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Travel around the world's kitchens to discover the most popular recipes from each country.  Follow the advice of international amateur and professional cooks: choice of ingredients, presentation tips and tastings on the menu!

Do you want to impress your guests and make them "gustatively" travel? Follow the advice of international amateur and professional cooks to make sweet and savory dishes: choice of ingredients, presentation tips and tasting buds on the menu!

In Quebec, the maple syrup season starts in spring. For Canadians, this nectar is more than just a nutrient-rich sugar substitute, it's a tradition. A component of many regional recipes such as pancakes, this amber syrup, made from the sap of maple trees, is mostly made in Quebec. Today, it is one of Canada's leading export products.

Matera is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. A limestone city with habitats carved into the rock. In the heart of this white city, another heritage, just as precious: bread.

Over here, it is much more than a food. It is the synthesis of a history and a territory.

The Halles de Dijon is a huge expanse hosting over 700 stalls in 4 pavilions. Its size goes along with the variety of specialities coming from the Burgundy region. The stalls on the periphery carry the proteins – a vast selection of meats, poultry and charcuterie. Seasonal mushrooms, organic vegetables and an enormous variety of cheese are concentrated in the centre. The vendors take pride in explaining how the abbey monks make their cheese or the black currents are harvested. The light entering the steel beams makes shopping at the market a pleasure and stopping for a little snack, a must. 

Burgundy and the annexed Jura regions have the highest number of organic farms in France and farming now attracts committed youngsters who believe in a more sustainable lifestyle of which selling at the market is part of. The vendors take pride in explaining how the monks living and praying in the abbeys of the Cote d’Or produce and mature their cheese, the farmers in the same area harvest the black currents for the city's famous ‘crème’, and the way the snails a la bourguignon, with butter and parsley, are prepared.  Every stall has a story to tell or a speciality to reveal. The gastronomic capital, as the city of Dijon goes by, has a lot more to discover than the world-popular mustard and its unique spicy gingerbread, and the chefs that buy at the market are always experimenting with new ways of using their regional delicacies.

Ireland's third-largest city has one of Northern Europe’s market gems: The English Market. It supplied high-quality food to the rich English families differently to the Irish market, which no longer exists. Differently to the past, the best Irish produce today remains on the island and can be found here.

Not big but consistent, one can find savoury sheep tripes boiled in milk and blood sausages, soda bread, and different sorts of potatoes. Everything from spiced beef to plum pudding, from apple ice wine to cucumber kombucha.
Irish cuisine puts together land and sea and one of the great specialities is the spiced beef that Tom, a big man with a large smile, prepares for his customers at the English market. He marinates the superb meat with cloves, allspice, treacle, juniper berries, brown sugar, white and black pepper & salt.  Eoin  instead prepares the so-called cheap cuts. He is a 4th generation “whole beast butcher”. He’s always suggesting to his customers to go beyond the usual cuts and be more daring in their dishes with neck and breast of lamb, flank steak, calves liver and oxtail. From the sea comes the fish collected directly from the fleet in Castletownbere, a beautiful area facing the Atlantic Ocean in West Cork. Pat’s fish stall is amazing, well prepared, attractive and has everything from oysters to the scary and ugly monkfish. Pat is a real character himself: a true Irishman who the Queen of England came to visit when she was in Cork.
 

Nearly a km long, the Isemarkt in Hamburg is one of the most significant bi-weekly markets the city can boost. 200 stalls full of fruit, bread, vegetables, fish, baked products and the best bonbons in town can be found under the U-Bahn viaduct. Most of the vendors are farmers and take us to where they cultivate rhubarb, grow wintery kale or harvest summer plums. The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is a real gastronomical hub collecting produce from the lower Saxony region to the Lünerburger Heathland, from Schleswig-Holstein in the north to the biodynamic farms, just out of the city limits. 

Most of the vendors are farmers showing us how they cultivate their specialities and how important the market is for their survival. This market assures them of direct contact and sales with their customers creating fidelity and trust.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful and well-organized food market buildings in Europe is the Mercado Central of Valencia. Built on the area where an open-air market stood for centuries, the Valencian style Art Noveau construction is a ‘Cathederal of senses’.

It’s two domes, iron beams and stained-glass windows, cover 400 stalls of local products, a proof of the variety and diversity of the regional agriculture, which is now transforming itself from intensive to natural.During the summer months, in a section of the market dedicated to seafood, the stalls display a variety of fish and most importantly the local muscles, the Valencian ‘clochinas’. Harvested from rafts on the old port of Valencia, they are the pride of the Valencian citizens. As much as the garrofò, a green bean internationally known as Lima bean.
On Toni’s small patch of land in Melliana, just a few km north of the city, they are grown and harvested keeping the original seed. At the market they can be bought fresh or dried and mainly end up in a paella. Three types of rice can be used to make paella and all are produced in the Albufera area, part of the municipality of Valencia itself. The fresh-water estuary has become a national park and for the rest, it is dedicated to the huge cultivation of rice. 

Travel around the world kitchens to discover the most popular recipes from each country.  Follow the advice of international amateur and professional cooks: choice of ingredients, presentation tips and tastings on the menu!

Do you want to impress your guests and make them "gustatively" travel? Follow the advice of international amateur and professional cooks to make sweet and savory dishes: choice of ingredients, presentation tips and tasting buds on the menu!

Corsican hospitality can only be fully experienced by those who take the time to discover the local terroir and specialties. Two foreign chefs can attest of this: English chef Simon Andrews in Ajaccio and Italian chef Fabio Bragagnolo in Porto Vecchio.

While the two managed to retain an Italian or English touch in their cuisine, they have also highlighted the island's culinary wealth as well as its unrivaled flavors. We follow them in their quest for the most genuine products from local producers of veal, cheese, saffron, olive oil, oyster and bluefin tuna – before tasting their delicious dishes.

Sometimes dubbed the land of wine, France is renowned the world over for the quality and diversity of its vineyards. However, traditional cultivation techniques and wine yields have exhausted the soil and the vines, which all too often have to be uprooted prematurely.
 
 

To fight against the decline of French viticulture, a young generation is favoring production methods that respect traditions and, above all, nature. Follow the struggle of men and women who are passionate about their profession and love a job well done, to maintain sustainable viticulture.
Will the reformers succeed in imposing themselves on the wine market?

The diversity and richness of Slovenia are perfectly represented at the central market of Ljubljana: bakeries, family dairies and meat stalls offering the Carniola sausage or the Kraški pršut, a delicious, unique ham can be found on the lower level of a seminary building. Two great open spaces host the fresh fruit and vegetable stalls while on the long water-edge colonnade there is the fish market with lake water fish as well as seafood coming from the Adriatic coast, only an hour and a half away. Urban honey and freshly harvested salt also give a unique touch to this beautiful city market.

Ljubljana is a medieval city with a strong Baroque influence. Its central market area, just across the Ljubljanica river, spreads across two open lots, running alongside the cathedral and a seminary building. A colonnade hinting at ancient Greece closes the area along the river and hosts the fish market and various cafès. Designed by Jože Plečnik in the 1930ies, reflecting Renaissance influences, it is a Slovenian national heritage and one of the most interesting complexes dedicated to a food market in Europe. Here one can buy cherries coming from the hilly region bordering Italy or the elder fruit syrup coming from the forests at the foot of the Alps. Cured meat products, fresh meat, and the famous Kranjska klobasa or Carniola sausage are on display. In the same section of the market, home-made bread baked in a wood oven, biscuits and pastries and various kinds of local cheese are on offer showing how this small country and its capital have developed into a gourmet centre. It is also one of the greenest cities in Europe and a country with the lowest economic disequality in the world, according to the world bank. A bee path crosses the town of Ljubljana and on over 800 roofs there are hives producing refined and delicate honey. This is on sale at the market whilst the salt coming from the Adriatic coast pans and harvested with methods dating back 700 years is on offer close to the market. From the Hungarian border then comes a multilayered dessert, a treat no one can resist and best eaten when sitting at the cafè facing the Plac, as the market is called by the locals.

The Fish Market or Torget (the square) has a charming location in the heart of the city between the fjords and Bergen's 7 mountains. On the harbour the stalls sell an incredible variety of fresh fish and seafood like urchins, scallops, prawns and lobsters, but also local farm food.

The old and young farmers come weekly and offer a few little known traditional produce such us the brown cheese or the lapskaus. Knut is a scuba diver with a base in Askoy a few miles west of Bergen. At least twice a week, according to season, he brings his catch to the stalls of the Bergen Fisktorget, as the market is called in Norwegian. Here red sea urchins, giant clams, oysters, crabs of all dimensions as well as lobsters that go from dark purple to light orange are served on enormous platters. Eating raw seafood is not a Norwegian habit but is very trendy today.
Cod instead was the staple food and is still served even though revisited at what was once the meet market and is now a food centre overlooking the market. Salmon is also deeply rooted in tradition and comes from higher north, on the fjords that travel deep into the countryside. Halstein still smokes it the way his grandfather did even though today commercial fishing of salmon with nets is not allowed. His tales on the good old days of fishing from the lodges on the fjords is rather touching.