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Cookware, like the finest ingredients, sets the standard for your kitchen and your cooking!
Our son Craig (above), an executive chef in Chicago, had the good fortune to cook for a world class restaurant, Zuberoa, in Spain in 2009. Craig's experience as a gourmet chef and his training at Cordon Bleu established his appreciation for natural, local ingredients and for the finest cookware available. Having one without the other limits ones options and the culinary results which you wish to achieve. Ideally, we need to strive for both. Here at Ciao Bella! we are committed to identifying the very finest cookware which will provide you the very best results time after time. You can rely on our cookware products to consistently provide exceptional culinary service. The world's top chefs recognize the invaluable high performance which these products provide decade after decade.
Craig participated in a local Basque custom to search for and harvest the "hongo" mushroom, a delicacy that grows wild in the mountains of northwest Spain. His adventure in seeking this local treat may be of interest to you...he wrote from Spain....
"Like so many of my outings here in Spain this little side trip started out with a little confusion on my part due to a breakdown in communications. In the days lead up to our outing, a new ingredient began making its way into the kitchen - hongo’s – a local mushroom native to the mountains. One evening a young man carrying a basket appeared at the back door asking to speak with Hilario (head chef & owner). As Hilario entered the back kitchen the man opened the basket revealing a horde of wild mushrooms. Expensive and rare, we purchased and decided to trek into the mountains ourselves to seek more.
As the day of the hike to mountains are
group had thinned. It was an
early rise with the sun just beginning to pierce the sky behind the
jagged peaks of the Pyrenees. As we sped out of the tiny village, I was
still believing that this would be a great day hiking and taking a
picnic. The road out of the valley rose quickly and began winding
through the dense forest, I could see what I believed to be the
trailhead for our journey, but we quickly eclipsed the access road. I
asked Pablo where we were heading – "HONGO, HONGO".
Winding our down the mountains to the valley floor I begin to think of why these wild mushrooms are so important to these people and this region.
We entered a Arikutxa natural park and parked with several other vehicles at the ranger station. Soon we were traipsing off down a mountain road – Imanol and Pablo explaining that we were looking for stands of hardwood trees on the inaccessible ridge lines – this is where we are most likely to find hongo. With that my leisurely hike quickly turned into a gourmet scavenger hunt. Success! Satisfaction!
In a time when we as Americans purchase our produce at the grocery store after it has been grown and processed in large industrial operations; with no thought given to seasonal availability and dependence upon our vast transportation network, it becomes evident that food earned tastes better than that purchased. In the markets of San Sebastian, Hongos sell for 26 Euro per kilo or about $18 per pound – a small price to pay given the effort required to harvest them. We will take ours home to Zuberoa where we will make hongo risotto and savor our efforts."
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