This past Sunday was Newmarket’s annual Festival Italiano. As well as Auckland’s top Italian restaurants, the festival included lots of delicious street food and music and entertainment. Pizza, pasta, cheese, bread, Limoncello….I sampled anything and everything that was on offer and then sat down to a delicious lunch in the sun.
One of the things I chose was a ciabatta roll filled with fresh mozzarella which was rolled up with champagne ham, olives & herbs. The mozzarella from Massimo’s Italian Cheeses, is made in small batches from whole milk and has a soft, buttery texture and delicate flavour. It is stretch-cured, meaning it’s pliable and highly suited to making a roll, as it absorbs the flavours and juices of the other ingredients. Another thing I tried was a crostata made with mixed berries and almonds (main photo). A crostata is an Italian baked tart or pie, baked with either jam, ricotta or fruit. This one had the almond flavour baked into the pastry, which made it extra tasty.
My mum had never tried a cannoli before, so of course that was a must-have on our list.
The longest line was surely the one for Napoli Central, a mobile company that does events, weddings and appears at the Hobsonville Point Farmers Market and the Mt Eden Market on Friday evenings. The chef encouraged us to smell the freshly made pork sausage that was being used on the pizzas, and it smelled divine. Unfortunately I didn’t have room (!) for pizza by that stage (I wish I had seen their stall first), so I’m going to have to track them down at the market.
Napoli Central in pizza-making-action
The wood fire oven
Cheese!
Festival Italiano: held once a year in September, in Newmarket, Auckland.
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