Sharing Umbrian rural culinary lore tidbits is always part of my U.S. Umbrian rural cuisine events (and when cooking with guests in our Assisi farmhouse). Like “fare la scarpetta,” that (acceptable) Italian custom of cleaning up tomato sauce or succulent juices of meats by wiping the plate clean with a piece of bread,
What laughs at a Georgia cooking class one year when a woman exclaimed, “Honey, we do that, too, but here we call it ’soppin’ it up’!”
Fare la scapetta (non-translatable but roughly “to make the little shoe”) is a southern Italian expression comparing a soft, poor man’s soleless,shoe dragging along the ground, picking up what it finds, to that piece of bread “sopping up” the sauces, leaving nothing behind.
…and Peppa’s an expert and gave me precise lessons on the “fare la scarpetta” technique:
[lcaption]Be sure to serve up all the good juices in whatever you cook![/lcaption]
[lcaption]Don’t forget to serve bread slices[/lcaption]
[lcaption]Break off pieces of bread to clean the plate – and savor all those juices[/lcaption]
Peppa looked over the pan of savory wild boar, meatballs and her own piccione (squab) to be sure I’d clean my plate, now that I had the proper technique:
She uses bread to follow up every dish, including that night’s savory wild mushrooms:
Not only: at the end of the meal, she soaks up her wine, too, with a piece of bread: Peppa’s gran finale to fare la scarpetta.
Read about wine-making with Peppa
Read about Peppa and rural bread lore
Read about more Peppa rural wisdom: taking off the evil eye
Read many more stories about Peppa and our rural friends, their wisdom
Read about a family group’s “favorite day in Italy”
