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Some slightly related from Technorati and Google.

 [At Our Table] Have you had Doughnut Soup?: 18 Unique Courses at Moto: One of the things Chef Cantu is known for is using edible ink and edible paper in his dishes. The New York Times, commenting on Cantu’s technological innovation with edible inks and papers, has said that Moto is “where the sous-chef is an inkjet.” This course was a very high quality sushi roll, wrapped in edible paper that was printed with pictures of sushi rolls. The top, bottom and sides of the roll were wrapped with this amazing, edible paper and it made for a beautiful dish. The roll was outstanding.

 [Europe Travel - A European Vacation Travel Guide] Food, Wine, and Restaurants of the Piemonte: The Piemonte region of Italy offers a mind-bending array of wines, cheeses, cured meats, truffles and herbs, and is Italy's hazelnut capital. I've just visited, and prepared an introduction to Piemontese cuisine, including info on how you can participate in a truffle hunt (go in the fall for the far superior white truffle).

[Rurou.org] The Cheese Diaries: Raw milk Epoisses are exported mainly to Germany, Belgium, Italy, Swisstherland, where people are very found of with such a production, and where regulations about importation of raw milk goods are OK.This is good news, considering that no one was making it after the listeria scare in the '90s (great quote from an AFP article I found: "C'est tres dur. On a beaucoup souffert", confie Philippe Blanc, dirigeant de cette societe [Berthaut].) But, as Ed Behr wrote to me

[Info.detnews.com] Frank Sutherland on Wine -- Barbera is a taste of everyday Italy ...: 2001 Marchesi di Barolo Maraia Barbera at $8.99. This wine offered us smells and tastes of cranberries, lots of spice, licorice and a bit of earthiness. All this presented us with an unusual combination of flavors, but if you like them, the wine was well made for this price.

[Ilforno.typepad.com] Il Forno: Southern Italian cheeses, part II: Ragusano, the king of ...: in Sicily: it has been called the king of the island cheese by many Italian cheese experts, and while I haven't tasted all of the island's cheeses I do agree it is a great, imposing and important example of the craft. The first thing that strikes you is the sheer size of the cheese, and it's shape: a 12 to 16 kilo rectangular block which also gives the cheese it's Sicilian nickname scaluni i.e. step. I've occasionally seen a few of these babies on sale in Italy and they're impressive, but maybe it's just my being a male sample of the species, you know...

[Vinography.com] Vinography: a wine blog: Report from the World Wine Market Tasting ...: Now that's a little harsh, I know, but there was a lot of awful wine being poured today, and more than a few of them had "Looking for Distribution" signs on their tables. Additionally there was also a lot of wine NOT being poured. For an event that billed itself as representing the international flavors of wine, where were Spain, Italy, that little country called France, and uh, how about some US producers, too ? In retrospect I see that the conspicuous absence of almost all the decent small producers of wine from Sonoma and Napa (with the notable exceptions of Von Strasser and Rosenblum who both seemed a little lost and despondent amidst the sea of mediocrity) was a sign of something.

[Vinography.com] Vinography: a wine blog: Dessert Wine Archives: It turns out that there's a good reason (sort of) that I haven't ever heard of Black Muscat, and that's because there really isn't any such thing. A quick journey to the Oxford Companion to Wine reveals that while there are a few varieties of related Muscat grapes, none of them is Black Muscat. However, the oldest and finest of the Muscat varietes, Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains in different strains, produces berries that range from pink to 'black.' The Companion goes on to say, "...the dark berries are not so deeply pigmented that they can produce a proper red wine," which is interesting because the Eldorado is certainly a nice shade of purple.

Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Wine, Gourmets Of Wine