Food Matters in the Italian Region of Abruzzo
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Abruzzo is one of Italy’s lesser known destinations but its food culture deserves to be noticed. Ryanair has direct flights from Stansted to Pescara and it's a ten minute bus ride into the city centre. Standouts include Gregoriano cheese, Ventricina sausage, Virgin Olive oil and Porchetta, wood roasted pig. Even better, everything is washed down with the excellent Montepulciano wine.
This rugged mountainous region is the green heart of Italy and extends east from the Apennine range, in the centre of the country, to the Adriatic coast. Its deep long wooded valleys are the home to micro climates, essential for the unique quality of its produce, and here people eat locally, distrusting anything which comes from more than 30 kms away. Seasonality is also key, ingredients are picked and eaten when they’re ripe, and you can tell what time of year it is by what you have on your plate. And, of course, there’s a festival for everything, whether Artichokes, Asparagus, Cherries, Peaches and, of course, wine.
Nestling in the mountains above the hill top village of Scanno is an organic cheese farm which produces 15 different varieties from its 1500 sheep and handful of cows. Gregorio Rotolo, the farmer, even has a cheese named after him. It’s a type of Pecorino, called Gregoriano, and as it ages, the inside becomes runny and develops a strong aroma. I should point out that this is the only characteristic it shares with its namesake. There’s a restaurant on the farm and you can sample all the cheeses as well as some interesting local specialties. My favourite was the fresh Ricotta made that morning, and it was followed by a main course of horse meat stew with potatoes.
Pecorino is often eaten as a snack with fresh broad beans. I got the chance to try the best at the De Antoniis family farm in Sant’Omero in Northern Abruzzo. Here the landscape is less forbidding and their fields produce excellent Olive oil, Montepulciano and Trebbiano wines as well as rows of broad beans. As I cracked open the freshly picked pods, took a slice of cheese and anointed a piece of home baked bread with their olive oil, I began to understand why ingredients are so important in Abruzzo cuisine.
Not far away, in the village of Campli, Porchetta was on offer. Salvatore Angelo takes half a deboned pig and stuffs it with salt, pepper, rosemary and garlic and then roasts it in a wood-fired oven for 4-6 hours. He says the secret is the special type of wood he uses to fire the oven to 280 degrees. When the pig’s ready he loads it onto his van and sells slices stuffed between hunks of bread in the Campli market square. The meat is delicious, moist and aromatic, with crispy crackling, and feet and ears are an optional extra. He’s there lunchtime and evening.
Cured sausage is always on the menu. The most distinctive is Ventricina from the Vasto region in the south. Luciano Caracciolo in Carunchio stuffs a pig’s bladder with chopped pork, adds salt, hot peppers, bell peppers, ground pepper and wild fennel seeds. He hangs it for 3 months to dry it out and then wraps it in lard for a further 5 months. It’s served thinly sliced and is moist and spicy, the ideal snack with a glass of red wine.
Most of the Abruzzo vineyards are concentrated on the narrow coastal strip between the sea and the mountains, but the wine from Valle Reale in Populi has a completely different character. At an altitude of over 1000 feet, the temperature differences between day and night are huge, and the grapes are only ready to harvest in November, just before the first snows. The result is a Montepulciano wine with fully developed flavours and a complex perfume, completely different from that of the coast. The best is aged in oak barrels for up to 18 months and labeled San Calisto. As I tasted the 2006 vintage, the sun slipped behind the mountains and the wolves began to howl. There were a good few more bottles to sample but I fortunately I didn’t have far to go - I was staying the night at the vineyard and only thing I had to negotiate was dinner.
Useful links
Bradt Guide to Abruzzo
Campli Porchetta
De Antoniis Farm
Gregorio Rotolo Cheese Farm
Ryanair
Valle Reale Vineyard
Ventricina Academy
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