Our Guide to Experiencing Italy at Home
One of our editors was supposed to be traveling all throughout Italy this week. The trip was planned last summer before the thoughts of social distancing and safer-at-home measures were on any of our minds. Now with various global safety measures in place, the trip has unfortunately been postponed until September or maybe even spring 2021. Only time will tell.
We were so excited to share a series of blog posts showcasing some of the best places to visit in Rome, Florence, Venice, Capri, and Positano, but those travel guides will have to wait. All of that being said, we’re excited to share our favorite Italy-inspired movies, cocktails, activities & recipes so that you (and we) can have a quasi-Italian vacation whenever and wherever. You can bet that we’ll be pretending that we’re experiencing the sights, sounds & taste of Italy for the next 10 days in lieu of the real thing.
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AN ITALIAN BREAKFAST EXPERIENCE
In Italy, breakfast looks a lot different than the eggs, protein & toast meal that Americans are accustomed to. So to set your ‘Italian vacation’ from home off on the right start, we suggest starting with a proper la colazione all'italiana.
Step One: Start the day by visiting your neighborhood café (Italians call it a bar) and stand at the bar while reading a newspaper. For us due to the stay-at-home order, that bar will be our kitchen counter, but at least we’ll be standing.
Step Two: Order (or make) your coffee. If you love milky drinks like cappuccinos or caffè lattes, now is the time to enjoy those types of drinks since Italians would laugh at you if you ordered a milky drink later in the day.
Step Three: Pair your coffee with a baked good, like biscotti, brioche or cornetti (essentially an Italian croissant).
How To Make the Perfect Cappuccino
We love ordering cappuccinos at coffee shops, but we have yet to master making a cappuccino at home. This video by the coffee brand illy should help, and at the very least, hearing the barista speak Italian will help to transport us to a neighborhood caffè in Italy!
MUSIC TO SET THE TONE
Italian Classics
Old school Italian American classics, like Dean Martin’s That’s Amore and Volare, always brings a smile to our faces. We love the variety in the Spotify playlist below, so we’ll definitely be turning this on while cooking and/or eating pasta this week. We’re also HUGE fans of Andrea Bocelli and highly recommend listening to this album that was on repeat our whole childhood.
Modern Italian Hits
If you’re looking to listen to the Italian hits that you’d likely be dancing to at a beach club in Capri or Positano, then this Spotify playlist is for you! You can bet we’ll be playing these tunes while preparing our Aperol spritzes.
ITALIAN WINE & COCKTAILS
How To Make a Perfect Aperol Spritz
Ever since one of our editors (& resident e-designer!) enjoyed her first Aperol spritz while in Lake Como, Italy, we have been obsessed with how refreshing & beautiful the drink is. More & more restaurants are adding the Aperol spritz to their cocktail menus after the popular drink went viral on Instagram, but luckily it’s also super easy to make at home.
Ingredients:
Aperol – only $19.99 here which is a steal!
Prosecco – we love using La Marca but any dry Prosecco will do.
Sparkling water or club soda
Orange or blood orange
Instructions:
We opt for using the popular 3-2-1 rule to make a refreshing & balanced Aperol spritz!
- Add ice cubes to a large wine glass (or the vessel of your choice)
- Pour 3 shot glasses of Prosecco over ice.
- Add 2 shot glasses of Aperol.
- Pour 1 final shot glass of sparkling water or club soda.
- Stir!
- Pop in a slice of an orange or blood orange & enjoy!
Wine
Pick up some bottles of your favorite Italian wine – bonus points for choosing varietals that are produced in the region that you would have been staying in that night. See below for some key thought starters so we can save you a Google search!
Lombardy: Pinot Nero (similar to Pinot Noir)
Puglia: Primitivo
Tuscany: Chianti and Sangiovese
Veneto: Prosecco
ITALIAN MEAL RECIPES To ENJOY
Italian cuisine is one of our all-time favorites. While you really can’t go wrong with bold, Italian flavors, we’re sharing some of our favorite go-to recipes, in addition to recipes that we’re looking forward to testing out, below. Be sure to click the photos to view the recipes!
Risotto
We have to admit, we overlooked risotto as a staple Italian dish for the majority of our lives. While we can’t pinpoint exactly when we fell in love with risotto, we can say that a good risotto has now become one of our favorite Italian meals. It’s versatile, feels light, and it’s downright delicious. Whether you choose to make a classic risotto dish à la Bon Appetit (left), add asparagus & mascarpone like What’s Gaby Cooking (center), or bring in French influences with brie cheese à la Half Baked Harvest (right), you really can’t go wrong. Can you tell how happy we are that asparagus is in season? As lifelong vegetarians, we can also vouch for using vegetable broth in place of chicken broth with no real loss of flavor.
Pasta
There are so many different varieties of pasta – including the pasta shape itself, as well as the sauce – that it’s hard to narrow our favorite and must-try recipes to share. The beauty of pasta is that you can really make it your own. Even if a recipe suggests using spaghetti, you have the ability to use penne or bucatini. From there, you can stick with the recipe as is, or add your favorite vegetables or proteins to mix things up & add more flavor. Or if you want to really revel in the taste of the sauce, enjoy the pasta and sauce all by themselves – bonus points for adding freshly grated parmesan. We suggest a classic pappardelle with bolognese sauce (left, from Bon Appetit), homemade pesto spaghetti (center, from RecipeTin Eats), although we prefer linguine with pesto, and a well-balanced cacio e pepe (right, from NY Times Cooking).
Pizza
Like pasta, pizza is so incredibly versatile. Once you get the pizza dough down to a science, you have the ability to create countless masterpieces by changing the sauce and toppings. We don’t discriminate when it comes to pizza – we love it all! We love a good margherita pizza (left, from A Couple Cooks), pesto and burrata pizza with fresh greens (center, from Half Baked Harvest), and white pizza with mushrooms & spinach (right, from What’s Gaby Cooking).
We are also obsessed with this pasta-style turned pizza from Pizzana: the cacio e pepe pizza. Mouth-watering!
ITALIAN DESSERTS TO EXPERIENCE
One of the things we love most about Italy is the joy that gelato brings to the people – locals & tourists alike. We have yet to find a perfect store-bought gelato, but we hope a homemade recipe will suffice. Apart from a cup or cone of gelato, tiramisu and affogato (vanilla gelato topped with espresso) are our next two favorite Italian desserts. We are taking a virtual Italian cooking class this weekend & will be making tiramisu, but for now we’ll share a well-rated recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction below for you to enjoy, in addition to two different gelato recipes, one from Wanderzest and the other from Giada De Laurentiis.
SHOP EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR AN AT-HOME ITALIAN VACATION
ESCAPE TO ITALY VIA MOVIES
Roman Holiday
This 1953 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck tells the story of a European princess and an American reporter. Although neither of the main characters are Italian, the film will transport you to many popular destinations in Rome, including the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, and La Bocca della Verita (The Mouth of Truth).
Call Me By Your Name
The Oscar-winning coming of age love story stars Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet. The movie is set in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy in 1983. You will be delighted by the beautiful, summer sights of less-touristy towns in the region, including Crema & Bergamo.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Cate Blanchett, you have likely seen this 1999 psychological thriller before, but if you haven’t, it’s a must! Despite being mystified and terrified throughout, you will also experience what summer in Italy was like in the 1950s. The film takes you all across the country – including Rome, Venice, Naples, and the islands of Ischia & Procida.
The LIzzie McGuire Movie
We’re not ashamed to admit that this was one of our favorite movies as preteens (and also teens if we’re being honest). Starring Hilary Duff, the movie follows Lizzie McGuire on a school trip to Rome where (spoiler alert!) she gets mistaken for a famous Italian pop star. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t expect the same thing to happen to us on our first (and second) trip to Rome. The movie will take you – mostly by vespa – to all of the most popular tourist destinations in Rome, including the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Colosseum, and Tivoli Gardens.
Letters to Juliet
Starring Amanda Seyfried, Gael García Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle), Vanessa Redgrave, and Christopher Egan, this 2010 romantic comedy is set in Verona, Italy. The movie starts off at Casa di Giulietta (the “house” of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet) and takes viewers throughout Verona, into Siena, and finally to a gorgeous vineyard, Caparzo S.R.L. Vineyard, in Montalcino.
Eat Pray Love
Also released in 2010, this memoir turned movie starring Julia Roberts details a woman’s solo travels to Italy, India, and Bali. We especially love the Italian scenes filmed throughout Rome – including Piazza Navona, The Pantheon, and the Borghese Gardens – and Naples.
We hope you enjoyed your Italian vacation all while staying where you are! Please share your favorite Italian recipes, cocktails, wine, movies & music in the comments below. We’re always looking for new inspiration & we hope we were able to help you with the same.
While we can’t wait to share travel guides for cities throughout Italy after our vacation is rescheduled, we hope that you’ll check out some of our other travel guides in preparation for your next trip. In the meantime, be sure to refresh your closet and home for spring with these great Target finds and full round-up of faux plants you’ll want in your home.