Chanterelle Risotto at Sarti's in Glasgow

My husband and I were going back to Lisbon for holiday shortly. Food in Lisbon is just heavenly, not to mentioning the weather.... that being said, I have never come across any good pizzas in Lisbon. Obviously you don't go to Lisbon to eat pizza really, but after having so many fish/seafoods and custard pastries every day, one sometimes needs a change, hence a notion of good stone baked pizza, even in Lisbon. For such a ubiquitous dish like pizza, one would think 'you can't go wrong with pizza, anywhere', albeit pizza in Italy being still the best in the world. Alas, not in Lisbon, or at places we have been to in Lisbon ...

So, naturally, we decided to go to Sarti, our favourite restaurant in Glasgow, to have a really good pizza before we go back to Lisbon for imminent holiday. Yes, we love pizza at Sarti's. In fact, the first time we went to Florence, we went to this restaurant to order some stone baked pizza. It was really good but also we said to each other, 'just like the one at Sarti's!'

Anyway, before we got to Sarti, I had already decided that I was going to have a tuna and red onion pizza.  Then, one of the chefs, Martin, came over and told us that chanterelle risotto was really good that day ....

I had a big dilemma ... do I have a pizza or the risotto.... the chef said it was really good .... and I had never tried chanterelle mushroom properly before.
In the end we were persuaded; we could have pizza any time but not the chanterelle mushroom risotto, and we did not regretted our decisions.

The risotto was really delicious, so creamy and with lovely flavoursome mushrooms!!!  How could they make the dish so beautifully ...
If they had this on a special menu in future, we would definitely have this again!

This was half-portion size risotto, sprinkled with freshly grated Parmesan cheese;
there were lots of chanterelle mushrooms, mmmmmm.

Well, just as well I only ordered as a half size portion so that at least I could manage to finish this, because we already had some focaccia whilst waiting for starter, and then had roasted red peppers with mozzarella cheese for starters, both were fantastic!

Mozzarella cheese was really soft and creamy with lovely and warm roasted peppers with balsamic glaze 

Ok, we are not going to have a pizza for a while but we can still look forward to going Sarti's pizza when we come back from our holiday in Lisbon, unless they create another scrumptious dish that would make it difficult for us not to have their pizza...

That's all forks!

Perfect Risotto at Hotel Torretta

Weather in Northern Tuscany has not been great as we had anticipated - it is overcast most of the time with occasional sunshine but not hot enough for sun-bathing, with occasional rain here and there with wind. As I only brought summer clothes with me and a black cardigan to shield myself from cold wind, I could not venture out too far other than going for a short walk through the park.

On our first day in Montecatini Term and being on Sunday with cold wind, we thought there may not be much restaurants opened in the town and that we decided to have lunch at our hotel.

The lunch was a set menu that began with assorted salad in buffet style so you just pile up whatever you fancy - I tried olive marinated onions and fennel which were really wonderful, especially I really liked the onions.

The primo was risotto with prawns, asparagus and cherry tomatoes.  I have never had such a delightful and perfect risotto - rice was soooo creamy yet with bites and never stodgy or too thick. You can also taste every key ingredients - asparagus, prawns and cheery tomatoes. And it looks so lovely to look at. The weather may not be that great outside but it sure lifted up our sprits!

The Secondi was sole with cheese & vegetable flan and boiled potatoes.  It was simple and light.

The dessert was panna cotta with strawberry sauce. I am used to eating supermarket panna cotta with more genetin-like texture, I have forgotten how creamy, silky-smooth the real home-made one is! This was really delicious, with pretty colour.

We then decided to have coffees - I know Italians don't have cappuccino for mid-day but we don't care, we asked for it to finish our meals. Cappuccino came with extra layers (?) of frothy creams to make us smile.

That's all forks for the lunch we had the other day.

P.S - The next day, my husband had to buy me Benetton's rain jacket as I was feeling so cold and pathetic. Luckily, for any consolation, it was 30% off due to end of season sale and now I can go out in the rain or wind!  I do like the style and functionality of it so I can definitely wear it back home.
I had never imagined we ended up having to buy a jacket in early summer in Italy!!!