italyum® ('ital~yum') - Delicious food or drink of Italian origin.

There is a simple understanding in Italy, that food and drink are not just a requirement of life, they enrich life.

We have a simple mission at Italyum - to share that passion for fine food and drink, and to help you aquire the skills and knowledge to create your own authentic Italian cooking.

Yet authentic does not necessarily mean difficult. Through a series of easy to follow recipes graded from Easy to Advanced, we guide you though the process of taking good quality, basic ingredients, to create your own Italian masterpiece. It's the closest thing to alchemy we know, as you create delicious food using simple ingredients and the knowledge of generations of Italian cooks.

Our recipes are uniquely simple to follow with step by step pictorial guidance, and the expert commentary from Federico. If you want a challenge however, you can find it here also - how about trying your hand at homemade tagliatelle?

In no time at all, even if you have limited cooking experience you will be creating really tasty and interesting meals that will impress your friends, and delight your taste buds. Vegetarians should look out for the  sign denoting there is no meat or fish, but there may be dairy products or eggs.

Italyum is currently the work of Federico Pezzaioli (recipe research and development) and Jeremy Webb (web site creation.) Italyum is not a restaurant, not a take away, not a publishing company but just our hobby!

A message from Federico - (See also the update below.)

When, at 38 years old (I am now 46), I decided to leave Italy for Scotland, I have always known that food was going to play a big role in my life. Food is the connecting leitmotif with my homeland; it is a great way to socialise with people and ,if you do it right it will also help you to enjoy life and live longer!

I publish Italian recipes because I am Italian and because I have been fortunate enough to grow up in a family where good and honest food was a daily routine, part of life. When living in Italy, I also had the chance to travel from top to toe (being a salesmen has its own advantages) and always ended up in a family run trattoria, where at the end of the service I was used to ask if it was possible to have a chat with the cook. I have never been afraid of asking things; this is how you learn.

I cannot guarantee you hundreds of recipes every year and I cannot guarantee that I will do this forever (the family is growing and commitments with it too), but what I can assure is that the recipes published in this website will be as authentic as they can get.

I spend considerable time researching recipes using old books, searching for the history of the recipe, then understanding the cultural background that influenced the way the recipe is carried out. Finally the “comparison”, where I discuss the recipe with the people living in the specific area where the recipe comes from, the old folk who are extremely knowledgable.

Sometimes, I still found myself travelling to Italy for the only purpose of getting the real touch and have a better understanding of what I am going to publish, like when I went in Romagna for a couple of days, to see how they make homemade tagliatelle using the traditional way; a metre long rolling pin!

Now, it’s time to share this passion with all of you and I hope to have the time and the drive to keep going and, why not, to learn more so that more people will enjoy what I am doing.  

We hope you enjoy Italyum. If you do, why not bookmark the site, and tell your friends!

Federico

UPDATE! 2011

We have been running this website for 8 years and I remember when me and Jeremy discussed for the first time creating a website for Italian food lovers. It happened during a kayak trip down a Scottish river (me and Jeremy are keen kayakers) and between a wave and a river drop, the ideas were flowing faster than the water.

We decided to put our expertise together; I was the cook and Jeremy was the IT guy who would help me to launch the website and keep things updated.

Nowadays, it is not any more about mere cooking; it is about Facebook, Twitter, iPhone apps, Android apps, so things have changed and we have found ourselves in a situation that I would not describe as a hobby at all.

It was a hobby at the initial stage, then we got busier and busier. On my side, in 2009 I decided to work part time and at the same time to attend the professional cookery courses run by the City of Glasgow college. I have been fortunate to meet some very good chefs and under their guidance I have learned a lot about cooking techniques, terminology, and ingredients .

At the end of two intense years, I have managed to get the SQA in professional cookery and I am happy I have done this because when I write about recipes I really want to give you the correct information and show you the right techniques.

Now, Italyum is keeping me busy at least two days a week and what started as a hobby, it's becoming a semi-pro activity. We are specialising in digital publishing, with two mobile phone apps and one e-book for kindle notebook already available in the net.

For the future I have in mind more bakery stuff because that is I want to do; I love baking, especially bread, and when I go to Italy, I always try to find some time to work overnight, in my home time bakery shop, with Giuseppe, a Master baker who's keen to share his knowledge with me.

This doesn't mean that I will not give you pasta recipes any more; it is just to say that the Italyum website content will be a bit more diverse.

On Jeremy's side, he is busier than than ever; also for him Italyum means at least one or two days work a week, updating the website, the apps and working at new things we have in mind. His day job as a web strategist at webbactivemedia and Trustee of the Forces Children's Trust plus hobbies of kayaking and adventure racing keep him very busy.

We hope that you are enjoying what we are doing and if sometimes things are not exactly as you expect, just consider that we are just two, with no other resources than lots of good will!               

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