Recipe Polenta with Cheese

Typical recipe with the PGI Salmerino del Trentino, cooked in a pan with seasonal vegetables.

The Chestnut: sweet, healthy and low in calories. The Valle Isarco/Eisacktal Valley innkeepers show us the taste of the chestnut during the “Valle Isarco Chestnut Speciality Weeks” from the middle of October to the beginning of November when everything revolves around the fruit of the bread-fruit tree. Numerous inns all along the route of the Keschtnweg, in the traditional chestnut growing area of the Valle Isarco offer all sorts of tasty treats during this time, which are all prepared using the noble chestnut.

Speculoos is a type of shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on or just before St Nicholas’ feast (December 6th) in the Belgium, the Netherlands and Northern France. In recent decades it has become available all year round. Speculoos are thin, very crunchy, slightly browned and, most significantly, have some image or figure (often from the traditional stories about St. Nicholas) stamped on the front side before baking; the back is flat. The Lotus brand is one of the most popular. You can also find them covered in chocolate…a real Belgian treat!

“Dining like Kings” under the Austrian monarchy did not necessarily mean fine dining. Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, for example, preferred simple meals. One of them was a simple Gugelhupf for dessert, which he loved to have served by his life-long confidante Katharina Schratt.