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Barbie Latza Nadeau

Barbie Latza Nadeau

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Newsweek correspondent, Rome

POLITICS

Forget the hype about French black truffles. If you really want gastronomic ecstasy, start sniffing around for Italian white truffles—truly the diamond of tubers. I highly recommend a truffle holiday as a fab niche travel experience. It is now the height of the white truffle season in Italy, where trained dogs are rooting around the base of oak trees. (Truffle-hunting pigs were replaced years ago since they can’t be trained not to eat the treasures.) White truffles, which are never cooked, are value at around $1,000 a pound, but worth every penny.

But don’t try to make the magic last—white truffles should be consumed within a few days of digging them out of the ground, preferably at a fireside table somewhere in a Tuscan villa near where they were harvested.

11:24 pm, Nov 2, 2009
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Barbie Latza Nadeau

Barbie Latza Nadeau

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Newsweek correspondent, Rome

POLITICS

Italy is buzzing about a cunning new documentary, Videocracy, which got rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival last week and is playing on 70 cinema screens around the country. The film, by Erik Gandini, traces the evolution of Italian television, which has the flavor of a peep show, with flaccid male hosts surrounded by wiggly young half-dressed TV starlets. The movie shows how this particular brand of soft-porn broadcasting was the brainchild of Silvio Berlusconi, who launched the country’s first private channels in the 1970s, featuring programs such as the quiz show where curiously sexy "housewives" removed a piece of clothing each time a contestant answered correctly. Now that media mogul Berlusconi also controls public broadcasting as head of state, neither public nor private TV channels in Italy will show the hilarious, racy movie trailer or allow advertising for the film. But it is well worth seeking out to truly understand why Italian television is so titillating.

11:25 am, Sep 8, 2009
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