Turin Chefs' Association

As the very first Italian capital, Turin also boasts the very first Italian association of chefs, cooks and kitchen professionals, from the HTM/cooking students to the restaurant owners. Founded in 1722, Associazone Cuochi Torino (ACT) is even older than the national Italian Cooks Federation (F.I.C.) (Italy got united into a whole kingdom in 1861) and back then, it already included women!
In the past centuries, wealthy families, especially the aristocrats, used to hire their own chefs/cooks and dine in their palazzos while restaurants, as we know them today, were not fashionable yet and cooking was a different profession.

Darryl's perspective on wines

This week guest post is by Darryl Baldwin who was a guest at Turin Epicurean Capital 2014.

After working in the City of London for 40 years trading, selling and marketing the whole gamut of financial instruments for various international banks, he and his wife stumbled across a piece of Paradise. It was February 2007 and he had decided the time was right for a bit of permanent R&R. Within a few months they had bought a house in Neive and properly discovered Nebbiolo. They built a grandchildren attractor (swimming pool) and within 2 years, when it was a proven success, decided to sell the house in the UK, help the kids and settle permanently in Italy. They have never looked back and are in love with the wine, the food, the culture and the family-centric approach to life. Slowly but surely they  are educating their English friends that they live in Piemonte where the best wines in Italy (if not the world) are made and not in Tuscany which is the only region they appear to know. You can follow Darryl on his blog Piemonte mio

Bookshops in Turin

Even in the digital era, Turin still has many independent bookshops and despite great online stores and e-book readers, many Italians are still buying real paper books. 

Although at Turin Epicurean Capital we are all addicted to buying books (especially food, novels and art), this week we thought of showing you some of those bookshops we MUST visit time to time, naturally without any cash or credit card on us. Most of our favorite bookshops have books in Italian and also other languages, so non-Italian speakers will enjoy these bookshops too ;)

La Befana in Turin

The countdown has started and la Befana is ready to take off on her broomstick to visit all the kids and deliver them the stocking filled with sweets or coal.

some Befana stockings and lose bakery sugar coal cubes