Press

You can buy carta di musica from Italian specialist food shops, including the online deli vallebona.co.uk. It keeps for weeks packed and costs about £8 per kilo – which goes a long way. link

Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday, 20^th November 2011

Another of Italy’s tiny islands, Sardinia, also has a fine food culture, although its maggot cheese casu marzu, could be describes as an acquired taste. But there’s no such extreme food from Vallebona, a company that specializes in the very best of Sardinian ingredients. Its coppa is incredible, sweet and infused with cloves, whilst its music paper bread and pecorino are excellent too. It finds the very best and delivers to your door. vallebona.co.uk link

The 50 Best Food Websites Indipendent 6th June 09

House & Garden March 09

Featured in wine & food: "Vallebona, the online purveyor of delicious Italian foodstuffs, is continually introducing new products to its range - providing a great way to expand your culinary horizons. Try serving its venison, lamb, goat or wild-boar prosciutto on a board with some bread and spicy olive oil as an interesting amuse-gueule for guests to graze on while you finish cooking. Call 020 8944 5665, or visit www.vallebona.co.uk"

 

House & Garden

Featured in Taste Note: "Vallebona, which recently celebrated its tenth birthday, sources delicious foods from small, artisan producers in mainland Italy and Sardinia. The range includes charcuterie, sauces and cheeses, as well as delicacies such as hone with white truffle. There is a consultation service to help customers put together a particularly special hamper. For details and mail order, call 020 8944 5665, or visit www.vallebona.co.uk"

 

Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes

This book is published to accompany the television series entitled Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes, first broadcast on BB2 in 2007.

Featured in the "Where to get ingredients" section.
www.vallebona.co.uk for pecorino sardo maturo and other Sardinia cheeses, fresh sausages with fennel seeds (similar to luganega), bottarga muggine (salted grey mullet roe), black squid ink, small pantellaria capers, carnaroli risotto rice, anchovie, smoked pancetta and other Italian charcuterie, past and other ingredients.

Sunday Telegraph Magazine

Salty, delicious and strange, bottarga will transform a dish of pasta into a Sicilian feast, writes Giorgio Locatelli, in the third part of his four-week series on Italian cookery.

Bottarga is not something you come across much in this country; it's not even particulary well known in Italy. The dried pressed roe of the tuna or grey mullet, it comes from Sardinia and Sicily. It has a wonderfully stong fishy taste, like caviar, and is good enough to eat on it's own.

....you will find that you can marry it with just about anything - the fresher and lighter the other ingredients the better. It is fantastic shaved over a salad of rocket and mozzarella, for instance, or a plate of fried eggs.....

I won't pretend that getting hold of bottarga is easy; if you can't find an Italian delicatessen that stocks it , you can order it from Stefano Vallebona.....who suppplies the Dorchester Hotel, Harvey Nichols Food Hall and me.