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Take home some delicious local products Enjoy Gourmet Shopping
[Susan Glasspool]
If you have been completely captivated and want to show off your newly acquired knowledge to your friends at home, you must buy plenty of ingredients while you are still here.
We will also proffered some advice on ordinary day-to-day shopping but more specific ingredients are often better at a shop specialised in gastronomic products.
It is true that you can get fresh basil in England or the States (if it survives once outside the supermarket), but it is even better if you buy the seeds here and then grow it yourself! You can find plum and Pachino tomatoes at home, but it is far more difficult to find really good olive oil, which is well worth buying here instead (and learning how to judge the best). Then there are dried mushrooms and tomatoes, hams, salamis and the superb local sheep’s cheeses (or mature cheeses like Parmesan from northern Italy, that will keep for quite a long time).
The choice is enormous and growing all the time! Try, for instance, some of the jams for accompanying meat (the equivalent of our chutneys), unusual and very different, or buy up packets of fresh Chianti-grown saffron, the local dried cannellini beans and chick peas, or lentils and peas from elsewhere in Italy. You can get packets of mixed legumes that make delicious thick soups (but don’t forget to top with good olive oil).
Other good buys are the various bottled vegetables under oil - artichokes, mushrooms, peppers and so on - perfect for a starter with fresh cut dressed ham, or else pasta (look out for the Sienese pici, or thick spaghetti, and the Mugello potato stuffed ravioli), while honey is another excellent local farm product.
No, we haven’t forgotten the wines, the wonderful Tuscan and Italian wines, and you have at last discovered all their properties! Abroad they have to compete in price with many other countries and unfortunately they are not always promoted as they should be. So why waste time, off you go and fill your bags with local goodies!
N.B.: Oleum in Via Sant’Egidio 22r and Divine Golosità in Via Reginaldo Giuliani 132r both offer a vast assortment of regional and Italian gastronomic specialities and can also organise shipping them home for you. What more can you ask?
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