Iseo Franciacorta: Places and Recipes

By Massimo Ghidelli

The romantic lake Iseo and Franciacorta wine.
Recipes, culture, travel. A delightful book that entices the reader to visit this Italian region and experience its treasures for themselves, to share in the many delights that a visit to Italy never fails to afford.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Massimo Ghidelli
• Release date: Feb 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9788894208290

Massimo Ghidelli

"I like to explore, observe, get curious"Passionate about tourism, travel and cooking, when Massimo is not out and about with his motorbike he lives in Desenzano del Garda (Italy). His books are printed in Italian, English and German and also available in eBook format on major international platforms.Follow me on Smashwords.

Book preview

Iseo - Franciacorta

Places and recipes

Massimo Ghidelli

Iseo - Franciacorta

Places and recipes

Massimo Ghidelli

Copyright 2016 Massimo Ghidelli

ISBN 9788894208290

Summary

The journey

The Hero of the Two Worlds

Enjoying different experiences

Franciacorta. A bit of history

What does Franciacorta mean?

Franciacorta

When wine isn’t enough

Sacred and profane coexist

A look eastwards

The places of the spirit

Nature discovered

Lake Iseo

The two islands

Monte Isola

Fairy chimneys

Monte Guglielmo

A rediscovered spirit: the grappa of Brescia

The meat market of Rovato

Fish and fishermen

Attracted culture

Landscape with Mona Lisa

The events

Typical products

Via Valeriana

The Silkworm Museum

Is golf all we need?

Slow Franciacorta

If 30 are not enough..

Recipes - Playing a role in the kitchen

In and around Montisola

Salami, cotechino and sausage with Verzolì

Baked burbots with polenta

Blaked stuffed whitefish with polenta

Tagliolini with perch

Trenette alla pescatora

Longing for the market

Potato gnocchi

Snails alla bresciana with spinach

Roasted shin

Tagliatelle with pilchards

Risotto with tench sauce and peas

Lake Amatriciana spaghetti

Almond brittle cream

Auntie’s thick cake

The suspended bridge

From Sulzano to Montisola

The Floating Fishes

Plain chocolate mousse

The fishermen’s taste

Sweet-and-sour chub

Soused whitefish

Whitefish fillet with courgettes

Pike salad with Sebino oil

Stuffed tench ravioloni with mountain butter and Formaggella of Tremosine

Scent of Franciacorta

Purple Violet Potatoes, Red Shrimps and Franciacorta Wine

Franciacorta-flavoured small pork fillets with sweet, tender spinach and crispy bacon

Seitan with Franciacorta red wine

Tradition - innovation

Tombea and borage malfatti with wild garlic pesto

Oil beef

Wood memory Risotto

Clusane baked tench with polenta

The romantic revolution

Burned wheat flour cappelletti with rabbit and anchovy butter

Coffee-flavoured marinated trout

Lukewarm organic chicken salad, Sebino dried pilchards, green sauce jelly, and chicken popcorn

Lake whitefish meunière, with calamondin and cauliflower toffee

Lake pilchard spaghetti with fennel, red bell peppers and chili pepper

The journey

We have arrived this far.

We are in Franciacorta because we love great wines and want to live an experience that will involve taste and flavours. We are here because we are on our way from Milan to Venice and are intrigued about the fame of this area.

We find ourselves on the shore of lake Iseo because we want to spend a few days’ holiday in a relaxing place, stimulating for the mind and the body, or also because we have heard of it and are curious about our school-day memories, when we used to read about the great writers who catalogued the pleasant features of this lake. We are here for a great event of international standing, that has captured the attention of the whole art world (and not only of that) and we too want to be here.

We have set out with the idea of living an emotion and experiencing the discovery of known places and of more intimate corners of an area with a curious name: Iseo-Franciacorta. We are moving about without a pre-established route: the distances are reasonable and the things to be discovered are really many. Let’s allow ourselves to be led on by the curiosity of discovery and by the charm of a journey that we did not expect would be so lovely and romantic. Let’s move through the hills, the lakeside, the little roads in the vineyards and the mountains that are so silent, pure and protective.

Oh thou, invisible spirit of wine, Shakespeare said; The Italian lakes, shelter for all adulterers, wrote Chateaubriand.

Spirit, shelter, refuge: three terms that sum up the essence of our brief trip through real worlds and the sensations of the soul. And which are the premise for an original and authentic holiday.

The Hero of the Two Worlds

In the square of Iseo soars the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi.

It is in the homonymous square, in front of the town hall, right in the centre of pleasant buildings characterized by rows of asymmetrical porticoes (architectural legacy of the Venetian Republic). This is the heart of the town, with bars, restaurants, the market and various shops. The statue is 3 metres high, made of Carrara marble by the Veronese artist Pietro Bordini in 1883. The Hero of the Two Worlds had only been dead one year when the Province of Brescia invited the various municipalities to raise funds to adequately celebrate the memory of this Father of the Italian homeland. The one in Iseo is the first statue erected in his honour in Italy.

Giuseppe Garibaldi will forgive us if we borrow a term (which refers to him and only to him) to speak about Iseo and Franciacorta, two different realities (almost, Two Worlds), and yet decisively united.

Franciacorta, in its entirety, is part of the province of Brescia.

It extends for 240 square kilometres from the outskirts of Brescia to lake Iseo, and is shut in on the sides by Monte Orfano on the left, and by Valle Trompia (the Trompia Valley) on the right. The shores of lake Iseo (also called Sebino) open onto the provinces of Brescia and Bergamo, in Lombardy. The lake is formed by the river Oglio, has a surface of little more than 65 square kilometres, is 25 kilometres long and has a maximum depth of 251 metres.

For a long time there has been a very close collaboration among the municipalities, the associations, and the tourist boards of Iseo and Franciacorta and all of them, having abandoned