Veneto is a region in north eastern Italy including Venice and Padua, Verona, Treviso and Vicenza. The cuisine of Venice includes wonderful seafood risotti.
Venezia is a province and town of the Veneto, a region of north eastern Italy centred around Venice.
A cake made with either chocolate and pear or chocolate and apricot and taken from house to house in the same way as panettone is.
Pilgrim or great scallops. These are shellfish with white meats and pink corals, often cooked in their shells with the corals and have sweet, succulent meat if properly cooked. According to legend, the body of St James (St-Jacques) travelled with a boat with neither oars nor sails around the Iberian coast, coming to rest in Compostela. Many miracles were associated with this journey, including one where the horse of a pagan nobleman leaped into the sea. They emerged carrying the body of St James covered in scallop shells. This resulted in the nobleman converting to Christianity. Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela have traditionally worn scallop shell badges in commemoration of St James, or used scallop shells as begging bowls. The whole pilgrim route is decorated with his emblem. In some parts of Europe they are eaten on the feast day of St James on 25 July to commemorate the arrival of pilgrims or peregrinos at Santiago de Compostela, often with tomatoes and garlic. They are more often simply and lightly fried.
A dialect word of uncertain place of origin for the Caesar's mushroom. Excellent raw in salads or grilled, stuffed or used as a garnish.
Strips of belly of tuna, generally tinned. Most highly prized. It is so soft it can be spread like a paste.
A dense salami from Abruzzo e Molise made with the stomach of pig with lots of flavour coming from chillis, fennel and often orange zest.
A name in the Etna region of Sicily for the scaly tooth mushroom or tiled hydnum, an edible fungus with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
False morel mushrooms. They are deadly poisonous if not cooked, closely resembling real morel mushrooms, being wrinkled and brown in the same way. However, morel mushrooms are symmetrical while false morels are irregular in shape and look like a brown brain, while true morels are more like a sponge. True morels have hollow stems while those of false morels are solid. Be careful to check each of these features before attempting to eat one. They have a fine flavour and are generally parboiled. They are popular in Nordic countries and in Finland especially.
