Piedmontese uphold their heritage of food and wine with unequaled staunchness. Turin, as home of the Savoy dynasty that reigned as Italy's royal family, shares a culinary savoir-faire with neighboring France. But the noblest examples of the good tastes of the past are to be found in the substantial cooking of the hill country.
The flavors of Piedmont reach peaks in autumn, when the harvest is in and wooded slopes from the Alps to the Apennines supply game, mushrooms and white truffles, whose magical aromas enhance pastas and risottos, meats and cheeses, foods that call for full-bodies red wines such as Barolo and Barbaresco.
Piedmont's range of antipasti is so vast and varied that it represents a compendium of regional cooking with dishes that elsewhere might qualify as main courses. Classic openers are fonduta (cheese fondue), insalata di carne cruda (marinated raw beef), finanziera (a bizarre meat stew), vitello tonnato (veal with tuna sauce) and bagna caoda ("hot sauce" for raw vegetables). Salads may consist of greens, asparagus, sweet-sour onions, beans or wild mushrooms. Red and yellow bell peppers are eaten with dressings or, like other vegetables, blended in flans called sformati. Zucchini flowers or verza leaves (Savoy cabbage) with meat-cheese fillings may be called caponet. Rice and cheese are used for croquettes, cakes and fritters. Eggs may be fried sunny side up with truffles or cooked with vegetables or peppers as frittata or in an onion custard called tartrá.
Antipasto lists continue with tongue, tripe, fried pig's feet called batsoa (silk stockings), tonno di coniglio (marinated rabbit tender as tuna) and stewed snails. Pates and terrines are made of liver and game birds. Fine pork salumi include salame alla douja (aged in lard in earthenware pots) and blood sausages called sanguinacci. Salami is also made from beef, goose, trout and potatoes. Munched with virtually everything are grissini, yard-long breadsticks first baked in Turin in the 17th century.
The regional pasta recipes are dominated by slender, hand-cut noodles called tarjarin, and ravioli-like envelopes called agnolotti, which take different shapes, fillings and sauses. Flatlands near the Po river around Vercelli and Novara are Europe's leading suppliers of rice, notably the prized Carnaroli or risotto cooked with beans and pork as panissa or paniscia or with frogs, vegetable or mean sauces or simply with butter and shaved truffles. Polenta and potato gnocchi are favored in places, as are hearty soups, such as cisrá, with chickpeas and pork rind, and tofeja, with beans, corn flour, vegetables and pork.
Piedmont raises prized beef to be braised in red wine, roasted, grilled or simmered as the base of bollito misto. Recipes abound for veal, lamb, kid and rabbit, as well as duck, goose, chicken, capon and pidgeon. Pheasant, partridge, hare and venison are favorites among game. Meats and other items combine in Italy's most ambitious fritto misto. Fried pork liver is the base of a dish called griva. Tapulone is a stew of donkey meat served around Novara. Anchovies and tuna flavor many a dish, though fresh fish is secondary in the diet, with an exception for trout found in the lakes and streams across the mountains.
Piedmont produces quantities of Gorgonzola from Novara, along with an intricate array of local cheeses. Notable are the Tobiola of Roccaverano and little wheels called toma or tuma from the hill towns, particularly Murazzano. These are usually based on cow's milk, as are the rare Castelmagno, Bra and Raschera from the Maritime Alps. A pervasively pungent fermented cheese is known variously as bros, bruss or bruz. Fontina preferably from the Valle d'Aosta, is widely used in cooking.
The region is a major producer of hazelnuts (used in pastries, cakes, chocolates and the nougat called torrone) as well as chestnuts (for roasting or candied as marron glaces). Among a wealth of biscuits, pastries and desserts, standouts are corn flour (meliga) cookies, the chocolate or coffee-flavored custard cake called bonet, cream cooked with caramel as panna cotta, an opulent chocolate cake called torta gianduia and fluffy zabaione, which supposedly originated there.
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