Peppe, Gentile…and the New Wine…

Food/Wine Lore, Rural Friends, Rural LifeLeave a comment

Last white grapes still to be picked[/caption]“Poco ma buono” , wine experts unanimously declare the 2012 vintage. The lack of rain and intense summer heat hampered the proper maturation of the grapes, resulting in a drastic drop in grape production, though the quality of the wines should be excellent. Claudio Riponi, head of the Departimento di Vinicoltura ed Enologia dell’Università di Bologna, assures “qualita’ buona”, explaining that this summer’s hot and dry temperatures protected the grapes from disease.
read more…

Gargano: Resisting Nero and Caligula

Other Italy FavoritesLeave a comment

“…Nerone infiamma il Centrosud…e dopo…arriva Caligola“, early August newspaper tidbits report here in Italy: “Nero inflames central/southern Italy…and later…Caligula is coming..” According to an erroneous legend, the emperor Nero (Nerone) played his lyre as Rome burned in 64 A.D. and he’s back: meterologists have dubbed this summer’s fifth sub-tropical, Saharan anticyclone “Nerone” and Nerone has followed Scipione, Caronte, Lucifero, and Ulisse. (Ah, these Italians: even the winds spiraling out from areas of high atmospheric pressure – the anticyclones – are named for protagonists of their history, literature and mythology).
read more…

Norcia: Finding a True Norcineria

Food/Wine Lore, Umbrian HilltownsLeave a comment

In the Middle Ages, the disparaging term “Il norcino” (literally meaning, “from Norcia”) grouped together a variety of improvisational impersonators of i chirurghi (‘surgeons”): il cerusico (“barber/surgeon), il cava-denti (tooth-extractor), and il concia-osse (“bonesetter), who wandered from village-to-village offering their rudimentary surgical skills at prezzi popolari. In ancient Rome, i norcini had been known above all for their skill in the castration of pigs (necessary in order to attenuate the strong gamey flavor of the meat of the male) and the transformation of the pig’s meat into temptations for the palate. The norcino pig-butchering skills lead easily to surgical interventions on humans: the setting of broken bones, tooth extractions, excision of tumors, cataract and hernia operations – and even to the castration of young boys, transforming their voices into mellifluous voci bianche…
read more…

Going Underground in Camerano

Curiosities, History, Other Italy FavoritesLeave a comment

Ah, Italy “the land of the endless discoveries.” One never finishes discovering the wonders “above ground” – let alone underground! And sometimes, serendipity leads you to yet another discovery.
Gray weather at the seaside last weekend prompted us to head out for some exploration. What wonders we found in a seemingly nondescript Adriatic seaside town, Camerano, whose very name is linked to its suprising labyrinthine maze of subterranean grottoes and tunnels, used by its first inhabitants, the Piceni, in the 9th-c. B.C., our guide, Daniele told us.
read more…

Preci’s Curious Fame

Curiosities, History, Umbrian Hilltowns3 Comments

A friend joined me for the adventure: we took a curvy wooded road into the Valnerina and then up into the Sibiliine mountains in southern Umbria, until we came to tiny Preci (population: about 200). Born as a medieval rural village near a Benedictine oratory (now the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio) time seems to have stood still in Preci. The serenity of this picturesque mountain village of warm Mediterranean colors belies its bellicose past: in the thirteenth century, feudal overlords battled Papal authority for dominance. After decades of conflict, the town was sacked in the early sixteenth century by nearby Norcia and then later rebuilt by Paul III.
His mid-sixteenth century reign coincides with the diffusion of the fame of the medical skills of Preci doctors throughout Europe. Preci’s sought-after surgeons constructed noble palaces and the town soon became an elegant fortified village.
read more…

Still Owing an Ode to Alessandro

Rural Friends, Rural Life, Special Events, Unforgettable Italians2 Comments

July 26th isn’t my birthday but farm friends will be calling in any case to wish me “auguri, Anna” on my onomastico (name day): July 26th is the Festa di Sant’Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin and one of Italy’s most venerated saints with over sixty churches dedicated to her throughout the peninsula. Due to diffuse infant mortality in the Middle Ages, devotion to Sant’Anna reached its peak and she became not only the saint of pregnant women but was also invoked by sterile women and nursing mothers (as mother’s milk was linked to infant survival).
read more…

Tasting Italy in Sirolo

Festivals, Food/Wine Lore, Other Italy Favorites, Special EventsLeave a comment

As the July evening moves in on Adriatic coastal gem, Sirolo, sea-satiated vacationers head up from the turquoise waters to the main square for a stroll from stand-to-enticing-stand at the food festival, Capricci di Gola. The late July “Caprices of the Tastebuds” ( or literally, “of the throat”) is a “culinary stroll” through Italy – just about – north-to-south.
At one stand, you can taste savory Pugliese pizzas or the famed Altamura bread and not far away, another southern Italian stand entices with baba al rhum, arancini (large rice balls, shaped like oranges, hence the name) cannoli made on the spot, colorful almond paste frutta di martorana, formed into every imaginable fruit form. You aren’t in Sicily here but you feel you are – and it’s not just the accent of the smiling young woman handing you a cannolo which convinces you! Hot and thirsty? Pause at the nearby giant lemon for a granita.
read more…

FOLIGNO, Where First Courses Take First Prizes

Festivals, Food/Wine Lore, Special Events, Umbrian Hilltowns1 Comment

Hard to imagine we are coming up to the fourteenth edition of the wondrous food festival celebrating Italian first courses, I Primi d’Italia. I wrote this when there ten years ago and re-reading this piece makes me eager to head there once again, this coming September: “Tradizione e Innovazione” (“Tradition and Innovation”) was the theme for the tenth anniversary celebration of one of Italy’s most renowned food festivals, the 4-day I Primi d’Italia, which animates Foligno at the end of September. I Primi d’Italia (“First Courses of Italy”) is Umbria’s celebration of the most-beloved Italian first courses: pasta (and this year, gluten-free varieties, too!), risotto, gnocchi, polenta and soups. Though the primi are the core of the festivities – both the tastings of them and cooking lessons with world-renowned chefs who transform the first courses with innovative creative touches – wine-tastings, classical and jazz music, theater, films, art exhibits, cooking competitions, cookbook displays, and even fashion shows embellish the festival and draw the crowds.
read more…

Zucchini Goodness, Zucchini Lore

Food/Wine Lore, Recipes, Rural Friends, Rural Life2 Comments

Ragazza/ragazzina (“girl/little girl) – chiesa/chiesina (“church/little church) – stella/stellina (“star/little star”) are logical pairings but zucca/zucchina (“squash/little squash”) doesn’t quite work out: La zucchina (“zucchini”) is not related at all to the pumpkin or any other squash – and in fact, its closest vegetable “relative” is actually the potato, just one chromosome away, genetically. That one chromosome gives the potato its rounded form rather than the oblong form of the zucchini.
read more…

Scheggino: Eating at “Kilometro Zero”

Food/Wine Lore, Rural Life, Umbrian Hilltowns2 Comments

For a “menu a kilometro zero”, head to Scheggino, Umbrian medieval hilltown gem on the Nera River. Follow the twisting stone-vaulted backstreets, leading up to the 11th-century S. Nicola church, and just past a narrow alleyway, you’ll come to the huge wooden door of Osteria Baciafemmine, named after il Vicolo Baciafemmine (“Narrow Alleyway Kiss-the Girls”). According to an old village legend, young people would head in summer heat to the shady alleyway, so conveniently narrow that getting away without a kiss was improbable.
read more…