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Rustic Restaurant with a Heart for Chileheads
From Ca’ d’Alfieri you don’t need to brave the long and winding road down to Bardi for lunch or dinner. Maurizio and Luisa are excellent (and very creative) cooks, and they love to serve their house specialties to their B&B guests as well as to larger groups. At one of Ca’ d’Alfieri’s legendary “cena piccante” hot & spicy dinners, the chilehead count on their roofed terrace was 52 people from five countries, and they served a five-course fiery meal! It’s almost logical that floral decoration around the house includes all sorts of ornamental peppers…
The picture below shows a private chilehead gathering at Ca’ d’Alfieri’ including his holiness the “Pope of Peppers” Dave DeWitt with his wife Mary Jane, pepper breeder Dr. Mario DaDomo (see my report here) and his Spanish girlfriend (soon wife) Manuela, the German author (that’s me), and some of their mutual Italian chilehead friends. It’s a pepper world!
Of course Maurizio and Luisa can rely on hired help, but not only do they cook, they also take pride in serving their plates. Almost anything placed on their tables comes from their own farm and manufacturing, most of it organically produced.
With all the delish aromas in the air, Heidi needs to poke her head in the door every now and then.
She’s aware, though, that she can’t come in any further…
On special occasions, “il forno“, the antique brick oven outside the house, gets fired up, like above, when Maurizio prepared a whole “Parmesan Black” pig leg with a spicy sauce. After trying this meat, it is hard to go back to supermarket pork.
By request and for special occasions, even the cakes from the Ca’ d’Alfieri kitchen are spicy. Above, Luisa is melting high-quality dark chocolate in a double boiler for a cake. Interested in the recipe? See below!
While on the subject of baking…even the bread served for breakfast and dinner is baked on location, using flour from the region. On special occasions, the bread is piccante, laced with a good portion of red pepper flakes! In fact, there are few food items here that are not available in a chilehead-compatible version. We love you, guys!
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