I’m a member of Slow Travel Tours, an affiliation of nine tour organisers who offer small group tours to England, France, Italy and other European countries. We collaborate in a blog on our group website, which means I write one every nine weeks and it’s my turn this week. You can read it at: http://slowtraveltours.com/blog/marble-art-and-artisans/.
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Health warning: Vegetarians and hesitant carnivores may find this blog disturbing. At the end of the last Advanced Salumi Course I was chatting with the norcino (pork butcher) Ismaele Turri and my driver Marzio Paganelli outside Ismaele’s butchery. Marzio asked me whether I’d ever eaten picchiante. I’d never even heard the word, so I wasn’t sure. They’re lungs, he explained, and his grandmother used to make a delicious dish with them. Did I want to try them? I wasn’t sure, but thought I ought to in the name of research. Problem is, where could he get them? He hadn’t seen them at a butcher shop in years. Ismaele rears pigs, and when one is slaughtered, he gets the whole animal back from the abattoir—head to tail, skin, offal, bones and blood. Nothing missing. He led us into the cold room; I briefly saw something long, grey and smooth before he popped it in a plastic bag and handed it to Marzio. No money changed hands. We fixed Tuesday for the dinner. I phone Tuesday midday to check what time to arrive. Marzio is already in the kitchen. He says if it doesn’t come out well, we don’t have to eat it. I consider taking a pork chop. When I arrive at 8 pm, his wife Carla tells me she’d gone out for the day to avoid cramping his style. I’m relieved that there are good smells coming from the kitchen. Marzio loves to recount recipes as if they were stories. This is what gave me the idea of ‘Cooking with Babbo’. Babbo is the Tuscan equivalent of ‘dad’ or ‘pa’. I bring my guests to the Paganelli’s summer haunt, a renovated chapel on the ridge above their home in the valley, and we cook whatever Marzio feels like. No menu, no recipes. While a ragù simmers, he’ll grab a jug and lead you down to the spring below the house, or take you to the veg patch to pick tomatoes. Carla is there too, and steps in to teach her to-die-for tiramisu. As a rule I don’t approve of cooking lessons as the only introduction a traveller gets to our food. Tuscan cuisine relies above all on good primary ingredients, and you have to know where to find them and how much better the flavour is than industrial food. That’s why I take my guests to visit artisan farmers and producers. But ‘Cooking with Babbo’ is as much a lesson in the dynamics between Italian husbands and wives as a cooking lesson. It’s a cultural experience. This time Marzio lifts the lid to a simmering pot and shows me the deep, rich red sauce from which small brown cubes of meat protrude. The story begins. He chopped two onions and sautéed them for several minutes in extra virgin olive oil, pressed from his own olives. He had already prepared the lungs. That’s what took longest, because you have to remove all the tubes so the finished dish won’t be chewy. He added the cubed lungs to the onions along with a small clove of garlic and a pinch of peperoncino (chile pepper), and sautéed them for an ‘abundant 15 minutes’, splashed in some white wine and evaporated it (sfumare), added chopped, peeled tinned tomatoes (much better in winter than tasteless hothouse ones) and some tomato paste. Then some hot water (or vegetable stock) to cover. He put the lid on the pot and simmered it for ‘an abundant 50 minutes’. Time is often as important an ingredient as the physical ingredients. The recital over, the pot is brought to the table along with a platter of hot, fairly firm polenta which he has piled in a mound and decorated with a fork. Formenton otto file, he states. It’s the old variety of maize whose stoneground meal makes polenta that actually tastes like corn. He cuts a slice of polenta with a knife and struggles to carry it to my plate. His grandfather used a pliable willow branch, which was perfect for cutting the polenta and getting the slice to a plate in one fell swoop. Carla spoons the picchiante in umido, the lung stew, to the side of the polenta. We look at each other, exchange the ritual buon appetito, and taste it. I’d expected a slightly slimy texture, but the cubes of lung are resistant while not being tough and the flavour is deep and complex. Truly delicious! As we enjoy Marzio’s creation, we ponder the origin of the word ‘picchiante’. The Italian for ‘lung’ is ‘polmone’. Maybe it’s Tuscan. When I get home, I check my Italian-Italian dictionary compiled by two Tuscan scholars, Devoto and Oli. They confirm the word as 16th-century Tuscan, but say it refers to the lungs of a cow. Nevertheless, the Italians in my village know I’m talking about pig lungs when I tell them what I’ve eaten. It also means door knocker, and was applied to lungs because they lie near the heart. Marzio and Carla talk nostalgically about all the ingredients that have disappeared from shops and the dishes that no one makes anymore. They think young people don’t like them, and wouldn’t eat them even if their parents could be bothered to prepare them. Every year Carla’s family reared a pig which they slaughtered in January. Marzio and I chorus, ‘Il giorno di Sant’Antonio’, the 17th of January. Sant’Antonio is the patron saint of animals, and it always seems strange to me that this is the day of the slaughter, but Carla thinks he only protected young animals. Anyway, no part of the pig was wasted; there were traditional ways of eating or using everything. Not only every cut of an animal was used, but a large variety of wild and cultivated plants formed part of the daily diet. This is partly old people’s talk. We’re at that age when the world seems to be going to the dogs. But I’m cautiously optimistic. I see hopeful green shoots: farmers’ markets, artisan bakers and butchers, restaurants featuring liver, pigs’ feet and foraged plants. And Marzio is still making his grandmother’s picchiante in umido.
I always get excited about the winter Slow Food Soup Tournament. The 2014 dates of the Disfida della Zuppa have just been announced. The displays of skill of the competing zuppistiare a wonder and will satisfy the mid-winter yearnings of any hungry foodie. Compare it to eating the Ladies’ Moguls Freestyle Skiing. I’ve written about zuppa in several blogs (if you’d like to read more, see below for the links), so this time I’m just going to tell you briefly what zuppa is and translate the email I received this morning soliciting zuppisti to enter the Tournament. Zuppa derives from the 16th-century ‘suppa’ which means ‘a slice of bread impregnated with liquid’, a sort of crouton. The Lucchese zuppa alla frantoiana, the protagonist of the Tournament, supposedly originated at olive presses (frantoio means olive press). After you pressed your olives, you took your new oil to the fireplace in the frantoio where a pot of soup was simmering over the flames. The press’s owner put a crust of bread in a bowl, ladled the zuppa over it and you seasoned it with a drizzle of your oil. Since olives were pressed between November and January, the ingredients were winter vegetables. (Nowadays the fashion is for bitterer, more piquant oil and many olives are pressed in the second half of October before they’re completely ripe.) This year there will be 11 matches before the semi-finals and the ‘Cup Final’. Anyone who makes zuppa can compete, whether mamma, son, aunt or professional chef. The philosophy behind zuppa is deep and produces endless discussions at the matches. What are the essential ingredients? At past tournaments the consensus has been: dried beans, olive oil, bread and cavolo nero. In the realms of ‘freestyle’, you can add wild edible herbs, seasonal vegetables, whatever your family recipe includes or whatever takes your fancy. What’s not allowed? Unseasonal vegetables like zucchini. In the light of this, Slow Food’s call for contestants is poetic and provocative: Non è mai troppo tardi per partecipare alla disfida ed entrare nel’albo ufficiale degli zuppisti lucchesi. Portate la ricetta della nonna, della zia, della trisavola, la vostra. Con erbi, senza erbi, con pane, senza pane, con cipolla fresca, senza cipolla fresca, ne abbiamo vite tante, ma non ancora tutte. La ricetta della zuppa è per definizione una ricetta che non esiste, se non nell’esperienza di chi la fa e ne custodisce i sapori, i profumi, gli aromi, i ricordi. Which means: It’s never too late to participate in the tournament and enter the official annals of Lucca soup makers. Bring the recipe of your grandmother, your aunt, your great-great grandmother, your own. With herbs, without herbs, with bread, without bread, with fresh onion, without fresh onion, we’ve nourished ourselves with many, but not yet all. The recipe for zuppa is by definition a recipe that doesn’t exist except in the experiences of those who make it and preserve the flavours, the fragrance, the aromas and the memories. The jury is us the public, so if you’re near Lucca between now and the end of March and want a truly Slow Italian experience, contact me at info@sapori-e-saperi.com and I’ll book you in for the date of your choice. But hurry, the competitors are world class and the games sell out quickly. Dates of zuppa matches
13 February: Ristorante pizzeria “i Diavoletti” di Camigliano, 18 February: Sala parrocchiale di Capannori, 21 February: Rio di Vorno, 26 February: Antica e Premiata tintoria Verciani – il Mecenate a Lucca, 28 February: Osteria da mi pa’, 1 March: Aquilea, 7 March: Osteria storica morianese da Pio, 8 March: Agriturismo Alle Camelie, 14 March: Sala parrocchiale di Carignano per il gruppo Equinozio, 21 March: Rio di Vorno per i Gruppi GAS Lucca Pisa, date to be announced: Pecora Nera Links to my other zuppa blogs: Soup Tournament, Elegy to Soup, Soup Put to the Test, Souprize, Slow Food Disfida della Zuppa or Soup Tournament, Another Zuppa If your lifelong dream has been to stuff a pig in a sack, your moment has arrived. French charcuterie, Italian salumi, Spanish jamón and English cured meats are all the rage. Not only are gourmet hams and salamis hogging (sorry, I couldn’t resist) the cold counters at fashionable delicatessens and stylish online shops, but every farmers’ market boasts a stall or more selling artisan salami made from rare breed pork. Want to learn to butcher a pig, salt a pancetta? Just type ‘charcuterie course’ into Google and you get 2,360,000 results for courses from Dorset to Down Under by way of Denver. If you’re a butcher, chef or pig breeder wanting to make Italian salumi, your choice is more limited. Even though when you enter ‘salumi course’, you get 237,000 results, not many are designed for professionals. But the top four are and they’re us: the Saperi e Saperi Advanced Salumi Course. Everyone who comes tells me our course is unique: it’s aimed at food professionals; it takes place in Tuscany; it lasts for four days, short enough for a small-scale pig breeder to get away and long enough to cover the subject in depth; the price is moderate—you don’t have to sell the farm or the restaurant to come. In my opinion, what makes the greatest difference is that we’re in Italy. ‘We’ is course leader Giancarlo Russo, native Tuscan, and course organiser me, adoptive Tuscan. We know there’s no such thing as ‘Italian’ salumi, nor even ‘Tuscan’ salumi. Move 20 km and you find different styles and practices. We know if we use only one norcino to teach the course, participants will get a totally skewed idea of how salumi is made. They’ll think there are rigid rules, because each norcino is sure his method is best. Giancarlo is consultant to Slow Food on meat and contributor to the book Salumi d’Italia. He knows the vast range of salumi in Italy and that there’s no hope of covering all of it. What to do? We base the course in northwestern Tuscany and use three norcini more than 20 km apart. In his theoretical sessions Giancarlo covers some practices in other parts of Italy. We’ve chosen our norcini carefully. All of them are at least third generation butchers, having learned from grandparents and parents. They are true artisans. They are aiming at excellence, not a uniform product. They use the best maiale pesante (heavy pig of more than 155 kg) they can get, always Italian. They don’t use starters, sugar or milk powder. They use a small quantity of potassium nitrate (E252), never nitrites. They dry their salami either naturally or in a drying cupboard and mature their products in a natural cellar. They reveal all their secrets except the exact mix of spices, which is a family recipe. You’re encouraged to take photos and videos. They want you to go home and make good salumi. Otherwise, they’d be wasting their time. Our first norcino is Massimo Bacci from Versilia, the northern coastal plain of Tuscany. Massimo is a consummate salumi maker and a natural teacher. He’s clear and patient; he explains and demonstrates and allows you to tie a salami as many times as you need to get it right. Massimo explains the stages in drying and maturing, and he produces the best lardo I’ve ever tasted, using the same marble basins as in Colonnata, higher up the mountain from him. His 83-year-old dad pops in from the adjoining shop every 20 minutes to make sure his 60-year-old son is giving us the correct instructions. Their mortadella nostrale (a salami, not cooked like mortadella di Bologna) always comes first or second in the all-Italy artisan salami competition. From Versilia we speed down the autostrada to San Miniato, a town along the Arno River between Florence and Pisa, where we visit Maurizio and Simone Castaldi, two brothers who learned their art from their father and uncle. We first came to them so we could include the fennel-flavoured salami finocchiona in the course. The finocchiona zone lies between Florence and Arezzo, south of our other two norcini. During our first visit, we discovered that their strongest suit is the production of prosciutto, and we now include an in-depth study of prosciutto from salting to air drying. Now we head to our third norcino at Venturo farm in the Garfagnana, the mountainous area north of Lucca. We’re just over the Apennines from Parma and Modena in the Po Plain, so many of the products are the same. Ismaele Turri learned from his father, as well as working in a neighbour’s butcher shop from the age of 14. He’s a farmer and pig breeder. He slaughters two of his largest pigs in honour of our course. Participants are guided from the butchering of the pig to all the various typical salumi of the Garfagnana: prosciutto toscano, coppa, guanciale, pancetta, salami, cotechino, soppressata, biroldo (blood sausage) and a few other surprises. Since we allow no more than seven people on the course, there’s lots of time for hands-on practice. If you stay for the extension workshop on the Tuesday after the course, you watch a production run at the Rocchi family salumifico near Lucca. Their efficiency is a sight to behold. At the end of the course we ask for feedback, which Giancarlo and I use to improve the course to meet the needs of future food professionals. Even experienced butchers who already make salami tell us they learn a lot on the course. Last year a couple who came on our first course got their salami accepted by Harrods. We’re proud to be the launchpad for such successes.
I first thought about the power of water when Bob Coleman, my tai chi teacher and director of works at Neal’s Yard Dairy (there’s always a food connection), was trying to get us to comprehend the force behind one of the moves in ‘grasp sparrow’s tail’. Water isn’t compressible, it doesn’t give when it hits you. We practised sending all our energy to our forearms and not budging an inch. While I was editing the World Bank’s independent review of the Narmada dam project in India with social anthropologist Hugh Brody, I became aware of the power of water to disrupt traditional communities. Moving to the valley of the Lima River, a major tributary of the Serchio (pronounced serk´-ee-o) River that flows across the Lucca plain and into the sea just north of the Arno brought me closer to the power of water. As you drive up and down the valleys, you see everywhere the evidence of the power of water to generate electricity through micro-hydro plants. It’s impossible to imagine what the Serchio was like before dams were built on every tributary and the main river itself, and huge tubes were drilled through the mountains between the tributaries so that water can be shunted to whichever reservoir needs it most. I’ve read that it was navigable, which it certainly isn’t today. One theory for the unequal heights of the arches of the Devil’s Bridge is that the masts of sailing ships had to fit through one of them. In mediaeval times the river (then called the Auser) progressively flooded land nearer and nearer to Lucca. Luckily, the Bishop of Lucca San Frediano, an Irish priest, was also an expert hydraulic engineer, and put a halt to the flooding by moving the course of the river to its present channel in 561 to 589. It takes a long time to move a river, but it did the trick. The Lucca plain is still crisscrossed by drainage canals to stop flooding and create rich arable land. Once or twice every winter due to a particularly heavy rainstorm or snowmelt, the Serchio is in spate. The swirling drive of the water is almost intoxicating as it fills the whole river bed and churns the worn river stones gouging out unfortified stretches of the river bank and piling up new pebble islands that will be visible when the water recedes. Occasionally it floods the main road at the Devil’s Bridge, just upstream from the big dam at Borgo a Mozzano, the last bulwark where the amount of water flowing across the Lucca plain can be regulated. Usually the most annoying damage is a few small landslides (frana in Italian) that either undermine or block the narrow mountain roads connecting the main road along the valley floor to the ancient villages high on mountain ridges. As I write this it’s been raining hard, really hard for five days in the Province of Lucca (probably elsewhere too, but what’s local has most impact). There’s an occasional break of a few hours, and then the rat-a-tat of the drops starts again. The force of the water in streams, rivers and canals is destroying roads, houses and fields. There are many more landslides and trees lose their grip and topple over also blocking roads. Although I didn’t ask for them, my computer gives me FaceBook updates from the Provincia di Lucca. In the last 24 hours they’ve been coming through nearly as fast as the raindrops. 24 hours ago #maltempo [bad weather]: The level of flow of the Serchio remains constant. The major danger remains the network of drainage ditches on the Lucca plain. #maltempo: Road maintenance crews from the Province removed detritus from the road at Acquabona (Castelnuovo Garfagnana) on the SR455. They positioned protection blocks. The road is open. #maltempo: On the strada provinciale 37 of Fabbriche di Vallico (locality Lombardo) in course of removal of detritus and water issuing from an adjacent ditch. Light inconvenience but the road is passable. #maltempo: In locality Ripa (comune of Seravezza) the eponymous river overflowed because of an obstruction of the river course caused by a landslide. Two houses are flooded. The comune sent its own volunteers to protect the houses and sent the Consorzio di Bonifica [land drainage] Versilia Massaciuccoli to remove the obstruction from the canal. #maltempo: The water flow at the dam at Borgo a Mozzano at 13.00 was 600 to 700 cubic metres per second. [I hope the Devil’s Bridge is holding strong. It’s over 1000 years old.] 21 hours ago #maltempo: Engineers are constantly monitoring the situation of the #serchio. #maltempo: The frazione of Tereglio is cut off due to two landslides which fell on the SP56 and on the SC Tereglio–Lucignana. #maltempo: A rise in the level of the #serchio has been registered. 15 hours ago #maltempo: A night of work for the personnel in the operations room for civil protection in the Province of Lucca. Many and diverse emergencies caused by the strong rain. At daybreak visits to the places are planned to assess the landslides and flooding. 14 hours ago #maltempo: In the comune of Gallicano, the frazione of Fiattone is reachable only by 4×4. The road was affected by a landslide. [Just below Fiattone is Podere Concori where Gabriele da Prato makes excellent wine. Are his terraces being swept away?] #maltempo: SP60 from Pascoso–Pescaglia remains closed due to a landslide. Road maintenance crews are working at the site. Pascoso continues to be unreachable. [A comment 5 hours ago: It’s still closed.] 13 hours ago #maltempo: Transit barred by a landslide on the comune road Mulino di Burica, in frazione Fabbriche di Casabasciana (comune Bagni di Lucca). At the moment one house is cut off. [It’s getting closer. That’s at the bottom of my hill.] #maltempo: A landslide has closed the road to Sillico, comune of Pieve Fosciana. [How will Ismaele, one of the norcini who teaches my Advanced Salumi Course, get up there to feed his pigs and cattle?] I feel anxious. What will be next? It feels like the world around me is crumbling, washing back to the sea where it came from. 12 hours ago #maltempo: The comune road to Bargecchia (Pieve Fosciana) was rendered impassable by a landslide obstructing also the road to Capanne di Bargecchia. The two communities are cut off, reachable only on foot. Work has already begun. #maltempo: The road to Sillico in the comune of Pieve Fosciana previously interrupted by a landslide has been reopened as an alternating one-way system to ambulances only. [Will they feed Ismaele’s pigs?] #maltempo: Worrying the level of Lake Massaciuccoli which has reached 48 cm. It is continually being monitored especially in the vicinity of Massarosa. #maltempo: In locality Lombardo, in the comune of Gallicano, a landslip is affecting a high tension electrical pylon. ENEL [electricity company] is assessing the situation. 11 hours ago #maltempo: After the peak flow during the night of 1100 cubic metres per second, the flow of the Serchio at 7.00 am was down to 950 cu.m/sec. The levels are being constantly monitored by the Province’s engineers. 3 hours ago #maltempo: President Baccelli [President of Lucca Province] inspects the SP56 in the Valfegana. [That’s the road to Marzia, one of my cheesemakers. Good thing they’re almost self-sufficient.] Gradually the reports bring better news; roads have been partly opened and dikes repaired, but some people have lost their houses. President Baccelli has asked for financial assistance from the Tuscan region. In one of the gaps in the rain, I go out to investigate whether Casabasciana has suffered any damage. I’m relieved to find that all the houses and roads are intact. Mediaeval town planners had the good sense to bed their villages on solid rocky spurs high above the valleys that were subject to flooding. The cobbled streets slope toward the centre where the water gushing from downpipes from roofs coalesces into mini-rivers that flow downhill out of the village. I think of the people swept away by tsunamis and major floods. We’ve escaped lightly, this time.
I’ve just received an email from Ponti nel Tempo (Bridges in Time), the tourist organisation for the Alpi Apuane, notifying me of NINE chestnut festivals, one starting tonight and eight on Sunday. You can tell these are for locals because they don’t give you much warning; they assume you live here and are ready to go at a moment’s notice. Here’s what’s on offer: From Friday 11 to Sunday 13 October Autunno Apuano, Loc. Bosa (Careggine) Sunday 13 October Fiera di ottobre, Castiglione di Garfagnana Castagnata del CAI, Fortezza di Mont’alfonso (Castelnuovo di Garfagnana) La Castagna e i suoi sapori, Convalle (Pescaglia) Mondinata con la Befana, Pegnana (Barga) Castagnata in piazza , Cascio (Molazzana) Festa della Castagna, Trassilico (Gallicano) Festa della Castagna alla Selva del Buffardello (San Romano in Garfagnana) Festa del Borgo della Poesia , Castelvecchio Pascoli (Barga) Details of each event can be found at www.pontineltempo.it. What’s most surprising to me is that despite being a sagra (festival) junkie, I’ve only been to one of these, the Fiera di ottobre at Castiglione, where they serve a delectable lunch including porcini mushrooms and black truffles. Highly recommended! Although every single sagra is tempting, I’m going to Convalle, because that’s where my friends Nada and Romeo live and weave the most beautiful household linens. To read more about them see my blog Weaving a Life of Happiness, and to visit them come on my Tastes & Textiles tour next May. But I’m digressing. Chestnut festivals are attractions for the whole family. The children enjoy the roast chestnuts. So do their parents and grandparents, but the latter are especially nostalgic about the necci, chestnut-flour pancakes cooked between flat stones or steel plates over a burner and often used as wraps for ricotta. Some of the grandparents ate dishes prepared with chestnut flour for every meal when they were young. Collecting, drying, shelling, sorting and milling chestnuts is a whole story in itself, a story of nourishment and social cohesion. You can read about how my village does it in my blogs Getting Under the Skin, To the Mulino, At the Mulino. Sadly, we haven’t lit the metato, the chestnut drying hut, for the last two years, because there haven’t been enough good quality chestnuts. The enormous, centuries old trees are under attack from a teeny weeny Chinese wasp with a long name, Dryocosmus kuriphilus, which was first spotted in the Piedmont in 2002. The female lays its eggs in the leaf bud (no male fertilisation is required) and the first year no damage is detected. The following spring galls are visible on the affected leaves and the presence of the larvae causes the leaves to be smaller and deformed. Photosynthesis is inhibited, the tree becomes weaker and produces fewer and smaller chestnuts. The most effective control found so far is a Japanese wasp, the natural predator of D. kuriphilus, which has been released in limited numbers, and should result in a good battle. Australians will shudder and think of the cane toad. I don’t suppose attending a chestnut festival will help the poor chestnuts, but we’d better enjoy them while we can.
Last week I went with Debra Kolkka to the Mostra Internazionale dell’Artigianato at Florence. You can read her views on it and look at her splendid photos over at her blog. I agree with her that its location in the Fortezza da Basso, a 10-minute walk from the Santa Maria Novella train and bus station, is impressive. She says quite rightly that the exhibition might be exactly what some people are looking for, but I was disappointed. It looked to me as if the word ‘artigianato’ had been stretched way out of shape. According my Italian-Italian dictionary, artigianato means ‘Industria a livello domestico e tradizionale’ (work at a domestic and traditional level), and the show’s website translates it as ‘handicrafts’. With a few notable exceptions, the items on display at the show appeared to be executed in factories ‘in the traditional style’. How could an artisan have turned out so many uniform items (I didn’t think to take photos of these)? The artisans I know are eager to tell you about their work, but not these. One exception was the antique furniture, some of it probably antique, but others certainly copies made by hand with modern power tools. It always amazes me how skilled the Lucca antique dealers are at creating, virtually overnight, exactly the ‘antique’ piece you were looking for. Undoubtedly artisan were the Sardinian knives of Efisio Spiga of Cagliari. You could tell he had made them himself from the way his face lit up as he explained the origins of each style of knife and described in detail how he makes Damascus steel. I had to buy one. Even more interesting to me was a line of stalls outside in one of the food courts representing Italian micro-breweries. Artisan beer has really taken off in Italy in the last five or so years, and much of it is excellent. I’m a good judge, because I lived opposite a pub in Cambridge and passed many happy hours sampling its beer. Notice how all the true artisans are smiling?
Guest blog by Penny Barry I had an adventure last weekend. Heather returned to Cambridge leaving me with a sub-contracted quest deep in the Garfagnana to discover the hidden properties of weeds as food. So what happened? This is my tale. The event centred around a dish called la minestrella di Gallicano, which is a soup native to the area made from weeds and beans served with a particular thin focaccia called mignecci,but more of this later. It’s not easy going somewhere you don’t know, meeting people you’ve never met before, and all this, not in my native country, but plucking up courage, off I went. I was told to meet up in a certain piazza in Gallicano at 9.30 am but there was no one else around apart from a friendly looking bloke. After smiling at him a couple of times, I thought I’d better say something to him before he got the wrong idea about me! Luckily he was the organiser, Cesare, and he showed me where we were gathering. First, we were given a lecture on local weeds (edible and not edible) by the expert, Ivo Poli, and the local delicacies you can cook with them. But the day was all about foraging, collecting weeds and eating them. The party of about 25 men, women and children left the safety of the lecture room to go to… the car park. Who would have thought that there were edible wonders lurking in the verges of an ordinary car park? We were shown how to collect the weed and clean it with a knife straight away; you must leave it with the root (not split off the leaves) until you get home or the flavour and goodness are lost. I am not a horticulturist, but even I recognised the weeds from my garden and orto(allotment) — nettles, dandelions, ranunculus (didn’t know its name before), primula, geraniums, violets — the list goes on and on and they can all be used in minestrella. From the car park we moved on to Molazzano, a village a few kilometres from Gallicano. As I didn’t know where I was going, Cesare kindly arranged for a young man and his mother to give me a lift and from thereon in, they befriended me. When we arrived, we were again treated to the delights of the wayside weeds in the car park. Following a short walk through the woods, we arrived at an agriturismo called La Scope for what turned out to be the highlight of the day — lunch! On arrival we were given an aperitivo, wine mixed with a licorice liqueur, I think, but boy did it pack a punch! Eating then started with antipasti including a wonderful locally smoked trout. Then it was time for the minestrella di Gallicano. It is made from 15 to 30 types of local weeds, cooked in brodo (stock) with fagioli giallorini, beans which are special to the Garfagnana region of Tuscany. The weeds have been cleaned, boiled, cooled, reboiled according to a recipe handed down from generation to generation so this authentic dish remains on the menu for years to come. I’m sure there must be a secret ingredient somewhere which would not be passed onto outsiders. It was served with mignecci — an unleavened focaccia made from maize flour, water and salt and cooked between the hot stones also used to make chestnut flour necci — not my favourite part of the meal. Next came sausages and beans served with fogacce leve di Gallicano — much better focaccia in my humble opinion — along with a wonderful pecorino and more cold meats, all of which were delicious. Finally when we were close to bursting point, dessert was served, apple torta (pie) and torta di erbi — what else? This sweet vegetable tart made with Swiss chard and parsley is not usually my favourite torta, but this was delicious. A feast fit for kings, or at least humble weed gathers! The day was glorious with warm sunshine and it was a pleasure to be in the company of genuine, friendly people. I must admit that this morning I was looking at the grassy verge at the side of the road with new interest. Thanks Heather.
And thank you, Penny. In future my tours will definitely include foraging with Ivo and Cesare. So what did I learn at the first sommelier course lesson? Apart from the party trick of how to open a bottle of champagne by chopping the top off the bottle with a knife, I learned that I have to smell everything. I must have only been fake smelling before. One of the wines we tasted was a Vernaccia di San Gimignano. When the instructor asked what it smelled like, I ventured, ‘Grapefruit’. He didn’t even deign to look at me. Someone from the back shouted, ‘Apple’. ‘Apple’, repeated the instructor approvingly. Back home, I went on a search for the apple that smells like grapefruit, buying up every variety in the village shop. With a bit of imagination Granny Smith came closest to grapefruit. Over on the internet on an Australian website, I found that apples and grapefruits contain both malic acid and citric acid, but when I tried to find out what causes the typical apple odour, none of Google’s suggestions helped and one got me wondering what other objects I need to smell: ‘The scent of an Apple product, sourcing the MacBook Pro fragrance’.
Any advice about wine and apples? Blood oranges have character and flaunt their diversity; every morning as I cut open two of them, I watch with anticipation to see what colour and patterns are hiding inside. There are three varieties of the arancia rossa di Sicilia (red orange of Sicily): Tarocco, Moro and Sanguinello. They usually appear in my village shop from the end of December until March. The Sanguinello gets redder as it ripens and when the really bloody ones arrive, I squeeze them with a tinge of regret that the season is nearly over.
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