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REVIEW BY TIMO

CYBERCUCINA

I looked at many online sources of food before deciding on which one(s) would be a good complement to the other good ones we already have here: grass-fed meat, wild fish and wine, and, with CyberCucina, we now have everything covered. We will not be offering fresh fruits and vegetables online; those are best obtained in specialized retailers or good neighborhood stores.

CyberCucina offers over 1,200 products; more than 1000 of them are food items. I know the selection includes some things that I would seldom, if ever, would buy for myself - like soft drinks or any canned things that contain preservatives - but they do have lots of quality, wholesome items. Things I am most likely to buy are vinegars (blasamic, sherry), many of the oils, grains and truffle/mushroom products.

The web site

The web site is well organized - it's easy to find things fast. Between the nice images and good product descriptions, you will have no problem seeing everything almost as if you were shopping in a store.

Look at the Shipping and Handling page on the site. Get this: on the US mainland, if your order exceeds $99, shipping is FREE! - something to consider at today's gas prices.

My personal experience with these products

My full-time quality control staff (my son) and I ordered three items. In all cases, thanks to the good descriptions and images we saw on the CyberCucina site before ordering, everything looked and felt as expected.

1. Mortar and pestle - beautiful, red marble, with the right sandpaper-like surface inside the mortar and on the pestle's tip, at a price no higher that I used to pay for the equivalent in a San Francisco cookware shop. It's a small one - 3" - perfect for making fresh garlic puree, the base for the aioli we make vary often.
2. Duck rillettes (in France, referred to as "poor man's pâté"). I don't usually buy this sort of product because of the preservatives, but, having made rilletes many times in the past, and being a duck lover, I was really curious. I'll just say the whole jar went in one sitting.
3. Black Venus rice (boxed, 2.2 lbs). If you haven't had Italian black rice, you're missing the boat. It's not cooked as you would white rice: you boil it in about five times the volume of water for almost an hour, then drain it. The box has good suggestions. You want to be around while it's cooking, to enjoy the great aroma. For a treat, toss the drained, still hot rice with some freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano or Argentinian Reggianito (you can get those in a good specialty cheese shop), serve right away. Do not waste it using that pre-grated garbage the supermarkets sell as Parmesan.

Here's another delicious treat, now that strawberries are in season. Buy a little bottle of one of the better Balsamic vinegars from CyberCucina; find some deep red, ripe strawberries (probably not in a supermarket); remove the stems, cut in half, if they are not really small; sprinkle with a little sugar and a few drops of the Balsamic vinegar, then mix carefully with a spatula, without breaking up the fruit; eat and send me a thank you note from the Contact page.  Since I stay away from sugar, I use liquid Stevia instead, which I also buy on this site, from the Life Extension Foundation.

Ready to raise your home cooking to the next level? Press here to find the quality ingredients to do it!