La Sagra: Feast with the Locals When in Umbria

One of our favorite sagre, la Festa di Sant’Anna, gathers the locals of our Assisi mountainside area (and not only!) for 10 days of feasting and ballroom dancing (an after-dinner event at most sagre). This sagra will always include July 26th, feast day of Sant’Anna and takes place near a small chapel dedicated to her at Paradiso di Assisi.

Monia, daughter of founder Ezio, shared with me the roots of this festival/celebration, indicating that in the 18th-century for the Fesat of St. Anne, the rural people prepared an abundant lunch, “also giving food to those who had nothing.” Sant’Anna is the patron saint of pregnant mothers and ouf of gratitude and devotion to her, farmers did not work the land on her feast day. Monia also told me that those in the confraterntiy dedicated to her, la Confraternita’ di Sant’Anna, wear a green cape, “symbolizing the protection of – and respect for – the cultivated fields and all of nature.”

Nowadays, a sagra is often dedicated to a typical food or dish of the area.

Near Perugia, Sant’Egidio’s sagra celebrates a typical Umbria flat bread, la torta al testo – and has been doing so for over fifty years!

La Torta al Testo stars, too, in a sagra near Perugia in Pila (47th this year!):

Another traditional local bread, la focaccia takes the stage at a sagra in the Orvieto area in early August:

For the forty-fifth year, mushrooms – domestic and wild ones – enhanced the dishes at the mid-August Sagra del Fungo of Pianello, near Perugia

At la Sagra dell’Oca, roast goose, pasta sauce with goose meat and various other dishes have been enjoyed at Bettona’s celebration of the goose (oca) for over 40 years:

I remeber that when Pino and I helped our rural neighbors in July – in the late 1970’s – with the wheat and oat harvests, all of us would gather in the shade of an oak tree at lunch time (not possible these days with the increase in summer temperatures).

The farmwoman hosting that day would come down the steps from the kitchen with a huge bowl of pasta all’oca gingerly balanced on her head. Oca arrosto con patate (“roast goose with roasted potatoes”) was often a second course. Other farmwomen also helped our host as maybe 10 to 15 of us would be working the fields and foods prepared were abundant. That goose cooked up had been slaughtered a couple days before…

Roast goose also highlights another sagra not far from Assisi – in Torchiagina. At this sagra, that goose meat also enhances gnocchi fatti a mano (“handmade gnocchi“):

For over thirty years, those gnocchi fatti a mano are the main culinary attraction at the Sagra degli Gnochi fatti a mano in early August near the Umbrian town of Foligno:

July is the month of the potato harvest around Colfiorito – in the hills not far from Assisi – and those tubers star in their Sagra Patata Rossa

There are many varieties of the red potato but that celebrated at this sagra is la patata rossa di Colfiorita IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) – or Protected Geograhpical Indication (PGI). IGP is an agricultural certification of the European Union for foods and agricultural products linked to a specific geographical area.

In the mountainous Valnerina area in early July, dishes with wild boar attract the visitors to the Sagra del Cinghiale:

Torgiano is famous for is extraordinary wine museum, il Museo del Vino di Torgiano and thus its August sagra Vinarelli di Torgiano showcases fine wines as well as tasty local dishes:

At the end of August near medieval gem, Bevagna, Pino loves feasting on smails at la Sagra della Lumaca:

Near a snail at the base of the sagra poster, red letters on a bright yellow background tell the viewer that the income from this sagra sustains research.

Cherry season in Umbria arrives in late spring/early summer and cherries are fêted in the Festa della Ciliegia:

Ever tried risotto alle ciliege? You can try a rice dish with cherries at this sagra – and even pasta with a sauce made with cherries…

A pasta of irregular shape and handmade with flour and water – visciarelli – is a culinary specialty of Alviano, (small medieval hilltown near Terni in southern Umbria) and celebrated in their late August festival: