Store Cupboard Staples

Italian food cupboards are generally very well stocked with the essential, simple ingredients needed to create wonderful meals. One of the main things to remember with Italian food is that less is more – so few ingredients should be used and cooked simply, but they must be the best quality that one can afford. Our hamper of Italian staples is packed with top quality products that will all come in useful! We sourced only products that we ourselves would use from small family businesses and farms across Italy.

What's Inside

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Liguria (500ml) This excellent unfiltered cold pressed extra virgin olive oil is made from olives cultivated in this beautiful area of the Italian Riviera, Imperia, known as the olive oil capital of Italy. It comes exclusively from the small, fragrant olives of the “Taggiasca” variety which give a low acidity, golden yellow oil with a delicate flavour.
• Balsamic Vinegar from Modena (Aged 8 Years) (250ml) A rich bouquet and a perfect balance between sweet and sour make this a very versatile balsamic vinegar, made from the best musts by the Giusti family in Modena. With its wonderful perfume, it is a high class choice for salads, omelettes, meat and fish fillets and veal escalopes. Mentioned in the book ‘101 things to buy before you die’ alongside Champagne Krug and Iranian and Belluga Caviar, this vinegar is a twice Gold Medal winner.
• Gourmet Herb Salt (200g) A completely natural blend of Sicilian sea salt and Pink Himalayan salt flavoured with a blend of herbs. Excellent for just sprinkling on your salads, pasta dishes or vegetables to add taste and aroma. Great for cooking with, especially for seasoning and flavouring roast, grilled and boiled meat. Brilliant in sauces too!
• Slow Food San Marzano Tomato Passata (380ml) Passata is a form of tomato purée that has been passed through a sieve to remove the seeds and skins. It is therefore very smooth, and suitable for a number of uses where a finer purée is required.
• Ortolana Dried Pasta Sauce Mix (50g) Ortolana literally means ‘from the garden’ and these dried ingredients including aubergines, courgettes and pumpkin reconstitute into a hearty, tasty sauce when sautéed in extra virgin olive oil. Just add a tin of our delicious Agrigenus tomatoes cook down, and serve over pasta.
• Organic Borlotti Beans (300g) The hearty and nutritious Borlotti bean is widely used in Italian cooking. The beans are large and plump and when raw, ivory in colour with reddish-brown streaks. They take on a darker colour when cooked and the interior becomes floury. Borlotti beans are free from cholesterol and particularly rich in protein. They are perfect in soups, stews, pasta dishes and risottos. 
• Bronze Die Cut Penne Pasta (500g) Penne rigate are medium length tubes with their ends cut at an angle (like a quill or fountain pen) and with deep ridges (rigatura) are said to have originated in Campania and are a perfect shape for all sauces. We suggest cooking them with spicy tomato sauces or sauce.
• Arborio Rice (500g) This rice takes its name from a village in the countryside near Vercelli in northern Italy, one of the best rice growing areas in the world.  This short, fat and slightly oval shaped rice is perfect for risotto thanks to its high starch content. Cooking releases this starch and gives any risotto its lovely creamy consistency.
• Sicilian Cracked Green Olives in Olive Oil (314ml) These lightly spiced Sicilian crushed olives have a bold, firm flavour and are ideal served as part of an aperitivo, as a snack alongside other antipasti or as a delicious side dish with grilled or roasted meats.
• Caputo Extra Fine ‘00’ Flour (1kg) Now you can make real Italian pizza at home! Caputo flour is recognized as the world’s best pizza flour and is used by 80% of pizzerias in Naples! If you have already tried making pizza at home and haven’t had much success, we think that switching to this flour will make all the difference!
• Organic Fairtrade Arabica Coffee (250g) Our Caffè Haiti “BIO” blend, made of 100% Arabica coffee is both 100% organic and 100% fairtrade. It is strong and full of flavour and ideal for espresso pots, caffettiere and filter coffee machines.
• Capers in Sea Salt (250g) The Aeolian Island of Salina, one and a half hours north of Sicily produces the finest capers in the world. The capers grow naturally and are of course organic, they are also a Slow Food product. Capers will add a natural richness and depth of flavour to al your favourite sauces, soups, salads, stews, rice and pasta dishes.
• Hot Calabrian Chilli Powder (100g) If there is one thing that makes Calabrian food Calabrian, it is spicy red peppers, and this chilli powder is super-hot! While many varieties of hot pepper are grown in the region, most are referred to as Calabrian peperoncino, and used in regional dishes. Like all capsicum plants, Calabrian peppers require hot weather to flourish and develop the oils that give them their spiciness.
• Boscaiola Dried Pasta Sauce (50g) From Campania, this dried Boscaiola sauce roughly translates as "sauce in the style of the woodsman" The dried ingredients including aubergines and porcini mushrooms reconstitute into a hearty, tasty sauce when sautéed in extra virgin olive oil. Add our passata, cook down, and serve over pasta - a quick and easy meal!

Our favourite Italian staples are presented in a lovely gift box tied with a ribbon.  A gift message option is available at the checkout. Please note that if we are out of stock of any item we reserve the right to substitute it with the most similar available item.

Dietary

Vegan, Vegetarian.

Allergens: sulphites, wheat, celery, capers.