Christmas Special: Win a 3 day Italian cookery tour holiday on Italy’s Adriatic coast by entering our Abruzzo cookery competition, open to everyone of Abruzzo heritage who no longer lives in Italy.
Christmas and the deep mid-winter holiday period is a wonderful time to rekindle connections with family and friends, when the shared enjoyment of food allows us to invite our heritage and old cultural traditions back into our lives, albeit perhaps subconsciously. Italia Sweet Italia wants to celebrate the vital role food plays in family and communities from the region of Abruzzo. This year we decided it is not just about sharing a tasty traditional Abruzzo Christmas cookie recipe, although here is one, but about curating year-round family favourite recipes from the region online which can be shared worldwide and preserved for future generations.
Share your Favourite Abruzzo Family Recipe
Do you have a favourite family recipe that you learnt before you immigrated from Abruzzo, or perhaps one that your Mamma, Nonna or even Papà and Nonno passed onto you? We’d love you to share that special handed down dish, bubbling with flavours & memories, with Italia Sweet Italia.
Our aim is to represent, celebrate and preserve Abruzzo’s mountain-to-sea culinary heritage as cooked by the region’s families for the first time in English online. The sweet & savoury family recipes will be published online via our website and be available as a downloadable cook book app.
Have an Abruzzo Cook, Have a Feast
Abruzzese cookery is often overlooked outside Italy, where it is held by many to be one of the three key regional cuisines that together form the cradle of great Italian cooking; the region is even home to Italy’s oldest cookery school! Abruzzo’s culinary traditions are however fast gaining in popularity internationally, in part due to the region’s notable success at winning food and wine accolades around the world.
The Family Cook Book
More than 1 million people emigrated from the former Abruzzi to the US and Canada between 1901 & 1915 alone, and the dishes they cooked still play a pivotal role in many of their descendants’ favourite dishes for preparing and sharing with family & friends. With the help of the many Italian families in Northern America, Australia, UK and many other parts of the world that the Abruzzesi migrated to, Italia Sweet Italia hopes to capture and share nostalgic food memories that illustrate the very best of Abruzzo’s culinary heritage.
5 Great Cookery Holiday Prizes for Italian Food Lovers
Our Vasto based prizes aren’t just for foodies but like all our tours designed for people who love to eat great Italian food and enjoy a cultural adventure.
1st Prize – Italian Culinary Tour for 2 people including accommodation & local transfers
- Day 1: Welcome dinner and tour of Vasto on Abruzzo’s Adriatic coast.
- Day 2: am – Cooking class with Mamma Anna-Maria in Vasto; pm – Visit to a local award- olive oil mill and winery. Evening free for dinner and exploration.
- Day 3: am – Fish cookery class aboard Trabocco Punta Tufano, Abruzzo’s unique fishing platforms, with lunch; pm – Departure.
2nd Prize – A cooking class with Mamma Anna-Maria for 2 people including local transfers
- Location – the Romanesque town of Vasto, on Abruzzo’s southern Adriatic Coast
3rd Prize – 3 course luxury fish dinner aboard a trabocco for 2 people including local transfers
- Example dinner, Antipasti: Fresh marinated anchovies, Mariner’s-style clams , Octopus in tomato sauce with polenta , Stuffed mussels | Main Course: Il brodetto alla Vastese | Dessert Pizzelle served with home-made fruit conserve
4th Prize – Olive Mill & Winery Tours for 2 people including local transfers
- A visit La Selvotta olive mill for a tour and lesson in how to ‘taste’ olive oil followed by a visit to the boutique Fontefico winery which straddles the Punta Aderci Marine park to sample some of their award winning wines – Awarded to the ‘Best Food Photograph’
5th Prize – One copy of the acclaimed book ‘Plate to Pixel’ by Helene Dujardin
- The perfect guide on how to make food photos look delicious for those who want to get serious about their food photography – Awarded to ‘Best Food Photograph Runner up’
– All entrants and their friends/ relatives will be offered a 20% discount to accompany the winners or come along on a separate date on a Italia Sweet Italia Abruzzo cookery tour or Ancestry tour
– Tour dates will be bookable by the 28th February 2014 for either 2014 or 2015 excluding July and August
How to Enter
If you or your family have been part of the ‘Abruzzo diaspora’ and moved away from Italy you are eligible to enter. Use the form below to share your favourite Abruzzese family recipe in English alongside at least one photograph of the dish by the visit of La Befana on 6th January. You are welcome to enter more than once if you have a number of recipes to share but you can only win 1 prize!
Please format your written recipe to include its:
- name
- the story behind the recipe, for example how you learnt it, what it conjures memories of
- the ingredients (either Imperial or Metric but not a mixture of both please!)
- the method and cooking tips
- how many people it serves or in the case of biscuits approximately how many it bakes and what you like to serve it with.
How to View your Family Recipe Online
All recipes and photograph(s) will be published on the Italia Sweet Italia blog and each entrant will be emailed a link as soon as their family recipe is live. We will map all entries to show where in Abruzzo and her 4 provinces the recipe originated from.
How to Win
A shortlist of recipes will be selected by Italia Sweet Italia’s Mamma Anna-Maria and this list will be published on the ItaliaSweetItalia facebook page. The 3 recipes with the most likes and shares by 10th Janauary, 11.59pm (cet, Italian time) will win the first 3 prizes for 2 people. The 4th & 5th prizes will be awarded to the winners of the ‘best food photographs’ by the Italia Sweet Italia team & our photography experts, Paesaggi d’Abruzzo, Abruzzo’s biggest web community and voice across 43 countries worldwide.
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