With the festive season around the corner, braving the shopping malls and planning your Christmas dinner can be quite the exercise. We thought we’d help relieve some of that stress by putting together a comprehensive list of our favourite Rialto products for you to plan your festive shopping – and even better, you can purchase most of these online at our Online Shop!

ANTIPASTI

Make a platter of all your favourite nibbles, like Goldcrest Black and Green Pitted Olives, Goldcrest Artichokes, cheeses like Ile De France Petite Brie and Zanetti Grana Padano and cured meats like Prosciutto Crudo and Parma Ham. Arrange on a board with some Italian Colussi Crackers and Roberto Breadsticks and spreads like Goldcrest Fig Jam for your guests to help themselves. For a delicious dish, try this Parmesan Crusted Artichoke recipe or this Parma Ham Camembert Bake.

 

 

MAINS

Whether you’re going full traditional or more contemporary, you’ll find what you’re looking for at Rialto. For the traditional, if you’d like a proper glazed ham try our Bonne Maman jams and Goldcrest Marachino Cherries. We also suggest our Goldcrest Cranberry Jelly, Mint Jelly and Apple Sauce for your festive sides. If you’d like to go Italian, try a lasagne made using Granoro Lasagne Sheets or a cannelloni using Granaro Cannelloni. No pasta is complete without Granaro Passata sauce. For something completely different, try this Antipasto Pizza.

 

DESSERTS

No festive table is complete without a traditional Italian Maina Panettone. Sweet and delicious, these delicious cakes can be served with ice cream, cream, as is with a glass of Marsala wine, or as a component of a Bread and Butter pudding. Available in different flavours like Chocolate, Fruit, Citrus and Tiramisu.

As part of Woolworths Flavour society Italian month Luciano and Mickey got together to cook a few delicious dishes they would share with their families for the June 2014 issue of TASTE magazine.

Their friendly rivalry in the kitchen resulted in a “cook-off” judged by TASTE editor Abigail Donnelly. Luciano’s prawn pasta narrowly beat Mickey’s Fiorelli pasta with salmon and cream. Check out the “behind the scenes” action and our recipes page for their fantastic easy recipes.

 

Pastas, like all good things, are not all created equal. In fact, some are more equal than others. Call us biased, but we believe to truly have the traditional Italian experience, you’ve got to do things with a bit more consideration, care and authenticity. And that means knowing your pasta! All of the authentic Italian pastas Rialto imports are made from 100% durum wheat flour according to age old tradition.

Bronze die pasta pertains to the cutter through which the pasta is extruded. This creates grooves and a rougher texture on the surface of the pasta, allowing sauces to coat and hold onto the pasta perfectly.

While there’s no harm in whipping together a quick and perfectly satisfying midweek pasta with whichever shape and sauce you have on hand, there is of course the ‘proper Italian way’ to do things. Each pasta shape, though at essence purely decorative, is meant to be prepared with certain toppings and not with others. But don’t be put off by the sheer scale of variety!

Here we will go through them in detail to forever end the confusion:

Short, Tubed Pastas

Think penne, rigatoni and macaroni and you always think heavy sauces and bakes, right? That’s because their ridges, curves and tubes are best served for holding thicker, heavier sauces and will hold their shape nicely, giving you perfect mouthfuls of sauce and pasta.

Long, Thin Pastas

The long, skinny pastas like spaghetti, linguine, angel hair and fettucine work best with thinner, lighter sauces. Cream and oil based sauces in particular work well with long, delicate strands of perfectly al dente pasta. The exception to this rule is of course Spaghetti Bolognese!

Shell Shaped Pastas

Conch shapes, or conchiglie, gnocchi and rigate, serve as holders of sauce and are best for chunkier sauces like chicken, beef mince, spinach and ricotta, mushroom and tomato. These pastas are also often textured to better hold onto sauce.

Twirly Shaped Pastas

Spirals, fusilli, bow ties and ruote (wheels) are the versatile pastas and can be used with a range of sauces and toppings, from thick and chunky to light and thin, as well as pasta salads and bakes.

There may be many to choose from and an endless array of delicious sauces to accompany them, but as a general rule you can never go wrong with pasta, so have fun making it your own!

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Visit the Rialto Foods Factory Shop in Cape Town or Johannesburg, or visit your nearest Woolworths store for the finest imported Italian pasta.

Parmigiano Reggiano is the rich, fruity flavoured, slightly grainy textured authentic Parmesan cheese. It is produced primarily in the Parma, Emilia Reggio and Modena regions of Italy, as well as the Mantua on the right bank of the river Po and Bologna on the left side of the river Reno.

Production dates back to the 12th Century, and it is still hand-made using the traditional methods by artisan makers; staying true to the unique and natural process. It all begins with the 4,000 farms (600 litres of milk go into each cheese wheel) included in the area of production, where cattle are fed on locally grown forage and where fermented feed and silage are banned, ensuring that the raw milk used in the production is high-quality.
Parmigiano Reggiano… the only parmesan!

The area of origin is a respected and protect environment, thereby giving Parmigiano Reggiano its unique qualities and characteristics and regular controls are carried out on the milk to ensure that its quality and presence of special characteristics is as it should be – a purely natural and nutritious product, without additives or preservatives and well matured. A PDO stamp is fire-branded onto the rind of the cheese to confirm the authenticity of the cheese as a product of the area of origin.

Parmigiano Reggiano has a minimum maturation time of 12 months but only when it reaches 24 months of age is it at its best. A truly special product, Parmigiano Reggiano is an essential ingredient in many Italian dishes and a must have Italian product in your fridge.

Parmigiano Reggiano 24 months matured, is available at Woolworths.

Click here for recipes using Parmigiano Reggiano.

Kikkoman Soy Sauce sizzles in Ultimate Braaimaster

Kikkoman soy sauce was one of the sponsors of Ultimate Braaimaster 2013 hosted by well known celebrity foodie Justin Bonnello.

In the “perfect steak” elimination challenge in episode 4, each team selected three cuts of meat, and presented one steak prepared using Kikkoman’s Soya Sauce.

Kikkoman soy sauce was also featured as a key ingredient in UBM with contestants using the product at their own discretion to add flavour to many other seafood and meat braai dishes.

Kikkoman’s unique flavour makes it far more than an accompaniment for sushi – it’s widely used in delicious meat marinades and sauces ideal for the braai. Check out our recipe page for Kikkoman recipe ideas to add something different to your braai.

Rialto Foods / Olitalia Opera School Bursary  

The Olitalia group, founded and managed by the Cremonini family, is the largest single olive oil exporter in Italy.  Over several years, Olitalia and the Cremonini family have actively supported Opera in Italy. Together with Rialto Foods, the importer and distributor of the Olitalia brand in South Africa, the Cremonini family have combined their passion for Italian culture with their commitment to supporting transformation and development in South Africa through the Olitalia/Rialto Foods Opera School Bursary Prize.

 

Thesele Kemane 2013 Opera School Bursary Winner

Thesele Kemane is the recipient of the 2013 bursary. Kemane has graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Opera at UCT’s South African College of Music and has been accepted to further his opera studies at the acclaimed Juilliard School in New York. He was one of five rising South African opera stars to participate in the Glimmerglass Festival’s Young Artist programme and received a standing ovation at the United Nations General Assembly on Madiba’s 94th birthday. Kemane also performed at the Cremonini Family Gala at the

Palazzo Re Enzo, a 13th–Century palace in Bologna, Italy. He spent time in Modena and Rome receiving intensive voice training and attended master classes with Giuliana Panza and Raina Kabaivanska, the famous Soprano.

Rialto founders cook on Expresso

As part of Woolworths Flavour society Italian month, Luciano and Mickey were at it again, cooking two of their favourite dishes on the Expresso morning show. Watch them in action and see the recipes here.