high school whose students will take part to a cooking contest.

In Italy we'll be enjoying 2 long week-ends which make it just the perfect occasion to spend some time savoring the most traditional street food coming from all over the boot, free concerts, free educational labs for kids and aperitifs!

Riikka, Langhetta on high heels

One of the purposes of the Turin Epicurean Capital round tables is to share our local resources and culture both from the insider's point of view and the external one. This is how we got in touch with Riikka Sukula of the Sukula boutique winery in Serralunga D'Alba, about ninety minutes driving from Turin.

Carolina's fruity sauce

This week we are hosting Carolina Stupino's guest post about Piedmont flavors and in particular: cugnà.

Born in Turin to a wine producing father and a food loving mother, Carolina always enjoyed good food. Over a decade ago, she moved to the UK  to study and work as a journalist. Since then her goal in the kitchen  has been to bring the flavours of Northern Italian cuisine to London, to recreate the dishes of her childhood with the ingredients she could find over there. That’s been the starting point of a gastronomic journey which brought her to explore different cooking traditions from around the world. But without ever losing sight of her origins. Carolina is also the author of Tastes of Carolina

magic Vezzolano Abbey

Art and history lovers - especially if with a passion for food and outstanding wine - will be amazed by the Vezzolano Abbey from the 12th century.

TurinEpi July 23

Just like any other good thing in life, Turin Epicurean Capital 2015 came to an end on July 23. 

The third day of the second edition started with the round table facilitated by Maria Pasquale who started by sharing her amazement about Turin during her first time last April. The topic of her round table easily outlined from her memories and the magic happened again: the round table participants were so carried away by their talks that the interpreters were literally left out and after checking with the audience, it was decided they didn't need to translate such long pieces of conversation.

living Turin style

Diana Zahuranec of Wine Pass who took part to Turin Epicurean Capital 2014 has decided to create Blogging Piemonte an online community of bloggers based in Piedmont and blogging in English.

We met in May and picked the first topic: authentic life in Piedmont.

After 11 years living in the Midwest, even though I am a Turin native, I did have to sit down and think about what this topic meant to me. This is how I came up with a list of things I missed while overseas and those that have always been part of my Turin way of life as a native.

10 things to live Turin style 

1. social eating and especially eating local cuisine, more particularly at the risotto restaurant where they have a glorious menu of risottos that changes according to what the season offers:P 

Bailey Alexander's gothic life in Piedmont

We finish 2014 with Bailey Alexander's amazing guest post to share with you our love for Piedmont!

Bailey Alexander is a freelance writer, travel essayist, gardener and Piemonte enthusiast. Prior life was spent directing corporate fashion shows and professional drag extravaganzas, then building a large IT consulting firm in Seattle before making the dramatic decision to move our entire life across the pond. We packed our home, sent 200 boxes on a container and I, along with my husband and 2 small dogs set sail aboard our sailboat in 2002. We proceeded to spend a nomadic decade in Rome, Paris, Malta, Amsterdam, Prague, Bucharest, along with 6 months spent living aboard our boat in Lignano Sabbiadoro, near Venice. Our finest decision was settling down and buying a home in Piemonte. I’ve written profile pieces in slick, glossy magazines, my travel essays are available on Amazon and my first novel will be published in 2015. Having lived in so many countries has altered my mind, living in Piemonte has altered my heart!