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Vol.1 No.1, March 2006
Welcome to the first Sapori+Saperi newsletter. I’ll be sending them periodically whenever there’s something I’m excited about concerning the Gastronomic Adventures and artisanal food producers in the Lucchesia and Garfagnana. If you wish to be removed from the mailing list at any time, just send an email info@sapori-e-saperi.com.
Contents
Neal’s Yard Dairy Joins Sapori + Saperi
The opening event for the Cheese, Bread + Honey Adventures in June will be hosted by Slow Food Lucca and presented by Bronwen Bromberger (week 1) and Chris George (week 2) from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. They’ll bring out British sheep’s milk cheeses, such as Spenwood and Berkswell, to compare with Italian pecorinos, including a Slow Food Presidium (protected) pecorino from the Pistoia province. For those of you who don’t know the Dairy, it’s more of a complete educational experience than a shop. You’re allowed to buy some of the best British cheeses that can be found anywhere, but not without tasting. No matter that you bought some of the same cheese last week. It won’t taste the same this week. Every batch is different, or It may be the same batch, but a week older. And everyone behind the counter knows and understands the cheeses they’re selling. I loved buying cheese there, but never had enough time totally to satisfy my curiosity. I selfishly suggested I could help them set up some public tastings to give people the opportunity to learn more and to sample cheeses that they might not think of trying. There must have been a lot of other curious people like me, because the tastings are well attended and everyone enjoys themselves so much that sometimes it’s hard getting them to go home. Chris George is the genial master of ceremonies. Bronwen joined the Dairy in the autumn and has already set up a group to make ricotta ‘down the arches’ beneath the railway lines near Tower Bridge, where the Dairy matures its cheeses. I’m already wondering how my perception of pecorino will change as a result of the S+S tasting.
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Search for a Shepherd
I rang the doorbell at Signora Gonnella’s farmhouse apprehensively. I had promised guests on the Cheese, Bread + Honey Adventures in June that they would be making pecorino with a shepherd, but the one I’d visited near Lucca turned out to be suspicious, taciturn and offhand, unlike the unfailingly open and generous spirit of the other producers I’d worked with. Was this the usual nature of shepherds? Would I be able to find one who would be keen on the idea of having a group of, let’s face it, foreign voyeurs crowding into their tiny dairies? It wasn’t easy to get leads. When EU regulations were introduced, many shepherds stopped making cheese themselves, selling it instead to the larger commercial caseificios. I turned for help to Andrea Bertucci, my friend at the Osteria Il Vecchio Mulino in Castelnuovo. Being a stagionatura (matures cheese) himself, he must know some shepherds. I soon realized that a stagionatura is the last person to reveal his sources. Shepherds only make a few cheeses a day, so Andrea wouldn’t want competition for the scarce supplies. In the end it was my landlady who introduced me to her friend in Barga who knew exactly where to go.
The door opened and the Signora’s daughter Luciana welcomed me with a smile. She led me down to the dairy, where the Signora and her two assistants were cleaning up after the morning’s cheesemaking: four pecorinos, four caprinos (goat cheese) and several tubs of ricotta stood on the counter. The Signora herself, a slim, efficient woman in her early 60s, took a bit longer to warm up, but after a few questions about how long she matures her cheese, a request to see the animals and to buy some cheese, I’d passed her test. Her sheep are the Massese breed, native to the ancient territory of Luni, to the northwest of the Garfagnana. They’re renowned for the high quality of their milk, but are also prized for their meat. In summer she takes them up to high pastures in the Apennines behind her farm.
The Gonnella smallholding lies on the edge of Barga, a lively mediaeval walled town in the Garfagnana, to which I descended for a few moments in the enveloping calm of its duomo set on a rocky outcrop high above the town. I contemplated our future visit to the restored 17th-century baroque theatre down below and deliberated about where we would lunch.
Later, when I proudly presented the Gonnella cheeses to Andrea, he beamed and defended himself: “I just wanted to see whether you could find her yourself”. That’s when he invited me to Saturday’s Agrisportello event at I Cedri in Castelvecchio Pascoli, just below Barga.
Agrisportello
‘Quality, not quantity’ was the theme of the speeches at the Agrisportello meeting and lunch. Speakers in support of this government-backed initiative extolled the virtues of what might in other quarters be deemed the backward, undeveloped agriculture of the Garfagnana. Instead of bemoaning their poor, rocky mountain soil and the lack of major transport arteries to get their products to market, here was a winemaker turning these into advantages. It had never been economic to buy chemical fertilizers or spray with insecticides, and in any case, most of the ancient varieties of crops they still grow, like farro and eight-row maize, wouldn’t respond well to such treatment. Without super-highways, the air is unpolluted. Everything they produce is and has always been ‘organic’. Farming here works the way it should: farmers shouldn’t buy in anything; a farm economy should be all money coming in, no money going out.
The benefits for the food produced were evident at lunch. Everything was simple and full of flavour. Out on the terrace in the early spring sun, there were bruschetta with Garfagnana olive oil, focaccia hot from the wood-fired oven and a particularly tasty thick vegetable, bean and farro soup. Alvaro Ferrari stood stirring his pot of polenta made from eight-row maize, just like he did for the Sapori + Saperi Adventure in November. You could have it with pecorino, or with an indigenous variety of trout from local rivers baked in a tomato sauce, or first one and then the other, which is what I had. Rolando Bellandi, also known to November Adventurers, had spread out his salumi and cheeses in one of the cellars. The oriental carpet of cured pork was entirely Garfagnana and couldn’t have been found anywhere else in Italy. The prosciutto was ‘Il Bazzone’ (a Slow Food Presidium product made from pigs fed on chestnuts and slaughtered at 18 months or older), the carpaccio was ‘Linchetto’ (beef cured with porcini mushrooms), the salami was mondiola (seasoned with a special secret mix of spices and shaped like a snail), and the blood sausage was biroldo (less blood than the French variety, no cereal filler like the Scottish one and a Slow Food Presidium product). The wine, Melograno (meaning pomegrate), is a new offering from a vineyard at Gallicano and has potential to be more than just a vino da tavola. How I managed to fit in any dessert I’m not sure, but I had to taste the castagnaccio (not as good as we made in our cooking lesson with Mariella), the mirtilli tart (good, but would be better when the wild bilberries are in season at the end of July and early August) and the ricotta with honey and, yes really, olive oil — fantastico! The ricotta came from Verano Bertagni, whose caseificio we’ll be visiting in June, and the olive oil and honey from the Azienda Agricola Consolati Miria, whose owner Luigi Maggenti I met at the Castelnuovo chestnut festival in December. We’ll definitely be tasting this combination during the June Adventure.
 Polenta
Polenta just means porridge, and you can make it with a variety of flours. In the Garfagnana they use either chestnut flour or maize flour. The tastiest maize flour is stone-ground eight-row maize, a primitive variety that can be either a rich gold colour or Indian red. It’s also grown in the Piedmont. The correct pot to make it in is an un-tinned copper bucket with a slightly rounded bottom called a paiolo. It hangs from a hook over the fire and you stir it with a wooden paddle. I’d been coveting a paiolo and recently saw exactly the model I wanted. I reserved last Thursday evening for the polenta-making ceremony. I measured out Alvaro’s eight-row maize flour — 150g per person, 100g to eat as porridge and 50g to dry for use the next day — put 6 times the volume of water into the paiolo and hung it over the kitchen fire to come to a boil. It looked magnificent. I haven’t figured out how you pour the maize flour in while it’s hanging over the fire, so I cheated and put it on a low flame on the cooker while I slowly added the flour stirring all the time, and then hung it back over the fire. It’s not true that you have to stir it continuously; frequently, yes, but you can easily prepare the rest of the meal while the polenta simmers — a full hour brings out the deep, sweet flavour of the maize. I made a spezzatino di maiale (a tomatoey pork stew) to eat with it. After ladling out the polenta for dinner, I left the rest over the fire to thicken a bit more and then spread it about a centimetre thick on a wooden board to dry until lunch the next day. It can be cut into squares and fried or grilled and topped with any of the combinations you’d use for bruschetta. But I like it best dipped in more maize flour and fried in peanut or sunflower seed oil, when it tastes a bit like the best homemade popcorn. These oils must be very fresh since, unlike olive oil, they oxidize and taste rancid very soon after opening. |
