Umbria Food

Food and Wine. Dinner is served! Flavours on the table
It is dutiful to begin with the two absolute protagonists: wine and olive oil. Both have ancient origins, dating back to the Umbrians and the Etruscans, and both, thanks to centuries of painstaking human labours, have modelled the landscape into a characteristic succession of vineyards and olive groves. Today, grape cultivation has modernised and specialsed, in a constant search for quality. Extremely varied soil and climatic factors enable the cultivation of prized vines, including indigenous varieties. It is therefore not by chance that Umbria boasts a range of extraordinary wines, increasingly well known and appreciated outside Italy as well. Standing out in particular are the "magnifi cent thirteen", composed of eleven DOC wines and two DOCG wines. The pinnacle of the millenari regional tradition is represented by Torgiano Rosso Riserva DOCG, along with Sagrantino DOCG di Montefalco, in the passito and dry varieties, with its unmistakable bouquet of blackberries. The delightful town of
Torgiano hosts a Wine Museum and a hugely popular annual wine-tasting event, the Banco d'Assaggio dei Vini d'Italia. The DOC labels of Umbria are: Assisi, Colli Altotiberini, Colli del Trasimeno, Colli Perugini, Torgiano, Colli Martani, Montefalco, Lago di Corbara, Orvieto Rosso, and Colli Amerini. Worthy of special mention is Orvieto Classico, an ancient and noble white wine beloved by popes and the architects and artists of the Duomo (Luca Signorelli requested a thousand litres per year by contract). To discover the secrets of the art of wine-making, a good starting point would be the four
"Strade del vino" (Wine Roads), tastino itineraries that also include sites of historical and artistic interest: the Strada del Sagrantino, which extends around Montefalco; the Strada dei Vini del Cantico, which joins Todi, Perugia, Torgiano, Spello and Assisi; the Strada del Vino Colli del Trasimeno; and the Strada dei Vini Etrusco-Romana, wedged into the province of Terni following the course of the Tiber. Just as extraordinary as the wine, Umbrian olive oil boasts a quality with few rivals in Italy, given that about 90% of it is extra-virgin. Truly a record. The merit, once again, goes to the climatic conditions and the soil of the foothills of the Apennines, ideal for the slow ripening of the olives, which ensures their low acidity. Cold pressed and for the most part mixed, they yield fruity and fl avourful oil with an intense green colour, an essential ingredient of the traditional cuisine. Olive oil is used for fi nishing a host of dishes, meats included, but is also delightful simply as is with bread. Umbria is the only Italian region to have obtained the DOP designation for the entire territory, divided into fi ve production zones: Colli di Assisi e Spoleto, Colli Martani, Colli Amerini, Colli del Trasimeno, and Colli Orvietani. A number of museums preserve and hand down the culture of olive oil, including the Museo della Civiltą dell'Olio e dell'Ulivo in Trevi and the Museo Lungarotti dell'Olio in Torgiano.
Thus having paid homage to the two most noted products of Umbrian gastronomy, we come to the cuisine itself, genuine and strongly tied to the fl avours of the land, but also capable of continuously reinventing itself. Not to mention the fact that methods of preparation, ingredients, and fl avours change from place to place. In order of presentation, we start with the fi rst course: umbricelli pasta made with water and flour and served with tomato sauce, stringozzi (or strangozzi) with goose sauce or with wild asparagus, handmade tagliatelle, imbrecciata (a soup of beans and cereal grains), risotto with asparagus or lupari, gobbi (cardoons) alla perugina, chick pea and chestnut soup in the Orvieto area, and ciriole with garlic, oil, and chilli pepper in the province of Terni. The meats, entirely from locally raised animals, are among the most succulent dishes: testina di agnello al forno, torello alla perugina, corata di lepre con la crescia, and then wild boar, venison (in the Valnerina), roast goose, stuffed duck, wild game, piccione alla ghiotta in Assisi, agnello allo scottadito, and gallina ubriaca ("drunken chicken") in Orvieto, cooked in the celebrated local wine. Meats are typically barbequed or roasted, and fl avoured with herbs and spices. Umbrian beef is renowned: the quality is guaranteed by the name Vitellone Bianco dell'Appennino Centrale (awarded the IGP designation from the European Union) which covers three breeds: Chianina, Marchigiana, and Romagnola, and establishes strict standards on the methods of raising, butchering, and distribution. Chianina cattle, raised in Umbria for more than two millennia, provide excellent meat, extremely tender and low fat, a real delicacy. But the undisputed king of traditional Umbrian cuisine is the pig, around
which a true culture has developed. It is cooked in a wood-fi red oven, fl avoured with herbs, fennel, and garlic, or roasted on the spit, known as "porchetta", which is also widespread in Latium but is believed to have originated in Umbria. To prepare porchetta, you start with a young, lean pig, around 40 kilos, which is cleaned of its entrails, washed, and fl avoured with herbs, salt, ground black pepper, garlic, and wild fennel, then stuffed with the entrails that have been chopped and fl avoured, and roasted on the spit. In one area in particular, Norcia and the Valnerina, pork processing is an art that has been handed down over the centuries (to the extent that all charcuterie makers are called "norcini") and has reached unrivalled levels of excellence: prosciutto di Norcia is rightly one of the best Italian prosciuttos. Savoury but not salty, it has a particular triangular "pear" shape and its preparation, starting with a selected white pig breed, requires at least two years. In addition to prosciutto, the master norcini produce other delicacies such as corallina, mazzafegati, mortadella, capocollo and sausages, still today based on the techniques and rhythms dictated by tradition. But the second course is not all meat: it also includes fi sh, obviously freshwater. The centuries-old cuisine of Lake Trasimeno, for example, offers such delicacies as carpa regina in porchetta, tegamaccio, perch fried or with pasta, pike (the eggs are used for dressing spaghetti), and latterino. Two types of eel are also fi shed in the lake, boccona and maretica, the most prized; it is usually prepared "a brustico", cooked on the embers of the reeds that grow on the shores. Along the Nera river you can enjoy trout (try it al cartoccio with truffl es), and around the springs of Clitunno, freshwater shrimp. All of Umbrian cuisine, though, is rich in special ingredients. Rural tradition has taught us to use a surprising variety of herbs and spices, wild woodland vegetables and fi eld greens: pimpernal, wild beet, sorrel, camettole, porcacchia, common brighteyes, lupari, erba del becco, grespigni, wild asparagus, vitalbe, bladder campion, and mushrooms. There are certain specialities that are rare, even unique, like the fagiolina del Trasimeno, a typical legume saved some years back from disappearing altogether and now protected with pride, or the fagiolo di Cave di Foligno, which can be tasted only during the festival dedicated to it, in which the entire annual harvest is consumed. Then there is the Cannara onion, famous and well-loved, the red potato of Colfi orito, chickling peas (a small very tasty legume), the rare black celery of Trevi that only grows in the vicinity of the Clitunno river, the spelt of Monteleone and Spoleto, the renowned lentils of Castelluccio
di Norcia, which also have the IGP designation, and the special saffron of Cascia and Cittą della Pieve.
The touch of magic, however, is contributed by truffl es, the object of desire with its intense fragrance that makes it the leitmotif of numerous recipes: it is used with pasta, meat, eggs, poultry, fi sh, in cheeses and in oil. The lands of Umbria abound in truffl es, from the white truffl e (Tuber magratum pico) to the black truffl e of Norcia or Spoleto (Tuber melanosporum vittandini), as well as the scorzone variety that grows in summer and the bianchetto, less noble but equally inviting. Truffl es are vital for the regional economy, given that 80% of the entire national production is concentrated here. All dishes are accompanied by bread, which in Umbria is baked in a huge variety of mixtures and shapes, often tied to ritual or votive occasions. Thus we have ruota umbra (whole wheat bread in a round loaf), brustengo (oilfried bread) with bacon or rosemary, the saltless crusty bread of Terni, pan caciato (with pecorino cheese and walnuts), and pan nociato in all its various versions (the version made in Todi is excellent). Not to be missed are torta al testo (a mixture of water, fl our, salt and sometimes yeast cooked on the "testo", a fl at red-hot stone), fi lled with various ingredients, and pizza di Pasqua, a cheese bread of peasant origin. And there is no better way to fi nish a meal than with
one of the many desserts: torcolo (a ring-cake made of bread dough with oil, candied citron-peel, raisins, pine nuts, and anise seed), strufoli (fried dough with honey or alchermes), torciglione, maccheroni con le noci (the typical Christmas Eve sweet), tozzetti del pescatore, fave dei morti,
zuppa inglese, rocciata, panpepato, crescionda, pampolenta, cicale, lumachelle, and ciaramicola, the
typical Easter cake of Perugia.