
I described in Italy All-Star Feast: The South how a blog about New England food and drink came to focus temporarily on Italian traditional cuisine, wrapping it up with a trio of all-star feasts exploring the 20 provinces of that ancient foodie culture. This was a tricky one, as I had to squeeze in eight provinces, each with long and distinct culinary traditions!

For the Northern Italy feast, I included the big provinces of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna, plus the smaller Alpine border provinces of Val d'Aosta (on the French/Swiss border), Trentino-Alto Adige (Austria), Friuli -Venezia-Giulia (Slovenia), and little coastal Liguria, home of Genoa. Our companions were our old friends David and Diane Peck. Here's how we did it: