Any ingredients made with red, white and green ingredients, i.e. the colours of the Italian flag. This often takes the form of tomato, pasta or potatoes coloured with rocket or basil.
A red wine, lightly sparkling or frizzante, made from a variety of grapes including Bonarda, Barbera and Croatina, with Uva Rara and Ughetta, made by the Italian wine estate Lino Maga in the Oltrepo pavese DOC south of Pavia in Lombardy.
Monk’s beard. A thin, wild spring grass, a type of chicory, looking like a cross between samphire and tumbleweed, from northern Italy. It has a bitter flavour, bearing some relation in texture and taste to samphire, succulent and pleasantly resistant to the bite, and is eaten raw, blanched for seconds and dressed, or stewed in olive oil. It is also a useful addition to salads. It has a very short season which seems to be quite specifically five weeks in spring.
