Monday, July 30, 2012

The meal that is worthy of its very own blog post

Rimini blogging adventures continue...

If you've read a few of my posts, you might have realized that since the inception of this blog, I have written mostly about one thing-- food. I can't help it-- I love food, and I live in ITALY, the country with some of the best food in the world. Rimini and the other cities that I visited on this blogging trip are all located in the Emilia Romagna region, which is known as the gastronomic capital of Italy, and after our lovely day hike, we hopped in our blogger bus and arrived at a large barn-turned-restaurant with quite a view...


Bloggers never put their cameras down. How'd that shot come out Keane?





Il Poderone is an agriturismo, which is a farmhouse that operates as a sort of B&B/ restaurant that usually serves foods to guests prepared from raw materials produced on the farm, which is exactly what we were given at our meal-- everything was grown, picked, raised, and prepared right on the property. 



At Il Poderone, there is no menu, and everyone in the restaurant eats at the same time. The most adorable woman makes all of the food each day, and when we arrived, she came to greet us bloggers. It was one of the many, many times since my arrival in Italy that I was very thankful for my Italian language skills, as she of course spoke in all Italian to Nick and the rest of us, and I was able to understand everything that she said and respond a bit as well. Before she left us to start making our lunch, she asked if any of us had any food allergies or preferences. When we replied with a no, she exclaimed "molto bene!" and was off to create one of the best meals I've had in my entire lifetime.

After starting off with some red wine, our first course was Tortelloni e Ricotta. Don't forget, all of the ingredients used in this meal were made or raised right at the farmhouse, so you can imagine just how fresh everything was.. am I making your mouth water yet?

I was a bit taken back by our second course when I first saw it... this pasta was almost the color of blood, and I wasn't sure exactly what it was. Turns out that it was Spaghetti with beet sauce and it tasted fantastic. 

On to the next dish...

Round three of pasta. Linguine con funghi e pomodoro ... Linguine with mushrooms and tomatoes. A bit lighter, still delicious.

We got a little more exotic for the next course, and finally got some meat. This is fried rabbit and fried pumpkin flowers. It was my first time trying both rabbit and pumpkin... I really enjoyed the taste of the rabbit but thought it was fairly difficult to avoid the bones. Both were crunchy and a nice change from all of the soft, fresh pasta we had just had.

Course number five, and it's at this point that I'm thankful that I'm not one of those girls who only eats half of what's on her plate and is full. Slices of pork and stuffed tomatoes... there was some salad too, but I decided to save that little bit of empty stomach left for dessert...


And I'm glad I did. Gelato cake, called a Semi-Freddo. 

And we're in Italy, so of course we had a digestif to finish off the meal.

An absolutely amazing lunch. Agriturismo Il Poderone is located in Campigna, only a few minutes from where we took our hike. If you are in the area, it is WELL worth the trip!

Next up, the bloggers move to a spa hotel, have yet another amazing meal, and appear on Italian TV!

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