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Giamaica Caffe
Gianni Frasi is one of Italy's premier coffee roasters. He learned the coffee business from his uncle, Giovanni Erbisti, who began roasting coffee in his 1,500-foot apartment in 1947. Believing that too dark a roast masks the subtleties and fine aromas of a top-quality bean, Erbisti insisted on roasting coffee to the color of a tunica di monaco, a monk's tunic. Anything darker, he claimed, was burnt. Today, Frasi continues his uncle's coffeemaking tradition in the same small shop in Verona, making as much coffee in a year as Starbuck's makes in a day. Frasi and his dad work side-by-side, monitoring each batch of coffee as it roasts slowly in his uncle's original fire-engine-red roaster. Fanatical about quality, Frasi flies down to South America every year to personally select the beans used to make his unparalleled coffee. Giamaica Caffe is used in Italy's finest restaurants.
Veneto
Considered one of the great destinations of the world, Venice so dominates this region that it's easy to forget what lies beyond this beautiful and romantic city. The region covers a stretch of land between the Alps, the Dolomites, and the Gulf of Venice; a tiny piece of it touches Austria. Veneto has a remarkable variety of terrain, which contributes to the complexity of this region's cuisine. Venetian cooking is a combination of the bounty of the sea and mainland, as well as the influence of the East. Venice is the birthplace of polenta. Plain, grilled, or fried, it is an everpresent accompaniment to meat, fish, or game. The Venetians also popularized rice and created a host of risottos made with almost everything the countryside has to offer. Two varieties of rice are deemed by Venetian cooks to make the best risotto: Vialone Nano and Carnaroli. There's no tradition of pasta in Venice, save pasta e fagioli, a thick pasta and bean soup originally made with speckled beans from Lamon. Treviso is famous for its radicchio rosso, delicate, slightly bitter red chicory, as well as for its Asiago cheese, which the region has been producing for over 1,000 years. Fish is another Venetian staple, and the selection of seafood culled from the Adriatic is astonishing. Dolci are mostly simple cookies, typically eaten with a glass of white wine. Around the holidays, Venetians might be tempted by something a touch richer, such as Perbellini Ernesto's delicious golden breads Ofella d'Oro and Pandoro. Created in Treviso, heavenly Tiramisu is the region's most recent claim to fame. Veneto is Italy's largest producer of D.O.C (region and varietal specific) wine. Although Soave is the most popular Italian wine in the U.S., it's not the region's best. Among the excellent wines produced in this region are the semisweet Prosecco sparkling wine, the powerful Amarone, made with semidried grapes, and the medium-bodied Valpolicella.
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