Food & Wine Tips from Food Network's Anne Burrell

Monday night's Vinitaly at Eataly event was quite the success with over 600 registrants at the consumer tasting alone. But for Lil' Miss WinoBee and her partner-in-crime (@GlutenGossip) we wanted to make sure our experience was more than robust, so in addition to expanding our palate and having (too much) fun drinking new styles and varieties of Italian wine, we actually took some time to meet up with Food Network's Anne Burrell, host of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef to get her top food and wine tips.

Anne is notorious for her spiky blonde hair and former role as both Mario Batali's sous chef onIron Chef America, while also having worked under the likes of Lidia Bastianch. Anne also formerly taught at ICE and lucky for me, I'm scheduled for their "Essentials of Tuscan Cooking" class this weekend. Maybe she'll make a cameo for old times sake!

More recently Anne has kicked off her own show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, where she reveals the concise, easy-to-master techniques of a top level chef by showcasing professional secrets to preparing food that is creative and full of flavor (but never too frou-frou or scary -- thats why we love her, she's real!) You can tune into her show on Saturdays at 10:30am EST onFood Network.