Dear Lisa, I'm very happy to write you a short paragraph to describe my area. I'll take the description from our touristic brochure. Vercelli is situated in North-West Italy between Turin and Milan. It is a very important city in the region called Piedmont. The city alone has about 50,000 inhabitants. "Each season presents Vercelli country with different aspect and probably for this reason this land looks so delightful. In Spring the whole plan becomes a large watery expanse: from Monferrato hills the landscape below looks as a huge mirror, geometrically framed into squared banks of dark brown land, on which farms and small villages lean like floating islands. Over the months this "sea" changes colour turning slowly from blue to green and finally in September to golden. These are the rice characterizing Vercelli country up to Gattinara, at the border with Valsesia. This is the land that produces rice, where the sky mirrors itself and where the sky shows up many treasures belonging to art, to culture, to the farming society that for many centuries has taken part in writing an important part of the local history. ... The museums and the archives in Vercelli, the capital of the province, have a rich heritage of history and culture and the monuments, here as in the other towns of the area, give evidence of an important hystorical past. In the parks and in the natural preserves there is a unique natural environment, very difficult to be found elsewhere: the so called "lame" of the Sesia river and the "isolone" of Oldenico are a shelter for herons and many other species of birds, that only few years ago were in danger for extinction. The society of the "Partecipanza" in Trino probably represents the only example of league that has exploited a wood for seven hundred years. In the XV Century the Cistercian monks living in Lucedio's Abbey developed rice growing all over Vercelli country. Not only history, art and nature, then, but also gastronomy. Here rice is the basic agricultural eating product. As it is said "it grows into water and dies into wine", thanks to an exceptional wine as it is the "Gattinara" now being reconized D.O.C.G. wine (guaranteed and controlled origin name)."

VERCELLI, ITALY

ARTICLE AND RECIPE-- BY DEBORA PROTTI

Recipe for :   PANISSA Ingredients: rice, bacon fat, beans, broth, salami under fat, tomato extract, red wine, salt, oil, laurel, rosemary, grated Parmisan cheese, onion. Method: you need 2 handfulls of rice for each person and 1 more. Prepare some broth (you need a big saucepan almost full for 4 people) and cook the beans in it with some leaves of laurel. You can also make broth with soup cubes. Cut in little pieces a little salami under fat (or a not well matured soft salami. Salami under fat is typical of my area), cut the onion and the bacon fat. Put in a large copper pan some oil and let the onion become gold; add the bacon fat and the salami and let it fry for a little. Add the beans without broth and laurel (you'll need it later), add the rice, some rosemary and some tomato extract. Toast it for a little then turn off the fire and cover with a lid. After 10-15 minutes light the fire and start cooking rice. Add some broth and let the rice cook: go on like this since the rice is almost cooked, then add a glass of red wine (we use the Barbera one) and some salt if necessary. Cook the rice since the wine is absorbed: the rice must be a little hard, but not too much. Add some Parmisan cheese and serve the rice. FOR THIS RECIPE WE USE THE CARNAROLI RICE: I don't know if you've it, however I think you can also use parboiled rice. Let me know if you tried this recipe and if you liked it! Debora deboraprotti@jumpy.it