Tasting of typical products
A guided tour and an excursion can be the opportunity to taste the local products. Even if they are not very famous (but everybody knows Gorgonzola cheese!), they are really tasty! The landscape around Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta is variegated, as the area stretches from the Valley of the River Po to Mount Rosa: therefore there are different typical products, all of them of quality. The visit to Novara and the excursion to the Benedictine abbey San Nazzaro Sesia or to the Oratory of Momo, are the opportunity to taste the Paniscia, a rich "risotto" made of Carnaroli rice, the "king of rice", vegetables, salami and red wine. Delicious are the salami de la Duja, preserved in fat. Gorgonzola cheese is famous all over the world. The biscottini of Novara are cookies baked by nuns. Travelling northwards, situated between the plane and the lakes there are the hills: it is the territory of the vineyards where they grow the species of wine Nebbiolo, the most important species of wine in Italy, difficult to grow, whose wine is difficult to control in the cave. It is used to produce the famous Piedmontese DOCG and DOC wines that are fit for a long aging. They are perfect coupled with the several salami and cheese produced in this area. In Ghemme, the wine town, you can walk in the lanes of the ancient castle. Further north you find Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore. In Orta you can visit Orta San Giulio, the Sacro Monte and reach by boat the Island San Giulio for a guided tour to the basilica. From Stresa you leave by boat for the excursion to the Islands Borromeo, Island Bella, Fishermen Island and Island Madre. Only in the commune of Stresa, you do not find them elsewhere in Italy, pastry cooks are allowed to bake the Margheritine, crumbly tea-cakes dedicated to the first Queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoy. Typical of Orta is the liver mortadella. The fresh water fish have a delicate taste and some of them are really tasty, like the fish soused in vinegar, the lake whitefish, the specialty of Fishermen Island together with the perch and the delicious bleaks, which are served fried. Honey and mushrooms come from the slopes of Mottarone, the mountain that separate Lake Maggiore from Lake Orta. At the head of Lake Maggiore and of Lake Orta are the mountains and valleys of Ossola, wich offer completely different delicious dishes: that is the region of gnocchi after the Ossola valley fashion, made of chestnut flour, of the polenta, the torrent trout, the violini, tasty hams made of goat or chamois meat, of cheese, among which toma and Bettelmatt, of the brown bread and the Prunent, the typical species of wine of Ossola Valley.