agno and tonnato

 If like us, you are among the many fans of The Bear, have already been to Turin, are planning your next trip and are a foodie you might have recognized Carm's Turin inspo! 

If you haven't watched it yet: do yourselves a favor and watch it, especially if you love eating, high level cuisine, dedication, Chicago and Turin! As you will see, these two cities have more in common than bulls.

agnolotti from Piedmont filled with extra lean Fassone beef

Just imagine our pride and joy in hearing Carm say AG-NOLOTI and seeing he was actually serving our delicious and beautiful (agnolotti del) plins or pinched tiny ravioli traditionally filled with extra lean Fassone beef, a native breed from Piedmont.

Nothing screams Turin more than agnolotti and the style they are served: generally just high quality Alpine butter  - similar to The Bear or our local gravy. Agnolotti encapsulate all our cultural history and culinary tradition in one single bite. 

In theory, both plins and regular agnolotti (pron. 'anioloT-Ti with a long T like Turin) are made with the same pasta sheet used to make our protein-packed local fresh long pasta: tajarin or tagliolini - basically yellow flat spaghetti made with 40 egg yolks, flour and no water! Call it a royal dish, after all Turin has been the capital of the Savoy kingdom since 998.

Chefs, cooks, nonnas and mums used to make this rich pasta dough on very special occasions and they would roll it medium thin to allow you to enjoy some texture when eating tajarin but also hold the beef filling of our agnolotti - regional squared ravioli. 

In the plin case, the teaspoon of beef filling is rolled inside the pasta sheet and pinched at the sides, almost like a candy. It is a masterpiece of culinary elegance and versatility in miniature, as small pasta shapes are suitable for both sauces and broth! Needless to add that agnolotti, the squared ones also come in a smaller size to be enrich a broth.

Carm's plins served at The Bear S3E3, they did use those 40 egg yolks!

If you have already visited Italy, have you ever noticed how Italian restaurant menus virtually never list chicken? Definitely, this is the case here in Piedmont where poultry and white meat are historically considered 'poor  proteins' and in the last few decades also the lowest quality meat due to what the animals are fed.

Speaking of meat and beef in the specific, Turin and Piedmont natives grow up eating our locally bred beef, often grass fed too and they take for granted that all over Italy this is the kind of beef people buy, cook and eat. However, this is not the case at all! And when traveling around the boot, visitors are surprised to find specific 'Piedmont butcher' shops selling 'our meat' like a valuable imported good. In a way it is really a nutritionally special meat as it is virtually cholesterol free, and just like our royal agnoltti, there is an historical reason behind our Piedmont beef breeding practices.  

In fact, beyond every business you always have historical, social and economical reasons and it is no secret that the Jews were persecuted in many of the Italian little kingdoms but in Piedmont, where they have been living since at least the 1200s. 

To maximize their meat sales, the Piedmont breeders and butchers focused on our native Fassone beef instead of other farm animals and this is how this beef has become a synonym of the Piedmont cuisine. Keep in mind that Piedmont is also famous for its mountains and cheeses - our white gold - so cows have always been a great investment as they provided great milk and meat. And in 2026, the traditional Piedmont menu 'casually' designed to be Kosher can easily accommodate Al Halal restrictions too. 

Fassone's high quality allows it to be eaten raw too, either as tritata or tartare version: hand chopped, or all'albese - Alba style - marinated in evoo and lemon juice, after being sliced as thin as a communion wafer, meaning see-through / almost shaved thickness.

Judging by how Carm relies on our very own Piedmont delicacies to save the restaurant day, The Bear culinary consultant must really have Piedmont, Turin and our local cuisine at heart because in season 5, it is yet another of our aristocratic, yet now common dishes that saves the day at The Bear.

lamb tonnato of S5E7 presented as 'albacore ajoli'

At the peak of a day begun as a major failure, Carm finds some tuna cans in the pantry and just like that, the first thing he can think of is our vitel tonné or roasted veal garnished with our very own Piedmont tuna mayo! Nowhere else in Italy, you'll see anything like this, amici.

Portions had been smaller and smaller, lamb was the only meat left and voila! Holding all those tuna cans, Carm proposes to Syd our magic word: tonnato. She approves and readily modifies the menu with 'albacore aioli' where everyone knows that albacore is tuna and sort of recognizes the mayo form of ajoli.

Yet, all Turinese and Piedmontese can still hear Carm's voice in our ears saying 'tonnato' with an American T and single N - and trust me, nobody cares about his pronunciation because all of us together with our territory and over 1000 years of history just feel the joy of finally being represented like polenta, focaccia, risotto, braciola and cavatelli!

The Bear S3E3

Representation matters, amici, and within The Bear menu... you'll find different other Italian dishes, but nothing as geographically distinctive as our "agno and tonnato". Even only because most of the other Italian dishes served can be found everywhere... but not ours!

Foodies, pasta lovers, carnivores, healthy eaters and Italian cuisine aficionados everywhere: take inspiration from The Bear, hop over to Turin and Piedmont and savor our culinary traditions. You won't regret it and our royal food and wine scene won't disappoint!

📧 email Lucia: turinepi@gmail.com 

for all your tours, travel experiences, private classes, relocation services and more!

Turin will amaze you!

Panna cotta = Piedmont

P = Piedmont panna cotta

a traditional registered recipe since 2001

Let's be real... who doesn't like panna cotta?? Simple and versatile, it's a world wide people pleaser from Piedmont!

Panna cotta literally means cooked cream, and we mean heavy whipping cream. This is because according to the registered traditional recipe here in Piedmont, NW Italy, you make it by cooking heavy whipping cream with sugar, vanilla or a citrus peel, and by adding gelatin. This is the very basic recipe you can serve with fresh fruit, coulis, natural syrups, chocolate and / or coffee sauce. 

Keep reading for our recipe.

Different versions of panna cotta have been around in Europe since at the very least 1244 when Henrik Harpestræg, a Danish doctor who had studied in Sicily, included in one of his books moos hwit - a dessert almost identical to panna cotta.

Even though, up to the 1960s there is no mention of panna cotta in the Italian cookbooks, legend has it that we owe it to a Hungarian lady who in the early 1900s had moved to the Langhe wine district (Unesco World Heritage Site) here in Piedmont.

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 😉

Turin rocks

If you have never heard of Turin or Torino and you have no clue about it, or if you haven't been here yet, after reading this post by our friends the independent people, Xavier and Valeriia, you will simply want to teleport here!

Xavier and Valeriia, a couple of cyclists, dancers and photographers explorers are living the expatriation experience, currently in England. On their mission to discover hidden or little-known spots of Europe and prove that there is no need to go too far for some genuine treasures. You can read them on their blog Independent People and follow their adventures on Twitter and Instagram

Chef Giachello's research of flavors

Restaurant La Smarrita is a culinary symbol in Turin; located in Palazzo Salmatoris in the super central Piazza Carlo Alberto, this is where the Kingdom of Italy was born in 1861 and where Count Camillo Benso of Cavour, the first Italian Prime Minister, had his office. In fact, he just needed to cross the square to get to Palazzo Carignano, the very first Italian Parliament.

Today, La Smarrita strives to keep the Langhe culinary traditions alive in the heart Turin offering authentic seasonal specialties paired with the best wines of small selected local producers. 

The commander in chief of the kitchen is Chef Marco Giachello, a Turinese at heart, or "DOC" as you would say in Italian, borrowing the high quality certification of Italian wines (controlled designation of origin).

Chef Giachello majored in cooking from high school and worked his culinary career up from the lower levels of restaurant kitchens, to the top of the best Turin's restaurants. 

His passion for food and local products was shaped by his maternal grandmother, nonna Teresa who just like his mom, was a very skilled cook. Growing up, Marco would spend the summer in the Langhe wine district at his maternal grandparents' who had a small vineyard, tiny orchard and a small vegetable garden. Most of what they cooked and ate came directly from their land and nonna Teresa would craft amazing traditional meals!

Michelangelo Mammoliti's culinary symphony

We start the new year with Michelangelo Mammoliti aka the herbalist chef we met in August in the Roero wine district, a Unesco World Heritage site. Back in the summer, when we visited Osteria La Madernassa in Guarene, we got to know how he works, his cooking philosophy, about his French training and his love for local herbs and flowers, but over the Holidays we finally got the chance to savor his cuisine. And ho boy, what an experience! Our senses went on a trip we can hardly find the right words to describe because Michelangelo has the rare gift to give his food many dimensions, making of his menus a culinary composition, rather than a mere meal.

We arrived at Osteria La Madernassa with some expectations because we already knew him, had already tried his herb infused olive oils and had visited his herb garden around the osteria, however, even knowing him and seeing him at work, we couldn't simply imagine how his dishes could be shaped, how his flavors could be balanced or layered and how meaningful both the names and the display of his food could be.

Like any shy guests visiting a  high level restaurant in one of the world culinary lands, we picked a table in the sunlight and prepared to take gorgeous pictures; in fact, we knew Michelengelo, like the famous Renaissance artist, takes watercolor classes and puts a painstaking precision in anything that concerns the restaurant, not just the food. Every detail counts from the table cloth fabric and the silverware design people will use to eat his masterpieces, to of course, his kingdom: the kitchen or la cucina in Italian!

a Piedmont menu

Piedmont, NW Italy

Piedmont is one of the twenty Italian regions; it is located in the northwest corner at the border with France and Switzerland and it offers a wide array of local products. Over the centuries, it rich culinary traditions and world renowned wines have made of Piedmont one of the culinary destinations of the world.

It is very interesting to notice how varied the landscape is in Piedmont and how the Alps, the hills, the country side, the lakes, the Po Valley, the cities and the rice fields produce distinct ingredients that have always been part of the local menus, shaping the taste and the identity of this unique region. The different social classes have also contributed to the contrast between the once poor cuisine of the peasants and the aristocratic more refined specialties enjoyed by the nobles. 

Today, Piedmont cuisine unites both sides and everybody here pays a lot of attention to the origin of the products, their making processes and certification because they guarantee the food high quality, its flavor and consequently the quality of the local daily life. 

Here, food and wine are as important as medications and in order to preserve both traditions and quality, special labels and certifications have been instituted by the Italian government and at the European Union level. This is why in all our posts we always signal if a product has the DOP, IGP (to guarantee the territories where products can be made and labeled with a specific name) and DOC/DOCG (to guarantee the highest quality wines) certification.