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Europe where quality is at home
"Enjoy it's from Europe". Here in our European Union we know beautiful areas where the tastiest products are grown and produced. Products that you might not just put in your basket because you actually don't know the story behind the products. Or you have no idea what to expect from the taste. I was invited by PR agency Coopr to get acquainted with some South Tyrolean products. And when you hear Tyrol, you quickly think of mugs of beer and lederhösen. But from this region come beautiful quality wines and other products with quality labels. And I'm going to tell you all about that in this blog "Europe where quality is at home"!
cooking workshop
And how can you better assess and get to know products? Yes, by tasting them and holding them in your hand and being able to smell and feel them. So I jumped in the car to Amsterdam where we had a workshop with a number of food bloggers on these products. The cheerful Roberta Pagnier from 24Kitchen and the ambassadors of South Tyrolean products welcomed us at Keizer Culinair with a nice bubble.
Together we went to work to make a delicious 3-course lunch. The bloggers were divided into teams for, main and dessert. I myself was part of team starter and this was a Tyrolean gnocchi with Stilfser BOB cheese. And candied tomatoes. Is your mouth watering already?
Quality labels
As I mentioned, all the products we have used have been provided with a quality label. These labels are issued by the European Union. The protected name guarantees the consumer that these products meet the specific quality requirements. But also that these products come from the indicated region of origin.
This way it remains transparent and traceable. The products that who have tasted are provided with the DOC label, the BGA label and the BOB label. The DOC stands for the controlled designation of origin for wines from Italy. The PGI label stands for the geographical indication and that the product is linked to that region with a specific characteristic. The BOB label guarantees that the product is produced and processed in a specific region.
Get to work
After some explanation about these labels, we all got to work. Because, of course, food is not just on the table. The cheese we used with the gnocchi is the Stilfser cheese. This is the only cheese from South Tyrol that has been allowed to carry the PDO label since 2007. The cheese is produced on the mountains. For example, the representative told me that he knows a number of farmers who hardly ever come down the mountain and do not even have a zip code.
The cheese is produced at an altitude of over 1000 meters. The cheese is soft and easy to cut and has a soft and slightly salty taste. After tasting a small piece, I was immediately convinced! Almost a shame to grate it and use it in the recipe. But we did it anyway and it gave the gnocchi a lot of flavor.
Add some wine?
What is a good lunch without a nice glass of wine? We got to taste some delicious wines with the dishes. Both red and white and they are from the Alto Adige DOC. A fresh white wine but also a delicious light Pinot Grigio were poured.
Now I'm not a huge wine connoisseur, but I really know what a good wine is. And these passed the test with flying colors! South Tyrol is actually the northernmost tip of Italy. And with wine production that goes back more than 3000 years.
It is an extremely diverse area with vineyards from 200 to 1000 meters above sea level. Just over half are white grapes and the rest is red, of course. Viticulture in South Tyrol is very small-scale and almost all wines fall under the umbrella Consortium Alto Adige Wines.
Sweet and salt
The main course has two very nice products that give this dish a lot of flavor. They are the Südtiroler Speck PGI and the Südtiroler Apfel PGI. Or a nice salty and spicy bacon and fresh sweet apples. The advantage of this bacon is that they have this quality mark, the meat comes from responsible livestock farms. There has been a lot of buzz about eating meat lately and this can help consumers make an informed choice for a certified product.
We ate the bacon wrapped around a piece of pork tenderloin with fried potatoes and fresh rösti. But also simply cut raw into thin slices, this is a delicious piece of meat. The cheerful red, yellow and green Marlène apples have a fresh and crunchy bite. Due to the mountainous location, the orchards are protected and they also have sun for 300 days a year! More than 1 million tons of apples are harvested here every year.
The dessert
And we also find these Marlène apples in the dessert. We made an apple panna cotta with almond crisp. Not complicated to make at all and for extra flavor to this dessert we also used a fresh white Tyrolean wine. This way, all products are reflected in almost every dish. Food bloggers will not be food bloggers, so of course we snacked and tasted a lot while cooking.
So after lunch I was quite full. The suppliers had put together a very nice goodie bag for us at the event. This way I had the opportunity to enjoy a bit of it at home cheese, bacon, a delicious wine and some tasty apples.
Europe where quality is at home
All in all a very pleasant afternoon with nice people and beautiful products. What I can recommend to you when you go shopping is to look at these types of labels more often. With this we can all change the market a bit and opt for real quality. Very good of the European Union to come here with these kinds of initiatives and to allow us as consumers to make our choices more consciously.
This blog "Europe where quality is at home" was written in a paid collaboration with Coopr/Influentials
Delicious Happen is a multi-media company, so you can also find me on various social media. follow me on Facebook, Pinterest en Instagram under @delicioushappen. If you make this recipe I would love it if you tagged me #delicioushappen. A comment below in the comments is also nice of course!
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